![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() There is also the psychological violence of not being heard. Dear Senthuran becomes Emezi's story of transcendence over the violence that has marked their lived experience, beginning with the physical and sexual violence they experienced growing up in near poverty in Aba, Nigeria, where "cockroach eggs gelled into the egg grooves of the fridge door." Childhood was the "house where bad things first happened, the house our mother left us in, the house of our father's temper and our brother's cruelty" and where an "old neighbor had groped me when I was twelve." What is revealed in these letters is both the immense strength Emezi has nurtured in order to sustain a belief in who they are despite the destructive noise of the world, as well as Emezi's own brave and poignant vulnerability in charting this journey. Structured as letters to various people - some friends, some lovers, some public figures like Toni Morrison whom Emezi has never met in person - each letter reveals an aspect of Emezi's life that has shaped them into the being they have become. "People can do spectacular things if you forget to tell them it's impossible," Akwaeke Emezi writes several chapters into their new book Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir. ![]()
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