Cover Photo: A photograph of a grey floor covered with multicolored party streamers, confetti, and ribbons.
Photograph by Matheus Frade/Unsplash

Reading My Audiobook Was an Act of Letting Go

You cannot grow, or heal, or whatever it is we’re trying to achieve when we write though trauma, by distancing yourself from your own pain.

This is The Sound of My Voice, a series on the craft, process, and stakes of recording audiobooks.


My summation of the first day had been, “Jesus, this is bleak.” On the second day, by the time I read the final line in the final chapter, I thought, “Jesus, this is me.” Writing has a way of revealing things to you in stages, I find. When I finished writing the book, I mostly felt relief. Now, having completed an entire reading of it, what I felt was exposed. I had hoped that by writing candidly about my pain, I could heal it. And I thought healing would mean feeling no connection to the words I read out loud. I thought healing would mean being able to say, “And she lived happily ever after, and she let go of the sadness, and she truly became carefree.” I wanted, so badly, to not be the person I was when I wrote the book.

I recently got a chance to hear a snippet of the audiobook. I think I sound weird, anxious, and kind of miserable. But I also think I sound like myself. I’m not sure what else to call that but acceptance.

Zeba Blay is a culture and film critic born in Ghana and based in NYC. Formerly Senior Culture Writer at HuffPost, her words have also appeared in Allure, Film Comment, ESSENCE, The New York Times, Shadow and Act, The Village Voice, Indiewire, and the Webby Award-winning MTV digital series Decoded. In 2013, she was the first person to coin the hashtag #carefreeblackgirl on Twitter. Her forthcoming book of pop culture essays, Carefree Black Girls, is set for release on October 19 2021 by St. Martin’s Press in the US, and October 21 2021 by Vintage/Square Peg in the UK.