The entire story flowed out in the character’s voice. When people ask me about how I ‘crafted’ the tone, I try to tell the truth: I didn’t craft it, I listened to it. I remembered from the inside and transcribed it. He reminds me of someone I know and love, actually, so it wasn’t difficult to hear him.
The most fascinating thing about the process of writing that story, for me, was that the ending came first. We hear (and read and watch) so many stories about queer characters being disowned by their parents because they came out or were outed. Those stories are powerful, but I was curious about something else: a character who a) centres his own experience, b) lives his full life, c) decides for himself who he wants to let in on the truth about who he is, d) never comes out to his parents, e) is thickly loved through his obvious messiness and f) draws a line between himself and what he is(n’t) willing to let go of for the sake of being accepted.
Eloghosa Osunde, First Draft interview with Republic.ng magazine
I know what Osunde means when she says she heard the voice and wrote it down. In the film Amadeus, the character Salieri is amazed that Mozart’s written music has no corrections: “He had simply written down music already finished in his head! Page after page of it as if he were just taking dictation.” It sounds like Osunde had a similar experience with this story. The voice is distinctive: occasional grammatical and vocabulary variations captured in long paragraphs with organizing structures such as lists and orderings.
I’ve always had a problem with introductions. To me, they don’t matter. It’s either you know me or you don’t—you get? If you don’t, the main thing you need to know is that I am a hustler through and through. I’m that guy that gets shit done. Simple. Kick me out of the house at fifteen—a barged-in-on secret behind me, a heartbreak falling into my shin as I walk—and watch me grow some real useful muscles. Watch me learn how to play all the necessary games, good and ungood; watch me learn how to notice red eyes, how to figure out when to squat and bite the road’s shoulder with all my might. Watch me learn why a good knife (and not just any type of good, but the moral-less kind, the fatherlike kind) is necessary when you’re sleeping under a bridge. Just a week after that, watch me swear on my own destiny and insist to the God who made me that I’m bigger than that lesson now; then watch my ori align….Second thing to know about me: I know how to make the crucial handshakes. Third thing: I no dey make the same mistake twice.
Even though I’m not familiar with the voice, after a few pages I could hear it as I read. I can’t say I fully understood all of the references, but I got the gist. I was interested in the phrase “watch my ori align” and discovered ori is literally “head” but figuratively means something like soul or fate, maybe something like a personal Tao, a path.
Most of the story is an extended monologue providing backstory that is the story: how a fifteen-year-old kicked out of his house with nothing when found with a gay lover manages to not only survive, but thrive, and now lives with his partner in luxury. This all leads up to meeting his estranged father after so many years, finding him gravely ill, paying his bills to return him to health. And when Dad asks to meet the woman he will marry – “Won’t you let me see you whole?” – the son does just that. “Yes, sir you will see me whole.” The ending uses a linguistic play that succeeds wildly; I didn’t think I was that emotionally engaged in this coming-out story, but following the struggle just outlined, it gave me goosebumps:
Are you sure you understand, Dad? I asked. By then my voice was hot iron. No one, I decided there and then, is allowed to kill me twice. Using my child-voice he said, Yes, sir, and using his dad-voice, I said, Good boy.
This twist of voice – a triple twist, a switch of owner, nature, and role, a kind of end-parenthesis on the initial comments about his father – sold me on the story. It shows who has matured and who has some growing to do. In a story made of voice, it was unexpected. That might be why Ward put it in her Surprise category. It also might be what won it Paris Review’s George Plimpton Prize for 2021.
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- Author interview with Republic.ng magazine.
- Jake Weber at Workshop Heretic looks at the story as a picaresque.
A Just Recompense 
This is most definitely my favorite story of the collection, and one of the best stories I’d read in a long time. The voice is magnificent and the resounding of hope throughout reverberates. I am so pleased I got to read this. I was thinking of Callie and Arizona and their struggles with their parents and lack of acceptance. This character manages a victory and I am so thrilled. “At different times we were terrified that we wouldn’t find our tribe, we wouldn’t find our people…” is a universal fear, not just connected with queer struggle. And we were just talking about My Person, and that is tied into this, too. “Made some good boys, in the end, out of us.” Yes. Love it. It is possible to reach that state.
I was just thinking how hopeless so many of the stories seem, so I’m glad you reminded me that some are full of hope coming on the wings of struggle.