You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-12

Chapters 13-18

Chapters 19-23

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Background

Authorial Context: Akwaeke Emezi

Akwaeke Emezi was born in Nigeria in 1987 and came to the United States at 16 for college. They are transgender and were featured on the cover of Time magazine’s Next Generation Leader issue, as “Storyteller for a Changing World.” In the interview for Time, they explain that they see storytellers as those who amplify ideas that others have put forward as loudly and well as they can to reach the masses.

Emezi’s work spans multiple forms of media. A filmmaker and musician, they have created award-winning short films and music videos. They are also a visual artist, frequently working with blood as a part of their art. In an interview with Trevor Noah in June of 2022, Emezi says that blood plays an important role in traditional rituals. Using blood in their art is a way to connect with traditions that existed before colonization. In this way, Emezi and Feyi are similar, as both choose blood as a medium for their work. Emezi’s writing, however, is what has gained them the most prominence. They published seven books between 2018 and 2022, including three novels, two young adult novels, a memoir, and a poetry collection. They have another book, Little Rot, coming out in 2024. Emezi is also assisting with the film adaptations of their novels Freshwater and You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty.

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is a romance novel inspired by the books Emezi loved to read growing up. In the same interview with Trevor Noah, they remember smuggling the Harlequin and Mills and Boon romances to school and swapping them with their friends. Emezi, however, has combined the genre’s tropes with their goal of writing for audiences that have traditionally been ignored or assumed not to be consumers of the product. Their book is a genre romance written for a Black audience with language, references, and situations that are considered a part of the everyday world of the characters without reference to the expectations of white consumers of the genre.

Among the awards Emezi has won or been nominated for are the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for their novel Pet, the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 list, and the Stonewall Book Award for non-fiction for their memoir, Dear Senthuran. Their book The Death of Vivek Oji was a New York Times Notable Book.

Cultural Context: The Black Diaspora

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty’s characters are members of the Black diaspora. Sometimes called the African diaspora, Black diaspora refers to people with African roots living in other parts of the world. The novel highlights and celebrates the various cultures inside this community. Alim and his family are an example of the historical diaspora, referring to descendants of people who were kidnapped and enslaved between 1500 and 1800. When describing the mountain in the Caribbean where he has built his house, Alim calls it family land, saying that “our blood is in it” (77). His food, clothing choices, and even his language reflect the culture that enslaved and free people of African descent created on the Caribbean islands. Feyi’s first attempt to get back into relationships is with a man named Milan who Feyi thinks “has manners his Southern grandmother would have been proud of,” implying he is part of the Black diaspora rooted in American slavery (15).

By contrast, Joy, Feyi’s best friend, is the daughter of recent immigrants. Feyi observes that Joy is a New Yorker but also very Ghanaian. Joy’s connection with her new girlfriend stems from them both being Ghanaian and therefore having similar ideas, which “Feyi suspected came from her Ghanaian parents, something about being deviant, maybe not even deserving what ‘normal’ people got” (61). Feyi’s family members are also more recent immigrants, and she frequently hears that her bluntness and confidence are very Nigerian. When she drives a hard bargain for her artwork with a collector named Pooja, Pooja declares, “I do love you Nigerians” (151). Feyi’s family’s food is also shown as distinctive from Alim’s when she thinks about “eating ego and pounded yam at her mother’s kitchen table” (145).

Aside from the interaction of people and food, the art exhibition Feyi takes part in highlights another aspect that unifies the diaspora. Feyi interprets the title, “Haunted,” to refer to “so much of the personal as well as the wider emotions across Black Diaspora” (121). Feyi’s art expresses her grief specifically for her husband, but also the collective grief shared by members of the Black diaspora for the experiences of their peers and ancestors. Emezi’s novel, then, shows the reader a Black diasporic community that is at once highly interconnected while also maintaining each individual’s distinctive cultural roots and identities.