Akwaeke Emezi, Nigerian Writer with the Most Modified Body

Akwaeke Emezi is a Nigerian fiction writer born in Umuahia, the capital city of Abia State in 1987 to an Igbo father, and an Asian mother of Sri Lankan descent. While growing up in Aba as a little girl, she loved reading fantasy books with her sister and enjoyed storytelling. 

At 16, she relocated to the Appalachian region of the United States for her university education. The very move one might call a blessing and a curse. Shortly after her relocation, she started having identity crisis. A feeling she described as deeply depressing because she felt she belonged to the liminal space as an ogbanje trapped in an inaccurate body. So one day, her thought found expression when she ran into a vibrant queer scene in Brooklyn. Right there and then, she sensed there were many more ways to be than she had ever known and whatever it was, she just knew she had never been a woman. She abandoned her vet studies to be in the environment that created her kind of world and knew she had grappled with gender dysphoria all the while.

To rectify this "gender dysphoria" affecting her mentally and emotionally, she went for a breast reduction surgery. That way, she thought she wouldn't have the identity of either of the genders assigned at birth. Maybe after that surgery, people still called her "she" and it vexed her the more, who knows? Lol. About two years later, at 28, she went for another surgery and this time, it was to get rid of her womb and fallopian tubes! A procedure carried out by a robot called subtotal hysterectomy with a bilateral salpingectomy. Palava, you go say abi? Sha wait. After another few years, she kukuma went to remove the remaining breasts patapata. Now, she says her gender is fluid and prefers the pronoun "they". 

As cringe-worthy as Emezie's personal details might be and her focus mostly on LGBT themes in her works, she is a fantastic writer whose works have gained international recognition, nominated many times and won several awards. She has written and directed a couple of short movies and tried her hands on rap music too. So far, she has published eight novels including Freshwater, Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir, The Death of Vivek Oji, Pet, etc. and You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty which has been adapted into a movie by Amazon Studios after paying handsomely for the right. 

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