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As a teenager in the mid-’90s, Akwaeke Emezi was, the Nigerian author reveals, an active participant in a “thriving illicit book trade.” This was, of course, at their secondary school and the books in question were smuggled copies of romance novels—think Harlequin and Mills & Boon—which would be discreetly swapped with other lusty teenagers, out of sight of their teachers.
Ever since, Emezi, soon to turn 35, has been enthralled by romance novels, as is clear in their latest offering, You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty. (The title is, incidentally, borrowed from the Florence + The Machine’s track “Hunger.”) It tells the story of Brooklyn-dwelling 29-year-old artist Feyi Adekola, who, after a life-changing bereavement is finally ready to dip a toe back into the world of sex and dating; to make herself vulnerable to love again. She meets (among others) adoring Nasir, but it is his father Alim—a renowned celebrity chef living an other-worldly existence on a Caribbean island—who she can’t shake from her mind.
“I was very firm on the fact that I was writing a romance—not literary fiction that could pass for romance—and a book that sounded like me and my friends,” Emezi explains over a call from their house in New Orleans one late spring morning. Their reason was simple: “I just wanted to write something that was fun.”
Indeed, the beginning of the novel is very much that, centering largely on Feyi and her best friend—“two Black girls in Brooklyn having a hot girl summer,” who “curse a lot and are not interested in being in a relationship, [or] in respectability politics in order to gain the prize of a relationship with a man.” They’re simply acting in the same way we, as a society, expect men to act—“sleeping around for fun.”
For anyone familiar with Emezi’s work, this switch to romance might come as something of a surprise. While they have always written across genres—following their debut novel, Freshwater, in 2018, there have been forays into young adult fiction (Pet and Bitter), memoir (Dear Senthuran), and poetry (Content Warning: Everything)—there is no getting away from the fact that “romance gets a really bad rap.”
“People think that, oh, if it’s a romance, then it’s, you know, fluff or it’s not good writing or it’s not real literature, which I think is a very elitist way to look at the genre,” Emezi continues. “I think there’s a hierarchy in terms of genres. I don’t agree with the hierarchy, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.” In spite of the commercial success of many authors of romance novels, Emezi puts their low position in this so-called hierarchy down to the fact they are largely “written by women or enjoyed primarily by women or people who aren’t men,” and, as such, are “considered less than.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” they continue. “Some of the most impactful literature in the world is children’s literature. Some of the most successful writers in the world write romance and commercial fiction. I think the strictness of the genre divisions is so silly. You end up having to create all these subgenres, too, so that you can make sure that every book can be slotted into its appropriate pocket.”
Luckily for their readers, none of this has put Emezi off from writing what they want to write. And already, it is opening up their writing to a whole new audience, one which would have arguably been unlikely to pick up one of Emezi’s previous works. And while it is true that Emezi has succeeded in their aim of writing a pure romance novel, that doesn’t prevent it, or the author, from challenging readers; of asking them to question their preconceived notions of what love looks like and who gets to experience it.
“I meant to write just like a fluffy romance that didn’t have any heavier themes,” says Emezi. “Unfortunately, once I started writing Feyi all this darkness just kept unfolding.” But that’s no bad thing: “It shows all the facets of her as a person—you have the version of her that’s doing rooftop parties and hooking up with people in the bathroom. And she’s still the same person who is an artist that’s working through her grief. I think it’s so important to show a Black woman who is all these things, and that you can be profane and promiscuous and that doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve a happily ever after.”
There is also, without giving too much of the book away, a scenario that arises that, though nothing but romantic, manages to also beautifully defy what some may deem acceptable, forcing the reader to consider that love, as in real life, does not fit one perfect mold.
“This is something that I believe very strongly in,” says Emezi. “There are all these systems that we’re caged in, and whenever you deviate from them, you pay a cost, because society makes sure that you do. Queer people experience that a lot—in order to live a life that is more free, unshackled by certain structures, you have to deal with the penalties of that choice. I remember having a conversation with some people who were talking about how wonderful it is that they’ve had the same friends since they were children. And I was sitting at the table with another queer friend of mine and afterwards we were just like, yeah, that doesn’t happen for us because there was a point where we disclosed that we were queer, and we lost our childhood friends.”
Ultimately, says Emezi, “everyone chooses what costs they can bear. The more dangerous path—those are the stories I like, because there’s more possibility in them.”
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is, unbelievably, the seventh book Emezi has published in five years—they have already submitted their tenth manuscript to their publisher when we speak. There’s no doubt Emezi has already accomplished an incredible amount (the literary awards and nominations are too numerous to recount), but it has sometimes come at a price. “One of the downsides of the ways that I trained myself to be so prolific is that I learned how to write when I was suicidal,” they say. “I learned how to write when I was really, really sick. I learned how to write when I didn’t have a place to live. And that’s just capitalism. That’s just this thing of you must produce, you must create a product, no matter what’s happening with your life.”
Moreover, “as a Black author in this industry, I get paid much, much less than white authors do. Especially also as a trans writer, who is going to be shut out of certain opportunities, because I don’t have a gender and because it makes people uncomfortable. There are all these things working against me. The only way that I could create some sort of safety for myself through financial stability was by writing at this pace.”
That said, Emezi is trying to find that elusive balance, to avoid burning out. “A friend of mine sat me down and she said, ‘You are the way that you are, so don’t try and dim yourself. Accept that you write at this pace. What you need to do is figure out how you can rest and make it sustainable for you.’ ”
And so Emezi interrupts writing with walks to the large lake they live close to in New Orleans, where they sit and eat ice cream while reading romance novels, before returning back home to work with a view of a jasmine-filled porch, and a cat that is kept entertained by “a tonne of little birds flying around.” It sounds close to something in a fairytale. Emezi laughs. “I just make sure my life looks like this all the time.”
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty (Atria) by Akwaeke Emezi is out now.