The Death of Vivek Oji

The death of Vivek Oji (2020) van Akwaeke Emezi past in de tijdgeest. Het verhaal begint met de dood van Vivek, net als de schrijver het kind van een Igbo-Nigeriaanse vader en een Indische moeder. (Die van Emezi is Sri Lankaans.) Met elk hoofdstukje verspringt het verhaal in de tijd en wisselt het perspectief. Zo ontvouwt zich het beeld van een zoon die niet kan voldoen aan de verwachtingen van zijn geslacht, vooral gezien vanuit anderen.

Sympathiek is het boek zeker. Emezi beschrijft zowel liefdevolle familierelaties en vriendschappen als koude machtsverhoudingen en onbegrip en geweld jegens afwijkend gedrag. Het mooist vond ik de passage waarin moeder Kavita de foto’s van Vivek te zien krijgt. Ook de stukken over het uitdrijven van de duivel waren boeiend om te lezen.

Verder deed het boek me weinig. Het heeft een hoog young-adultgehalte en leunt sterk op het lhbt+-element. Ik vond de wijze waarop Emezi de blik van anderen gebruikt om Vivek te mystificeren wat overtrokken. Ten slotte werd te vroeg duidelijk dat het boek op een onvoorspelbare manier zou gaan eindigen, al bleef lang ongewis hoe dan precies. Ik heb bij vlagen veel plezier gehad van The death of Vivek Oji, maar hoop dat [b:Zami: A New Spelling of my Name|37857065|Zami A New Spelling of my Name|Audre Lorde|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1531478682l/37857065.SY75.jpg|1252977] me hierna meer brengt.

I loved Freshwater, so I thought I was going to love this. Not so much!

The writing felt more standard, less expressive than Freshwater. The plot also felt more standard, like a family drama or mystery. Somewhere past halfway, I guessed that Vivek was dressing as a woman and that Osita had brought her back undressed to hide that. So that reveal was anti-climatic for me. It also honestly felt a bit gross for it to be withheld and used as a shock?? I didn’t feel good about that, but I don’t identify as genderqueer, so I can’t really say if that’s offensive. Plus the author is gender nonconforming, so what do I know. What I will say is that it didn’t work as a “reveal” to me. I’d rather it have shown up in the book earlier as we learned about Vivek/Nnmedi.

Overall, I still enjoyed the story and will read more by Emezi.

Favorite quotes:

He was the one leaving me alone with my mother, who felt like a hammer instead of a person.

I could feel the shame like a shadow in my chest, but it was faint, insignificant. I didn’t care. I didn’t care. I would do it again, all of it, for him, always for him.

But if that pleasure was supposed to stop me from being a man, then fine. They could have it. I’d take the blinding light of his touch, the blessed peace of having him so close, and I would stop being a man. I was never one to begin with, anyway.

“We can’t keep insisting he was who we thought he was, when he wanted to be someone else and he died being that person, Chika.”

I love Akwaeke Emezi, and this book is a fine example of why. The dualities and boundary-straddling on so many different levels of this novel are fascinating to think about. I want to expand on that, but there's kind of no good way to do that without spoiling the ending.

The narrative structure of the book is interesting and unique, flipping between a handful of first-person chapters and a third person story that gives a panoptic view of the characters at the heart of the novel. My only complaint about that is it feels like we don't get a chance to know everything we want to know about everyone involved, but it's a short book, so it's understandable.

I did like the story and structure of Freshwater a bit better, but the exploration of assumptions and things that aren't quite what they seem in Vivek Oji were gorgeously crafted and I sailed right through reading it.