Aftershocks: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Identity

by Nadia Owusu

I have lived in disaster and disaster has lived in me. Our shared languages are thunder and reverberation.

When Nadia Owusu was two years old her mother abandoned her and her baby sister and fled from Tanzania back to the US. When she was thirteen her beloved Ghanaian father died of cancer. She and her sister were left alone, with a stepmother they didn't like, adrift.

Nadia Owusu is a woman of many languages, homelands and identities. She grew up in Rome, Dar-es-Salaam, Addis Ababa, Kumasi, Kampala and London. And for every new place there was a new language, a new identity and a new home. At times she has felt stateless, motherless and identity-less. At others, she has had multiple identities at war within her. It's no wonder she started to feel fault lines in her sense of self. It's no wonder that those fault lines eventually ruptured.

Aftershocks is the account of how she hauled herself out of the wreckage. It is the intimate story behind the news of immigration and division dominating contemporary politics. Nadia Owusu's astonishingly moving and incredibly timely memoir is a nuanced portrait of globalisation from the inside in a fractured world in crisis.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Race, Biography, Africa, Biography Memoir

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 12, 2021

About the author

NADIA OWUSU is a Brooklyn-based writer and urbanist. She was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and raised in Italy, Ethiopia, England, Ghana, and Uganda. Her first book, Aftershocks: A Memoir, was selected as one of 13 new books to watch for in January 2021 by the New York Times, one of BookExpo America’s buzziest books of the year, and one of Oprah.com’s 55 most anticipated books of 2021, among other honors.

Nadia is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award. Her lyric essay chapbook, So Devilish a Fire won the Atlas Review chapbook contest. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the New York Times, the Washington Post’s the Lily, Orion, the Literary Review, The Paris Review Daily, Electric Literature, Catapult, Bon Appétit, Epiphany and others. She earned her MFA in creative nonfiction at the Mountainview low-residency program where she now teaches.

Reviews

[Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤ · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The earthquake came and destroyed their homes, their city. On the same day, my mother came, and her coming toppled me. My mother became the earthquake. I was only seven."

What a beautifully written and profoundly moving memoir. I am breathless!

Nadia Owusu was a young child when her mother left her and her younger sister with their father. Due to her father's work, they moved often, and she lived in several different countries and on three continents by the time she was eighteen. 

She begins by describing a visit her mother made to her in Rome at the age of seven.... or rather, her mother leaving after this short visit. She likens the experience, and her mother, to an earthquake. And everything that follows is the result of that earthquake, the aftershocks reverberating throughout her life.

"I asked my father what an aftershock was. He said they are tremors in the earth that follow an earthquake. They are the earth’s delayed reaction to stress."

With prose that is shattering in its intensity, Nadia describes her pain growing up and her journey as a young woman to find herself. She narrates her childhood and young adulthood while weaving in the cultures and histories of the countries and people of her ancestors - her father was Ghanaian and her mother Armenian American, the daughter of immigrants who fled the Turkish massacre of Armenian people. 

It is difficult for me to describe how this book affected me. It is rare that a memoir truly moves me.... but like an earthquake, this book did. 

Ms Owusu writes with piercing clarity and  Aftershocks is a powerful memoir. It is both poetic and profound. If you enjoy memoirs, you don't want to miss this one. 

[BookOfCinz Reading Retreat Host · Rating 5 out of 5]

Updated April 30th
I loved this book so much I made it a BookOfCinz Book Club pick and I am so happy I did! I truly enjoyed this one!


Nadia Owusu raised the memoir bar, visceral, beautifully written, and deeply moving, I did not want this book to end!

I finished reading this book and I felt like the earth shifted from under me. Nadia Owusu took us in her world and I did not want to leave. In the memoir Aftershocks which is told in a non- linear way we are taken to Rome, New York, Ghana, Tanzania, London and New York with the author piecing together her life. From being abandoned twice by her Armenian mother, to the death of her father, from battling with mental health issues, to racism, abandonment and trying to fit in. Owusu packs so much in less than 300 pages and it is done in the most beautiful way, I do not have the words to express.

Any river loses its identity when entering the sea…” . Owusu comes from a diverse background she is many things, but is not one thing and we get this from she explores her identity in the memoir. Just 28 years old and I feel like she’s lived a rich, yet exhausting life. She’s seen and been through so much, yet she walks us through it with grace and beauty.

I love the historical looks at Armenia, Ghana and Tanzania, from that I learned so much. Owusu walks us through how those moments impacted her in someone way or the members of her family.

How the author had the running use of aftershocks and earthquake through the books worked amazingly well for me.

This memoir is one that I would call required reading. Please add this to your list.

