Our regular Book Digest segment spotlights new books by Mubanga Kalimamukwento, Michelle Myeko Kekana, Iryn Tushabe, and Jesudubami Jemima Aganaba.
The Fragile Mental Health of Strong Women by Michelle Myeko Kekana
Publisher: Jacana Media
Date: April 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Jacana Media
Michelle Kekana
Michelle Myeko Kekana was a 2021 JIAS writing fellow. She has been published in an anthology of essays about post-apartheid South Africa. Michelle is a former teacher but an eternal student who is passionate about creating the things she wishes existed. She is an adoring mother of 4 children, ranging from ages 10 to 25.
The Fragile Mental Health of Strong Women
Lunga keeps quiet for a few minutes after my rant. I feel terrible for shouting at him. Babies cry, I rationalise. They are impatient because they have no sense of time. Lunga is not trying to ruin my life. I cannot assign malice to an infant. I bend down to kiss an apology into his forehead, but he starts wailing, trying to thrust the pacifier out of his mouth.
Black women are labelled as strong; their tears often seen as indulgent, their suffering expected to have an imminent expiration date. In Michelle Kekana’s ambitious debut, three modern South African women find themselves brought to breaking point as they navigate the complexities of life, love and mental health. Utterly engrossing from the first page, The Fragile Mental Health of Strong Women is a bold exploration of what it means to be ‘strong’.
Everything is Fine Here by Iryn Tushabe
Publisher: House of Anansi
Date: April 22, 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: House of Anansi
Iryn Tushabe
Iryn Tushabe is a Ugandan-Canadian writer and journalist. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Briarpatch Magazine, Adda, Prairies North, the Walrus, and on CBC Saskatchewan. Her short fiction has been published in Grain Magazine, the Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Anthology, and the Journey Prize Stories. She won the City of Regina Writing Award in 2020 and 2024, was a finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2021, and won the 2023 Writers’ Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. She lives in Regina.
Everything is Fine Here
A beguiling coming of age novel set in Uganda in which a young woman grapples with the truth about her sister in a country that punishes gay people.
Eighteen-year-old Aine Kamara has been anticipating a reunion with her older sister, Mbabazi, for months. But when Mbabazi shows up with an unexpected guest, Aine must confront an old fear: her beloved sister is gay in a country with tight anti-homosexuality laws.
Over a weekend at Aine’s all girls’ boarding school, sisterly bonds strengthen, and a new friendship emerges between Aine and her sister’s partner, Achen. Later, a sudden death in the family brings Achen to Mbabazi’s and Aine’s village, resulting in tensions that put Mrs. Kamara’s Christian beliefs to the test. Aine runs away to Mbabazi’s and Achen’s home in Kampala, where she reconnects with her crush, Elia, a sophomore at Makerere University.
In acclaimed writer Iryn Tushabe’s dazzling debut novel, Aine must make hard choices, with inevitable and harrowing results.
Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies by Mubanga Kalimamukwento
Publisher: Wayfarer Books
Date: April 22, 2025
Genre: Poetry
Language: English
Where to find it: Barnes & Noble
Mubanga Kalimamukwento
Mubanga Kalimamukwento is a Zambian attorney and writer. She is the winner of the Tusculum Review Poetry Chapbook Contest, the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award, Kalemba Short Story Prize, Drue Heinz Literature Prize, and the Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction. 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.
Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies
Mubanga Kalimamukwento’s multi-lingual, hybrid collection of essays and poems, Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies, is a kaleidoscope of emotions: at once self-excavation and epitaph, exhumation, and burial song. These words are a conversation between the present and the past. Kalimamukwento deftly navigates the aftermath of devastating personal losses, particularly that of her mother. Through them, she invites readers to reflect on their own experiences of loss and the enduring impact of familial bonds.
Big Small People by Jesudubami Jemima Aganaba
Publisher: Masobe Books
Date: March 31, 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Masobe Books
Jesudubami Jemima Aganaba
Jesudubami Jemima Aganaba is a storyteller from Bayelsa State, Nigeria. She studied English and Literary studies at the Niger Delta University, Wilberforce Island. Her writings have been published by F-bom, Kalahari Review, Creative Freelance Writerz, and Michael Afenfia’s “Write Now 2018”. She cares about children, eccentric fashion, and soulful music.
Big Small People
A powerful tale told through the eyes of three children from different backgrounds and their devastating encounters with terrorism.
Ahmed never imagined that leaving home would mean losing himself. Sent to an almajiri school, hunger, beatings, and forced faith leave scars on his body and mind. But when the school delivers him into the hands of militants, his world shrinks to the trigger of a gun and the promise of paradise.
Stephanie knows how to stay quiet, how to shrink herself in a home where silence is survival. But when a terrorist attack takes her best friend, the silence swallows her whole. Her father, powerful in politics but absent in her life, offers no answers. And when Deborah, a girl from an IDP camp, is brought into their house, grief collides with guilt, forcing Stephanie to ask questions.
Deborah has lost everything, her family, her home, even the right to her own memories. Now she is in a house where she does not belong, surrounded by people who do not understand. But ghosts do not stay buried, and the past does not stay silent. As her presence forces open wounds no one wants to face, Deborah must decide if survival is enough or if she will demand for more.
Big-Small People is a haunting, unflinching exploration of what it means to be young in a world that devours its children. Brutal, urgent, and deeply human, this is a story of loss and longing, of boys made into weapons and girls silenced by grief.
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