#55: All For One And One For All
A Review of Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun by Sarah Ladipo Manyika
A story of aging, friendship, and yearning, Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun follows 74-year-old Morayo Da Silva, a Nigerian woman living in San Francisco, as she recounts her remarkable life. It’s the author’s second book, published in 2016.
Greetings, dear reader! 👋🏽
I hope you are doing well and taking good care of yourself.
Welcome to another edition of this spectacular newsletter.
The book opens with the protagonist describing where she lives, a top-floor unit in an ‘old but sturdy’ building with a magnifique view. She and her hundreds of books have lived there for twenty years. She spends her time reading, taking road trips in her vintage Porsche, and chatting with strangers.
When Morayo has an accident and has to undergo surgery and spend some time in recovery, she’s forced to rely on people and she struggles with needing help. Having no family, she had to rely on her friends.
“I know I’m lucky, I know I am, but I don’t like being this fragile and feeling this out of control.”
As Morayo narrates her story, weaving a tapestry of her past and present, we meet Sunshine, Dawud, a charming Palestinian shopkeeper, Sage, a feisty, homeless girl, and Antonio, the poet she desired more than her husband, Caesar. We also get a glimpse of the other character’s lives as they narrate their own stories.
Life is not particularly linear, for lack of a better word. With certain events, we are often forced to reassess everything and make adjustments as necessary. Also, as much as many people would like to shy away from it, or not acknowledge it, we cannot do without a community. Being by ourselves all the time and figuring out life on our own is near impossible.
“But wasn’t that the thing about life? It was always the unexpected, those events not planned for, that got you in the end.”
Although the entire book is written in first-person, it doesn’t take too long to know who is “speaking” in each chapter. At a little more than 100 pages, it makes for a short easy read on a lazy day or weekend. I like that it featured an older character, which isn’t something we see often.
Have you read this book? What did you think about it? Leave a comment, maybe?😊
#54: My Neighbour, My Neighbour
A collection of 35 poems exploring family dynamics, the lives of people living in a ‘face me I face you’ house, and the narrator's romance with her lover.