Aftershocks

By: Nadia Owusu

Narrated by: Nadia Owusu

Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

In the tradition of The Glass Castle, this “gorgeous” (The New York Times, Editors’ Choice) and deeply felt memoir from Whiting Award winner Nadia Owusu tells the “incredible story” (Malala Yousafzai) about the push and pull of belonging, the seismic emotional toll of family secrets, and the heart it takes to pull through.

“In Aftershocks, Nadia Owusu tells the incredible story of her young life. How does a girl - abandoned by her mother at age two and orphaned at thirteen when her beloved father dies - find her place in the world? This memoir is the story of Nadia creating her own solid ground across countries and continents. I know the struggle of rebuilding your life in an unfamiliar place. While some of you might be familiar with that and some might not, I hope you’ll take as much inspiration and hope from her story as I did.” (Malala Yousafzai)

​One of the Best Books of 2021 Selected by Vulture, Time, Esquire, NPR, and Vogue!

Young Nadia Owusu followed her father, a United Nations official, from Europe to Africa and back again. Just as she and her family settled into a new home, her father would tell them it was time to say their good-byes. The instability wrought by Nadia’s nomadic childhood was deepened by family secrets and fractures, both lived and inherited. Her Armenian American mother, who abandoned Nadia when she was two, would periodically reappear, only to vanish again. Her father, a Ghanaian, the great hero of her life, died when she was 13. After his passing, Nadia’s stepmother weighed her down with a revelation that was either a bombshell secret or a lie, rife with shaming innuendo.

With these and other ruptures, Nadia arrived in New York as a young woman feeling stateless, motherless, and uncertain about her future, yet eager to find her own identity. What followed, however, were periods of depression in which she struggled to hold herself and her siblings together.

“A magnificent, complex assessment of selfhood and why it matters” (Elle), Aftershocks depicts the way she hauled herself from the wreckage of her life’s perpetual quaking, the means by which she has finally come to understand that the only ground firm enough to count on is the one written into existence by her own hand.

“Full of narrative risk and untrammeled lyricism” (The Washington Post), Aftershocks joins the likes of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and William Styron’s Darkness Visible, and does for race identity what Maggie Nelson does for gender identity in The Argonauts.

©2020 Nadia Owusu. All rights reserved. (P)2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Aftershocks

Very moving and mellifluous. Painfully honest and the author is empathic and you get to watch her awareness shift over the course of the book

Kept me interested

This wasn't your usual memoir. I really enjoyed it and also found it educational to some degree in reference to her father's culture

Tender, healing, and triumphant

Nadia's recounting of her life is poetically done, thematically structured, and painted a picture of my own pain. it was healing for me to read about her life, because my life was also described. The feelings of not knowing your home, not knowing the people you came from, not knowing who your mother is, all very similar pain experienced. Thank you Nadia for sharing this with the world.

Beautiful memoir

This was a beautiful written poetic journey of a complex life. I look forward to her next work

Sometimes less is more

It feels like a truly compelling life story bogged down by delivery and unnecessary information added. It almost felt like she didn’t believe her story was good enough, so she just kept adding anything she could think of.

If you can’t find what you want…. Write it!

I’m always talking to my friends. 1st generation this, 1st generation that… This book slapped the shit out of that and was extremely complex. Nadia, thank you for writing this book. It’s amazing! Can’t wait for the next one. Much love!

Intellectually Stimulating & Emotionally Moving

Nadia is clearly not only a brilliant writer, but also, an intellectual of the highest calibre. I give this book my highest recommendation if you are looking for a storyteller that bares her soul and reaches into the soul of those who read her words.

Struggled with author’s writing style

The life the author has led is fascinating. She does a nice job weaving the many parts of her journey & the earthquake theme itself is brilliant. I struggled however with her writing style. It may have been less bothersome had I read it (rather than doing audible). Overall a good book but not usually the type of content & literary techniques i usually like. It was interesting enough for me to complete it.

The Audiobook is the Better Edition of the Memoir.

This memoir presents an interesting insight into an individual’s childhood as a child of a diplomat. However, the “intriguing” aspects of the memoir are presented in the second half of the book. The audiobook makes it easier to read through the narrative style. I recommend the audiobook version of this memoir.

Genius and generous!

Ms Owusu’s gift to us is her raw honest excavation of her personal history, through which she also manages to teach a masterful history class. She is unflinching in searching out herself and digs deep into her family and ancestral lineage to build herself the firm ground she needs to tell her story. We would all do well to take a page from her book, to find firm footing in our own histories and ourselves.