All anyone can see is that there is something wrong with the half-Indian college kid, something that everyone who loves Oji fears will lead, in this small town, to mistreatment and death: and so it is in order to protect Oji that their father chides, their aunt suggests exorcism, their cousin pushes, and their mother estranges herself in a cape of worry.įor those of us used to doing the work of identifying with a non-BIWOC protagonist, it can be blindingly beautiful to feel represented, but it also means that we know what great writing can do, how it can allow us to feel the insides of another experience, how it can give us space to be near the story of someone coming into themselves. When chapters voiced from Oji’s own perspective, which is otherwordly, appear, they are achingly adolescent about their frustrations as a transgender person: “Every day it was difficult, walking around knowing that people saw me one way, knowing that they were wrong, so completely wrong, that the real me was invisible to them” (38). The story is told through the perspectives of an array of the townspeople, all tied together by their focus on relationships and identity, and all advancing the story of Oji’s death by adding in crucial details from peripheral perspectives. Instead, what has happened in this small Nigerian town is a mystery that consumes Oji’s mother throughout the book, a tragedy that forever changes her friends, and that for Oji is a journey of self-affirmation. This – spoiler alert – is not what happens. “They burned down the market the day Vivek Oji died,” the story begins, and so I read: a local kid, so beloved that their community may have burned down a market in its grief. It’s true that this tale of second-generation found family centers on its protagonist’s death, but even this, which comes in the book’s opening arresting chapter, hints at what is to come. We’ve been a fan of Akwaeke Emezi’s writing since the pre-launch of their debut, Freshwater, at Africa Writes 2018 after that luminous novel and its YA successor, Pet, Emezi is back with what is perhaps 2020’s most optimistic novel yet. Review: A Community Forms, a Community Mourns: The Death of Vivek Ojiīy Africa in Words Guest on 19 January, 2021

› Review: A Community Forms, a Community Mourns: The Death of Vivek Oji

The death of vivek oji a novel