


“They start feeling like they’re men.”īook review: A young Black women navigates a white open marriage in Raven Leilani's spiky 'Luster'

“Be careful of women like that,” his brother tells him. In one narrative interlude, we meet a man named Ebenezer, whose marriage fractures when, after many years of trying for a child, his wife suggests he sees a doctor – an affront to his manhood. The world Vivek is born into is one of rigid patriarchal standards, where women like his mother Kavita, who is Indian, join the “Nigerwives,” a group of foreign-born women who learn together how to be better wives to Nigerian men. A wrenching tale of grief and identity, “The Death of Vivek Oji” builds on the success of author Akwaeke Emezi’s striking 2018 debut, “Freshwater” – also a story about constructing an identity that doesn’t conform to social standards, and how such an identity makes the world bearable even as the world punishes you for it.
