In formally adventurous stories rooted in Zambian literary tradition, Obligations to the Wounded explores the expectations and burdens of womanhood in Zambia and for Zambian women living abroad. The collection converses with global social problems through the depiction of games, social media feuds, letters, and folklore to illustrate how girls and women manage religious expectation, migration, loss of language, death, intimate partner violence, and racial discrimination. Although the women and girls inhabiting these pages are separated geographically and by life stage, their shared burdens, culture, and homeland inextricably link them together in struggle and triumph.

BIO

Mubanga Kalimamukwento is a Zambian attorney and writer. She is the winner of the 2022 Tusculum Review Poetry Chapbook Contest, the 2019 Dinaane Debut Fiction Award, and the 2019 Kalemba Short Story Prize. Her first novel, The Mourning Bird, was listed among the top fifteen debut books of 2019 by Brittle Paper. Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in adda, Aster(ix), Overland, the Red Rock Review, Menelique, on Netflix, and elsewhere.

When she’s not writing, Mubanga serves as fiction editor for Doek! and as mentor at the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.

REVIEWS

"Kalimamukwento writes with empathic knowing, deftly treading between resignation and hope. Her enigmatic storytelling underscores that silence is not an option, that bearing witness is obligatory." -- Shelf Awareness

"Timely and at times wrenching stories about contemporary Zambian women fighting to establish their identities." -- Kirkus

"These stories! They are opulent, clever, and ingenious." -- Debutiful

"Obligations to the Wounded is a marvel of a collection. Kalimamukwento joins the likes of Deesha Philyaw, Edwidge Danticat and others whose short stories signaled breaking boundaries of the form and creation of space for a wide range of Black women’s experiences committed to making noises louder, sights sharper, and feelings linger with us." -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"The stories in Obligations to the Wounded have a universal appeal. Kalimamukwento’s characters face daunting odds while trying to do the right thing, in a way that feels so familiar, so compelling. Everyone can use a little help, human or divine. We feel that obligation, reading these stories." -- The Hopkins Review

"Kalimamukwento's syntax is as selective as a poet’s, allowing the reader to sit in the spaces so often filled with unnecessary words. Obligations to the Wounded is a sensitive work of compelling juxtapositions: neat and raw, soft and tough, victimized and empowered." -- Booklist

[H]  University of Pittsburgh Press  /  October 08, 2024

1.0" H x 7.4" L x 5.5" W (0.7 lbs) 200 pages