Soft Magic-Book Review

Fall for yourself, shamelessly-Soft Magic.

Upile Chisala is a 24 year author  with two books already published.Her books Nectar and Soft Magic are relatively popular each having a lot of positive reviews.

I know what you are thinking,what?!! such a young published author but there is more, girl already has TWO graduate degrees from Oxford University.She wrote Soft Magic when she was 21 years so basically Soft Magic is a collection of poems written by a 21 year old. Where I come from 21 year olds are still children and no one takes a lot of what they say seriously because a lot of the time they are still in school and living at home on their parent's tab.Upile is a special young person as her book though small with quite a number of two sentence pages gives strong messages on self love.She definitely isn't your average young adult.

Reading it I felt  that it was specifically written for women and is a wake up call to women to love themselves and to be comfortable in their own skin.

It covers different topics but she puts a lot of emphasis on these ones.

Body positivity accepting yourself curves,flaws and all.

We are all flawed in some way and it's human nature to focus on only the flaws and not the things that you have right.For the longest time I thought myself too dark and suffered major insecurity because I wanted to be beautiful to other people.I thought light skin was what made one beautiful. These days all I see is dark beautiful girls and I now know beauty is so much more than the colour of your skin.

In this book Upile has some poems that urge you to love yourself flaws and all.Examples include:

''Consider this:your body is a blessing.Where it curves,sags,wrinkles,where it was scarred,burnt,touched.All this is a map of your life.Your body is a memory.''

''Remind your little girls with kinks in their hair and skin as dazzling as the night sky that they too are miracles,that they too are warriors.Remind their little souls of the goddesses they are always meant to be.''

Get in the habit of celebrating yourself from skin to marrow,you are magic.

Speaking up on things that matter. 

Women as it is don't speak up a lot.They might have the brightest ideas,opinions or concerns but mostly they won't voice it until asked to and when they do sometimes it's trivialized which I believe is men's way of shutting women down.Upile in this book talks about the need to speak up and raise your voice on things that matter to you in the following poems:

''Girl, who taught you to be so silent? to fold your opinion back into your mouth so neatly?''

''Honey, you need to say the thing before it forms  a storm in your chest. you can’t keep carrying anger in your bones because you are too afraid of letting poison out. freeing yourself from the thing won’t make you serpentine. you mustn’t keep anger tucked in your skin like that. please darling, say the thing you mean to say. say the thing before it builds a home in your blood. say the thing before you become the thing itself.''

Pursuit of happiness.

''Choose happiness every morning like you would an outfit.''

''If someone hasn’t called you brave lately, I will. You are fighting sadness with everything you’ve got
and for that you are mighty.''

To be happy is a thing a lot of people are working towards me included.I always thought constant laughter meant one was happy but it doesn't.Happiness I have found out is contentment with all you have and faith that your prayers for what you don't have will be answered.

Would I recommend this book? yes, a hundred times.Sometimes  most of the time we forget that we are enough with all the flaws we think we have.This book is a celebration of; women,mothers,female creatives,dark skinned women and every one working towards being happy. It helps that its a tiny book so you can easily read it in one sitting.