Review of Questions for Ada by Ijeoma Umebinyuo

Ijeoma Umebinyuo highlights the feelings of being a stranger to a new country and an outsider to one’s home after relocation. In certain poems, with words, she paints a caricature of the individuals who forget how to call their father’s names because they lived outside their birth countries for a while.

TITLE: Questions for Ada
AUTHOR: Ijeoma Umebinyuo
GENRE: Poetry
NUMBER OF PAGES: 248
PUBLISHER: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition
PUBLICATION DATE: August 7, 2015
ISBN: 9 78-1505984347
 
In Questions for Ada, Ijeoma Umebinyuo reclaims womanhood with pride, strength, and compassion. Ijeoma writes healing to loss and brokenness, she writes honesty and love for women and womanhood. She exalts femininity by connecting women to the reality of their power. By teaching them to guard and let loose of the god they are when the time is needed. She re-tells the graduation from being a girl to becoming a woman, and she adds to many things that females are not taught at this ceremony, like occasional forgiveness of their selves. She embraces counselling, not only to tell one’s problems or to be diagnosed but as a place, an atmosphere and heaven where women and girls find their voice without shame or judgement. Her words bring deliverance and relief to females who have been hurt and taught to hide their pains in shame.

Other topics that Ijeoma touches on includes immigration and culture. Ijeoma Umebinyuo highlights the feelings of being a stranger to a new country and an outsider to one’s home after relocation. In certain poems, with words, she paints a caricature of the individuals who forget how to call their father’s names because they lived outside their birth countries for a while.

Overall, Questions for Ada is highly recommended, especially for women who seek liberation within and around themselves. It is a gospel of women and for men’s understanding as well. Questions for Ada is collection that exalts the female gender in a way that has never been seen.

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