Nadia Owusu: Aftershocks

In Aftershocks: A Memoir, Nadia Owusu revisits the intimate topography of her childhood and young adulthood. She was just two years old when her Armenian mother abandoned her. Her Ghanaian father’s job at the UN involved changing countries time and again, so she grew up between different continents, languages and identities. To her, home was where her father was… until he died when she was only thirteen. Like a seismologist, the first-person narrator explores the personal «earthquakes» and «aftershocks» of her past, tracing them back to historical «fault lines» where wars, genocides and colonialism have left enduring friction and trauma in their wake. Owusu draws a nuanced portrait of a world torn apart by privilege, inequality and racism.

This event is held in association with Culturescapes 2023 Sahara.