The Facts
Zambian writer Mubanga Kalimamukwento was named this year’s winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize for her forthcoming debut collection of stories, Obligations to the Wounded, the first African to scoop the award. She is also the co-founder of the recently launched Ubwali Literary Magazine, a platform intended to be an archive of Zambian stories. Currently, she is a Miles Morland Scholar, Shenandoah Editorial Fellow, and a Don Lavoie Fellow at George Mason University.
Know More
💡What are the key themes that your forthcoming anthology addresses Always a difficult question for me because I wrote the stories over such a long period. But having just finished copy edits of Obligations to the Wounded, I can see that one of my literary obsessions is Zambian girlhood and womanhood and the obligations each of those titles imposes on the holder. I am always digging for those stories wherever they call to me.
💡How relevant was it to anchor the anthology on Zambian languages, culture, and place? Nothing prepared me for how much I would re-fall in love with my languages when I left Zambia a few years ago. It wasn’t a conscious decision; it’s just that when I am writing Zambian women, I think a lot about how they would talk depending on where they are. There are things I don’t ever say in English. They are only their true selves in their mother tongue. As for place and culture, well, I was born and raised in Zambia–the places and culture I write about are the ones I observed around me.
💡As a Zambian who has also lived abroad, how do women’s experiences evolve with migration to the West? Everywhere is hard, one has to choose their hard. Mothering is easier/ was easier in Zambia. The village was there, an unspoken, sure thing, even for we, the motherless. In the U.S., it’s every woman for herself, you have to be careful about ensuring you don’t drown. Even the choice to be a mother is more precarious here, and the class differences are stark because of the high cost of child care, which didn’t take up as much of my time as they did in Zambia.
💡How do you build a sense of belonging and community while negotiating the complexities of woman’s identity? Women raised me––first my mother, then my aunts, and then my grandmothers. Obviously, as I grew, I began to see the differences you want me to talk about between men and women, and they form the subject of a lot of my work. How do I build a sense of belonging? I don’t build. I belong, no matter what. Challenges come when people expect one thing of me, and I refuse. But I am now comfortable with being misunderstood for my own sake. I am ok disrupting the peace if I get to keep my own. That’s probably the most significant, best lesson I learnt from the successes and downfalls of the women who raised me, and for that I am grateful.
💡What are you currently reading, well, other than your work? I’ve been reading all the work Ubwali will publish. My older son and I have just finished Don’t Answer When They Call Your Name by Ukamaka Olisakwe, which he loved and is enjoying unpacking. I am also completing an editorial fellowship at Shenandoah and accepted some stunning stories, some of which are unpublished.
💡What is on your playlist? I write with music playing. For years I only wrote to either Silence by Pompi or All I Want is You by Banky W & Chidinma, but that’s been changing lately. I’ve been listening to more music my Dad loved, like Tracy Chapman songs and stuff I heard a lot on the radio growing up, like the Mutende Cultural Ensemble. I’m a ‘90s girl at heart, and I went to a Janet Jackson concert last summer, so that got me back into those albums—my favorite–has always been Brandy.
💡Which African dish reminds you of home? Ubwali, of course, with chibwabwa cooked in peanut sauce. My husband always grows a garden of pumpkins so that I have the leaves all summer and to freeze for winter. When I miss my grandma, it’s rice with mabisi, but the closest thing is natural yogurt, which does the trick in a pinch.
