Vagabonds by Eloghosa Osunde – A Love Letter Review
How Vagabonds! unravelled me, remade me, and became a book I never wanted to share.
Never in my life have I had such a hard time reviewing a book. Usually, it's quite easy: I hate it, I don’t read it. I explain why I didn’t read it. It’s never too long. I don’t dwell on books much. If I love it, the words will flow out of me—in a messy, excited way—but there will still be some clarity.
With Vagabonds!, the relationship is much different. I love this book. I love it enough that I didn’t want to share it with people. I didn’t want to.
Still don’t want to. I’m doing this reluctantly, only because it’s my job. But thinking about how to share it, I feel like I am losing my mind.
There’s no natural way for me to make you understand how close to tears this book has brought me.
So here I am, 20 pages before the end, dizzy with emotions and images. Amazed by Osunde’s writing. “Amazed” feels lazy, though. Wonder is more like it. I felt it in every line I read. I want to walk between those lines for the rest of my life. Analyze every single word.Let me pull apart each image summoned by these sentences.Watch intently every color, every pigment, every detail.And I will. I will draw these characters and bring them to life.
I’ll create scenarios and short films from these lines—and I will keep them to myself.
The 6 quotes to remember :
“Here, we don’t see people unless they’re big—and to get big you need to eat money, breathe money, piss money, shit money.”
“Anybody who has tried it before will tell you this: silence is a dangerous thing to give yourself to, especially if you were born to speak.”
“If you calm down and stop looking for the meaning of things all the time, you’ll enjoy them more.”
But enough about me.
The book starts with a list of definitions of the word vagabonds. At first, they are familiar ones—what we’ve heard and used often. Then come the other definitions. The definitions that draw a line in the sand, creating the margins of our world. And how beautiful are those margins. I’ve lived my entire life believing that the world was not fully visible. I used to be obsessed with urban fantasy because I was looking for the magic in our world. An explanation for why I feel like I belong elsewhere.
A constant unease. Pretending to fit in. That terrifying hope of one day finding a place where I truly belong.There is more to this.
There is so much more—and Osunde puts it into words.
You encounter spirits, revenants, the devil, wandering eyes, shapeshifters, angels, magicians—and many more with no names. You meet them in a whirlwind of images. You hear how they are hated, loved, pitied. You listen to the heartbroken masquerade. You bask in the love those vagabonds are capable of. You feel their fierceness and the warmth of their arms.And then—you understand why people choose to live in the shadows.
Why people stay there. Because there… is them. Is the real them.
Osunde writes like each word is the last thing they will ever be able to say. Each word matters. Each is exactly where it’s supposed to be.
Oh, you read Vagabonds! and you get dizzy.
And you refuse to leave.
Because where else are you supposed to go?
Isn’t this book your home?
“When I looked closely, I saw that the outsiders, the vagabonds, the ones we were fond of uprooting from the ground, were the people the city couldn’t do without.”
“It was a joyful life they’d made—a life with real friends who knew their real given names and the meaning behind them. A circle, a community, a family, a fortress. A home far from old violence, wholly accepting.”