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A review by ridgewaygirl
Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu
4.0
In countless ways and for countless reasons, I loved growing up in many countries, among many cultures. It made it impossible for me to believe in the concept of supremacy. It deepened my ability to hold multiple truths at once, to practice and nurture empathy. But it has also meant that I have no resting place. I have perpetually been a them rather than an us. I have struggled with how to place myself in my family histories.
I initially picked up this memoir by the far-too-young-to-be-writing-memoirs Nadia Owusu, because she had spent her childhood living in different places. Her father worked for the UN and so the family was posted to places like Italy, Tanzania and Ethiopia. I was initially interested in her experience of living a childhood moving from place to place. And she describes that world beautifully, the experience of living in a privileged bubble even in the center of countries being torn apart by war and famine, of never feeling centered in one place. But there's a lot more to this memoir than that; her parents, one Ghanaian, one Armenian-American, divorced when she was young and her mother only visited sporadically and briefly, and when her father died when Owusu was fourteen, her mother refused to take her and her younger sister in, leaving them with their stepmother, a woman with whom Owusu had a contentious relationship.
Owusu ends up, like so many rootless people, in New York. Despite her privileged childhood, she is struggling to get by and running up against the harsh realities of the American dream and her own unresolved trauma from being constantly abandoned. There's a lot of uncomfortable honesty in this memoir and if Owusu doesn't exactly emerge in a secure space, there's the feeling that she will probably manage to find her way. I look forward to seeing what she writes next.
I initially picked up this memoir by the far-too-young-to-be-writing-memoirs Nadia Owusu, because she had spent her childhood living in different places. Her father worked for the UN and so the family was posted to places like Italy, Tanzania and Ethiopia. I was initially interested in her experience of living a childhood moving from place to place. And she describes that world beautifully, the experience of living in a privileged bubble even in the center of countries being torn apart by war and famine, of never feeling centered in one place. But there's a lot more to this memoir than that; her parents, one Ghanaian, one Armenian-American, divorced when she was young and her mother only visited sporadically and briefly, and when her father died when Owusu was fourteen, her mother refused to take her and her younger sister in, leaving them with their stepmother, a woman with whom Owusu had a contentious relationship.
Owusu ends up, like so many rootless people, in New York. Despite her privileged childhood, she is struggling to get by and running up against the harsh realities of the American dream and her own unresolved trauma from being constantly abandoned. There's a lot of uncomfortable honesty in this memoir and if Owusu doesn't exactly emerge in a secure space, there's the feeling that she will probably manage to find her way. I look forward to seeing what she writes next.