University of Pittsburgh Press
Obligations to the Wounded
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Obligations to the Wounded

By Mubanga Kalimamukwento
These thematically linked stories deliver an intricate study of Zambian women living both in Zambia and abroad who are weighing their options for whom to love, where to live, where to work. The author, with a poet’s restraint, has written stories that deftly negotiate the challenges and tribulations women face when they feel the pressure and duty to yield to the will of family, community, customs, country, and spiritual beliefs. Obligations to the Wounded is a graceful, touching, and generous collection.
Angie Cruz, Drue Heinz Literature Prize judge and author of How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water
Hardcover $24.00

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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.

More Praise

Obligations to the Wounded is extraordinary—a powerhouse collection of stories that give voice to a dozen Zambian girls and women. Mubanga Kalimamukwento’s prose crackles with sharp observations and searing images. Her characters sing their truths, listing the horrors of misogyny—yet she empowers rather than victimizes them via her loving lens and protective fury. A stunning book that should not be missed!

Mona Susan Power, author of A Council of Dolls

Rendered in rich, rolling, and riveting prose, Obligations to the Wounded is written with great care, pacing, and hard-won wisdom by one of Africa’s most talented writers. This collection of short stories, which uses Zambian womanhood as its contextual exploration point, offers the reader something approaching a universal understanding of the challenges women face in contemporary African and world societies. With these perspicacious stories, Kalimamukwento has compiled a collection of tales that will shock, awe, and delight readers and lovers of stories wherever they are found. Obligations to the Wounded is the work of a writer in the full flow of her storytelling prowess.

Rémy Ngamije, author of The Eternal Audience of One

In this innovative collection, Mubanga Kalimamukwento finds mesmerizing new ways to tell the stories of women navigating a world that is pitched against them. Each story is a deftly realized portrait of a woman insisting on her individual humanity while contending with the expectations of her family, community, religion, and history. Moving elegantly across decades and continents, Obligations to the Wounded showcases a rare talent and rich sensibility.

Mike Alberti, author of Some People Let You Down

200 Pages

October, 2024

isbn : 9780822948360

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about the author

Mubanga Kalimamukwento

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.

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Mubanga Kalimamukwento