Ama Asantewa Diaka is a Ghanaian writer and visual artist. She is interested in exploring how women juxtapose the normal with the bizarre, how it contributes to the fluidity of their identity and how femininity thrives as a political statement.
She has participated in internationally acclaimed workshops organized by Femrite (2013) and Farafina Trust (2016) and was the first poet to be selected as a OneBeat 2016 Fellow.
Her stage name is Poetra Asantewa.
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Kenkey For Ewes And Other Very Short Stories
Like a basket full of coloured beads, like a kente strip of many colours, like a xylophone that produces a thousand vibrant sounds, this collection is made up of stories as varied as the diversity represented in Ghana, from Hohoe to Hamle.
These stories represent the budding creative spirit of the current generation of young Ghanaian writers. These new voices have become the refreshing perspective from which to consider the Ghanaian narrative in a thousand words. Or less.
This is an anthology of hope. Never have so many young people captured the stories of our time the way this army of writers have immortalised. But beyond the greatness in the stories, Kenkey for Ewes guarantees one thrilling fact: it is a great time to be a global citizen.
₵60.00 -
Someone Birthed Them Broken: Stories
In this startling collection of short fiction, Ama Asantewa Diaka creates a vibrant portrait of young Ghanaians’ today, captured in the experiences of characters whose lives bump against one other in friendship, passion, hope, and heartache. Men like Opoku Sr., not yet forty and struggling to keep his family’s cocoa business afloat after his father’s unexpected passing. Opoku strains under the burden of caring for his eight younger siblings and the child whose mother ran off. When his new girlfriend tells him she’s pregnant, he knows he has nothing left to give.
Years later, that girlfriend’s son, Opoku Jr., now faces his own troubles, including his girlfriend Boatemaa, who (correctly) suspects he is sneaking around, and Amoafoa, the woman he’s seeing on the side. And there is John, who confides to his crush Baaba about a surprising encounter with a male friend over a game of FIFA; Baaba, who falls into a whirlwind romance with her professor that ends in violence; and their friend Ayeley, who is learning to accept pleasure after being raised to believe it is sinful.
Diaka charts this constellation of interconnected lives in thirteen stories, exploring themes which run through the collection like a current: corruption and economic hardship, trauma and infidelity, shame, neglect, and the tribulations of the female body. In telling their stories, Diaka illuminates hope, freedom, and triumph that can be found in the everyday—the bonds between women, the joys of love and sex and art and dancing, the possibility of repair and redemption.
Renowned for her spoken word artistry, Ama Asantewa Diaka demonstrates her lyrical brilliance in this emotionally rich work that unveils profound truths about her country, its inhabitants, and the universality of human experience.
₵160.00