[Esil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nadia Owusu could not have had a more complicated early life. Her father was from Ghana. Her mother was Armenian American. Her mother left when she was three years old. She lived with an aunt in England until her father and stepmother took her and her sister to live in Italy. Her father died when she was 14 and she lived in different parts of Africa with her stepmother, sister and half brother until she was 18, when she moved to the US. There are no spoilers in what I have just described. This is all clear from the outset. But Owusu’s beautiful memoir is a long meditation on the repercussions of this life without stability or a clear sense of identity. She moves back and forth in time and place, always coming back to a few days in her late 20s when her life seemed to have fallen apart. Owusu’s writing is rich and intense. Her thoughts about identity are interesting and nuanced. At times, it was a bit claustrophobic to be so immersed in Owusu’s head. But overall, Aftershocks was well worth reading for Owusu’s life experience and broader insights. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

[Bookworm · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was not at all familiar with the author but the title and premise intrigued me. Owusu grew up all over the world and has to cope with being a young mixed woman who does not quite fit in anywhere. She was abandoned by her mother as a young child, was abused by her stepmother, loses her father later in life and has to navigate the world as a mixed woman.

Initially the book was incredibly compelling. Reading Owusu as a child trying to navigate meeting her mom after such a long time apart was both sad and compelling. I had to put the book down after the first chapter or so, but I was super eager to return to it and learn more about that little girl who was rejected by her biological mother.

Unfortunately, I can't say I understand the hype and positive reviews. The book is a mess, weaving from memoir to history to reflections on her relationships (familial, romantic, etc.), to what occasionally feels like the author writing in a journal instead. As much as the writing was really interesting at times, at others it was incredibly boring.

This is one of those books that I felt might have felt better if it had "sit" for awhile, and maybe written and published 5 years (or in the future) from now, or perhaps had a much stronger editor in deciding what the book was trying to be. And maybe that was the author's point, to occasionally dip in and out like a stream of consciousness instead. Unfortunately, to me it occasionally felt like this was a person trying hard to work out things in a book that really might have benefited from therapy instead.

Again, I'd definitely read more by the author, but I am ultimately disappointed that the book really wasn't quite what marketing presented it as.

Worth noting the author discusses topics like sexual abuse, racism, bullying, parental abandonment, divorce, child abuse, etc. Borrowed from the library and that was best for me.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

“An earthquake is trauma and vulnerability: the earth’s, mine, yours.”

Consider me bedazzled! My god, what a poetic memoir! This book got under my skin. It did what all great books should do: in gorgeous prose, it made me think, it made me feel, it made my soul sing. I lapped it all up like a thirsty pup. Highlights galore. I just reread some of them and I was blown away again. The author, Nadia Owusu, is so wise, so insightful, so self-reflective, I could read her words all day long. And I’m always impressed when someone can be analytical and lyrical at the same time, like she can. What I like about poetic, perfect language all mixed up with emotions, sounds, and the flow of a great story, is that it makes everything sound passionate, dramatic. And instead of thinking oh, she’s overdoing it, I thought, yes, this is brilliant. She is speaking from deep down, and there is drama in the soul. She’s letting us in; are we ever lucky.

Owusu grew up on several continents. Her dad was Ghanaian, her mother Armenian. Her mother abandoned her when she was two. Her dad died when she was 13. There’s a stepmother in the picture. She never got over being abandoned, and to over-simplify, it was a big contributor to an identity crisis that eventually drove her mad.

Owusu uses earthquakes as a metaphor for her life. She weaves all things earthquakes into her story, and it completely works. She talks seismology and aftershocks, of course. She did experience (and describe) a couple of real earthquakes, but it’s the earthquakes within her that get the most airtime. Look at these gems:

“A story is a flashlight and a weapon. I write myself into other people’s earthquakes. I borrow pieces of their pain and store them in my body. Sometimes, I call those pieces compassion. Sometimes I call them desecration.”

“My mind ate the earthquake victims’ stories. It chewed them into private truths, digested them into memories.”

Besides all the earthquake talk, there is also a blue chair that keeps reappearing. She sits in the chair and goes mad. Her madness is scary and intense, and she describes it vividly. And I didn’t see the madness coming—the blurbs don’t make a big deal of it, for some reason. I couldn’t stop thinking of how it must have felt to lose touch with reality. Such pain, such fear, such loneliness. Here is one of her comments about her madness:

“A story I could tell is that my mothers drove me mad. But when it comes to madness, there is no such thing as attribution. There is only contribution. My mothers were the sparks that lit the fire, but they cannot be blamed for how it burned.”

Though I obviously loved this book, I really got mad at the author at one point. Well, twice, but the first time was minor: toward the beginning, she went a little overboard describing the history of some countries. It wasn’t poetic; it sounded sort of textbook-y and I feared I was going to be given history lessons all day. Luckily she pulled out of that gear pretty quickly and returned to her poetic self. Forgiven.

