Shedding the Archive, For New Beginnings or alternatively Ụlọ Akwụkwọ and the Fourth Wall Rendezvous follows five interconnected, but separate individuals as they discover the world through the eyes, fiction and nonfiction of the author, Vasilis-Chukwunonso Onwuaduegbo.

Shedding the Archive reveals how an individual born into a nomadic experience learns of their heritage, their identity and their sense of purpose. The varied nature of the pieces that compose Shedding the Archive shows through doing how time, place, movement and augmenting maturity brings us closer to the selves and the realities we desired even before we could properly articulate what was lacking in our previous life.

Shedding the Archive is experimental, a mix of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Shedding the Archive is like a prayer, the string of words and wishes that closed off an era of exploration and discovery. The Vasilis that wrote the pieces that bejewel the book is not the same Vasilis that compiled and released it to the world. This is the truest accomplishment of Shedding the Archive, it made normal and plain the experiences and thoughts of an individual that lived unprecedentedly as both a child and a young adult. It reveals through 28 chapters and a post-notes section how a migrant boy from Africa, born in the Hellenic Republic, can become a global agent for change, especially for folks that are queer, Black and disenfranchised based on other arbitrary identity markers.

Some might say it reminds them of Ocean Vuong’s debut, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Warsan Shire’s Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, and they would not be far from the truth because what despite its genre bending nature, Shedding the Archive shines because of its transparency and vulnerability, especially when it comes to social commentary on this freshly post-colonial, digitized and globalized world. Don’t hesitate to join V and his cohort of sibling spirits as they wander through the House of Creative and Intellectual Exploration, you might discover worlds you never anticipated.