“Energy cannot be destroyed,” Kelechi Okafor says as we chat about Edge of Here, her debut speculative fiction short story collection.
I had asked the multi-hyphenate writer, podcaster and pole studio owner who her pleasure lineage was, a nod to a prompt in adrienne maree brown’s book Pleasure Activism.
In response to the provocation, “who taught you to feel good?” (or, who politicised your experiences of body, identity, sensation and feeling good), Kelechi shares how Black feminist thought and practice saved her life, including the works of Maya Angelou.
“Maya is brilliant! I can’t even speak of her in the past tense because while her physical body is no longer with us, her mind, her interrogation about pleasure as somebody who experienced sexual abuse as a child is still with us. I remember reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and thinking, ‘so everyone is just going around living my life’.
In certain regards, it thematically spoke to me so deeply. In the poem Still I Rise, she is speaking about pleasure when she mentions the meeting of her thighs and simultaneously describes the violence that goes on around her.”
Our conversation quickly turns into a sermon of sorts, where I literally have to stop myself leaping from my seat and screaming “tell them!” in African Pentecostal Church style, hands in the air waving about. Because within five minutes of our Zoom call, not only is Kelechi preaching - something she does weekly on her podcast Say Your Mind - she is mirroring what drew me to her world seven years ago.
I first encountered Kelechi in my @makariina Twitter days (LOL what a time!). I can’t exactly remember what the cultural commentator had tweeted but it was so hilarious that I went straight to her bio. When I read ‘Benz Punani Womanist’ I pressed that follow button immediately.
As someone who lives at the intersections of Audre Lorde and hot wuk, the worlds Kelechi was nurturing invited this pansexual baby girl to a space where Africanness, sensuality, Black diasporic influences, liberation politics and worldviews coexisted.
In Edge of Here, Kelechi welcomes us into multiverses that centre the inner worlds of black femmes. After being invited to contribute to Who’s Loving You, an anthology of romantic stories by women of colour, Sareeta Domingo, an author and editor of the anthology, asked Kelechi if she would publish a book. Being asked to write something beyond anger unlocked the eight stories that make up the collection. The stories Kelechi wanted to put into form “started hurtling through” and resulted in Edge of Here.
The book begins with ‘The Watchers’, where we are introduced to the spaces and worlds the collection traverses; from the centrality of pleasure and love, to the potency of the dream world and the ways in which spirit never forgets. As a reader it felt like a genesis of sorts, Kelechi providing a historical backdrop of stories that inform her experiences as a Nigerian woman living in London. I caught the ode to my Cancerian sis Octavia Butler whose stories contain inner worlds where pleasure and love are ever-present.
Longing, desire and pleasure are central in the inner lives of the protagonists, who are all black women. From polyamorous relations that feel like a reclamation of sexual agency, to love across timelines including a not too distant future where VR sexting is a thing.
The stories in Edge of Here represent the boundless nature of pleasure, breaking away from taboos that are often associated with yearning. With desiring. With wanting. After all, the processes of colonialism caused a shift in gender norms and familial and communal structures, the ripple effects of this can be seen in how we engage with pleasure and our desires.
“I can’t speak for everyone else but as black femme identifying people, pleasure is our birthright. When we have to navigate the constant violence around us, we put pleasure on the back burner. In the story ‘Blue’ I wanted to amplify the ways black women put their pleasure aside to save the world. We have to save ourselves through exploring ourselves, our sexuality and the power of our erotic if we have any chance of participating in the world we’re trying to save,” Kelechi says.
When I ask the pole studio owner what soundtrack was playing as she channelled Edge of Here, she lets me know there’s a playlist accompanying the release and mentions Sade’s By Your Side.
“In all their lives that song matters, it’s just in the story ‘School Run’ where I was like let’s name the song. Not only is Sade the icon who’s there but not there at the same time, there is something otherworldly about her voice. In ‘UteruStar’ I also had to honour black feminist tradition by highlighting the power of romantic platonic friendships. So many times it is our friends who save us.”
In honouring black feminist tradition, the actor highlights how bell hooks’ book Communion: The Female Search for Love informed the stories of love in the collection. For her it was important to mirror what our worlds can look and feel like, when and if we centre pleasure.
As we wrap up our conversation, I ask Kelechi if she has any spiritual seasoning (a popular Kelechi-ism) for us as we flow through transitional and often turbulent times.
“I want us to know satisfaction. To know pleasure and to become deeply acquainted with the erotic. We keep being told to defer our pleasure but what if our purpose is to experience pleasure in a beautiful and healthy way.
“We know there are wars and injustices and if we want to save the earth, we need to understand how it is connected to our pleasure. Pleasure is deeply connected to spirit and deeply aligned with the flourishing and justice of others”.
• Edge of Here is out now, and can be purchased via Mighty Ape and The Nile.
