Mubanga Kalimamukwento is a Zambian author and lawyer whose work explores themes of reminiscence, womanhood, and survival. She is the writer of The Mourning Chicken, a novel set towards the backdrop of Zambia’s AIDS disaster, which gained the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award in 2018/2019. Her second guide, Obligations to the Wounded, is a thematically linked assortment of brief tales that heart the lives of Zambian girls and ladies. The gathering obtained widespread acclaim, successful the 2025 Minnesota Guide Award for Novel & Quick Story and being longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. In 2024, Mubanga Kalimamukwento turned the primary African author to win the Drue Heinz Literature Prize.
Obligations to the Wounded was acknowledged on a number of notable literary lists, together with The Boston Globe’s “75 Finest Books of 2024,” Brittle Paper’s “100 Notable African Books of 2024,” and Afrocritik’s “Notable Books From Africa in 2024.”
Mubanga Kalimamukwento has simply launched her debut hybrid assortment of poems and essays, One other Mom Does Not Come When Yours Dies, which was a finalist for the Middle for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP) Guide Prize in 2023. Alongside her literary profession, she practices regulation and continues to advocate for African voices in international literature. Mubanga Kalimamukwento is the editor-in-chief of Ubwali Literary Journal.
On this interview, Mubanga Kalimamukwento speaks on hope, grief and the writing strategy of One other Mom Does Not Come When Yours Dies.
Learn extra about One other Mom Does Not Come When Yours Dies
Howdy, Mubanga. Congratulations in your guide launch, and thanks for granting this interview. One other Mom Does Not Come When Yours Dies is a hybrid assortment of essays and poetry. Compared to your beforehand revealed works, would you say this manner was extra formidable to execute?
Mubanga: Just a little sure, primarily as a result of it felt like a brand new language. My first tales got here to me as prose, so this was a shock. In the end, although, I loved the method as a lot as I do with all my initiatives–it taught me new issues about myself, about writing, about the way in which my thoughts works. So, I accomplished it with a way of gratitude.
The title of this guide is each stark and tender. It takes me again to a funeral ceremony I attended after I was little—the bereaved girl burst out, shouting at her sympathizers, “Why are you asking me to be silent? Will you be my mom? Which certainly one of you will be my mom?” I’m curious to understand how you arrived at this title.
Mubanga: If my mom may learn my phrases, she would most likely discover herself in all places, even in locations the place others don’t recognise her due to the container she is in. Which is to say, I’m my mom’s woman, and she’s going to all the time be my muse. The title to this, as with most of my work, got here on the finish, when the guide itself was already full. It’s borrowed from a Zambian proverb, which thus far, I’ve present in Bemba and Ngoni, languages that kind a part of my ethnic background. After I learn the proverb the primary time, years in the past, whereas engaged on unmarked graves, my chapbook of poems, it struck me the identical approach that shouting did you– Which certainly one of you will be my mom? For me, the reply is nobody, and so the search, although futile, is one which pulls me. I do know she isn’t there, however I wish to maintain her reminiscence, even by means of fragments.
May you share the proverb, please?
Pokufwa Lini Anyoko Powela Muyakiné and Tapafwa noko, apesa umbi, which each translate to One other Mom Does Not Come When Yours Dies.
How have language and kind helped you navigate loss, acceptance, and reminiscence?
Mubanga: Not a lot language, I believe, as having the ability to put the sensation down someplace on paper, in order that I’m not always carrying it round in my chest.
What occurs to the sensation as soon as it’s written down?
Properly, they are saying that matter is neither created nor destroyed, that each one it does is remodel from one state into one other. If my grief can’t be destroyed, the writing transforms it right into a state I can reside with, one that doesn’t crush with its weight.
I marvel on the experience it should take to write down a guide that blends style and language—and to do it so effectively. How did you determine what to place in a poem and what to place in an essay? Did the kinds evolve organically?
Mubanga: I didn’t determine. Throughout my MFA, three very fantastic issues occurred. I met my fantastic thesis advisor, mentor, and now buddy, Sheila O’Connor. Really, I met her first by means of her guide, The Proof of V, a novel in fragments, information, and fictions. It’s a marvel, that guide, the way it does solely what the story calls for with out constraining itself to the expectations of style. One thing about studying it, I believe, unlocked one thing in me–the way in which I assumed in regards to the phrase What’s a narrative?
