Open Water

This is a fearless debut, defying all conventions. Written in the second person where the main characters remain unnamed, the prose follows its own looping rhythm, often repeating words across sentences. It is a celebration of black excellence as Nelson invokes Dizzee Rascal, Kendrick Lamar, Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk, Zadie Smith, James Baldwin, Solange, Frank Ocean, Tribe Called Quest, and more. (Look for Caleb Azumah Nelson's Open Water Spotify playlist) This story, presented this way, would have never escaped the Iowa Writer's workshop.

It is a story on blackness and black masculinity that is vulnerable, emotional and remarkably chaste. It proclaims that you are more than the sum of your traumas but understands the consequences of being black. It is so intimate in its writing that I almost feel self-conscious, made a voyeur into a world I will never truly know, implicated by my own frame of reference and unconscious biases.