The second crime really infuriated me, though, and kept me from giving the book 5 stars. I’m being vague on purpose, but let me just say she talks about a family member and tricks me. I felt so emotionally manipulated, like she was toying with me, and I didn’t think it was okay. Luckily, it didn’t go on for too long. For a bit today, while revisiting her wise and lilty words, I thought of upping the rating, but damn, I just can’t forgive this one. I guess I hold a grudge.

Nevertheless, I recommend this memoir wholeheartedly and hope a lot of people read it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Edelweiss for advance copies.

[Vince Caparas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I genuinely wanted to enjoy this memoir but if I’m being totally honest, I found it very difficult to get through.

It isn’t that the story isn’t interesting. The daughter of an Armenian American mother, who left the family when Owusu was just a little girl, and a Ghanaian father and Tanzanian stepmother whose jobs at the UN took their family from Italy, to Britain, to Africa, all before the age of 18, I was expecting so much more. To be clear, Nadia Owusu is clearly a gifted and talented writer who has lived an incredible life. I just don’t think that this book captures how genuinely extraordinary her life is.

Instead, what the reader is treated to the type of navel gazing and lyrical rhapsodizing that characterizes the most middling of memoirs. I almost feel that Owusu doesn’t fully trust in the power of her story and therefore felt the need to constantly explain and wax lyrical about the events of her life. I can’t emphasize enough, there is a good story here. Rather than giving us overly tortured metaphors of blue chairs and earthquakes, the book would be so much better served with a straightforward biography of her life.

Owusu presents her childhood and adolescence in such a fractured and kaleidoscopic way that it’s impossible to get a foothold on the actual timeline. Most glaringly I feel like rather than letting the power of the scenes of her childhood speak for themselves, she feels the need to frame and explain its significance through tortured metaphor. The “blue chair” in particular, a symbol of the author’s depression and alienation, is repeatedly returned to throughout the book, just to remind you that yes, in fact, the author has unresolved issues. Even the book’s main aftershock/earthquake conceit is so on the nose that it’s effectiveness as a theme wears off by the middle of the book.

There are some memorable incorporations of geographic and political histories of Armenia, Tanzania, and Ghana, and when Owusu finds her stride through simple storytelling the result is completely compelling. But unfortunately, those moments are chopped up, remixed, and set alongside arduously long lyrical contemplations that resemble the author’s journal or workbook, rather than a finished product. Especially annoying is the author’s decision to take these moments are refashion them sometimes in first person sometimes in second person and sometimes in third person, almost as if she is unwilling to own her own story or to somehow distance herself from its telling.

Anyway, I was quite disappointed by this memoir because I think it’s a lost opportunity. There is a genuinely great story in here, but I just don’t think the author was able to get out of her own way in telling it.

[Sheena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nadia Owusu grew up in different countries, struggling with identity, race, and trying to find a place for herself. Her memoir discuses the results of growing up without stability and being rejected by your own mother. Her mother abandons her and she loses her father at an early age. Her and her sister stay with their step-mother who is cruel and unable to give them the care they need. The book moves between time from when she was a little girl and as a young woman. Owusu deals with anxiety, depression, and guilt as an adult. She is made to feel lesser because of her race but also because she lost both of her parents in different ways. I liked the earthquake metaphors throughout the novel and thought it ties her story together well.

I thought the writing was lovely and had a great flow to it. Thank you to Netgalley and to Simon & Schuster for an advanced copy of this book!

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 4 out of 5]

In eloquent prose, Owusu explores the aftershocks of a life marked by personal loss and "cultural homelessness." She is the child of an Armenian mother, a Ghanian father, a citizen of two countries and has lived in many more - always feeling like an outsider. Owusu's insight into race and identity is fascinating.

[luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus) · Rating 4 out of 5]

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“To heal, I would need to look inward as well as outward. I would need to examine my memories. I would need to interrogate the stories I told myself—about myself, about my family, about the world.”

Unflinching and elegant Aftershocks is an impressive, engrossing, and deeply moving memoir by a promising author. In her memoir, Nadia Owusu explores the way in which her upbringing shaped her sense of self. Throughout the course of her non-linear narrative, which jumps from Ghana, America, England, Italy, Ethiopia, and Uganda, from her childhood to her adulthood, identity, loss, fear, madness, longing, belonging, abandonment, and Blackness are underlining motifs and, as the title suggests, Owusu uses earthquakes related terminology—foreshocks, faults, aftershocks, mainshocks—as a lens through to which she reassesses her past experiences and her shifting perception of herself.

“I ached for lasting connection, for a place where rejection was not inevitable. No matter how many times I stood on bare floors, surrounded by blank walls, telling myself I belonged everywhere and to everywhere, emptied houses never stopped feeling like ruin.”

