All water is connected. All freshwater comes out of the mouth of a python.
Freshwater is a surreal and unique reading experience, set in the liminal world between madness and sanity, between the binaries of gender, between African spiritualism and American rationality. A coming-of-age tale, apparently based on many of author Akwaeke Emezi's own experiences, it was impossible for me to determine what was meant to be literal and what metaphorical, but the writing so perfectly captures the pain and pressures of mental illness (as I imagine it) that it was impossible not to be both moved and enlightened. Emezi has indeed written a “startling” and “extraordinary” debut.
Earlier, when we said she went mad, we lied. She has always been sane. It's just that she was contaminated with us, a godly parasite with many heads, roaring inside the marble room of her mind. Everyone knows the stories of hungry gods, ignored gods, bitter, scorned, and vengeful gods. First duty, feed your gods. If they live (like we do) inside your body, find a way, get creative, show them the red of your faith, of your flesh; quiet the voices with the lullaby of the altar. It's not as if you can escape us – where would you run to?After Saachi gave birth to a son in their small Nigerian village, her husband Saul prayed for a daughter to be born to them next; and that prayer was answered. What Ada's parents couldn't know, however, was that while Ala (the python goddess, mother of us all) granted Saul's petition, the gates between worlds were left open and Ada's mind was filled with others, “brothersisters”, from the start. As a child, Ada would scream and stomp, throwing things against the walls and cutting herself for relief, but what her parents couldn't see was that she was being controlled by nebulous spirits she named Smoke and Shadow. When Ada eventually went to America for college and suffered through a non-consensual sexual experience, the gates opened once again and a more powerful personality, Asụghara, came through and took over.; nothing would ever happen to Ada's body again without her consent.
The narrative is always told from the point-of-view of these controlling personalities – as they watch what is “Ada” retreat to the safety of the “marble halls of her mind” – and while this reminded me so much of those multiple personality biographies that were once the rage (Sybil, The Three Faces of Eve, The Minds of Billy Milligan; in which strong personalities come forward to protect the helpless and childish core during times of trauma), by rooting the experience in Nigerian mythology, Emezi is suggesting that Ada's (and her own) experience is simply par for the course for an “ọgbanje” (a kind of malevolent trickster spirit that only appears to be human when it manifests itself on earth). This is where I got confused about what was meant to be literal and what metaphorical – as Ada is compelled by the voices in her head to hurt herself and others, is this a literary depiction of schizophrenia (or other condition)? Or is Ada meant to actually be an ọgbanje? (In this article, Emezi writes how she considers herself to be an ọgbanje; describing how this fact has compelled her to hurt herself and others, how it expresses itself in gender dysmorphia, and what she ultimately did about it.) As a Western reader, what right do I have to dismiss the idea of ọgbanje as superstitious witchdoctory? Is the Psychiatric approach (which fails Ada every time she seeks help) really the only valid one?
Allow us a moment to explain a few things. When you break something, you must study the pattern of the shattering before you can piece it together. So it was with the Ada. She was a question wrapped up in a breath: How do you survive when they place a god inside your body? We said before it was like shoving a sun into a bag of skin, so it should be no surprise that her skin would split or her mind would break. Consider her burned open. It was an unusual incarnation, to be a child of Ala as well as an ọgbanje, to be mothered by the god who owns life yet pulled toward death. We did the best we could.In addition to Smoke and Shadow, and the vindictive Asụghara, Ada has other brothersisters occupying the marble halls of her mind: there is the christ that she learned to love in Sunday School (but although Yshwa loves her completely, when Ada reaches for him, she discovers that he loves her “as a god does, which is to say, with a taste for suffering”) and another known as St Vincent. When St Vincent comes forward for a while, it is he who prompts Ada to bind her breasts and start dating women – but as this was apparently also Emezi's experience in real life, I'm certain that the author isn't equating a nonbinary gender identification with schizophrenia or mental illness; it's simply another feature of being an ọgbanje, and again, I was confused about the liminal space and what is metaphor and what is meant to be literal – but confused doesn't mean disappointed, just challenged in my thinking. Even the idea that the ọgbanje isn't fully human and is, therefore, drawn to return to the other side (via suicide of the “bag of meat” that binds it) was challenging to my thinking – would a suicide be less tragic if explained and justified by Nigerian spiritual belief? Would only a colonising mind insist that the Psychiatric model is the only valid one for judging Ada's/Emezi's experience? Should these "gods" be drugged into submission to preserve a human body?
In this review I've been trying to capture something of the main character's mental state and how that challenged my own thinking, but Freshwater also has a startling plot, following Ada throughout her life as she navigates both Nigeria and America as an ọgbanje. There is much human pain here – buffered by the strong mental personalities that come forward to shield Ada – and knowing that the narrative is at least partially based upon Emezi's own life, makes it feel like a gift to the reader; an opening up that lays bare a way of living so different from my own. I couldn't help but be moved by this and think it ought to appeal to a wide range of readers.
