In letters addressed to their friends, to members of their family - both biological and chosen - and to fellow storytellers, Akwaeke describes the shape of a life lived in overlapping realities. Through heartbreak, chronic pain, intimacy with death, becoming a beast, this is embodiment as a nonhuman: outside the boundaries imposed by expectations and legibility.

This book is an account of the gruelling work of realignment and remaking necessary to carve out a future for oneself.

The result is a black spirit memoir: a powerful, raw unfolding of identity.

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“A thing of great beauty . . . Dear Senthuran is about powerful excellence, especially the excellence that appears in bodies that aren’t white and aren’t male. Emezi is changing the world and our reaction to this kind of power.” —The Paris Review

“An audacious sojourn through the terror and beauty of refusing to explain yourself.” —New York Times Book Review

“Unlike anything I’ve read. There are many magnificent parts where the language, the insight, the writing are simply unparalleled. They also are fearlessly open about identity, success, human frailty, mental health, destructive decisions that are sometimes necessary to achieve a greater goal. [And] they are remarkably clear- eyed about the best and worst parts of themselves. . . . This is a remarkable memoir and really expands possibilities for the genre.” —Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist

“Written in imagistic language that is both poetic and crystalline, Dear Senthuran is an honest and lyrical accounting of a boundless mind exploring the wide expanse of creativity and experience. Authentic and vulnerable, the writing winds through the depths of wrenching wounds, but also explores the beauty in not pretending to be less that one truly is.” —NPR