CALEB AZUMAH Nelson’s debut novel is about black love and creativity, as much as it is about vulnerability and masculinity.

What is now titled Open Water began as a collection of non-fiction essays written up until the summer of 2019.

“I was writing about photography and music and blackness and love and I was really writing a lot about freedom,” says Caleb “and where freedom can be found for black people.”

His book is about real emotions and all the things he was “thinking and feeling,” but it’s delivered in intense fictional narrative.

He describes it as a “bit of an ode to all of the things that I loved.”

Growing up in South East in London and being of Ghanaian heritage, cultural and pop cultural references are found throughout his prose.

Themes such as community and black expression play a prominent part too.

‘You write how black people are feeling’

“After the launch event that we did [for the book], my aunty called me,” he says “and she gave me her critique and she said something that really stuck with me: she said that you write how black people are feeling.”

Open Water is an ode to black narratives.

“I don’t think there’s one correct way [to tell a black narrative]. But a lot of the time I feel that the media misses the mark. So, it was an opportunity for me to really say this is how black I feel. And perhaps it will resonate with you too,” Caleb says.

So much of his work is about being seen, and having the reader see something of themselves.

He recalls growing up and seeing himself in Malorie Blackman’s work, a staple of almost every black child’s reading list through the 90s and 2000s.

Through his characters, he went beyond telling a love story that first blossomed in a pub. Azumah Nelson explores love between family and friends throughout his book, exploring that “freedom in the space that you create for each other where you can just be yourselves” when you do love.  

Black men and emotion

He explores love, vulnerability and how that translates itself in the lives of black people – specifically black men.

“I wanted to explore what happens when we’re not able to share that vulnerability, because we feel threatened or there’s no way to express the hurt that we’re feeling,” says Caleb, “and how that interacts with the relationships around you and how other people become collateral damage because of the hurt that you’re feeling.”

In his writing, he allowed his characters to develop with no direction, giving them room to breathe and make their mistakes. He gave characters space to have their successes and all those other human experiences.

They are “fleshed out” and can be themselves, he says.

Caleb’s novel is a tentative and beautiful, yet devastating story of the human condition.

“Open Water speaks to this openness and this vulnerability that you want to be able to have in your every day, but isn’t always possible for black people,” he concludes.

“I think that’s really the primary thing, being able to be out in the open and free and that tug when you know there are other things in the water that might stop you from doing that.”

Open Water is available to purchase online and in all good bookstores.

Watch the full interview with Caleb Azumah Nelson here: