Pet

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi is a young adult novel of how to tell the monsters from other people. 

In the near future, after the revolution to get rid of the monsters, in the city of Lucille a young person named Jam lives with their parents. 

When their mother creates a painting, it seems to want to come alive. And Pet accidentally lets what looks like a monster out of the canvas. But the creature is actually a monster hunter. But what monsters? They were all gotten during the revolution.

Emezi's layered book looks at justice and identity. How do you save the world if no one will admit the monsters exist? (A very important question for our time!) A tender look at a society in denial by a brilliant poetical author.

Emezi, Akwaeke. (2020). Pet. New York: Make Me A World.

Freshwater

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi is a fictionalized novel based on her life, a quasi-memoir, of living as a plural person.

Ada, born in southern Nigeria, is a trouble prone child due to the ogbanje or spirits to share her body. As is typical of Nigerian parents, Ada is sent abroad for college. She moves to United States.

At college a traumatic event leads to one of the ogbanje taking over Ada's body. Asughara protects Ada but also revels at having a physical body to do with as she pleases.

Written with lyrical prose this difficult tale is moving and beautiful. It is the story of loss and reconciliation, of heartbreak, and of merging the disparate parts into harmony. Emezi is a powerful writer who choses words carfully - resulting in sentences that stop your reading in its tracks so you can savor them. I will read everything they write.

Emezi, Akwaeke. (2018). Freshwater. New York: Grove Press.