Someone Birthed Them Broken

What does it mean to inherit a world that has already fractured you? Ama Asantewa Diaka interrogates this question through 13 loosely interconnected stories set in contemporary Ghana. The characters repeatedly show up across stories while building a portrait of a generation formed by cycles they are still learning to identify. Yet these stories are not only about pain and despair: the author also highlights the bonds between women, in friendship and motherhood, the pleasures and failures of love, and the potential for healing. Her way with language makes the collection especially compelling and as a poet/spoken-word artist, Diaka brings a sharpness to her prose; the result is something that gets under your skin. She leans into the texture of Ghanaian everyday life using laughter as a way in, so that by the time the harder truths arrive, you are already too close to look away.