Freshwater

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses sexual assault.

Ada is the protagonist of the story, yet Emezi only provides her first-person perspective three times throughout the book. Her words are few, but she is the body in which all of the relayed experience takes place. At the book’s outset, Ada is a helpless, lonely child. The ogbanje within her barely acknowledge her personhood, and Asughara does so even less when she arrives. Eventually, Ada pushes back against the total control of Asughara. She grasps onto Christ, Yshwa, for her entire life, even though he leaves her on her own sometimes. She spends time in the marble walls of her mind with these ogbanje, who become something like her friends and then even closer. Throughout the book, the python represents Ada’s true self. She is sacred and holy, but she is terrified of herself.

Throughout the book, her control over her own body evolves. As a child, she shows tendencies different from others: yelling, screaming, violence, and power. The ogbanje wake up when she is raped repeatedly in college by a man who claims to love her.