YVIX: Notes from the Underground
Memoirs of Nnalolile Yvi — June / July / August 2023
“We look, we listen, most importantly we learn something new with you from the art and memoirs of the Atoto Atori. Karibu Nyumbani Kwetu, Nnalolile Yvi.”
This is the complete series index for YVIX: Notes from the Underground — a memoir-in-chapters by Atoto Atori, written across the mid-year window of 2023. Part letter, part myth, part East African folklore — Yvi’s notes travel between cloud and underground, between the Nairobi Highrise and Mount Elgon, between the 29-year-old woman society expects and the one who actually exists.
Each chapter is its own world. Read in order, or enter wherever the title calls you.
The Chapters
01. Notes from the Underground
In response to Fyodor Dostoevsky
A letter to the great Russian — from a 29-year-old Kenyan woman who refuses to marry, refuses to explain herself, and refuses to stop being exactly who she is. The series begins here.
02. Oops Babies
Now that we are Two
The elephant vanishes and the cat too. But an oops baby doesn’t want an oops baby just to make it through. A descent into the mythology of the underground — where sky people fall, notes are traded for pennies, and Aries looks for Hades.
03. Once Upon a Time
The elephant vanished, and the cat died.
In the underground, time is cheap. Everyone has some on their watch. A Japanese novel about a vanishing elephant, a Murakami reference, and a man who refuses to admit the English lady existed at all.
04. The Genesis Story
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
What is Yvi — and why do you prefer it? A cosmological reckoning through Egyptian tombs, fallen angels, the Gemini twins, and the tree of life, whose keepers still keep the code.
05. The Two Majini
A brown lady on fire
Some guy bought my art for 50 USD while my boyfriend lectured me on nudity. The chapter where a dark knight, a digital portrait, a dungeon, and a lion all make sense at once.
06. J for Jack of all Trades
The Therapist
Six months in — and still pondering how the elephant vanished. A love letter to the man from the clouds who sends books on Mondays, asks no questions, and somehow stays.
07. The Elephant and the Cat
Looking. Listening. Learning.
Genesis, verse by verse — read from the 12th floor with a dead phone and a man who wouldn’t cook. Forensics, waist beads, polka socks, and what it means to want a full house.
08. Apropos of th(no title)e 12th Floor
Finally: I’m almost there.
The final end. He moves, and he moves massively. She is Yvi in Lala-land. A week on the 12th floor, reconstructed day by day — and the quiet goodbye that ends it all.
09. The Genesis Story of Atoto Atori
In the beginning…
The name. The clan. The Christadelphians. Auntie Kaye from Canada. Juliet in the white coffin. The Atori Clan at the slopes of Mount Elgon, where once upon a time, a child full of stories was born.
10. Quaerendo Invenietis
By seeking, you will discover
A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll — Gödel, Escher and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Yvi in French, Swahili, Luhya and Luo. Three blind mice, a Crab Canon, two djinn, and the eternal question: are you god, demon, or genie? The series ends where it began — at the slopes of Mount Elgon, looking East.
About the Series
YVIX: Notes from the Underground is the first major release under the Nnalolile East African Stories imprint — part of the Yvi-World universe by Atoto Atori. The series spans memoir, mythology, literary response, and intimate personal narrative.
It is for anyone who has ever been 29 and unmarried and unbothered and blamed for it.
It is for anyone who has watched an elephant disappear.
It is for the oops babies, the underground readers, the cloud people, the ones who walk out of Omelas.
We look. We listen. We learn.
Atoto Atori
atotoatori.co.ke