Rather than providing a straightforward linear retelling of her life, Owusu’s narrative jumps from memory to memory, in a way that felt natural and far from confusing. She dwells on different periods of her childhood and her teen years, in particular, on her relationship to her father (who she idolized), her mother who after marrying for all intent and purposes disappeared from Owusu and her younger sister’s lives, and her rocky relationship with her father’s ‘new’ wife. Owusu is both observant and incisive when it comes to examining herself, her family, and the countries she lived in. As the daughter of a Ghanian father and an Armenian mother raised across numerous and vastly different countries she is time and again forced to question who she is, how others perceive, how she fits within a certain society. Those instances recounting her time in Rome were particularly hard to read as I was born and grew up there and could easily imagine the kind of way in which Italians would have exoticized her Blackness (my best friend growing up although white had dark skin and was often taunted and called ‘dirty’ because of it). I also found her relationship with her father, who died of cancer, to be incredibly moving. I truly respect how self-critical Owusu is when revisiting her childhood as she does not paint herself as the hero nor the villain of her own story. She has hurt and been hurt, she grieved and loved, she longed for a mother figure yet she also pushed her stepmother away. Owusu is also cognisant of her own privilege, for example, when she observes the poverty and violence present in Ethiopia. While the people she writes of are rendered in vivid detail, some of what she recounts is obscured, by pain or distance, so that each moment she writes appears in a unique light.
Because her father worked for UN Owusu grew up in many different countries. When revisiting her memories of her many 'homes' she not only writes about her personal/family history but often delves into a country's own history. For example, when remembering her time in Ghana, she dedicates many passages to exploring Ghana, its people, its rich history, and its myths. It was truly illuminating. I also found her discussions on language and code-switching to be deeply captivating. Owusu's nuanced approached to race, racism, and Blackness makes for some thought-provoking reading material.

Towards the end Owusu's earthquake metaphor does seem a bit strained, one could even say affected, but I could see why she is so obsessed by it. It allows her to understand the topography of her own mind and body, and the marks left by the trauma, grief, and abandonment she experienced growing up.

Aftersohocks is a striking memoir that moved me tears. Owusu’s prose, by turns graceful and direct, combined with her distinctive storytelling (her non-linear structure, her shifts in pacing and style, her earthquake metaphor, her ability to depict time, place, and person) make Aftersohocks into a powerful and not soon to be forgotten memoir.

[Quirkyreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, I won this as a goodreads giveaway. Thank you Simon & Schuster.

This was a memoir of a world traveller. When Nadia Owusu wrote of her childhood spent in different countries in Africa I felt like I was there. Especially when she wrote about the dry season in Ghana.

The memoir also taught me new things about Ghana’s political structure.

Possible Spoiler....

The main theme of this book is identity and where does one belong. Ms. Owusu describes her long journey as to what it meant to be her and find “home”.

When this book comes out, look for it and enjoy her writing.

[Maxwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

[3.5 stars]

I thoroughly enjoyed this debut memoir from Nadia Owusu. She focuses on themes of identity, homeland, parentage and how we grapple with the shifting, seemingly uncontrollable forces of life. Her extended metaphor of earthquakes is fascinating, if a bit heavy-handed at times. She's a very strong writer; the prose did not strike me as a debut author and she is completely open and honest about some really hard experiences and parts of her life, and I commend her greatly for that.

I think the biggest complaint I have with this book is something that I'm still processing, and that is its structure. In a way, the non-linear style really works for the story she is telling; however, it truly did feel so all over the place that I felt disconnected from what was happening at times. That being said, you can read each section or chapter more as a thematic essay where they all sort of relate to each other in the end. Because in the microcosm, the chapter/essays are really intriguing, educational, heart-wrenching at times, and overall completely fascinating.

I would definitely still recommend this to anyone who likes memoir with a unique POV. It may be something I revisit in the future and have stronger, even more positive feelings about. Let me sit with it a while, and go read it so you can decide for yourself :)

[Suzanne Leopold (Suzy Approved Book Reviews) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nadia has never had a clear answer to the seemingly simple question, “Where are you from?” She has lived in many places throughout her life due to her father’s job with the UN, ranging from Rome, to Dar-es-Salaam, to Kampala, to England, and even New York City. Beyond her varied geographic identity, Nadia has grappled her whole life with her complicated relationship to her cultural and ethnic identity. As a multiracial woman who did not have a cookie-cutter family, she struggles to understand herself as well as her relation to her absent Armenian-American mother, her Ghanaian father, and her stepmother, Anabel.

Weaving together the many time periods of her life, Nadia attempts to craft her identity and true self from the multiple strings making up her life history. While attending university in America, these many ties prove too tangled as Nadia struggles with her mental health in her small New York apartment. However, she is able to overcome the great instability of her upbringing and use writing as her grounding force.

Nadia Owusu delivers an intense and palpable memoir of her life that always circles back to the few days in her twenties when her world seemed to be completely shaken. It is about race, identity, trauma, family, and eventual movement toward a place of healing or acceptance. This book was wonderfully written with interesting metaphors tying all the pieces together.

