Born in a Second Language: 9 (Button Poetry Contest Winner)

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.

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.