Dear Senthuran
A Black Spirit Memoir
(Sprache: Englisch)
FEATURED ON THE COVER OF TIME MAGAZINE AS A 2021 NEXT GENERATION LEADER
A once-in-a-generation voice. Vulture
One of our greatest living writers. Shondaland
A full-throated and provocative memoir in...
A once-in-a-generation voice. Vulture
One of our greatest living writers. Shondaland
A full-throated and provocative memoir in...
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FEATURED ON THE COVER OF TIME MAGAZINE AS A 2021 NEXT GENERATION LEADERA once-in-a-generation voice. Vulture
One of our greatest living writers. Shondaland
A full-throated and provocative memoir in letters from the New York Times bestselling author, a dazzling literary talent whose works cut to the quick of the spiritual self (Esquire)
In three critically acclaimed novels, Akwaeke Emezi has introduced readers to a landscape marked by familial tensions, Igbo belief systems, and a boundless search for what it means to be free. Now, in this extraordinary memoir, the bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji reveals the harrowing yet resolute truths of their own life. Through candid, intimate correspondence with friends, lovers, and family, Emezi traces the unfolding of a self and the unforgettable journey of a creative spirit stepping into power in the human world. Their story weaves through transformative decisions about their gender and body, their precipitous path to success as a writer, and the turmoil of relationships on an emotional, romantic, and spiritual plane, culminating in a book that is as tender as it is brutal.
Electrifying and inspiring, animated by the same voracious intelligence that distinguishes Emezi's fiction, Dear Senthuran is a revelatory account of storytelling, self, and survival.
Lese-Probe zu „Dear Senthuran “
Nowhere | Dear KatherineIt is the middle of June.
The Black Sea is turquoise, stained by blooms of phytoplankton and polished with undulating mirrors, sunlight reflecting in ripples over the water. I stand on a tumble of rocks, holding an empty plastic water bottle and listening as the waves spit foam into the quiet of the morning. Seagulls wheel and yell against the sky. A magician I am falling in love with has asked me to bring him back a drop or two of the sea, this specific sea, the one I am close to. I meant to retrieve it-this seapiece-when I went swimming the other day, but I forgot. Instead I stood thigh deep in a cloud of green algae for an hour, my calves numb and my back burning. None of it made me feel as if I was anywhere.
Perhaps it was the traveling, airports, and rough blue seats blurring into safety announcements, or the cities-white chocolate drizzled on a waffle at a picnic in Johannesburg, an Orthodox monk walking through a thunderstorm in Sofia, a little girl with afro-puffs selling homemade lemonade in Brooklyn. Maybe it was the homelessness-a terminated lease in Trinidad, too many guest rooms in too many countries. They say the word nomad like it has a rough glamour, but in my mouth it is jet-lagged, wearing a sheet mask with fifteen minutes left, a draped attempt to fix its dehydration.
I don't even mind anymore.
... mehr
The state of my body matches that of my mind-floating, tripped, and suspended amid clouds, crashing down into borders, lonely. Nowhere seems real; all the people are constructs. I have stopped fighting detachment and started learning how to sink into it instead. Rumi suggests being dead to this world and alive only to God; in Sozopol, a former monk leans across a dinner table with bright stained-glass eyes and tells me about the types of nothingness in Buddhism. I tell him that my search for somewhere to be is really a search for self, and the only self I feel at home with is one that doesn't exist, not anymore, one that's been taken apart, whipped into dust.
I tie back my hair, so it doesn't interfere with my eyes, and start climbing down toward the sea. My sneakers slide slowly over the wet rock and I drop my legs into crevices, press my palm against outcrops. The rest of the land grows higher and higher as I sink. The sea pulls. I could see how people would try to lose themselves in it, when the detachment gets too strong, when the urge to be nowhere becomes an action. I unscrew the cap from the bottle I'm carrying and crouch on a rock, dropping my hand and waiting for the surf to wash it full. I feel utterly alone. The water is clear inside the faint blue plastic. I should leave-I have buses and planes to catch-but this curve of nothing feels too right, so I sit there for a long time.
I text the magician, tell him about the way the sun turns the rocks into cradles and clothes-racks. Perhaps, with time, if I waited here long enough, I could dissolve into foam and be withdrawn into something vaster than my immediate body.
I want to be nothing, nowhere.
The magician texts me back. I too am turquoise, he says, stained by phytoplankton.
Fire | Dear Jahra
Kerosene burns nearly everything.
