Reviews with content warning for Transphobia - Eau douce

Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'

Eau douce by Akwaeke Emezi

70 reviews

jayisreading's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

5.0

Freshwater is a relatively short book, but it was absolutely (and perhaps deliberately) challenging to read. It has its own pulse, breathing in an unsettling and yet entrancing manner that pulls you into liminal spaces rooted in Igbo beliefs.

Emezi challenges the reader and takes them out of their comfort zone. Their book sheds Western beliefs like python skin. Freshwater is brilliantly and cleverly written, deconstructing ideas of “mental illness” and gender/sexuality. It’s a critical examination of the influences of colonialism and the pervasiveness of Western understandings of the world. This is all done through one character, Ada, and the pushes and pulls she faces with the ọgbanje that live inside her. Her multiple selves tell the story in a unique fashion, though I was most taken to the moments we get Ada’s perspective (which doesn’t happen too often).

The thing about the ọgbanje is that they’re there to challenge you, the reader, just as much as they push Ada to a particular extreme that will be disorienting and uncomfortable. Furthermore, it’s traumatic and difficult to get through, as Emezi brings in content including but not limited to self-harm, attempted suicide, and sexual assault. Again, this is a challenging book to read and not meant to be consumed in one sitting.

Which leads me to my next point about Freshwater. I believe those who have tried to diagnose/label Ada and/or treated this book as magic realism read an entirely different book and, in my opinion, missed the point. This book will deconstruct what you know and understand in an unnerving way; it pushes you to come to terms with being utterly disoriented and take the position of rethinking how you look at things. Of course, Emezi isn’t throwing the reader into the deep end and expecting them to figure things out on their own. They write vivid descriptions and, at least to me, a followable storyline (in a way, I guess you could call this a Bildungsroman). I realize it’s a bit paradoxical to say that this book is disorienting and followable, but I think it makes sense once you get into the swing of things while reading this book.

Frankly, I can’t write anything that will do justice to Freshwater. All I can say is to read this book with a very open mind. Try not to get frustrated that you’re going to be shifting between liminal spaces that isn’t magic realism; these are very real spaces of an ọgbanje. And while this book will be challenging, Emezi’s incredible storytelling and lyrical writing will make it a worthwhile read.

Content Warnings

penofpossibilities's review against another edition

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4.75

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miri_png's review against another edition

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dark emotional

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

kelseyland's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

A stunning book about spirituality and survival

Content Warnings

ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“…because this was my life, you understand? No matter how mad it sounded, the things that were happening in my head were real and had been happening for a very long time. After all the doctors and the diagnoses and the hospitals, this thing of being an ogbanje, a child of Ala—that was the only path that brought me any peace.”

TITLE—Freshwater

AUTHOR—Akwaeke Emezi

PUBLISHED—2018

GENRE—literary fiction (reads somewhat like a memoir)

SETTING—Nigeria; America; liminal spaces

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—trauma, grief, neurodivergency, DID, “madness”, identity, sex, nonbinary & trans identity, religion, mythology

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

CHARACTERS—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

PLOT—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

BONUS ELEMENT/S—I mean just the incredible parallels between the MC/author?’s experience of their neurodivergency and a DID-like “condition”? and my own is just… I’m speechless.

PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“They sent a psychiatrist to come and evaluate her, but he didn’t like our attitude and I could tell that he wanted to lock us up. That sobered me up faster than anything else would have. There was no way I was ever letting someone commit us…”

[Note: please pay special attention to the TWs for this book before going in—it’s very intense in that area.]

