One common theme I saw in chapters 5 and 7 was the importance of knowledge and history. When Yetu and Oori are talking about their histories, they come to a disagreement about the importance of history. Yetu says: “‘If the past is full of bad things, if a people is defined by the terror done to them, it’s good for it to go, don’t you think?… It was a very holy thing for my kind. It meant I held onto all the memories so no one else had to, generations and generations of them. Six hundred years of pain.’” (p.94). In contrast, Oori says: “‘I would take any amount of pain in the world if I meant I could know all the memories of the Oshuben. I barely know any stories from my parents’ generation. I can’t remember our language. How could you leave behind something like that?’” (p.94). These are two very different perspectives. One knows all, and one lives without knowledge. If you compare Oori and the wajinru, both live in ignorance of their past, but the wajinru are able to live in the present, while Oori seems consumed by questions of her history and unable to move forward. Is it because the wajinru have the Remembrance? Or is there another difference? Would Oori really want to know her people’s history? As they say, curiosity killed the cat. In addition, this comparison between knowing history and not knowing mirrors the relationship between Yetu and her mother, as her mother often said that Yetu could not understand what it was like, when in reality, Amaba was the one who struggled to realize the pain Yetu underwent. Similarly, Oori is struggling to realize how traumatizing a history can be, especially when relived in such detail. Often, when we consider trauma, we see it as an event that happens to a person, and that person is the one who is traumatized. However, there are some theories that people who are close to the person who is traumatized (partnerships, parental, etc) can be traumatized just by hearing what has happened to someone they care about. Yetu has been repeatedly traumatized by these memories, but no one will acknowledge it because it is ‘history’ and decidedly over with, and because it has happened, they believe one cannot be traumatized by the pure memory. I think this end of the chapter raises the question of the importance of history, as well as how we choose to define ourselves. Do we define ourselves by history, by culture, by community? These two characters show sharp differences in where they find identity; Oori has no culture, community, or history to lean on to shape her identity, while Yetu feels very defined and shaped by her culture and community, and the history she was forced to bear.