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have just finished reading Aftershocks - A Memoir by Nadia Owusu

This was an outstanding memoir, and first book by the author. It is an honest and heartfelt book about her life that spans many countries and cultures.

She had a very special bond with her father and had a mother who abandoned her when she was only two years old.

She was brought up primary by a stepmom, and aunt and her father who worked for the UN so travelled a great deal, but he taught her much about life.

This is an author who has an amazing command of words and story telling

I would highly recommend this book and will watch for more books from her in the future!

Thank you to NetGalley, Author Nadia Owusu, and Simon & Schuster Canada for my advanced copy to read and review.

[dianne b. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just didn’t feel this one. Yes, the author had some serious misfortune (her mother took off when she was 3) but she was well-loved and cared for, adored actually, by her father. She lived a very privileged life, experiencing several countries and cultures from the protected position of a UN brat - sleeping behind high walls, surrounded by armed guards, supplied with ample servants and chauffeurs, all keeping her educated, well fed, and safe. And, despite the title, and the overused metaphor - she never lived through a significant earthquake.

I’ve lived in, or spent time in, all the places she describes (and through at least two major earthquakes - San Fernando 1971 and San Francisco 1989). Her father’s home in Ghana - complete with loving aunties who are always there for her; Kampala, Uganda where she leads the reader to believe she lived through the war. She didn’t - Kampala is ~500 km and a century away from Acholiland where the insanity was. The latter is a dismal place sans electricity, running water, or paved roads - still ripped apart by Museveni’s forced displacement and rupture of traditional clans. I worked there, and can dependably relate that every single Acholi child I had the honor to meet would have traded places with Nadia in a heartbeat, and considered themselves incredibly fortunate to have done so - especially the girls who can look forward to a lifetime of abuse, endless work, and ever-present illness. Nadia was far away, in the developed city, living in a guarded compound, going out with friends to clubs, driven by servants. In one scene she describes sitting with friends in a Kampala bar: “a crested crane watched us…”. This large extravagant bird was just hanging out, safely watching the rich kids drink. In Acholiland there were NO birds. I know because I’m a twitcher, and had packed my Birds of East Africa book and binoculars only to see NOTHING with feathers for months on end. “Why?” I asked. “Because all the birds are killed for food.”

Nadia spent some time in Dar es Salaam, the home of her step-mother, and lived in Rome and London with loving family members. She received an excellent education. I’m just not there with oh-poor-moi.

In several sections of the book she describes the horrors of racism, police violence and societal neglect that people of color suffer - but none of it is HER trauma. I’d like to imagine we all feel empathetic pain when we learn of the abuse of others - but, sh*t - as a person who has lived a privileged life, it’s important not to claim personal victimhood from it. Yes, I’m talking about both the author and me. If we can’t define reality, we have diminished our ability to place ourselves so as to help effectively as allies. imho.

Another Uganda moment: she describes a starving beggar who collapsed. She watched from her chauffeur driven, air conditioned auto:
“The boy’s bird body haunts me. He hovers over me in judgment when I feel sorry for myself, but he cannot stop me from feeling sorry for myself.”

I’ll say.

“I have lived in disaster and disaster has lived in me.” She describes living in NYC during the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks (as did 12 million other New Yorkers). But, see, Nadia didn’t lose anyone or anything. Except the view of the twin towers. She was, in fact, one of the lucky ones.

“A wound is a weakness I can’t help but pick at. Some wounds never heal.”
A tad melodramatic? Who has a life without wounds? Who told Nadia she would?

Ugh.

[Oyinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book 159 of 2021

Absolute flamesss omgggg

It's been a hot minute since I read a book that made me cry but this one opened the floodgates. Nadia Owusu was so raw and open and honest in writing this review. She showed us the depths to which people, including herself, could sink to be horrible.

This book was part memoir and part exposition on history and politics of some African countries where she's lived, like Uganda and Ghana. Fans of Born a Crime by Trevor Noah would love this. Instead of the humor Trevor told his story with tho, Nadia's story reverberates with so much trauma and pain.

Motherhood is a huge theme in this book - from dealing with her mother's abandonment to her shaky and toxic relationship with her stepmother and then Nadia's own feelings about having her own child. There's also the theme of fatherhood, as Nadia's relationship with her father - the parent that stayed - makes up a large part of her life, even though he died when she was very young.

Nadia has come across and has ties to people who are very horrible over the course of her life. She has also been horrible to others, and I love that she did not paint herself as some victim. I constantly find myself thinking about Agatha, and I hope she's okay wherever she is because facing that type of racist bullying at such a young age must be tough.

Nadia's mother is the character I might just hate most and yes, I know hate is such a strong word. She was so horrible to Nadia and if I was Nadia, I would definitely hold a lot of resentment towards her stepsisters because, for me it would be like "why did she abandon me but was able to stay and raise you guys? What do you have that I don't?".

