In the tradition of The Glass Castle this gorgeous (The New York Times Editors' Choice) and
deeply felt memoir from Whiting Award winner Nadia Owusu tells the incredible story (Malala
Yousafzai) about the push and pull of belonging the seismic emotional toll of family secrets
and the heart it takes to pull through.In Aftershocks Nadia Owusu tells the incredible story
of her young life. How does a girl-abandoned by her mother at age two and orphaned at thirteen
when her beloved father dies-find her place in the world? This memoir is the story of Nadia
creating her own solid ground across countries and continents. I know the struggle of
rebuilding your life in an unfamiliar place. While some of you might be familiar with that and
some might not I hope you'll take as much inspiration and hope from her story as I did.
-MALALA YOUSAFZAI ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2021 SELECTED BY VULTURE TIME ESQUIRE NPR AND
VOGUE!Young Nadia Owusu followed herfather a United Nations official from Europe to Africa
and back again. Just as she and her family settled into a new home her father would tell them
it was time to say their goodbyes. The instability wrought by Nadia's nomadic childhood was
deepened by family secrets and fractures both lived and inherited. Her Armenian American
mother who abandoned Nadia when she was two would periodically reappear only to vanish
again. Her father a Ghanaian the great hero of her life died when she was thirteen. After
his passing Nadia's stepmother weighed her down with a revelation that was either a bombshell
secret or a lie rife with shaming innuendo.With these and other ruptures Nadia arrived in New
York as a young woman feeling stateless motherless and uncertain about her future yet eager
to find her own identity. What followed however were periods of depression in which she
struggled to hold herself and her siblings together.A magnificent complex assessment of
selfhood and why it matters (Elle) Aftershocks depicts the way she hauled herself from the
wreckage of her life's perpetual quaking the means by which she has finally come to understand
that the only ground firm enough to count on is the one written into existence by her own
hand.Full of narrative risk and untrammeled lyricism (The Washington Post) Aftershocks joins
the likes of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and William Styron's Darkness Visible and does
for race identity what Maggie Nelson does for gender identity in The Argonauts.
