“Romance Gets A Really Bad Rap”: Akwaeke Emezi On Writing This Summer’s Must-Read Love Story

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“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.”

“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.

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.”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 , but it has sometimes come at a price.

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.

 

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