'Notes On Grief' Makes Visceral The Experience Of Death And Grieving
"'After the burial we can begin to heal,'" Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recounts her mother saying. Perhaps in the reading of this book, so too will the rest of us who lost so much over this past year.
The lament, a lyrical outpouring of sorrow, is one of the oldest and most universal art forms, with The Lament for Sumer and Ur dating back 4,000 years to ancient Sumer.
Across time and cultures, the lament has been seen in The Illiad and the Hindu Vedas, Beowulf and the Christian Bible. It has been seen in the operas of Monteverdi and Purcell, the music of Mozart and Rossini. The lament permeates the piobaireachd music of Scotland. And for millenia, the lament has characterized African mourning traditions, from the Bantu in the East to the Igbo in the West.
In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's the lament composed to honor and process the death of her father during the
