The Jalada Conversations No 6: Akwaeke Emezi

I recently did an interview with Akwaeke Emezi, who is an Igbo/Tamil writer and filmmaker based in liminal spaces. These interview was part of the Jalada Conversations, where we interview writers of African identification. Jalada is a Pan-African Writers’ Collective, which we founded in 2013, in order to execute literary projects quickly and effectively. Akwaeke’s debut novel FRESHWATER is forthcoming from Grove Atlantic (Fall 2017/Winter 2018) and her work is available online at http://www.akwaeke.com.

Let me quote a bit of what she had to say:

“I am interested in navigating humanity, mostly because I personally experience humanity as a rather foreign thing, so I am fascinated by it, and I am particularly interested in aspects of humanity that people have trouble accepting as human. I am interested in things that people think are inhuman or, you know how people say, that person is a monster. I find that interesting because the person is not a monster. The person is a person. We seem at times, to have this reluctance to confront the amount of horror that human beings have been perpetrating for the whole of their existence.”

Read or listen to the rest of the interview in the link provided below.

Source: The Jalada Conversations No 6: Akwaeke Emezi