Born in a Second Language
by Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie
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Pub Date Jul 06 2021 | Archive Date Aug 12 2021
Button Poetry | Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Titles
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Description
Born in a Second Language investigates how translation shapes and alters both language and identity as speakers travel through space and time.
In this book, languages are a means of conjuring an existence, of full expression and of defining who one becomes. Home exists on a spectrum: Botswana, Zambia, Ghana, one’s body, music, mother, mother tongue etc.
Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie’s book is an exploration of African and female identity, navigating what it means to be in-between identities, languages and homes and how those in-between spaces brush up against each other, and are in themselves, a home too.
A Note From the Publisher
eBook
Advance Praise
“Born in a Second Language by Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie is a book of beautiful poems, yes, but it is also a journey in time, in space, in a body. “I / look beyond God / for a woman / like my mother” says this poet, and I am hooked right away. It is a book that speaks in a full voice, a book that is unafraid of inventiveness, unafraid of play, unafraid also of telling it like it is–full truth. And what does this truth do? It asks tough questions: of itself, of us, of this very language: 'How can I trust God In the language / in which He first forsook me' asks this voice. 'How can I when / English makes a sentence sink, / iron gags and fastens mouths?” This is a powerful, necessary debut.”
– Ilya Kaminsky, author of Dancing in Odessa and Deaf Republic
“'As if somehow my open / mouth and this day’s English could unscramble Africa / and rejoin what was cut,' Afiriyie-Hwedie reminds us of one of the many labors of writing in English: the paradoxical hope that the language that makes you then breaks you over and over will yield itself long enough to build you. Holding trust and distrust in a singular pen stroke, she gives us words that welcome us home despite the persistent threat of refusal. She builds. And is building….”
– Marwa Helal, author of Invasive Species
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781943735921 |
| PRICE | $16.00 (USD) |
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