The writing. My God, the writing. So lush and layered and powerful and beautiful. The audiobook narration by Nadia herself was everything. I listened to this book in one go because I just couldn't tear myself away from it. This has definitely shot up the list of my favorite memoirs.

This book also has strong political themes, as Nadia takes us through lots of African politics pre and post independence, and British colonial rule. Other political and social elements in this book include racism, colorism, and police brutality.

This was oh so good and I really want everyone to read it.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful writing illuminates this part memoir, part cultural travelogue. This is a moving story of Owusu’s journey from surviving a fragmented childhood to becoming a self-confident young woman. Owusu’s father worked for a United Nations Agency, so their family moved often. The author lived in Tanzania, England, Italy, Ethiopia, and Uganda before moving to New York when she was just 18. [She includes fascinating descriptions of her life in each of these places.] Her Armenian-American mother abandoned the family when Owusu was just 2 years old, and her Ghanaian father died of cancer when she was 13 years old, leaving her stepmother to raise the author and her sister.

Owusu compares losing her beloved father as her personal earthquake, and subsequent unsettling events as aftershocks. It is a powerful metaphor! She had to struggle to determine who she was, and where she belonged. It wasn’t an easy journey—she had bouts of heavy drinking, fought angrily with her stepmother, and had one memorable anxiety-driven breakdown where she stayed in a blue chair for days. Highly recommend.

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nadia Owusu searched for her identity and freedom and her desire to belong and for hope, while struggling with abandonment, loss, depression, and madness. She compares her inner and outer lives to experiencing an earthquake with its cracks, tremors, and aftershocks. She bares her soul and her body. This is her history, her story.

She notes, “I write toward truth, but my memory is prone to bouts of imagination. Others remember events differently. I can only tell my version. This does not mean I do not also believe theirs.” “We color in the outlines of our memories with our beliefs.” “We become the stories we are told.”

Her mother was an American of Armenian descent whose grandparents escaped genocide. “Perhaps dreams can be passed from mother to child through blood, or through whispering to womb, or through the sheer power of faith that can cross oceans and mountains and estrangements, because my mother’s dreams have always been my dreams: to create beauty from ink and thin air.”

Her proud father was an academic from Ghana, who worked for an United Nations agency. Born in Tanzania, she lived in England, Italy, Ethiopia, and Uganda before moving to the States after graduating from high school. “Not only did being biracial mean that I looked out of place, but I also didn’t always know how to behave within of the norms of my chosen nationality: Ghanaian. My English was too posh-sounding, courtesy of my time in England. It earned me the nickname Lady. I wasn’t proficient when eating fufu with my hands. I didn’t sop up nearly enough soup with the sticky dough, so I had to finish up with a spoon. When I tried to run around outside barefoot like my second cousins, my too-soft soles were scorched by the sunburnt earth. I hopped from foot to foot for hours until, defeated, I put my sandals back on.”

Her “particular shade of black - ... biracial – was valued differently in each of” the places she lived ranging from indifference, privilege, curiosity, rage, and social hierarchy. She “was obsessed with reading historical texts and literature about people like [her]: black people, in-between people, people who complicated the rules.”

Her world was rocked by the abandonment of her mother and the death of her father. She only had one photograph of her family (father, mother, her, and younger sister) before their separation. Her parents separated when she and Yasmeen were young. Each remarried providing siblings to Owusu and Yasmeen. The sisters were then raised by their aunt, then their father, and finally by their stepmother after their father’s death when Owusu was 13 years old. Later her stepmother disclosed information that questioned the legacy of her father that she idealized and the story of him that she created.

“Ghana, America, England, Italy, Ethiopia, Uganda – I could not lay claim to any of those places in an incontestable way. It has always been difficult for me to say the word home with any conviction. When I was a child, I felt like an outsider among my own family. Between me and them were borders – geographic, spiritual, cultural, linguistic. And no sooner had we arrived in a place than we had to prepare to leave it.”

Her childhood reminded me of mine with the frequent moves. For me, having grown up in several places due to my father’s work, I defined home as where I lived, not where I was born (as I left when I was 1 ½ years old) and not where my parents were from (as I never lived there). Maybe the difference is my family remained intact providing both security and a sense of home.

It was natural for language and accents to change as you grew and moved depending on your environment and your audience. She described code-switching which she is adept at as “dancing between vocal styles and rhythms. The dance is part celebration – of the richness, intricacies, and blurry borders of our cultures.” She wrote that in Ghana where there are more than 250 languages and dialects, many people speak several to communicate, to survive, to conform, and “to access schools, jobs, and services.”

This a woman’s exploration and voyage of self-discovery and her transformation in finding her place in the world. A remarkable and well written autobiography. 4.5 stars.

