Learning the Multiplicity of Being with Akwaeke Emezi

Written by Amuna Wagner

Edited by Veronica Vivi

Illustrated by Olamide Florence Adeoye aka Sharp Txngue

Do you believe in spirits? And does it matter whether you do? Akwaeke Emezi taught me that to Black people this question is essential for collective survival the day I stumbled upon Freshwater (2018) in my partner’s bookshelf. The novel pulled me into the life of Ada, the child of a Nigerian father and Tamil mother who suffers the pain of being a spirit trapped in flesh. An ọgbanje, to be exact. Ada is born a screaming baby “with one foot on the other side” (back cover), only a half-step ahead of madness. When she moves to the United States for college and her boyfriend sexually assaults her, spirits that have been living inside her emerge and assume increasing autonomy: the feminine Asughara, masculine Saint Vincent, and a collective “We” of brothersisters. Ada continues life as a fractured, multiple being, navigating her several selves’ desires and darkness.

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Harmonia Rosales’ Black Female Universe

Words and Illustration by Tanatsei Gambura @tanagambura

Edited by Veronica Vivi

The Black imagination is a dangerous, radical phenomenon. More still is the Black, female imagination. It is an envoy into the speculative realm of pure freedom. In an existence that is marked by the suppression of the Black female form in all its shapes, the Black imagination functions as a powerful and liberating force. That being said, a pleasurable Afrocentric paradigm of the world is too abstract and incomprehensible to many. However, for Afro-Cuban artist Harmonia Rosales, not only is it conceivable, but, more importantly, it is a divine universe that can be translated into compelling visual representations for others to bear witness to.

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The Whispering Trees by Abubaker Adam Ibrahim

Joycelyn Longdon

Edited by Veronica Vivi

Art by Jazmine Sheckleford www.facebook.com/jasmineillustrations13

Abubaker Adam Ibrahim’s short story, ‘The Whispering Trees’, follows the spiritual awakening of protagonist Salim, a Nigerian medical student, after being rendered blind from a fatal car accident. Shortlisted for the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing, this story stood out to me, with its ability to pair emotional familiarity with cultural insight and authenticity, raising personal questions on the compatibility or incompatibility of spirituality and religion. Seldom approached in Theology or Philosophy courses, the defeat of spirituality by religion and the ongoing practices of spirituality within the African community are subjects in need of more academic scrutiny.

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Julian of Norwich: England’s forgotten first

Katherine Dixon

Editing by: Vicki Madden

Art: ‘The Young Virgin’, Francisco de Zurbarán

Julian of Norwich, an early fifteenth century East Anglian anchoress, and important Christian mystic and theologian, is the first person to draw attention to her own limitations as a woman. She makes it clear that she is unable to serve as a teacher to her reader, ‘For I am a woman, lewed, febille, and freylle’ (ST 7). Julian pens this admission close to the beginning of her writings, in which she wonderfully and wisely documents a divine visionary experience she had whilst deathly ill in 1373 and on which she continued to ruminate over the course of her subsequent life of enclosure in a Norwich anchorhold. In contrast to her contemporary counterparts, Margery Kempe in particular, Julian is often unduly overlooked in every strand of medieval studies despite being uncontestably deserving of canonical status, not least because she is the first woman ever known to write in the English language.

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