OPEN WATER: CALEB AZUMAH NELSON

‘It’s easier to hide in your own darkness, than to emerge, naked and vulnerable, blinking in your own light’.

Open Water is the wilderness where freedom resides. It is vulnerable…the barest you will find the black man. It is fueled by trauma and a longing to be seen and to break out of the box of injustice. There is a weariness that binds an entire community. There is a pattern to his words. Words densely and superbly nesting on a soft beat. It has touches of James Baldwin but sits apart in a unique way that truly belongs to Caleb Azumah Nelson. There is nothing that separates the page from the author. This is all him. I know it. This is a window to a soul, so heavy. This was an honest meeting, a direct gaze of the black body…which is unseen and unheard or worse still seen and heard in ways ‘you do not ask for’.

Open Water is magnetic and deserves all the praise. You can’t help but fall in love with honesty.