"We were used to the warm thuds of two hearbeats separated by walls of flesh and liquid, used to the option of leaving, of returning to the place we came from, free like spirits are meant to be. To be singled out and locked into the blurred consciousness of a little mind? We refused. It would be madness."

Last year (or perhaps the year before?) I read a beautiful piece of non-fiction called Strangers to Ourselves by Rachel Aviv, which my best friend had kindly gifted me for my birthday. Aviv strikes a rare and impressive balance between acknowledging the reality of mental illness (and the necessity of treatment) while also casting a critical eye upon how we, culturally and medically, define and diagnose "mental illness." One chapter centers an Indian woman named Bapu, who, depending on who you ask, was either delusional or a holy woman attuned to other levels of existence. Aviv had access to 800+ pages of Bapu's personal journals, which, though not always describing her experiences as easy or straightforward, did not seem to indicate that she was negatively affected by her belief in her own mysticism and her relationship with Krishna. Rather, the problems of her life came from how others treated her for what they perceived as "sick" or problematic. Aviv writes that "the metrics by which Bapu assessed her own state of mind were murkier, because she drew from a rich tradition that gave her anguish purpose and structure. She studied the lives of mystics, and understood that their stories were not about seeking God and then victoriously finding him. Their conviction often flagged. They lamented that they had given everything away for a vision, an experience of oneness with the divine, that they could never attain. [...] Bapu had rejected the idea that her path could be explained by mental illness" (pp. 92-93). Around that same time, I was reading from the texts of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe for a medieval literature class, and was already curious about how flimsy the line between religious/spiritual experience and mental illness can be, particularly when mental illness sometimes seems less defined by the actual struggle it causes and more by how resistant a person is to being shoved into and shaped by pre-existing systems (ie. inability to be productive under capitalism or serve a husband under patriarchy). With the DSM in one hand and pills in the other, the specter of colonialist psychiatry claims to know "what's best" for you and everyone else. A worldview becomes an illness. An unconventional coping mechanism becomes an illness. A non-normative religious practice becomes an illness. Even so, mental illness certainly is real, is the source of deep pain and suffering for so many (myself included), so it's not like we can do away with treatment and study altogether. With all of my criticisms, I don't know what I would do without the SSRIs that have opened an entire world of opportunity for me, or the EMDR therapy that helped me recover from years of recurrent panic attacks. All of these things can be true at once, a deeply difficult reality which is explored rather beautifully in Emezi's Freshwater.

"They talk about Ewan, the man I married, as if he was nothing, because he was only flesh. But I loved him and that made him more than human to me. Love is transformative in that way. Like small gods, it can bring out the prophet in you. You find yourself selling dreams of spectacular hereafters, possible only if you believe, if you really, really believe. So in loving Ewan, he somehow became a god. I don't mean that in a good way -- he made me suffer but I still cast idols in his name, as people have done for their gods for millennia."

Freshwater's main character, (the) Ada, experiences something which, most accurately and simply. could be called "multiplicity," but which the DSM might try to call "Dissociative Identity Disorder" (DID). As expressed through the novel, Ada's multiplicity -- sharing her mind with beings known as Asughara, St. Vincent, and three ogbanje (spirit-beings of Igbo mythology) who existed before Ada's birth -- is both highly spiritual while also being born from trauma. The beings she shares her body with provide much-needed protection, but also cause her much distress and sometimes lead her directly into self-destructive behavior. Thus, Ada has to grapple with a few important questions: is she truly a god-child trapped in a human body, or is she delusional? Should she share her mind with the multiple beings that live in it or banish them for good? She visits a therapist at one point, desperately wanting to feel better, to feel normal, but Asughara rages at Ada's percieved attempt at getting rid of her. Ultimately nothing is so binary as good or bad, real or imagined, sickness or strength. What fascinates me so much about Ada's story is watching her orient herself on a path that sees truth somewhere in the middle of all of these things, oscillating between various extremes along the way.

"The Ada felt like a trickster, which felt right. She could move between boy and girl, which was a freedom, for her and for us. But when she turned twelve and started bleeding, everything was ruined. [...] We were distressed at this re-forming of our vessel, very much so, because it was nothing other than a cruel reminder that we were now flesh, that we could not control our form, that we were in a cage that obeyed other laws, human laws."

Ada and the others are not immediately easy to slip into sharing a perspective with. If I were to write a character like her, I must admit I would be intimidated by the tall order to finding a way to convey such a unique experience, layered as it is with so many factors, beliefs, traditions, and concepts that may or may not be familiar to a potential reader. It's hard to believe this was Emezi's debut novel, as they manage to bring all of this into visceral reality and understanding after a few chapters, once the reader gets the chance to settle in. The prose is confident and vivid, where a lesser writer may have fallen into language of muddy ambiguity. Perhaps it helps that, despite the wide gulf in experience between myself and Ada, I can, at least, relate to her experience of gender, (in ways that I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to unpack).

At the risk of sounding unkind, introspective coming-of-age novels about mentally ill and aimless 20-somethings are a dime a dozen nowadays. A glance at any catalog of new/upcoming trad pub releases will leave you veritably drowning in them, and most of them are underwhelming, mediocre, unoriginal, boring, and/or navel-gazing in a way that utterly fails to be endearing. Really, it's mostly millennial women wandering around cities being vaguely sad, a trend which started around 2017-2018, which just so happens to be when Freshwater was published. Emezi sets their work apart by turning to strong imagery and confidently facing down complexity, crafting a rich world inside their narrator(s)' head, experimenting with chronology and voice, and ultimately creating a book within this over-saturated genre that is genuinely noteworthy and gripping. My only complaint is the occasional sense of narrative disorganization -- sometimes the disorganization was obviously intentional and was quite effective, but other times it felt like some details had been forgotten in the writing process (ie. a later chapter in the book follows Ada's grief at losing a cousin who she was apparently close with, but the grief doesn't quite hit, because the news of the cousin's death is the first time we ever hear of him or what he means to Ada). Generally, though, this is a remarkable novel. I will absolutely be seeking out and reading Emezi's other work as well.

"You must understand, fertility was a pure and clear abomination to us. It would be unthinkable, unbelievably cruel for us to ever swell so unnaturally, to lactate, to mutate our vessel. Could there be anything more human?"