Thick Skin

by N/A Oparah

Fiction. LGBTQIA Studies. California Interest. After Nneka, a young Nigerian-American, is dumped and abandoned by her partner Jacob, she undertakes a ritual of thickening her skin physically and spiritually—with mud, knives, tweezers, and a questionable form of therapy. Nneka's healing process is as layered as the emotional abuse of her interracial relationship and embodies all the ways we hide, obsess, flail, fail, and finally carve our way toward feeling and healing. This heavily metaphorical novella, inspired by the author's experience, mines meaning from memories and half-lived moments. Told in vignettes, from the perspective of a someone-turned-no-one, it grapples with the question: who's responsible for the wreckage?

156 pages, Paperback

First published April 6, 2021

Reviews

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5. This is a powerful, fragmented approach to abuse, Madness, and what it means for a bodymind to endure unrelenting and insidious violence that often remains invisible or illegible to the outside world. I was particularly struck by the way Oparah uses the changing body as a map of harm and healing with injury, disordered eating, and speculative/body horror-adjacent imagery.

[Zak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fuck me, this book is beautifully written.

Elgaic. Spiritual. Dense. Witty. Sad. Hopeful. Depressing. Anguished. Full of memory and decay and plaster dust of ourselves shedding and needing to be recast.

Sublime novel.

[Allison Renner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know if there are words for this book. It felt intensely personal and private in the best ways while being completely relatable. The words are poetic and the imagery is beautiful and raw.

I finished it but I hesitate to use that word because it’s still sitting on my bedside table and I keep picking it up to re-read certain sections, and I have a feeling I’ll be coming back to it very often.