21 Sep / Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi [in Booklist]
Just as only Akwaeke Emezi could have narrated their Freshwater debut, no other voice could have manifested their first nonfiction title. Presented as an epistolary mosaic addressed to family, friends, lovers, betrayers, and heroes, Emezi’s raw voice lays bare their unadorned writing. Although the vulnerability, arrogance, and brutal transparency might cause readers to turn off, such haste would be regrettable.
Nigerian-born Emezi is unlike any other author; they’re a self-described ogbanje, “an Igbo spirit that’s born to a human mother, a kind of trickster that dies unexpectedly only to return in the next child and do it all over again.” They’re also a self-proclaimed “god,” occasionally a “bratty deity.” Facing “the dysphoria experienced by spirits who find themselves embodied in human form,” Emezi sought alignment in reductive mastectomy and hysterectomy, eschewing naysayers both professional and personal.
Writing gave them voice, even if gatekeepers and audiences weren’t quite ready to listen. And yet they persisted. In between, family was discarded and chosen, relationships grew and shattered, alliances cemented and severed. They sought fame, money, power without apology. They faltered, they rose, they survived, and clearly they have triumphed.
Review: “Media,” Booklist Online, September 17, 2021
Readers: Adult
Published: 2021