Yvonne Vera died (7-4-2005)

Is Crystal death-obsessed? Seems to me there have been more deathdays than birthdays so far (I haven't counted). Maybe it's just because I am more used to the idea of celebrating the latter than the former.
Anyhow...Yvonne Vera. Born Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, 1964.
Lived mainly in Canada from 1980s.
Black (I had to look). Post-colonial African literature.
"Vera wrote obsessively, often for 10 hours a day, and described time when she was not writing as "a period of fasting"." (Wiki, cf. Asimov)
Crystal quotes from _Under the Tongue_ (1996) a striking passage beginning:
"Grandmother pulls a word from her mouth and places it under my tongue..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvonne_Vera