[da AL · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unflinching and honest, Nadia Owusu lays bare her life, good and bad -- and offers us an example of how our acceptance of ourselves can allow us to blossom. The author performs an excellent audiobook reading.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here, time is not linear. How thrilling it is, when memoirs toy with time. Here, storytelling is infused with the historical. Here, you get glimpses of the Piazza Navona in Italy, the Ghanaian stool house, and also stories of the Maasai people of Tanzania. Here, a family’s history is traced to show cultural legacies and how generations inherit both the beauty and trauma of these legacies.

I was the air and the water. I was made of living fragments. I was past, present, and future at once. I felt more than ever before, and perhaps ever since, deliciously free.

This is the true story of a “black, biracial, Indo-European, central-Asian” woman abandoned by her Armenian mother, raised by her Ghanaian father (who battles cancer), and a stepmother whom, it seems, she never fully appreciates until much later. Due to her father’s work for the UN, their family lives in Italy, England, Italy, Ghana, Ethiopia Uganda, and the United States. Born in Tanzania, at eighteen she moves to New York City where she lives for most of her adult life. If this brief description seems dizzying to you, imagine the story itself. Hers is a story rooted in history with layers of dysfunction, trauma, grief, and mental health challenges.

History is many stories. Those stories are written, spoken, and sung. They are carried in our bodies. They billow all around us like copper-colored dust that sometimes obscures everything. In those stories we grasp at meaning. We search for ourselves, for our place, for direction.

The more one reads the more one understands why the storytelling needed to be engraved with historical elements. As a child with many homes, Owusu was obsessed with reading historical books to learn more about her intertwined heritage. More importantly, her expat family directly experienced some pivotal historical changes, like the onset of the civil war that tore Ethiopia into two countries: Ethiopia and Eritrea. Her father was born and raised in the former Gold Coast. Her mother’s history of trauma was rooted in the Armenian Genocide. Without the historical elements, this memoir would not be as invaluable as it is.

The memoir enlarges and deepens when she writes charged emotions with metaphoric and sensory and symbolic language—like the blue chair, for example. Reading this, I was reminded to “look inward” to “examine memories” and the stories we tell ourselves about family dysfunction and displacement. Reminded of the unsolved questions we carry, the “upended, dislocated body and mind.”

[Dana DesJardins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. This was an absolutely riveting journey across continents and back and forth through time. Owusu has lived in Rome, Addis Ababa, Kampala, Dar es Salaam, Kumasi, London, and New York. With astonishing self awareness, Owusu describes both her privilege and its cost -- on herself, her family, and the world at large. “Let me show you my home,” she writes. “It is a border. It is the outer edge of both sides. They drew the lines right through me.”
This is really two books, a fascinating reflection of an international childhood and the brutal “aftershocks” of the cumulative emotional and geographic upheavals that result. Her narrative intersperses memories of youth with those of a harrowing psychic break, darkly foreshadowing cause and effect. She demurs, “I can only talk about the wars in Ethiopia and Uganda from a remove, from a protected place.” Yet she is not protected enough to prevent the world from marking her. At one point, a violent local militia invades her house looking for children to kidnap as soldiers, and a boy she’s played with unthinkingly hides in plain sight on their couch; her family’s wealth and status shield him from being revealed as a potential recruit. But danger does not lurk only in Uganda, Ghana, and Ethiopia. Threats at a playground in Rome and even her boarding school also imperil her physical and emotional well-being.
The combination of a heart-breakingly fractured family and frequent moves between cultures and languages constitute the book’s earthquakes, in response to which Owusu develops what she calls her “seismometer,” which emotionally calibrates “foreshock, mainshock, and aftershock.” As a result of these quakes and faultlines, she explains, “The story is reshuffled. In the sequence, we only know what goes where in retrospect.”
While I understand the reason for the narrative fragmenting, I found this toggling between locations and time periods disorienting and had to reread chapter titles to remember where and when the action was set. This jumbled organization, combined with a tendency to provide exhaustive background, were my only reservations about this protean memoir. Owusu has lived so many places, speaking in different languages and accents, that some context is obviously necessary. Owusu explains the Black Lives Matter movement, colorism in the African American community, post-colonial theory, anti-LGBTQ laws in Uganda, the Armenian genocide, and Bush’s PEPFAR legislation, among other ideas. Obviously she has been so misunderstood in so many ways that perhaps she errs in providing too much background rather than presuming on her readers’ knowledge.
Having lived through two literal tremors and countless figurative quakes, Owusu writes, “An earthquake is trauma and vulnerability: the earth’s, mine, yours. An earthquake is the ground breaking and the heart breaking.” Yet she bravely owns her history and writes, “A story is a flashlight and a weapon.” Reading this memoir is an insightful and inspiriting tour through the seismic moments of the last several decades.

