Since reading Pet, my attention has been tugged at by Bitter’s name. Emezi names too carefully for it not to. In Pet, I laid it down as a product of her conception story and birth, but in Bitter it tugs at me anew and I see more in it. Emezi uses so many taste and smell words in Bitter that I started to question why I read Bitter’s name as a feeling and not a sense. While the feeling of bitterness makes me think of being stuck, unmoving, and worn down, I associate the taste and smell of bitter things with strength, enough strength to spark reaction, enough strength to put something in the world that can overpower the sweet and soothing.
A synonym for bitter is acrid, a word Emezi uses repeatedly to describe the smell of fire in Lucille, a symbol of crisis but also cleansing. It’s connection to Bitter/bitter also makes it, I would suggest, a symbol of creativity, leaving me to wonder, once again, what connects destruction to creation.
The purpose of art, I understand, but artists, I don’t. How can a creature that breathes in fire and blood also be this obsessed with safety? How can I? Normally, I would say that safety is my central preoccupation, but, reading Bitter, I have to say, I’m not interested in what’s safe. I am not interested in what’s soothing. I just want the bitter. I just want the strong spark that can crack the world into pieces. I don’t want to feel safe; I don’t want to feel stable; and I don’t want to press murderous angels back into floorboards. I want more necks broken. I want more change, even if it comes in a parcel of chaos. I want all the artists bleeding, and all the angels loose. It isn’t war that I want; it isn’t even justice. Bitter doesn’t call Vengeance out to do justice. What she says is, “Come out and play!”
What the artist makes plays in the world. In a world obsessed with production, what could be more destructive than that?
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