Born in a Second Language

By Akosua Afiriyie-Hwedie

2019 Button Poetry Prize Winner

Born in a Second Language investigates how translation shapes and alters both language and identity as speakers travel through space and time.

In this book, languages are a means of conjuring an existence, of full expression and of defining who one becomes. Home exists on a spectrum: Botswana, Zambia, Ghana, one's body, music, mother, mother tongue etc.

Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie's book is an exploration of African and female identity, navigating what it means to be in-between identities, languages and homes and how those in-between spaces brush up against each other, and are in themselves, a home too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Button Poetry
• Release date: Jul 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638340201

Akosua Afiriyie-Hwedie

Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie is a Zambian-Ghanaian poet who was raised in Botswana. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan. She is a Hopwood and Meader Family Award winner. Akosua has received fellowships from Callaloo and the Watering Hole. Her work has appeared in Bettering American poetry, WusGood?, The Felt, and is forthcoming in Platypus Press.

Book preview

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When first asked, Where are you from? I was hardly old enough to hold my sentences

BORN IN A SECOND

LANGUAGE

BORN IN A

SECOND

LANGUAGE

poems by

Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie

© 2021 by Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie

Published by Button Poetry / Exploding Pinecone Press

Minneapolis, MN 55403 | http://www.buttonpoetry.com

All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cover design: Victoria Alvarez

Cover art: Lebohang Motaung

ISBN 978-1-943735-92-1

Ebook ISBN 978-1-63834-020-1

Contents

for those for whom this need not be translated

Brenda Fassie wakes the dead

In my version

Port of Entry

I know a place where I can spread myself out and be enough to fill a room

Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?

What my hands have learned

Birthwrite // Mantswe

I beg Botswana back

conditioned

I am deciding which language to spend the night in

Say grace

To-do list:

Setswana lesson

Long distance

If I play Brenda Fassie now,

Please select the best answer:

How to rebuild me when I fall apart

Akan Naming