Obligations to the Wounded - (Drue Heinz Literature Prize) by Mubanga Kalimamukwento

About the Book

Winner of the 2024 Drue Heinz Literature Prize

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2024 Drue Heinz Literature Prize

Longlist, 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction Winner, Minnesota Book Awards of 2025 Winner, 2025 CLMP Firecracker Award Finalist, 2024 Foreword Indies Award Co-winner, The Boston Globe's Best 75 Books of 2024 Winner The Minnesota Star Tribune Best Book of 2024 Co-winner, Brittle Paper 100 Notable African Books of 2024 Co-winner, The Continent's Top 5 African Books of 2024

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.

Review Quotes

Obligations to the Wounded deserves immediate attention.-- "Pittsburgh Quarterly"

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"

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

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"

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"

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

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"

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

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

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

About the Author

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.