This was an INCREDIBLY personal book for me and I wrote a whole long personal review of it and then decided that I just am not ready to share all of that with um well I guess anyone? yet so 😅 I’m so amazed Emezi was able to write their story like this. I’m just, totally speechless with what they’ve done and Idk if they realize what they’ve done for others like (and of course, not like, but very similar to anyway) them because wow. This is the most important book of my entire life and I can’t believe that it exists and I’m obviously about to go read everything else they’ve ever written and I just, I can’t even talk about this book? like in terms of it being a *book* and I’m going to write a *review* of it so, sorry about that but, yeah. I’m still stunned. I’ve actually already reread it too like. I may be just constantly reading and rereading this book forever, so. Check out the favorite quotes I’ve listed below because that will start to give you a sense of what about this book was so important to me and what its main themes are. 🥰

“It was very hard letting go of being human. I felt as if I had been taken away from the world I knew, like there was now thick glass between me and the people I loved. If I told them the truth, they would think I was mad.”

(FUCK. This book was so good. 😭😭😭)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

TW // desc. of a child being hit by a car, abandonment, self harm—cutting, sexual assault, rape, trauma, grief, eating disorders, suicide attempt

Further Reading—

everything else by Akwaeke Emezi especially their newest book Dear Senthuran
The Icarus Girl, by Helen Oyeyemi
White is for Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi
The Bird’s Nest, by Shirley Jackson—TBR
The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson
also The Bone People, by Keri Hulme! It seems like a subtle connection but I think it’s actually really there in like a big way…

Favorite Quotes...

“Humans often pray and forget what their mouths can do, forget that every ear is listening, that when you direct your longing to the gods, they can take that personally.”

“This is all, ultimately, a litany of madness—the colors of it, the sounds it makes in heavy nights, the chirping of it across the shoulder of the morning. Think of brief insanities that are in you, not just the ones that blossomed as you grew into taller, more sinful versions of yourself, but the ones you were born with, tucked behind your liver.”

“Reality was a difficult space for her to inhabit, unsurprisingly, what with one foot on the other side and gates in between.”

“…bodies are not meant to remember things from the other side. There are rules. But these are gods and they move like heated water, so the rules are softened and stretched. The gods do not care. It is not them, after all, that will pay the cost.”

“We think about this because there has to be a point, a purpose to this, a reason for why we were thrust across the river, screeching and fighting. There must be a thought behind this entrapment, our having to endure this glut of humanity.”

“Earlier, when we said she went mad, we lied. She has always been sane. It’s just that she was contaminated with us, a godly parasite with many heads, roaring inside the marble room of her mind.”

“…but he would never get her again. I had arrived, flesh from flesh, true blood from true blood. I was the wildness under the skin, the skin into a weapon, the weapon over the flesh. I was here. No one would ever touch her again.”

“…but I had promised to let her hold her lies if they would keep her sane.”

“I hope it scrapes your mouth bloody to say it. When you name something, it comes into existence—did you know that?”

“I don’t even have the mouth to tell this story. I’m so tired most of the time. Besides, whatever they will say will be the truest version of it, since they are the truest version of me.”

“But I am not entirely opposed to madness, not when it comes with this kind of clarity.”

“…they talked as if things weren’t impossible, as if choices hadn’t already been made.”

“after all, Ada loved him too now. She and the girl were basically on the same side.”

“They were balanced now—the Ada, her little beast, and her saint—the three of them locked in marbled flesh, burning through the world.”

“She wasn’t sure if we were real, but nothing about us felt false… They would’ve told Ada that she was crazy or that we weren’t real, and I couldn’t allow those lies… like she thought we were abnormal. How can, when we were her and she was us?”

“We’re the buffer between you and madness, we’re not the madness.”

“They sent a psychiatrist to come and evaluate her, but he didn’t like our attitude and I could tell that he wanted to lock us up. That sobered me up faster than anything else would have. There was no way I was ever letting someone commit us…”

“…because this was my life, you understand? No matter how mad it sounded, the things that were happening in my head were real and had been happening for a very long time. After all the doctors and the diagnoses and the hospitals, this thing of being an ogbanje, a child of Ala—that was the only path that brought me any peace.”

“Sometimes, you recognize truth because it destroys you for a bit.”

“It was very hard letting go of being human. I felt as if I had been taken away from the world I knew, like there was now thick glass between me and the people I loved. If I told them the truth, they would think I was mad.”

