Listen up: A native of Zambia, Mubanga Kalimamukwento is a lawyer who recently took the bar exam so she can practice in Minnesota (she’s awaiting her scores). She’s a Fulbright scholar. She has a master’s of fine arts degree in creative writing and just began a doctoral program in feminist studies. She’s married, with two kids. Oh, and she’s about to publish “Obligations to the Wounded,” a searing and hilarious collection of stories about women and girls who share her Zambian heritage.
“I work in bursts. I do a million things at once,” said the Mounds View, Minnesota, resident, who said she’d probably have been taking a nap if she weren’t talking to me about “Obligations,” a collection of mostly first-person stories in which characters face down complicated, often traumatic family situations.
They include: a woman, at her husband’s funeral, who finally realizes it would cost her nothing to acknowledge her child’s gender identity. A “truth teller” who has an exchange on social media platform X with an acclaimed writer who’s a phony. And another woman, summoned from America to Zambia to the bedside of her dying mother, about whom she feels ambivalent.
That’s in the opening story, “Azubah,” and if readers are surprised when the woman walks out on her abusive mother, so was the writer.
“Sometimes a story comes to me complete, but sometimes a story evolves,” said Kalimamukwento. “What I think a story will be is not what it ends up being. But the women in my stories — often the stories end with them taking a step that’s different from what’s expected of them.”
She was given three possible covers for “Obligations to the Wounded,” and chose the one with a photo of a woman walking away — an image that directly relates to the first two stories, “Azubah” and “Inswa,” both of which conclude with women stepping into uncertain futures.
Uncertainty is big in Kalimamukwento’s writing; each of the 16 stories begins with a Zambian proverb (such as “Life is wealth”), something she likes because proverbs can be interpreted so many ways.
“What a proverb means to one person may be completely different from what it means to someone else. What it meant to me when I chose it for that story might be different than today,” said Kalimamukwento. “And another person can read them and find a different meaning. Which is also true about stories, really.”
It’s certainly true that Kalimamukwento’s stories are wriggly things, difficult to pin down. Humor is abundant throughout the collection, but her subjects are often dark: child abuse, sexual assault, grief.
“There are some things I choose not to fictionalize, that I will write in essays instead,” said Kalimamukwento, citing a recent conversation about death and the movie “Bambi” with one of her sons, which did become an essay.
“It hit him really hard. He said, ‘Your mom died,’ and I said, ‘Yeah.’ [By the time Kalimamukwento was 12, both of her parents had died.] He said, ‘Are you going to die?” recalled the writer. “That was a hard conversation. I said, ‘Yeah, I am.’ And he said, ‘When?’ “
She assured her son he’d be old by the time she died, but the conversation sent Kalimamukwento back to memories of her own mother. Like her son, Kalimamukwento says she was a “why, why” kid, full of questions and mischief. But she believes her mother’s thoughtful responses helped her come to a conclusion that now influences her writing.
“I do think asking questions, being able to say things that are difficult, can be healing,” said Kalimamukwento, expressing a sentiment that reverberates throughout “Obligations.”
Mothers, some gifted and some not, appear often in the book, partly in response to the idea that moms the world over get blamed for just about everything. In “Azubah,” the narrator has essentially been abandoned by both of her parents, but it’s her mom she homes in on.
“The discourse that happens around fathers is different,” said Kalimamukwento. “I saw a TikTok video the other day where someone said, ‘I don’t know how to take care of my hair. Can anyone give me advice because my mother didn’t show me how?’ No one even pauses at that. But I think about it all the time.”
She’s also been thinking a lot about Jane, a nonspeaking girl who experiences horrific abuse in the final story of “Obligations,” “Where Is Jane?” Kalimamukwento’s also been writing more about her, too.
In fact, if you’re keeping track at home, chalk up another accomplishment for busy Kalimamukwento. Inspired by that story, she just completed a draft of a novel about Jane.
Obligations to the Wounded
By: Mubanga Kalimamukwento.
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 192 pages, $24.
