Anna Konuche

“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“The loss of him felt cumulative, as if he’d been slipping away so slowly that she’d missed the rift as it formed in his childhood. It was only once he’d become a man that she realized she couldn’t reach him anymore, that he was gone, so gone that breath had left his body. No one else could feel that lifetime of loss. No one else had lost him more than she had, yet they cried in front of her as if it meant something.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“As if Vivek’s parents’ lives hadn’t stopped, at least in every way that was important, even as they had to wake up in the morning and watch the sun move across the sky. Maybe we were all pretending to be fine because the world gave us no other option.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“dreamt that I was our grandmother,” I tell him. “I looked in a mirror and she was there, just like the pictures, and she spoke to me in Igbo.” “What did she say?” “Hold my life for me.” I wait for his laugh, but it never comes. “Do you believe in reincarnation?” I ask him. “I’m not sure my belief matters,” he says. “If it is, it is, whether I believe it or not.” “You know what I’m asking.” My cousin gives me a small smile and twists some of my hair in his fingers. “They talk about you and her in the village, did you know?” I have never heard this before. I sit halfway up, leaning against his body.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji