REVIEW OF FRESHWATER (2018) BY AKWAEKE EMEZI

   







    I wasn't sure what to expect going into Freshwater. I'd read blurbs about it, double checked the goodreads rating, and wasn't sure I'd like it. However once I started I found it hard to leave it be. Throw in that it's part of an ongoing art project by Emezi called "The Unblinding" and I've been delving into the rabbit hole that is this book and this author ever since.

    I'd like to start with the author. Akwaeke Emezi. Akwaeke Emezi (they/them) is a Tamil and Igbo author in their early thirties. The importance of starting with the author is particularly relevant with this book- as it's an autobiography. Akwaeke Emezi has spoken a lot (and I will link some interviews in the links section of this review) about their identity as embodied spirit, using the concept of the Igbo ogbanje to explain their worldview. An ogbanje is defined as a spirit child in Igbo religious ontology- a child who comes to die young and then be reborn to do it all over again. Here is Emezi's definition of obganje below.

    "It’s a bit of a difficult term to describe, just because it’s not an English term. Most of the times it gets translated as a spirit that’s born into a human body. But I’ve been finding that people start thinking of it as a binary. They think, Is it really a spirit if it’s in a human body? And they start trying to divide it into two because the description splits it that way. Really, it’s not one or the other. It’s both at the same time. It can’t be split.
 

    It’s part of Igbo reality. Part of the ontology of the culture where there would be these children who were called “born to die.” They get born, and they die repeatedly. And the point of it is allegedly to torment the mother. It’s central to my work because when I started doing this work, I’d been trying to understand suicidality, and Western lenses that were usually around mental health really weren’t helpful. And the only thing that sticks for me was going back and choosing a different lens, and ogbanje was the one that made a lot more sense than the “mental health” descriptions of what was going on."  Akwaeke Emezi, Rumpus Magazine, Feb 21st, 2018

     Emezi's explanation and thought process that took them from western lenses around suicidality and mental health to the lens of the obganje as this intertwined spirit and human is interesting and honestly revolutionary to me.   Emezi has said they used their own life events to create the bones of this novel. The plot is told through a plurality of voices, four spirits in all inhabiting and making up the identity of a Nigerian girl named Ada. The spirits are often referred to as gods, and bemoan their state within Ada. This is the story of how Ada goes mad, being filled with spirits in a human body. 

“The first madness was that we were born, that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin.”

    The voices are given as chapter headings: We, Asughara, and Ada. Ada grows up in Nigeria, where she is a troubled child, the spirits within her driving her actions. At school Ada undergoes a traumatic assault, and here is where the spirits take over and Ada's own identity as Ada takes a backseat. Important to this section is Asughara. Asughara is the part of Ada that destroys, that acts in behaviors that are rebellious and callous, sending Ada's life into a dangerous spiral.

“We're afraid for you, they said. It's like you're on this thin line between being alive and being dead, like one small shift could send you either direction”

     There is also St. Vincent, a male spirit living in Ada with a gentle presence. Ada is often visited by Yshwa, the Christian god she grew up with. She converses with these spirits in her mind, allowing them to carve her up and take over her life. I won't tell you the rest, you'll have to read for yourself.

     This book was incredible to engage with. I found myself tantalized by Akwaeke's bold prose. It's elegant and violent at times, setting the reader up to both devour this book and be devoured by this book. It reads like a snake, slithering at different turns, sometimes impossible to catch, moving right through your hands on a scaly belly. Reading about the thoughts of gods "stuffed into a bag of skin", about multiple realities colliding and crashing and crystallizing, about migration, about liminal spaces, and about one person's messy survival was an engrossing experience. 20/10 from me.

Rating: 💛💛💛💛💛

Links: 
Akwaeke Emezi's Website: https://www.akwaeke.com/biography
Interviews: 

Also Emezi has provided a reading list to supplement this book: 



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