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I hope you all are doing okay out there. Over here, my family is plotting our return to our community in California after months of living with in-laws in Wyoming. That means I am routinely looking up COVID stats, fire maps, and air quality indexes for smoke levels. Then, I look at the other news, including the 64 percent jump in emergency overdose calls in my home state of West Virginia, the cascade of businesses closing and the risks of long-term unemployment, and the protests in Wisconsin and the latest on Jacob Blake's condition after being shot by Kenosha police.
This is a really hard time.
That is why I so loved the conversation in your feed today with novelist Akwaeke Emezi. Akwaeke's writing does not flinch from suffering, but also explores all the other dimensions surrounding it, including deep love. We talked first about how their life has changed as they released three books in two years—the latest is the New York Times bestseller The Death of Vivek Oji—and the winding path they took to becoming a full-time writer. And then, in the latter half of our conversation, they talked about the necessity of dissociation, and what this time of isolation has shown them about tending to themselves, hearing their own needs and wants, and finding refuge in stories and gardening. I have been ruminating about this since we talked.
I hope you find some hope and rest in their words.
—Anna and the Death, Sex & Money team
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This Week on Death, Sex & Money
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For the latest conversation in our "Books We Love" series, I spoke with writer and artist Akwaeke Emezi. Their latest book, The Death of Vivek Oji, tells the story of Vivek, a young gender-nonconforming person growing up in Nigeria, and how his loved ones grieve him and what they learn about him after his death.
Akwaeke joined me on Zoom from their home in New Orleans to talk about growing up in Nigeria, getting permission to fail, and why they love writing and reading fantasy novels. Listen to this week's episode now.
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Your Stories: There Is Wealth
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Last week, we got an email from a listener with the subject line "I increased my salary by $75,000 since March (when COVID hit)." What followed was an email about feeling conflicted around race and representation in the media, especially when you're not seeing stories like your own.
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"There’s so much in the media about black trauma, as there should be. There is a lot of black trauma and it’s an amazing thing to have our pain and grief and silenced voices be heard. It’s long overdue. AND, there’s more to blackness than pain and sadness. There’s also joy and love and softness. And wealth. I grew up with a mom who went to Wharton and a dad who went to Stanford. My brother went to Harvard and then HBS. I went to Georgetown and then Columbia. We grew up in Trump Tower (ugh) and had a house in the Hamptons. We flew to Paris for my 14th birthday.
I am now a black, married, mother of three young children. If you only listen to the media I bet you’d be picturing either a mother dying during childbirth (which I actually almost did) or a woman on the edge of conviction whose family members are all dying from the coronavirus. Again, it is a GOOD THING that black voices and stories and struggles are being highlighted. AND. We’re not monolithic. I’m not struggling right now (I could be in a month though, who knows). I have an au pair for my twins and my son is in a pod learning set up. I was already working from home as a consultant and since March I’ve gotten a promotion and $15,000 raise at my full time job and picked up a part time job for $60,000. That brings my salary to $202,000. My husband makes something similar. I hate putting in the numbers but I just know from listening that you appreciate numbers.
I love your show because it highlights a variety of stories and refutes stereotypes and assumptions."
—Anonymous
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Listen to This: Audio We Love
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In the new podcast Embodied, host Anita Rao wants to open up a space to have frank conversations about our bodies—ones that normally might be considered embarrassing or taboo. And what's more uncomfortable than "the sex talk"? In the first episode, we hear Anita confront her parents about why they never sat her down to talk about the birds and the bees when she was a kid. And, we hear from sexual health experts and biologists about pleasure, desire and consent—for humans and for wild animals.
In the VS podcast, poets Danez Smith and Franny Choi talk with fellow poets about their processes and important ideas for them. In a recent episode, the conversation is a little more intimate: Franny interviews her partner, poet Cameron Awkward-Rich, inside a blanket fort in their apartment in Northampton, Massachusetts. As Franny tells Danez at the top of the episode, interviewing him "was like a specifically sweet and interesting thing... to get to hear them say the smartest version of the thing that you have been talking about one on one in your kitchen for the last few months." The couple talks about their cat, why Cameron's thinking more about ambivalence these days, and Cameron shares two poems from his collection Dispatch.
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"Podcast realness. In an overcrowded field of broadcast noise, Death, Sex & Money rings true. Thanks and respect."
—Victoria, San Francisco, CA
Join Victoria in supporting our work at Death, Sex & Money! Donate now at deathsexmoney.org/donate.
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Take care of yourselves this week.
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