Growing up, our house was sometimes invaded by soldier ants, rivers of red, clacking bodies that ran over our windowsills and bit us with thoroughness. We soaked newspaper in kerosene to make torches and burnt the ants back, singeing our carpets and bathtubs. The price of petrol kept climbing, so we transferred all our cooking over to the small green kerosene stove and watched as the pots blackened. In the dry season, we raked dead leaves into a pile next to the borehole that didn't work, sprinkled some kerosene, and dropped a flame. I remember being amazed at how a little wetne
The state of my body matches that of my mind-floating, tripped, and suspended amid clouds, crashing down into borders, lonely. Nowhere seems real; all the people are constructs. I have stopped fighting detachment and started learning how to sink into it instead. Rumi suggests being dead to this world and alive only to God; in Sozopol, a former monk leans across a dinner table with bright stained-glass eyes and tells me about the types of nothingness in Buddhism. I tell him that my search for somewhere to be is really a search for self, and the only self I feel at home with is one that doesn't exist, not anymore, one that's been taken apart, whipped into dust.
I tie back my hair, so it doesn't interfere with my eyes, and start climbing down toward the sea. My sneakers slide slowly over the wet rock and I drop my legs into crevices, press my palm against outcrops. The rest of the land grows higher and higher as I sink. The sea pulls. I could see how people would try to lose themselves in it, when the detachment gets too strong, when the urge to be nowhere becomes an action. I unscrew the cap from the bottle I'm carrying and crouch on a rock, dropping my hand and waiting for the surf to wash it full. I feel utterly alone. The water is clear inside the faint blue plastic. I should leave-I have buses and planes to catch-but this curve of nothing feels too right, so I sit there for a long time.
I text the magician, tell him about the way the sun turns the rocks into cradles and clothes-racks. Perhaps, with time, if I waited here long enough, I could dissolve into foam and be withdrawn into something vaster than my immediate body.
I want to be nothing, nowhere.
The magician texts me back. I too am turquoise, he says, stained by phytoplankton.
Fire | Dear Jahra
Kerosene burns nearly everything.
Growing up, our house was sometimes invaded by soldier ants, rivers of red, clacking bodies that ran over our windowsills and bit us with thoroughness. We soaked newspaper in kerosene to make torches and burnt the ants back, singeing our carpets and bathtubs. The price of petrol kept climbing, so we transferred all our cooking over to the small green kerosene stove and watched as the pots blackened. In the dry season, we raked dead leaves into a pile next to the borehole that didn't work, sprinkled some kerosene, and dropped a flame. I remember being amazed at how a little wetne
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Autoren-Porträt von Akwaeke Emezi
Akwaeke Emezi (they/them) is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Death of Vivek Oji, which was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize; Pet, a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People s Literature; and Freshwater, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Center for Fiction s First Novel Prize. Selected as a 5 Under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation, they are based in liminal spaces.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Akwaeke Emezi
- 2021, 240 Seiten, Maße: 14,5 x 21,7 cm, Gebunden, Englisch
- Verlag: Riverhead Books
- ISBN-10: 0593329198
- ISBN-13: 9780593329191
- Erscheinungsdatum: 17.07.2021
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, VULTURE, MARIE CLAIRE, TEEN VOGUE, LIT HUB, AUTOSTRADDLE, BOOKPAGE, BOOKRIOT, AND THEMPRAISE FOR DEAR SENTHURAN:
A thing of great beauty . . . Dear Senthuran is about powerful excellence, especially the excellence that appears in bodies that aren t white and aren t male. Emezi is changing the world and our reaction to this kind of power. The Paris Review
An audacious sojourn through the terror and beauty of refusing to explain yourself. New York Times Book Review
Written in imagistic language that is both poetic and crystalline, Dear Senthuran is an honest and lyrical accounting of a boundless mind exploring the wide expanse of creativity and experience. Authentic and vulnerable, the writing winds through the depths of wrenching wounds, but also explores the beauty in not pretending to be less that one truly is. NPR
A book about shifting, letting go, rebirth . . . Dear Senthuran is not self help, per se, but because of Emezi s generosity, it is a balm to the spirit, a reminder that the only certainty is that of change. Vanity Fair
A singular memoir. USA TODAY
A complex, innovative work of hybrid memoir [from] one of contemporary literature's most engrossing talents. Elle
Emezi is pouring luminous light onto all of their selves, their incarnations, their spirit, their fractures, and the potency of their existence. Joss Lake, Bustle
Akwaeke Emezi is pure magic. Dear Senthuran is a song, an adventure, a wound, and a balm all in one. . . . Akwaeke's ability and willingness to bare their soul is a treasure that we don't deserve. BuzzFeed
