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So Devilish a Fire
“You are lucky. We saved you.” In Nadia Owusu’s So Devilish a Fire, we experience Nadia’s coming-of-age story, in which she absorbs the split narrative that has defined her life: Born in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater to a White mother and Black father, motherhood curved into a complete question. She tells us of the two people pressed just under her flesh, the pressures to be lighter and whiter. We learn alongside her how whiteness represents a safety she can never fully attain. This chapbook offers the complexity of learning self-love while showing us exactly what her survival looks like.
The title is plucked from W. E. B. Du Bois, who said of Black women, “I sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.” Owusu, simultaneous to her brilliant courage to speak, invests in the duplicitous power of storytelling as yet one more way she brought herself up through these fires. Stories, as we know all too painfully, have many sides, as glimmering as they are putrid. She reminds us of this doubleness, a metaphor for her entwined bloodlines: “The most destructive weapon in the world is a story, purified and poisoned. It attacks from the inside out, and from the outside in. We soak in it. We drink it. We are it.”
The title is plucked from W. E. B. Du Bois, who said of Black women, “I sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.” Owusu, simultaneous to her brilliant courage to speak, invests in the duplicitous power of storytelling as yet one more way she brought herself up through these fires. Stories, as we know all too painfully, have many sides, as glimmering as they are putrid. She reminds us of this doubleness, a metaphor for her entwined bloodlines: “The most destructive weapon in the world is a story, purified and poisoned. It attacks from the inside out, and from the outside in. We soak in it. We drink it. We are it.”
- GenresNonfiction
41 pages, Paperback
First published December 21, 2018
213 people want to read
About the author
Nadia Owusu
6 books297 followersNADIA OWUSU is a Brooklyn-based writer and urbanist. She was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and raised in Italy, Ethiopia, England, Ghana, and Uganda. Her first book, Aftershocks: A Memoir, was selected as one of 13 new books to watch for in January 2021 by the New York Times, one of BookExpo America’s buzziest books of the year, and one of Oprah.com’s 55 most anticipated books of 2021, among other honors.
Nadia is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award. Her lyric essay chapbook, So Devilish a Fire won the Atlas Review chapbook contest. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the New York Times, the Washington Post’s the Lily, Orion, the Literary Review, The Paris Review Daily, Electric Literature, Catapult, Bon Appétit, Epiphany and others. She earned her MFA in creative nonfiction at the Mountainview low-residency program where she now teaches.
Nadia is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award. Her lyric essay chapbook, So Devilish a Fire won the Atlas Review chapbook contest. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the New York Times, the Washington Post’s the Lily, Orion, the Literary Review, The Paris Review Daily, Electric Literature, Catapult, Bon Appétit, Epiphany and others. She earned her MFA in creative nonfiction at the Mountainview low-residency program where she now teaches.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 26, 2020
A breathtakingly quick read that nonetheless ranges in subject (identity, white saviours, sexual abuse). Intensely lyrical. I was left hungering for more.
August 9, 2020
For such a small work, it was truly remarkable and leaves an impact. I really enjoyed this book.
June 9, 2021
It's a remarkable book, it touch me real deep. I love Nadia's work - truly, an amazing writer.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews