Freshwater
By Akwaeke Emezi
Faber & Faber
Akwaeke Emezi’s bold debut novel Freshwater is a tale that blends Igbo spirituality with contemporary realities. Echoing the author’s own life, Ada, our narrator, identifies as a non-binary trans-person and an ‘ogbanje’, and in the novel we see their struggle to accept this splintered self. With a myriad of spirits trapped within Ada, Freshwater vividly conveys the pain of dysphoria – of being contained in a form unfitting. Emezi uses playful language throughout, evoking an air of mysticism, while suggesting our primal-most inclinations. These poeticisms, however, sometimes slip into oversimplified statements and repetition, straying slightly into the domain of YA fiction.
Freshwater navigates the concept of madness in a singular way: portraying it as an internal retreat when humanity has failed you, as a means of coping with the heavy weight of trauma. One of the spirits within Ada functions as a personification of female sexuality, an attempt to distance oneself from memories of sexual abuse, while another embodies Ada’s bodily dysphoria. Beneath the apparent trope of romanticised madness, Emezi presents an alternative lens to view mental illness. Rather than exorcising demonic spirits, or being medicalised under mental illness, Emezi purposes accepting the reality of one’s true self.
Freshwater, albeit a victim of a degree of padding, brazenly, elegantly questions the assumptions of our time, seeking to normalise the fractured self, and create space for the ‘ogbanjes’ of the world.
Words: Courtney Byrne