I used to be a child author on the time, so it was extra, Wow, that was highly effective, I wish to write one thing that makes me really feel that approach. Anyway, a 12 months or so later, I e-met Sheila in a category she was educating about studying as an editor. For the primary class, she requested us to write down down our favorite and least favorite tales and checklist what made every one fall into the class it did for us. We shared our lists afterward, and Sheila defined that the purpose of the exercise was to not set up what a great story was, however fairly to indicate us all of the methods a narrative may very well be good for various folks. She additionally identified how none of our tales ticked all of our personal packing containers for the “good story”. Which was an effective way to introduce us to enhancing different folks’s work, but additionally enhancing our personal. That very same 12 months, I additionally took a combined style class, the place our solely job was to write down and submit one poem, one essay, and one story. The story was my mom tongue, however I actually struggled with the essay. I knew what I wished to write down about, however when it got here time to do it, it was like my pen was clogged and I simply couldn’t. I found, although, that after I tried, it was leaning extra into poetry, although I knew nothing about it on the time. So I requested my professor, Richard Pelster-Wiebe, if I may write a poem as an alternative, and he graciously agreed. I haven’t stored that poem on this assortment, however I ended up receiving a Deborah Keenan Poetry Scholarship for it. In my final 12 months, I took an essay writing class the place I used to be lastly in a position to full an essay I used to be engaged on for years with the assist of Erin Sharkey. Between then and now, I observed a pure dialog rising between all these items, and that cross-genre dialog is what led to One other Mom Does Not Come When Yours Dies.
What was essentially the most tough side of crafting One other Mom Does Not Come When Yours Dies? Did you will have any huge doubts?
Mubanga: So, I do that factor, the place after I get a rejection, I delete it instantly. After some time, I suppose, my thoughts deletes it too, which suggests when my Sure comes, it looks like that’s all there ever was. In fact, that isn’t true; there have been many rejections alongside the way in which, and generally that meant loads of huge doubts. However, my associates, Theresa Sylvester, Foday Mannah, Rešoketšwe Manenzhe, and Frances Ogamba actually held me up, affirmed my work, and jogged my memory who I used to be. That’s what I bear in mind.
What would your life appear to be in case you didn’t write?
Mubanga: My preliminary coaching was as an lawyer, in order that’s most likely what I might be doing full time nonetheless.
You need to have had a great variety of conversations about this guide. What do you consider its reception thus far, and is there any query you would like extra folks would ask?
Mubanga: I really feel actually lucky for the alternatives all my phrases, together with this guide, have been bringing me. All of the questions this far have been attention-grabbing pathways for me.
What do you hope readers carry with them after studying One other Mom Does Not Come When Yours Dies?
Mubanga: Readers deliver themselves to the textual content as a lot as authors do. They are going to learn the guide based mostly on who they’re, what their journeys have been, so in that approach, we’re co-storytellers. I hope that they take from One other Mom Does Not Come When Yours Dies no matter they should take.
“I nonetheless know tips on how to make a smile of our shared options, and loss of life didn’t take all the pieces in spite of everything.” This line struck me whereas I used to be watching a clip of the guide launch. It’s such a hopeful line. Inform me about it, please.
Mubanga Kalimamukwento: That was one thing I would say to my father, if I may.
How do you are feeling about hope?
Mubanga: If you lose a lot, so younger, it may possibly make you pessimistic. And for a very long time, that’s what I used to be. However I didn’t get pleasure from shifting on this planet like that, anticipating the worst earlier than it got here. It was like punishing myself twice, and it was exhausting. Whereas I’m right here, I desire to hope as an alternative for the issues I need, which feels a lot lighter after the heaviness I needed to carry for therefore lengthy.
Buy Mubanga Kalimamukwento’s One other Mom Does Not Come When Yours Dies
Chinaza James-Ibe writes and practices images in Nigeria. Her work has appeared in Poetry Sango-Ota, Akewi, Isele Journal, Lolwe, The Shallow Tales Evaluate, Agbowo, Brittle Paper, and elsewhere.