Content Warnings

laurareads87's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

<i>Freshwater</i> is a novel that I didn't read when it first came out mostly due to the content warnings, and they are warranted - this is a difficult read. However, I'm so glad that I did read it -- it is incredibly well written, deeply affecting, innovative, and captivating -- magical realism at its absolute best. Beyond being an incredible story, <i>Freshwater</i> is a reflection on identity, selfhood, and spirit that is unlike anything I've ever read before. Incredible debut -- I very much look forward to reading Emezi's work.

Content Warnings

tina94's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

nytephoenyx's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I could tell early on that Freshwater was not going to be a great fit for me as a reader. Literary fiction is a bit hit-or-miss. I like the lyrical language used in the genre, but the stories often don’t hold my interest. This is to say nothing against the books themselves in the literary fiction genre – I’m used to fantasy, which tends to be more quickly paced.

Freshwater is told in an interesting way, from the perspective of multiple personalities inside the body of a young woman. This split in self is not mental health related, it’s because Ada is ogbanje, which is similar to the western idea of a changeling. In Freshwater, we learn of the development of Ada’s selves, as well as multiple levels of transition – physical, sexual, spiritual, emotional. it’s beautifully written and the perspectives were each intriguing and easy to differentiate, even in audiobook form. I fully appreciated Emezi’s work in Freshwater and am happy to attest that it’s a wonderful book.

The narrative within Freshwater feels detached, but I also believe that’s one of the intriguing things about the way this book is written. The ogbanje is experiencing human life, but it is not invested, not fully living it. Depending on the personality narrating at the time, you feel a different primal emotion, or the thought patterns present differently. As a reader, I liked the detached storytelling for two reasons. First, I found it drove the characterization really well. Second, there is a lot of trauma in Freshwater.

Telling the story from a more distant perspective helps the reader witness the trauma without being as damaged by it. In very much the same way Asugara protects Ada from the horrors of her life, so to does this storytelling allow the reader to see what is happening and be angry about it… but it limits the descriptions to a place where it feels… safer. Don’t get me wrong, I’d still slap a huge content warning on it.

Freshwater is the sort of book that… I don’t know if I’d recommend, per se. It’s well-written, but it’s heavy and heartbreaking and very different from other books. It would have to be recommended to a certain kind of reader. Or I think someone would have to solicit my opinion on it. If you’re intrigued, pick it up (that’s what I did!) but know that it’s a little magical realism, a little literary fiction, and a lot of introspective language. It’s a work of art, but I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it.

Content Warnings

moonlitemuseum's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

As soon as I finished Freshwater I knew that I would be chewing the fat of it in my brain for months, and resigned myself to the fact that I would be rereading it within months -- it was hard, honestly, not to begin re-reading it right away.

Emezi's prose sizzles and burns, writhes into your brain and sets off sparks; the fracturing of the protagonist's identity from birth is told with religious reverence, the traumas Ada faces are perfect horror, and the tenacity and vivaciousness of Asughara feels raw, clear and justified.

Ada's personalities are communicated with clarity and intimacy, and the collective's struggle to be seen, to wrestle with Ada's alleged destiny and her desire to be human is heartrending.

This novel is unforgettable but it is brutal and it is precise. I had to read it in several sittings due to the intensity of what is depicted within it, but the time spent with it was incredible, and I think it is well worth the time to sink into Ada's identity and learn the leylines of her inner mythology.

Content Warnings

nibs's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

FInally got to reading this after reading the rest of Emezi's work. I had to order it in, but particularly with Dear Senthuran coming out this year, wanted to read it asap. The biggest thing going in is that this book is only fiction because white publishers would not accept it otherwise.

The most emotional, gut-wrenching and intimate part of this book is its reality. It is based in truth - how much crossover there is between Ada and the author is known, but is likely to be revealed in Dear Senthuran. I am eager for that book in how it will mirror this one.

Ultimately what I am most appreciative of is the conclusion. That there is understanding and peace and hope and a future; because in earlier parts of the book, similar to Asughara, I thought it could only end one way.

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