“Who Do We Become When What We Love Is No Longer Ours?”: Delali Adjoa on The Free Verse Society
Delali Adjoa's debut novel opens with a girl arriving in a new city carrying a grief that has no clean name. In The Free Verse Society, sixteen-year-old Jae Afenyo leaves for Delray Beach to live with her uncle after placing her baby for adoption, hoping that a change of place might help her figure out who she is now.
What she finds there is music, poetry, and the complicated warmth of young love. The novel sits at the intersection of all three, tracing how two teenagers try to find their footing after loss.
The title itself asks the central question the story keeps circling: who do we become when what we love is no longer ours? It is the kind of question that does not resolve neatly, and from what Adjoa has shared, the book does not pretend otherwise.
If you have been waiting for a story that holds a young Black girl's grief with tenderness and without shortcuts, this one is worth your time.
Originally published by Brittle Paper.