Book Notes, Fiction # The Death Of Vivek Oji  by Emezi Akwaeke, 2020 ★★☆☆☆ --- I enjoyed this book's melancholy at times but the writing seemed bland and boring to me. Some aspects of the story were interesting, such as the description of life in the midst of the Nigerian immigrant "nigerwives" community, references to the Igbo culture and descriptions of the expectations that the Nigerian society has of its young. --- Ambivalently female lead character: **Vivek Nnedi Oji**. Vivek is a young biologically dude and psychologically mostly-but-not-fully dudette growing up queer in queer-unfriendly modern day Nigeria. Vivek dies at about 20 after trying and failing to conform to gender norms and social and familial pressure as the only child of a Nigerian father and Indian immigrant mother in modern day Nigeria. --- ## Quotes I liked ** “He was never there. He was the one leaving me alone with ==my mother, who felt like a hammer instead of a person.==” ** "I fought with almost everyone because I was slim and some suspicion of delicacy clung to me and it made boys aggressive, for whatever reason. ==Some people can’t see softness without wanting to hurt it.==" (Vivek Nnedi)  ** “Alone is a feeling you can get used to, and it’s hard to believe in a better alternative.” (Vivek Nnedi)  ** “I often wonder if I died in the best possible way - in the arms of the one who loved me the most, wearing a skin that was true.” ** "==Hunger radiated the same everywhere, throbbing and loud even without words.== I didn’t mind it."  ** “I dreamt that I was our grandmother,” I tell him. “I looked in a mirror and she was there, just like the pictures, and she spoke to me in Igbo.” “What did she say?”“==Hold my life for me.==” I wait for his laugh, but it never comes. “Do you believe in reincarnation?” I ask him. (Vivek Nnedi with Osita)  ** "Maybe we were all pretending to be fine because the world gave us no other option." (Osita)  ** "(The dress) It was a deep blue, like what I imagined falling into the sea would look like if you kept trying to find the bottom. (...) It had been Vivek’s favorite dress." ** "I wonder if anyone is pleased that I finally got my Igbo name. If my grandmother, floating somewhere here with me, is happy to be acknowledged at last. I would say it was too late, but time has stopped meaning what it used to. I don’t mind anymore. I see how things work now, from this side. I was born and I died. I will come back. ==Somewhere, you see, in the river of time, I am already alive.==" (Nnemdi) --- `Just carbon and water. Just atoms and the void.` ---