Fiery and diamond-hard, written by a once-in-a-generation voice. Vulture
Gorgeously written, lush, and full of confidence as well as struggle. BookRiot, Best Genre-Bending Nonfiction of
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2021
Akwaeke Emezi opens a portal into the brutality and beauty of their own self-creation and [reveals] the immense potency of their spiritual existence. Electric Literature
A memoir that transcends expectation and challenges readers to explore our own flesh and spiritual multiplicities. Them
The brilliant Akwaeke Emezi candidly shares their reflections on gender, embodiment, queerness, creativity and relationships with the same fierce dedication and candor that defines their bestselling novels. Ms. Magazine
A memoir in letters, to various friends, lovers and family in Emezi s life. . . . It s like no memoir I ve ever read before in the best possible way. Alma
An illuminating account of storytelling, self, and survival. Lambda Literary
A must-read memoir about creativity and identity. Bustle
Refreshing. . . . there are no wasted words. Everything Emezi writes holds importance and deserves space. . . . They have created an entire universe within themselves [and] share with the readers. Real Change
Hypnotic and poetic . . . In Dear Senthuran, Emezi generously shares both their wounds and their wisdom, offering aspiring writers and artists fresh inspiration for creating new forms of making, loving and being. Bookpage (starred review)
Spellbinding . . . a gorgeous epistolary memoir [with] consistently captivating prose. Publishers Weekly
"Fiery. . . . a remarkable memoir by a writer who doesn t shy away from sharing their ambitions or their vulnerabilities. Booklist
"A unique, visceral memoir. . . . Tribal spiritual beliefs meet contemporary literary acclaim in a powerful memoir." Kirkus
An intimate, disarming diary of transcendence, of wielding magic hidden deep within the marrow of our bones, and the spells we cast when we obey the work of honoring the unpretty truths of one s beginnings, Dear Senthuran is a swan song of survival written for survivors everywhere. Paperback Paris
PRAISE FOR AKWAEKE EMEZI:
[One] of our greatest living writers. Shondaland
Akwaeke Emezi parts the seas of the self. Vanity Fair
Remarkably assured and graceful . . . encourage[s] us to embrace
a fuller spectrum of human experience. The Washington Post
Emezi has a gift for prose that is often as visceral,
tender and heartbreaking as what it describes The Guardian
Extraordinarily powerful. The New Yorker
Dazzling. Los Angeles Times
A beacon of literary genius. Lambda Literary Review
Name a writer more essential to the recent landscape of contemporary fiction and more prolific than Akwaeke Emezi has been over the last five years. . . . I ll wait.
Harper s Bazaar
Akwaeke Emezi opens a portal into the brutality and beauty of their own self-creation and [reveals] the immense potency of their spiritual existence. Electric Literature
A memoir that transcends expectation and challenges readers to explore our own flesh and spiritual multiplicities. Them
The brilliant Akwaeke Emezi candidly shares their reflections on gender, embodiment, queerness, creativity and relationships with the same fierce dedication and candor that defines their bestselling novels. Ms. Magazine
A memoir in letters, to various friends, lovers and family in Emezi s life. . . . It s like no memoir I ve ever read before in the best possible way. Alma
An illuminating account of storytelling, self, and survival. Lambda Literary
A must-read memoir about creativity and identity. Bustle
Refreshing. . . . there are no wasted words. Everything Emezi writes holds importance and deserves space. . . . They have created an entire universe within themselves [and] share with the readers. Real Change
Hypnotic and poetic . . . In Dear Senthuran, Emezi generously shares both their wounds and their wisdom, offering aspiring writers and artists fresh inspiration for creating new forms of making, loving and being. Bookpage (starred review)
Spellbinding . . . a gorgeous epistolary memoir [with] consistently captivating prose. Publishers Weekly
"Fiery. . . . a remarkable memoir by a writer who doesn t shy away from sharing their ambitions or their vulnerabilities. Booklist
"A unique, visceral memoir. . . . Tribal spiritual beliefs meet contemporary literary acclaim in a powerful memoir." Kirkus
An intimate, disarming diary of transcendence, of wielding magic hidden deep within the marrow of our bones, and the spells we cast when we obey the work of honoring the unpretty truths of one s beginnings, Dear Senthuran is a swan song of survival written for survivors everywhere. Paperback Paris
PRAISE FOR AKWAEKE EMEZI:
[One] of our greatest living writers. Shondaland
Akwaeke Emezi parts the seas of the self. Vanity Fair
Remarkably assured and graceful . . . encourage[s] us to embrace
a fuller spectrum of human experience. The Washington Post
Emezi has a gift for prose that is often as visceral,
tender and heartbreaking as what it describes The Guardian
Extraordinarily powerful. The New Yorker
Dazzling. Los Angeles Times
A beacon of literary genius. Lambda Literary Review
Name a writer more essential to the recent landscape of contemporary fiction and more prolific than Akwaeke Emezi has been over the last five years. . . . I ll wait.
Harper s Bazaar
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