Review by ringofkeyz - Open Water

ringofkeyz 's review for:

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

4.5

emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I think this book has single-handedly changed my opinion on second person narration.

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What really stuck out to me throughout this book was the use of both rhythm and silence as a motif; particularly, the importance of silence and downbeats within a rhythmic pattern. Nelson continuously highlights that these fillable silences are moments were the characters find the most opportunity: the ability to breathe, the ability to be their most authentic.

I'm like, dancing into the space the drums leave [...] where that silence lies, that huge silence, those moments and spaces the drums are asking you to fill. I dance to breathe but often I dance until I'm breathless [...] and I can feel all of me, all those parts of me I can't always feel, I don't feel like I'm allowed to. [...] I make a little world for myself, and I live.

But you are home, amongst the melody, slipping into percussive breaks, breathing easy.

What is even more poignant is that these breaks in the rhythm are always in reference to Black music, predominantly jazz and hip hop. The characters find their most authentic selves in art that was made by people who understand their human experience. This directly contrasts the moments in which our narrator feels most stifled and unable to breathe: when he is being perceived by white people - most often white people in power, such as the police - and being judged at surface level rather than being truly seen (another theme of the novel). He is most able to express his joy and connect with his own art when he is surrounded by other expressions of Blackness.

I guess I'm always trying to make things which are reflective of Black music, which, to me, is some of the greatest expression of Blackness - that ability to capture and portray a rhythm. So maybe motion is the wrong word, rhythm is better.

And this motif carries through to the end, where the narrator and his girlfriend are reflected in Roy DeCarava's Couple Dancing; a photo where Nelson describes the two figures as "pressed close, rhythm captured in the stillness." Once again, reiterating that the characters are able to find this quiet, this stillness where they can breathe, in the presence of the other.

Favourite Quotes:

You would soon learn that love made you worry, but it also made you beautiful. Love made you Black, as in, you were most coloured when in her presence.

But when you hear music, and something, something takes you, closes your eyes, moves your feet, hips, shoulders, bobs your head, reaches inwards, invites you to do the same, leads you, if only for a moment, towards something else which has no name, needs no name, do you question it? Or do you dance, even when you don't know the song?

Content Warnings