[Mina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read. Nadia's story had the potential to be gripping and powerful but I just couldn't relate to. Must be a me kind of problem. I shall definitely come back to this.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man, Nadia Owusu has lived a lot of life and has many stories to tell, about her upbringing, living all over the world, her mother's abandonment, father's death, finding an identity, and her experience with mental illness. Set against the backdrop of certain global histories and systemic racial injustices and within the metaphor of earthquakes (hence the title and subcategories named Faults, Foreshocks, Topography, Mainshocks, etc.), this is an impressive debut that feels messy for a reason and highlights what it's like to not just be different but to be an undefined different by society's standards.

[akacya ❦ · Rating 5 out of 5]

a beautifully-written memoir/autobiography exploring themes such as racism, colorism, grief, mental illness, and more. reading owusu’s journey to find herself really stuck with me. i especially loved the organization of the chapters and sections as well as the writing style.

[Wavelength · Rating 2 out of 5]

The narrative structure (or lack of) prevented me from emotionally connecting to the story and the author. The earthquake metaphor felt imposed as if an editor suggested it to provide some cohesion to the otherwise disjointed story.

I did like this passage, "Everything on this earth is connected!" my father exclaimed. "A better religion to me, is the practice of noticing that connection, of deepening our understanding of it." In Christianity, there was no need for microscopes or space shuttles or radiocarbon dating. Questions were frowned upon. Everything was already decided. "and that is absolutely maddening,"my father said. "If that's the case, why live?"

[Sanjida · Rating 2 out of 5]

This reads like a diary, a young woman trying to find herself and figure out how she feels about her family and her life. I found the earthquake metaphors annoying and forced, like an experiment that went awry. As a reader, I felt disconnected, a spy looking in on thoughts that weren't meant for an audience. An editor may have helped.

[Nursebookie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir that will move you, beautifully written and heart breaking but will leave an impactful message into the life of a woman who is a citizen of the world.

[Najah Webb · Rating 4 out of 5]

The description is what draws you in and the journey is what sustains you when reading Aftershocks. I enjoyed this book and recommend it to the reader who likes human, harrowing, yet ever so surrealist literature. The memoir follows the life of Nadia Owusu in the aftershocks following her mother's sudden abandonment. Its strength is its unflinching criticism of the challenges of being woman, multicultural, and smart. It is a crisp narrative you won't forget.

[RoXXie | The Art of Reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating and review will follow!

[Elena L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

AFTERSHOCKS is a deeply intimate memoir of Nadia Owusu, a biracial woman born in Tanzania who had an unsettled childhood; this novel is about the search for belonging and identity.

Navigating multiple countries due to her father's job, Nadia constantly wrestled with rootlessness. She deals with abandonment, racism, grief and lack of sense of belonging - experiences that made her who she was and resulted in her latter sentiments of resentment and insecurity.
Even amongst the despair of poverty and civil war, the author acknowledges her privilege regarding being an American citizen and having better financial condition. Each event is like an earthquake, with different scale of impact in her life and composing a remarkable emotional memory.
Her voice, highlighted by an exquisite prose, has such a rawness that made my heart heavy and nurtured my empathy. Through non-linear narrative, the nuanced exploration of family, identity, mental health and (white) privilege made me reflect for a while.

However, not everything is around trauma - learning about Ghanaian/Armenian/Tanzanian culture and history was eye-opening and gave me an immersive experience. Ultimately, we follow her process of healing.

In this memoir...
I picture intolerable brokenness and vulnerability
I picture different meanings of being Black in distinct places
I picture that colorism happens everywhere
I picture that despite countless disasters and devastating moments, her soul fights for survival

[ I received a complimentary copy from the publisher - Simon & Schuster - in exchange for an honest review ]

[Elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu immerses readers into a cultural and historical journey as we follow the author’s coming-of-age story and what a journey it is! Along the way we learn of the Armenian genocide in the early twentieth century, the Ashanti people and their pre- and post-colonial lives on the gold coast, the Ethiopian Civil War, and of the establishment of Dar es Salaam, “Place of Peace”. We follow Nadia, who speaks several languages and has inhabited several homelands as she tries to develop a sense of identity and find a place of belonging. We see how Nadia’s life is shaped by the shared experiences of her ancestors and how she ultimately draws from those experiences to navigate relationships with the people around her and their cultures.

This memoir is beautifully written and had me captivated from the get-go. I enjoyed following the author’s story equally as much as I enjoyed her retelling of history and her engagement of culture throughout the book. Nadia isn’t afraid of being honest and speaking her truths, even the unpleasant ones, and that is refreshing. Unfortunately earthquake analogy didn’t speak to me personally, but I was only disappointed because it was the titular theme of the book. Nevertheless, this book was stimulating and engaging and overall, for me, a delightful read.

Nadia ends her debut book pouring libations in recognition of her history and childhood, and the people in them who have informed and shaped her present and future. It is a most fitting end to an incredible journey and a beautifully-written story.