They are the answer to her problems, and they become a whole other problem.ĭepending on your personal reading of the novel, the Ọgbanje are either disorders personified, or the personification of the mind post-trauma. The Ọgbanje protect Ada, but they also manipulate her as they see fit. In this strange, metaphoric way the novel connects the divine to mental disorders. They have hidden themselves in the crevices of her body, they tell us, and they see her as theirs even if, “The first madness was that we were born, that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin.” It is the chorus that fulfills its prophecy to the reader it is the Ọgbanje who drive Ada mad. But in Emezi’s novel, after somebody forgets to shut the gates to the divine world, they awaken underneath Ada’s skin as different selves. In Igbo mythology, the Ọgbanje are evil spirits who bring familial misfortune. The Ọgbanje have taken over Ada’s story, just as they have taken over her body. It takes a beat to realize that the chorus has lulled the reader into a sense of trust. The novel is written in deceptively beautiful prose. What follows is an intense and brutal journey of a woman who struggles to find her footing in the face of trauma, fractured identity, mental illness, and destructive gods. Ada, the protagonist in Akwaeke Emezi’s debut novel, Freshwater, is born “with one foot on the other side.”Īnd as the hypnotic chorus of “We” comes to tell us, this means she will go mad.
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