Freshwater, by Akwaeke Emezi

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Our brothersisters have always possessed the cruelty that is our birthright. They stacked their bitterness like a year’s harvest; they bound it all together with anger, long memories, and petty ways. The Ada had not died, the oath had not been fulfilled, and we had not come home. They could not make us return because they were too far away, but they could do other things in the name of claiming our head. There is a method to this. First, harvest the heart and weaken the neck. Make the human mother leave. This, they knew, is how you break a child.

I am getting to the end of my project of reading all of the Tiptree/Otherwise, BSFA and Clarke Award winners. This won the 2019 Otherwise Award, the first time it had that name, beating six other novels, two shorter pieces and a series of books. I have read two of the others, The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal and The Deep by Rivers Solomon; of the three I liked Freshwater the most.

It’s the story of a Nigerian who moves back and forth to the United States, but who also contains several different personalities: the Ada, who is the named protagonist; Asụghara, whose impulses are destructive; Yshwa, a rather distracted Jesus; and Saint Vincent, who carries masculine traits. This could easily have become very self-indulgent, but in fact the narrative twists and turns and doesn’t lose track of trying to tell a story, despite the multiplicity of the protagonist’s nature. I found it an excellent read. You can get it here.