[1] Clemmons was a graduate student in the fiction MFA program at Columbia University, working on a novel, when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.

When she is in college, her mother is stricken by cancer and dies, causing Thandi's life to fall apart as she struggles to process her grief.

In The Guardian, Marta Bausells described What We Lose as "highly experimental, told in intimate vignettes including blogposts, photos, hand-drawn charts and hip-hop lyrics".

[2] In Vogue, Megan O'Grady notes the book's "boldly innovative and frankly sexual" style, noting "the collage-like novel mixes hand-drawn charts, archival photographs, rap lyrics, sharp disquisitions on the Mandelas and Oscar Pistorius, and singular meditations on racism’s brutal intimacies.

[1][3][4][5] The New York Times review said: "The book’s distinctive form and voice give it an unusual capacity to show how individuals connect deep feeling to broad political understanding — an experience too rarely rendered in fiction.