Fike's Corner😊

  I just finished Wash Day Diaries, and I think what I loved most about it was how ordinary everything felt. There is no huge mystery to solve. No complicated plot that keeps you turning pages because you desperately need to know what happens next. Instead, we get four young Black women-  Kim, Tanisha, Davene, and Cookie ...living their everyday lives in the Bronx, dealing with relationships, family, work, personal struggles, hair, and, most importantly, each other. And somehow, that was enough to keep me reading. Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith is a collection of five connected short comic stories about four best friends. The title comes from something that many Black women will immediately understand: wash day. That day when washing and taking care of your hair somehow becomes a whole event. You need time. You need products. You need patience. And sometimes, you need your girls . But while the book is literally about hair, it is really about so much more. I...

  There is a girl who hasn't been sleeping much lately. Not because she doesn't want to sleep. In fact, she wants nothing more than to close her eyes and wake up when morning comes. But lately, sleep has become difficult. It visits when it wants to and ignores her when she needs it most. So, every night, she waits. After a while, she stopped trying to force sleep. Instead, she started paying attention to the things that happen after everyone else has drifted off. It's strange how different a room feels when everyone in it is asleep. The same walls that seem ordinary during the day suddenly become unfamiliar. The shadows stretch across the room in ways they never do under sunlight, and every little sound suddenly feels much louder than it really is. The room hasn't changed, yet somehow it feels like it has. Sometimes she stares at the ceiling for so long that the little cracks begin to look like faces. The hanging clothes in the corner become people for a second before h...

  There are books you finish, close with a smile, and move on. And then there are books you finish, stare at the ceiling for five minutes, and ask yourself, "What exactly was that?" My Sister, the Serial Killer was the second one for me. First of all... I need God to judge the author a little. 😭 I finally finished My Sister, the Serial Killer and... I think my biggest problem is that I wanted justice more than the author wanted to give it to me. I closed the book and just sat there thinking, "That can't be it." Throughout the entire story, Ayoola keeps killing the men she dates, and every single time, her older sister Korede is there to clean up after her. She lies for her, protects her, and keeps choosing her over what is right. As a reader, I kept waiting for the moment everything would finally catch up with them. I was convinced that at some point, someone would find out, the truth would come out, and justice would finally be served. It never happened. In f...

  The rats in my hostel have an unbelievable amount of audacity. I'm not even joking. I have spent a good amount of time wondering why the rats in my hostel are so comfortable. Not comfortable as in "they've settled in." Comfortable as in they genuinely do not fear human beings. Tell me why a rat will see a full-grown human being and instead of running away, it starts running towards the person? Or worse, it casually walks beside you as if both of you pay the same hostel fees. The first few times it happened, I was shocked. Now? I'm still shocked. Because where exactly is the fear? Who raised these rats? Growing up, I thought rats were supposed to be afraid of humans. You enter a room. The rat sees you. The rat runs away. Simple. Apparently, the rats in my hostel did not receive that memo. These ones move with confidence. Sometimes I feel like they look at me and think, "Good evening, roommate." Yesterday was when I finally accepted that these rats and I...

  Today was a lot.... It was one of those days that leaves you with mixed emotions, the one where you don’t fully understand at first, but you just know something in you has shifted. I found myself thinking about gratitude in a quiet and honest way. The kind that comes when you suddenly realize that no matter what you’re going through, there are people facing situations much heavier than yours. I witnessed an accident scene today. Thankfully, no one died, but it was enough to shake me. It reminded me of something I had almost forgotten….how scared I used to be of motorcycles. Growing up, my parents didn’t really allow it. We mostly used buses, and somehow that felt safer. But now, being in a different environment, things are not the same. Buses are not always easy to find, and if you’re in a hurry, waiting is not always an option. So I adjusted. I got used to motorcycles. Very used to them. But today’s scene made me pause. It reminded me that some things we get comfortable with are...

  Lately, I’ve just been tired in a way that is hard to explain. It’s not the kind of tired that sleep fixes, and it’s not the kind that goes away after resting for a while. It stays. It shows up in how I think, how I feel, and even in small things that normally wouldn’t bother me. I think what makes it worse is not just school, but everything I’ve had to pause because of it. I miss reading. I miss sitting with a book and getting lost in it without thinking about time or what I have to do next. I miss writing reviews and sharing my thoughts. That used to be something I really enjoyed, something that felt natural to me. Now it feels like something I’ve pushed far away, something I’ll come back to “later,” even though I’m not sure when that later will be. Sometimes I think about the goals I set for this year and I start to worry. I wonder if I’ll actually achieve them or if I’ll fall short. But at the same time, I ask myself what I’m supposed to do, because right now school is the pr...