Nadia Owusu on Writing and the Work of Staying Hopeful

“I was grateful for the beauty and for the reminders that there are seasons; that things change gradually and also suddenly.”

It’s hard to talk about Nadia Owusu and her writing without going to a very tender place in our hearts—so imagine, if you will, a vast, quiet space you feel most yourself, alone though surrounded by strangers. You’re in the Sincere Place, where words go to be loved without irony and the WiFi is bountiful and requires no password. Get comfortable—we’re going to talk about race, writing, and the work it takes to stay hopeful.

Nadia Owusu is a Brooklyn-based writer and urbanist. Her first book, Aftershocks, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2021. She is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award, and her lyric essay chapbook, So Devilish a Fire, won the Atlas Review chapbook series. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, Washington Post’s The Lily, the Literary Review, Electric Literature, and others. Her column on Catapult Magazine, Exit Interviews, explores the experiences women of color face in the workforce and has been described by editors as “SO good. Do we have ice? I need to make iced coffee and process this.” Owusu grew up in Rome, Addis Ababa, Kampala, Dar es Salaam, Kumasi, and London. She is an Associate Director at Living Cities, an economic racial justice organization, and lives in Brooklyn.

*

Mallory Soto: I miss asking this simple question and it feels more important than ever right now: How are you—today, in general, at the start of 2021, a few weeks after publishing your book?

Nadia Owusu: Thank you for asking! These days, I so often find myself feeling all the human emotions at once. It has been a difficult year. So many reasons to be afraid. So much to grieve. But I also find myself filled with gratitude. There is so much love in my life. I’ve taken more time to slow down and feel that love. I am working actively to be hopeful for the future by participating in mutual aid networks, organizing with my community for the change we want to see, and creating art that engages my curiosity. And I am so grateful for the reception Aftershocks has received. I have dreamt of being an author for as long as I can remember. It feels good to hear from readers about how they are connecting with the book. It feels good to be able to hold it in my hands.

MS: There are some really beautiful moments between you and your siblings throughout AFTERSHOCKS—they’re such vivid characters, yet so clearly written with respect to their privacy and as the storytellers of their own lives. How do you keep that balance, when memoir and stories of the self feel so unavoidably about the people we love?

NO: Thank you so much. My relationships with my siblings are so important to me. When writing about them, and about all the people in my life really, I held two principles in my heart. One was that I would always write toward deeper love and connection with them. The other was that I would acknowledge the ways in which this was my story; my version of experiences we shared. I would not speak for them. I include an author’s note in the book stating, among other things, that writing my version of our stories does not mean that I don’t believe theirs.

MS: Is there anything that had to be cut or didn’t make it into this book that you struggled to let go of?

NO: I wrote a section in which I imagined my mother’s life before me. It was fiction built on bits and pieces of stories I had been told. It was an important section to me because it helped me to see my mother as a person, separate from being my mother. I was attached to it. But my editors convinced me that it was work I needed to do for myself, but not necessarily a chapter that needed to be in this book. Ultimately, I agreed with them, but it was difficult to let it go.

MS: “‘She was just too angry. Bad for the culture. Unproductive,’ they will say as they close your personnel file and post a job description to replace you, making sure to note that diverse candidates are welcome to apply.” That line knocks the wind out of me every time I look through my favorite quotes. You talk about how racism manifests in the workplace extensively in your Exit Interviews column, but can you dwell a little here on anger, or even the perception of anger, and how that emotion is distorted and often punished by white institutions when seen in their ‘diverse’ staff?

NO: I think often of this Audre Lorde quote: “When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.” For much of my career, I sat silent and seething through micro-aggressions, racist and sexist treatment, and humiliations. When I did start speaking up, I had the angry Black woman stereotype used against me. I can recall one meeting in which I spoke passionately about an issue that was very important to me, having to do with racial equity in the workplace. A female colleague said something to the effect of, remind me not to get on your bad side. She didn’t engage at all with the substance of what I was saying. She tried to shame me for my passion. It worked for a moment. I felt like I had done something wrong—spoken too loud, taken up too much space. Then, I reminded myself that I am guided by my values. My passion grows out of those values. I will no longer allow myself to be silenced or shamed by people who, whether they realize it or not, are working to uphold white supremacist culture in the workplace.

MS: People often talk about their ‘love language,’ or the ways they’re most comfortable expressing affection. In AFTERSHOCKS, love is so often in language itself—the tenderness and intimacy of speaking to someone in a way that is most comfortable for them. Are there ways you see that in everyday life that bring you joy?

NO: Almost everyone in my family is multilingual and multi-voiced. I love that we move easily between so many rhythms and dialects. My aunties who normally speak English in accents that are a mix of British and Ghanaian affectionately tease my sister and me—the Americanos, they call us—in spot-on American accents. My cousin understands Twi perfectly but doesn’t often speak it, except when she is helping her mother to figure something out—how to use her new phone or how to record her favorite television show to watch later. My sister and I have words we made up in childhood to describe emotions or attitudes that we didn’t think were captured precisely enough in the languages we had. Whenever she uses one of those words, I’m transported back to who we were then—two bespectacled little girls who constructed whole worlds together. We still are those girls in some ways.

MS: Imagine the best moments of writing—the moments that keep you coming back to your notebook or computer, that just feel right in the way that makes a person say, “I could do this. This could be my job.” What do those moments feel like for you?

NO: The joy of getting lost in a question on the page is like no other. It’s not always about answering the question. In fact, many of the most satisfying questions, to me, are the ones that will become lifelong obsessions. But maybe I’ll find a new angle from which to look at the question that makes it even more fascinating. Or, I’ll learn something new about myself or about the world that delights or challenges me in profound ways. I’ll spend hours or days or months feeling stuck, or like something is just out of reach . . . and I’ll be exhausted by that. But then, suddenly, an opening. Sunlight streaming in.

MS: In AFTERSHOCKS, we see the blue chair often as a place of personal reckoning—of self-reflection, personal discovery, and pain. Are there places that evoke a certain kind of thinking for you now—a neighborhood, a writing desk, a restaurant?

NO: Since the pandemic started, I’ve been taking long daily walks around my neighborhood of Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. I’ve lived here for years, but I feel like I know the neighborhood more intimately now that I’m not always rushing elsewhere. I pay closer attention. I felt such exuberance when the trees on my block bloomed pink last spring, during what was such a difficult time for this city. I watched as a new mural came together on a wall beside a bodega. I was grateful for the beauty and for the reminders that there are seasons; that things change gradually and also suddenly. Sometimes, as I walk, I listen to audiobooks or music. Sometimes I just listen to my own thoughts, or I stop to watch children playing in the park. I stop to talk to neighbors, masked and from a distance. My walks make me feel connected to the world beyond the screens where I do most of my connecting these days. Sometimes my husband joins me on my walks and it’s good to be out in the world together again.