BOOK REVIEWS

|FRESHWATER|

AKWAEKE EMEZI

In Freshwater, the protagonist, a young woman named Ada, comes of as an unusual character. As an infant in southeastern Nigeria, she is a source of deep concern to her family. Her parents had successfully prayed her into existence, but she becomes a troubled child, prone to violent fits of anger and grief, developing separate selves within her. But Ada is more than just volatile-she is an Ogbanjé, born “with one foot on the other side.” When she travels to America for college, a traumatic event crystalizes her selves into something more powerful. Based in Emezi’s realities and narrated by these selves, Freshwater maps how Ada’s life spirals in a dangerous direction as her alters—now protective and hedonistic—move into control.

Freshwater speaks to the unification and separation of bodies and souls, the powers or lack thereof of gods and humans, and the long and arduous journey to claiming our many selves, or to setting our many selves free.