Journal 2

The Book I Read Before I Was Ready

Rereading Who Fears Death and questioning why we expect understanding to happen immediately.

Returning to the Book

A few days ago, I decided to reread Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor.

I first encountered the novel at university, during a period when books seemed to arrive one after another. There were pages to finish, seminars to prepare for, assignments to write and another title already waiting on the reading list.

I remember reading the book quickly.

At the time, that felt normal. Finishing mattered. Keeping up mattered. And somewhere between the deadlines and discussions, I think I began treating reading as something to complete rather than something to experience.

Years later, I found myself thinking about the book again. I remembered parts of the story, but I could not shake the feeling that I had passed through it too quickly that I had read the words without giving them enough time to settle.

So I opened it again.

This time, there was no seminar waiting for me and no deadline at the end of the chapter. I could pause, reread a paragraph or sit with a question without worrying that I was falling behind.

I was somewhere in Part Two, appropriately titled “Student,” when Aro asked Onyesonwu:

“What makes you think that you should understand it all?”

I stopped reading.

Not because I found the sentence difficult, but because it seemed to be asking me the question too.

Why did I think I should understand it all?

The first time I read Who Fears Death, I was a university student. Reading was part of the work. We moved from one book to another, prepared for seminars and learned to arrive with interpretations ready even when we were still trying to understand what we had read.

There was rarely time to admit:

I don’t know what this means yet.

Perhaps that is why this sentence passed me by the first time. Or perhaps I noticed it but was already moving towards the next chapter, the next discussion and the next book.

This time, I stayed with it.

And almost immediately, my thoughts moved from the student I had been to the students I now teach.

When Silence Is Mistaken for Not Understanding

As a teacher, I have learned that understanding does not always announce itself immediately.

Sometimes it appears as a quick answer or a hand raised confidently. But sometimes it looks like silence. It looks like a student searching for a word, beginning a sentence and then changing direction. It may appear in a thoughtful response offered several minutes or even several lessons after the original question was asked.

For multilingual learners, that pause can hold more than we realize.

A student may be thinking in one language while trying to respond in another. They may understand the idea clearly but not yet have the English words needed to express it. They may also be comparing the text with an experience, belief or expression from another part of their life.

Yet classrooms often reward the quickest response.

We ask a question and wait for an answer. When it does not come quickly enough, we rephrase it, simplify it or direct it to another student. We may believe we are helping, but perhaps we have interrupted something that was still taking shape.

Aro’s question stayed with me:

What makes us think that understanding should happen all at once?

Perhaps hesitation is not the absence of thought.

Perhaps it is thought in progress.

A question to carry with you

When have you needed more time to understand something and what helped you finally find the words?