All Water Is Connected: African Earth Spirituality and Queering Identity in Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater

Akwaeke Emezi’s autobiographical novel Freshwater (2018) offers a thought-provoking exploration of gender, body politics, religion, Igbo cosmology, trauma, and grief. Through the lens of Igbo cosmology, the novel recounts the story of Ada, a young girl living in Nigeria who is ogbanje, a being that is part-human and part-spirit. As the novel unfolds, Ada moves to the United States to attend college, and that is where she begins to embody various selves—including other gendered identities that are non-binary and male in response to trauma. In conversation with critical ecofeminist theory, postcolonial theory, and African heritage traditions, this present essay provides an analysis of the subversive ways Emezi employs gender, and Igbo cosmology to reject socially constructed gender norms and western psychoanalytic categorizations.