Proud, African, and queer: The Death of Vivek Oji is the best of all three
The Death of Vivek Oji is a LGBTQ+ fiction novel, released in the summer of this year. It combines memorable and distinctive characters with an intriguing plot that maintains interest until the very end, culminating in a touching message that encompasses community, pain, and identity.
Often if you’re a bibliophile, you’ll go through long spells of reading mediocre books. It’s bound to happen to even the most tasteful of us. Then you become engulfed by that delicious new book that’s a breath of fresh air, reigniting your love for literature — and The Death of Vivek Oji was that book for me. I inhaled the audiobook over the course of two days.
The book begins with the body of Vivek Oji being discovered on his family’s front step. Despite the death of our protagonist being firmly established, even in the title, author Akwaeke Emezi immediately fills him and the story with life. The knowledge of the protagonist’s death critically shapes the reading experience as we follow Vivek, his cousin Osita, and his family through his childhood, his formative years, and eventually his adolescence. The intrigue only grows as the story unravels how and why Vivek has died. Each chapter fuels potential theories for readers, as details are elucidated bit by bit through the eyes of other characters. You know that Vivek dies, but your mind reels trying to make sense of it, much like the minds of the other characters in the book.
While taking place in what’s described as a conservative Nigerian town, the novel embraces queer romance. These bonds are described beautifully and complexly, demonstrating that for many bisexual characters, their queer relationships can be deeper and more pure than those that are heterosexual. At the same time, LGBTQ+ communities are being actively persecuted, and this aspect is not shied away from either. Characters long to love each other openly, proudly, and loudly, but feel they must hold back for fear of losing their lives. Instead they cling to each other as friend-groups-become-chosen-families, and the gap widens between them and the dysfunction of their biological families. Despite the pain and grief that this book describes, there is also beauty and love within the fierce devotion of the friends surrounding Vivek.
Vivek’s story is told largely through the perspective of other characters — like his mother, father, cousin, friends, and extended family. Ironically, this includes some of the people who knew him the least, adding to the shrouded mystery that is Vivek’s life. Emezi masterfully uses these rotating narratives to craft who Vivek is, and both his slow descent into introspection and his electric ascent into authenticity. Readers witness as friends and family watch him withdraw into himself, go into fugue states, and become increasingly gender-nonconforming in appearance. However, by the end, Vivek is flourishing just as the story makes its way to its titular and tragic ending (which is incidentally also its beginning). Although the death of the protagonist is the basis of the novel, Vivek becomes more alive as the story marches toward his demise. By the end, pieces of him still linger everywhere.
In a way, The Death of Vivek Oji manages to show the transcendence of its protagonist over death, as he continues to live on in spirit and in those that loved him. This LGBTQ+ Nigerian-set novel is both beautiful and heart-breaking; Emezi may teach you about cultures you aren’t familiar with, and he will show you an intimate exploration of gender identity and acts of pure love that will move readers from all walks of life.
The Death of Vivek Oji (Riverhead Books)
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
