A review by ceallaighsbooks
Content Warning: Everything by Akwaeke Emezi

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

“i remembered how to be a god i give myself what i want no one raises their voice in my house no one lays their fleshy hands on me no one is cruel if they are fool enough to try then they die and what a death what a death to not be loved by me anymore” — from “Disclosure”

TITLE—Content Warning: Everything
AUTHOR—Akwaeke Emezi
PUBLISHED—2022

GENRE—poetry
SETTING—liminal spaces
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—godhood, the [extended] holy family, love, violence, healing, softness

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
CHARACTERS—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
STORIES—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
BONUS ELEMENT/S—The references to the holy family were really impactful.
PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“…i, poltergeist throw myself against a world one of us must break spiritbae says you don’t have a choice but to see true things… i, poltergeist with a life that matters, that matters to me” — from “When the Hurricane Comes the Men Protect Their Brothers”

Wow! Tbh even though I’ve read both Freshwater and Dear Senthuran I still wasn’t ready for the level of intimacy in these poems. It felt like looking directly into the sun. I read the whole thing twice in a row and when I went back to write down my favorite lines and notes I ended up reading it a third time.

I particularly appreciated how violence is conceptualized in these poems as extraphysical acts with extraphysical consequences. How cuts and breaks and slaps and blood all have an inseparable emotional and spiritual element. The grafting together of the body and the spirit is simultaneously holy and an abomination.

Emezi feeds their readers, starving for more of their work, the purest mana, each bite sweeter than the last. I’ll definitely be reading this over and over again. ☺️

“and i will finally look
like the terrible thing
i have always been”
— from “Self-Portrait as an Angel”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

TW // brief mentions: rape, selfharm, sexual content (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—
  • Everything else by Akwaeke Emezi
  • Everyone Knows I Am A Haunting, by Shivanee Ramlochan
  • Fort Red Border, by Kiki Petrosino
  • Lucky Fish, and At the Drive-In Volcano, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
  • Bless the Daughter Raised By A Voice in Her Head, by Warsan Shire
  • The Collected Poetry of Audre Lorde
  • Woman, Eat Me Whole: Poems, by Ama Asantewa Diaka—TBR
Expand filter menu Content Warnings