Narrative twists like the bones of a python
Akwaeke Emezi’s debut novel tells powerful, disorienting story of a broken woman
Akwaeke Emezi is a name you will want to remember, because surely it is one you will be hearing again and again.
Her debut novel, Freshwater, is a stunning and disorienting story about a broken woman trying to overcome the pain of her human life while straddling “the other side.” It interweaves Igbo religious myth with a story of overcoming mental illness — floating between the corporeal and metaphysical. Ada, the main character, is a bridge between life and death, embodied by ogbanje — evil spirits that are blamed for the havoc in human life.
Emizi, a young Nigerian author, won the 2017 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa for her story “Who is Like God.” She also worked with the editor and acclaimed author and feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the Farafina Creative Writing Workshop in Lagos. The experience has clearly helped her to carve out a unique voice that won’t easily be forgotten.
When Ada’s father prays for a daughter, his plea is not only answered, he and his wife get much more than they bargained for. “Humans often pray and forget what their mouths can do, forget that every ear is listening, that when you direct your longing to the gods, they can take that personally,” the ogbanje tell us. And so Ada is born a disturbed and inconsolable child and grows into an extremely troubled woman. Yet she can’t help herself. From the onset, we are told Ada is the true child of the python, Ala, the highest god in the Igbo pantheon, whose womb holds the underworld. It is Ala who answers Ada’s father’s prayer even though she isn’t the Christian God he knelt to.
Next, Ada’s relationship with her human mother, Saachi, becomes strained — the ogbanje create a wedge between mother and daughter, preying on Saachi’s weakness, depression and anxiety, until she reaches a breaking point and leaves her family to work in Saudi Arabia. “. . . this is how you break a child,” the ogbanje rejoice. “. . . Step one, take the mother away.”
Ada is pushed to the brink as the ogbanje spur a destructive streak of self-harm and cutting. These spirits consider themselves to be gods, therefore they cannot deign to care about the physical limitations of Ada’s skin and bones. “The first madness was that we were born, that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin,” the ogbanje say.
The introspective novel truly takes shape when the ogbanje, a collective “we,” are overwhelmed by one amongst them, Asughara. This “beastself” emerges to the forefront to protect Ada when she becomes a victim of sexual violence. Asughara is single-mindedly hedonistic and cav- alier, wearing Ada’s skin as if it’s patent leather as she steers her towards devastation: “the whole point of my existence was to run wild and tear whoever fell into my mouth into pieces.”
Asughara, like the other ogbanje, doesn’t worry about consequences or remorse — those human frailties are Ada’s alone. Yet, those frailties are often pushed to the margins of the novel, Ada’s voice being the one that’s drowned out by the ogbanje who share and occasionally control her body.
As a result, we might expect these concerns not to weigh too heavily. But that’s not the case — she is so lonely that she outwardly spirals. “Without us you’re nothing . . . We’re the buffer between you and mad- ness, we’re not the madness,” Asughara tells Ada.
The ogbanje are ruthless, yet they repeatedly remind readers that, while they may be ruthless, humans are the ones actually inflicting pain and they are merely protecting Ada. It isn’t until the very end that we truly understand the weight of these words and how much the ogbanje manipulate Ada’s mind to protect her from sexual abuses she suffers at the hands of boys and men.
Freshwater is unlike any novel I have ever read. Its shape-shifting perspective is radical and innovative, twisting the narrative voices like the bones of a python.
While these voices slither smoothly across the page, the story can feel jerky at times. The complex world within Ada requires a lot of explanation, and the story languishes during these protracted moments, especially when the drama outside Ada is rushed. But perhaps this is intentional: If Ada is fading away from her own life, then we are seeing firsthand how it floats past her. “It was an unusual incarnation, to be a child of Ala as well as an ogbanje, to be mothered by the god who owns life yet pulled toward death.”
Freshwater is an unusual story. Emezi has not only made a rich contribution to Igbo mythology, she has crafted a novel so unique and fresh, it feels as if the medium has been reinvented. Safa Jinje is a writer and editor living in Toronto. You can follow her on Twitter: @SafaJinje