She shifted her fingers away from her eyes so she could get a better look at Kewa’s face. Across it she could see the artifacts of Nijah. She and Kewa used to have the same dimple on their chin, but Kewa’s had filled out the older she got. Right then Tajudeen wanted to press her thumb into it, hoping it would leave a dent so that for a moment she would be staring at her best friend’s face again.

At its core, Seeri is a story about love. Plain and simple. But the love shown in the novella is anything but simple—the echoes of sisterly love that persist through death and grief, the wisps of the love left behind when a best friend loses their person, and the new, budding romantic love that isn’t new at all between two friends. Seeri, in its short length of 90 pages, delivers a funny, messy, and tender story perfect for readers looking for a contemporary narrative that’s engaging and easy to read on a cozy night in or a long transit ride. 

On the anniversary of her sister Nijah’s death, Kewa makes a decision: she wants to apologize to her ex. After a year of their relationship crumpling emotionally, mentally, and physically under the weight of Kewa’s grief, she’s ready to apologize and put this facet of her life back together. She can exist again, but she can’t do it alone. She needs the support of her and her sister’s best friend, Tajudeen. Reluctantly, Tajudeen agrees to help Kewa go meet her ex at a party in London, and the rest of their night decidedly doesn’t go as planned. However, for Kewa and Tajudeen, drunkenly following through with impulsive thoughts and love confessions is just the salve the two girls need. 

Grief touches multiple relationships in this story, but it doesn’t overwhelm the reader. It’s a sincere story: both Kewa and Tajudeen are grieving Nijah, but neither’s characterization is lost within their mourning. Chiamaka Okike is considerate when it comes to embedding sorrow into her narrative. As the reader, we can feel Kewa and Tajudeen’s pain and reservations towards the future, but we also feel their joy and love. 

She has this anti-compartment philosophy on love that most days I agree with. It’s about how you can find love in all these different places. And I do with her. She’s here.” Tajudeen moved her right hand towards her stomach. She’d always had a gut feeling about Kewa. “She’s here.” Tajudeen lifted the shoulder that Kewa was just leaning on. She had a Kewa shaped dent in it from years of taking the long route home together.

They’re nuanced and complicated characters who come together in a very sweet way. This isn’t a difficult story to follow along; there is no plot twist or convoluted narrative, and it’s this simplicity that lends itself well to Seeri’s favor. It’s heavily character-driven. We’re nestled deep inside of Kewa and Tajudeen’s minds, tucked alongside their motivations. We know what Tajudeen thinks as they look at Kewa, and we know what Kewa feels as they speak to their ex. It’s no surprise when the two come together, but their collision is welcomed and rooted for. 

Apart from characterization, another element of Seeri that adds to its readability is the fluidity in setting and time. Both Kewa and Tajudeen reflect on experiences in their life by mentally slipping through time. Through the use of brief flashbacks, we get to see how both girls felt in the past and how they feel now. Okike asks the question: when we’re remembering, are we existing in two places at once? Our main characters navigating the multiple versions of themselves that can exist and learning how to continue to live beyond a life-altering pain together is a huge part of the beauty of this story. 

I’m particularly excited to see what else Chiamaka will write in the future.

Nadine Rodriguez: Seeri is a very sincere and tender story. With intimate narratives like this, it’s common to be influenced by or carry some sort of personal inspiration into your words. Did you reflect on lived or personal experiences for Seeri? If so, how would you describe the experience of writing with them in mind? 

Chiamaka Okike: I more so reflected on feelings rather than any particular experience. I especially focused on all the love I have felt and turning it upside down until it became grief. I genuinely imagined what it would be like to never watch Avatar the Last Airbender again, or how I would feel if I could never visit the ocean again. Not because I don’t have any real life grief to take inspiration from, but because the story is mostly about yearning and remembering and when we do that, it’s for the beautiful things. I did cry writing portions of the story which was very cathartic.

NR: Do you feel, as a writer, that you are in conversation with any other writer or artist? 

CO: Not necessarily. I think I’m more so in conversation with queer communities. I’m deeply inspired by other’s creative work for sure, but not in a call and response way I don’t think. One of the indicators that I really love a work is not wanting to pick it apart or expand it at all, just letting it be perfect as it is. 

NR: Something I enjoyed about Seeri was the balance between the comedy from day-to-day living and the complicated feelings of queer romance and grief. Did this come about tonally naturally, or was it something you took into consideration when writing? 

CO: Omg you think I’m funny? I’m flattered. But on a serious note, I don’t think I set out to be. I actually fear that my sense of humour can’t or won’t translate into my writing. There are things that I wrote that made me laugh but I can never tell if they crack me up because of who I am or if they’re actually funny. Plus, by the time you’re reading the same thing for the sixth time, scanning it for mistakes, you stop registering jokes and only start registering missing commas. 

NR: In this novella, there’s fluidity in setting and a considerable focus on dialogue and inner narration. Do you feel dialogue is one of your strengths as a writer, and how do you approach it in a concise medium like a novella? 

CO: I’ve never really thought of dialogue as a strength per say. It’s definitely something that I enjoy writing and something that I find extremely crucial to stories, even short ones. I guess the way that I approach it in concise mediums is to think about what each word of dialogue reveals about a character. Why are they the ones saying it? Does it move the story along? Will it help readers understand the character better? If yes, then I go ahead and write it. 

NR: A lot of your work is essays and short stories, were there any challenges in writing a novella? What aspects of the process did you enjoy? 

CO: No, I don't think it was too challenging. I wrote Seeri in a week and it didn’t feel all that different from writing my university dissertation or writing a journal entry. It really was just a different kind of medium. I enjoyed crying while writing  because it was cathartic. I enjoyed being consumed by the work because of the arbitrary deadline I gave myself. I enjoyed thinking about all the things I loved. I enjoyed seeing the transformation of the first draft- which was just 4,523 words- to what it is now. 

NR: Do you have any plans on tackling a longer form of writing, like a novel? 

CO: Oh 100%. It is in the works as we speak, wish me luck. 

NR:Grief touches multiple relationships in this story, but it doesn’t overwhelm the reader. Was the seed for Seeri always Nijah’s death and Kewa and Tajudeen’s grief, or were there other potential versions of this story? Was Nijah ever an active storyteller in it? 

CO: It was always going to be a story about Nijah’s death, of that I was certain. I thought about including flashbacks that showed her speaking to Kewa/ Tajudeen but I ultimately decided against it. The 4,532 words version of Seeri is the same story as the 17,000 word version. The only difference was the decisions that I made to pause, reflect, add dialogue, and deepen the emotions of the story.   

NR: When it comes to the passage of time in this story, the characters move through time in a nonlinear manner through your use of personal narration, reflection, imagination, and flashbacks. Do you feel that your experience of grief or your experience of writing these characters actively grieving lends itself to a liminal mentality or a nonlinear approach to reality in your words? 

CO: Yeah. I don’t know of anything in life that moves in a straight line. You know those conversations with friends that are all about ‘remember when?’ And then they end up with plans for a group trip to Jamaica, reflections on what we thought or 20s would look like, that heartbreak that nearly finished us, how we’re going to quit our jobs and move to the sea, what we’re going to have for dinner, ec cetera ec cetera. That’s what I want my writing to feel like. It’s meandering, but not intentionally so. Grief takes the (un)scenic route, I think writing about it should reflect that.