I'm the kind of person who runs towards fear. And usually it's like running towards it, like

screaming with panic. It's not brave at all. It's just a complete panic attack.

Hey, welcome back. I'm Jeffrey Masters, and this is LGBTQ and A from The Advocate magazine

in partnership with Glad. Today, I'm talking to the author Aquakei

Amezi. They grew up in Nigeria and made a huge splash a couple of years ago with their

debut novel, Freshwater. If you read it and were wowed by it like me, then good news.

They've got a brand new book out called The Death of Vivek Oji. And yes, Vivek dies, but it's also one of the most surprisingly romantic books I've read

in a while, something that I think we need more of when it comes to queer and trans characters.

Although those are titles, Queer and Trans, that Vivek wouldn't use himself.

But more on that in the interview. So let's hear it.

This is Aquakey Amesi talking about their brand new book, The Death of Vivek Oji. It's available

on August 4th.

I want to jump into the new book. It takes place in Nigeria, and I thought it was so interesting

how people in the book describe Vivek. They say things like they're possessed, they're sick,

they talk about fixing them, but we never use labels like queer or trans. Can you talk about

why you made that choice in writing it?

Well, one of the first reasons was that Vivek has set in the Nigerian community that I grew up in.

And growing up, queer and trans just weren't part of our vocabulary at all. It also is a very

Western thing, these specific labels. And I wanted to

write a story about a queer kid who doesn't need to use these specific labels to still be what they

are. Is that why the book also doesn't contain what we've seen in the Western world as

like a traditional coming out moment, that like big theatrical sit down where like Vivek says,

...