Today’s post comes to you from Laura Simeon
When it comes to international literature for young people, works by contemporary writers from Africa deserve more attention. While “young adult” as a publishing category isn’t as widely established in many countries as it is in the U.S. and U.K., there’s a pool of literary talent from across the African continent producing fantastic works for teens that deserve to be in the spotlight.
Ten years after the release of her first novel, Shameless, a work for adults, award-winning author Futhi Ntshingila from South Africa made her North American debut with We Kiss Them With Rain (Catalyst Press, 2018 — starred Kirkus Review).
This slim but hard-hitting work centers on 14-year-old orphan Mvelo, who lives in Durban. She lost her mother, Zola, to AIDS, an illness that is haunts the community. The story moves around in time, presenting readers with carefully crafted vignettes told from different points of view that paint portraits of hardship and hope in a style reminiscent of oral storytelling traditions.
For Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree (HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen, 2018 — starred Kirkus Review), Nigerian novelist and journalist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, a multiple award winner, interviewed girls abducted by Boko Haram to inform her fictionalized account (an afterword by Viviana Mazza, an Italian journalist, offers additional context about the 2014 kidnapping of hundreds of girls from their school in Chibok).
This powerful story vividly contrasts the narrator’s ordinary life with Mama, Papa, and five brothers—and dreams of being the first in her family to attend university—with the horrors she endures and her indomitable will to survive.
Note: this book was included in a GLLI post on books supporting United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5: GENDER EQUALITY by Kim Tyo-Dickerson, March 7, 2021.
Born and raised in Swaziland, Malla Nunn is an acclaimed screenwriter and director; she’s also been widely recognized for her crime novels. Her YA debut, When the Ground Is Hard (Penguin Random House/Putnam, 2019 — Kirkus Review), is a historical mystery set in the 1960s at a boarding school for mixed-race kids, inspired by one the author herself attended.
This atmospheric story combines the strong appeal of whodunits with the evergreen popularity of boarding school stories, enriching the storytelling with explorations of social hierarchies based on wealth, skin color, and hair texture, subjects that remain relevant across the decades.
Combining cultural specificity with widely resonating themes, Nigerian author Rimma Onoseta made a splash with her extraordinary debut, How You Grow Wings (Algonquin Books, 2022 – starred Kirkus Review), which was a finalist for the 2022 Kirkus Prize in Young Readers’ Literature.
This is a story of two sisters and the ways they fit into (or defy) patriarchal cultural norms. Cheta is older, more outspoken, and darker skinned; Zam is quiet, compliant, and has a lighter complexion. These contrasts are amplified by the differential treatment they receive at home, at school, and among extended family, leading to a momentous climax.
Blessing Musariri, who’s from Zimbabwe, has received international recognition for her poetry, short stories, screenplays, and books for adults. All That It Ever Meant (W.W. Norton/Norton Young Readers, 2023 — starred Kirkus Review), one of her YA novels, is a jewel of a tale about a family navigating loss that’s told in a voice that’s at once lyrical, conversational, lightly humorous, and heart-wrenchingly emotion-filled. After the sudden death of Mati’s mother, her family leaves England to journey across Zimbabwe. Mati is accompanied by Meticais, a spirit only she can see who helps her work through her grief.
Laura Reiko Simeon is a Young Readers’ Editor at Kirkus Reviews, and a former librarian and diversity coordinator at a K-8 school. She has served on book list and award committees including the Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative Translated YA Book Prize, Rise: A Feminist Book Project for 0-18, and USBBY’s Outstanding International Books. Thanks to a grant from the Swedish Institute, Laura was able to do research in Stockholm on diversity in contemporary Swedish picture books. She’s a former co-chair of the U.S. National Committee of the UWCs, a secondary school program that seeks to make “education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future.”
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of GLLI.
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 