Mubanga Kalimamukwento on Hope, Grief, and the Writing Process of “Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies”
Mubanga Kalimamukwento is a Zambian writer and attorney whose work explores themes of memory, womanhood, and survival. She is the author of The Mourning Bird, a novel set against the backdrop of Zambia’s AIDS crisis, which won the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award in 2018/2019. Her second book, Obligations to the Wounded, is a thematically linked collection of short stories that center the lives of Zambian women and girls. The collection received widespread acclaim, winning the 2025 Minnesota Book Award for Novel & Short Story and being longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. In 2024, Mubanga Kalimamukwento became the first African writer to win the Drue Heinz Literature Prize.
Obligations to the Wounded was recognized on several notable literary lists, including The Boston Globe’s “75 Best Books of 2024,” Brittle Paper’s “100 Notable African Books of 2024,” and Afrocritik’s “Notable Books From Africa in 2024.”
Mubanga Kalimamukwento has just released her debut hybrid collection of poems and essays, Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies, which was a finalist for the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP) Book Prize in 2023. Alongside her literary career, she practices law and continues to advocate for African voices in global literature. Mubanga Kalimamukwento is the editor-in-chief of Ubwali Literary Magazine.
In this interview, Mubanga Kalimamukwento speaks on hope, grief and the writing process of Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies.
Read more about Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies
Hello, Mubanga. Congratulations on your book launch, and thank you for granting this interview. Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies is a hybrid collection of essays and poetry. In comparison to your previously published works, would you say this form was more daunting to execute?
Mubanga: A little yes, mainly because it felt like a new language. My first stories came to me as prose, so this was a surprise. Ultimately, though, I enjoyed the process as much as I do with all my projects–it taught me new things about myself, about writing, about the way my mind works. So, I completed it with a sense of gratitude.
The title of this book is both stark and tender. It takes me back to a funeral ceremony I attended when I was little—the bereaved woman burst out, shouting at her sympathizers, “Why are you asking me to be silent? Will you be my mother? Which one of you can be my mother?” I’m curious to know how you arrived at this title.
Mubanga: If my mother could read my words, she would probably find herself everywhere, even in places where others do not recognise her because of the container she is in. Which is to say, I am my mother’s girl, and she will always be my muse. The title to this, as with most of my work, came at the end, when the book itself was already complete. It is borrowed from a Zambian proverb, which so far, I have found in Bemba and Ngoni, languages that form part of my ethnic background. When I read the proverb the first time, years ago, while working on unmarked graves, my chapbook of poems, it struck me the same way that shouting did you– Which one of you can be my mother? For me, the answer is no one, and so the search, though futile, is one that pulls me. I know she isn’t there, but I want to sustain her memory, even through fragments.
Could you share the proverb, please?
Pokufwa Lini Anyoko Powela Muyakiné and Tapafwa noko, apesa umbi, which both translate to Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies.
How have language and form helped you navigate loss, acceptance, and memory?
Mubanga: Not so much language, I think, as being able to put the feeling down somewhere on paper, so that I am not constantly carrying it around in my chest.
What happens to the feeling once it’s written down?
Well, they say that matter is neither created nor destroyed, that all it does is transform from one state into another. If my grief cannot be destroyed, the writing transforms it into a state I can live with, one that does not crush with its weight.
I marvel at the expertise it must take to write a book that blends genre and language—and to do it so well. How did you decide what to put in a poem and what to put in an essay? Did the forms evolve organically?
Mubanga: I didn’t decide. During my MFA, three very wonderful things happened. I met my wonderful thesis advisor, mentor, and now friend, Sheila O’Connor. Actually, I met her first through her book, The Evidence of V, a novel in fragments, facts, and fictions. It is a marvel, that book, how it does only what the story demands without constraining itself to the expectations of genre. Something about reading it, I think, unlocked something in me–the way I thought about the phrase What is a story?
I was a baby writer at the time, so it was more, Wow, that was powerful, I want to write something that makes me feel that way. Anyway, a year or so later, I e-met Sheila in a class she was teaching about reading as an editor. For the first class, she asked us to write down our favourite and least favourite stories and list what made each one fall into the category it did for us. We shared our lists afterward, and Sheila explained that the point of the activity was not to establish what a good story was, but rather to show us all the ways a story could be good for different people. She also pointed out how none of our stories ticked all of our own boxes for the “perfect story”. Which was a great way to introduce us to editing other people’s work, but also editing our own. That same year, I also took a mixed genre class, where our only job was to write and submit one poem, one essay, and one story. The story was my mother tongue, but I really struggled with the essay. I knew what I wanted to write about, but when it came time to do it, it was like my pen was clogged and I just couldn’t. I discovered, though, that when I tried, it was leaning more into poetry, even though I knew nothing about it at the time. So I asked my professor, Richard Pelster-Wiebe, if I could write a poem instead, and he graciously agreed. I haven’t kept that poem in this collection, but I ended up receiving a Deborah Keenan Poetry Scholarship for it. In my last year, I took an essay writing class where I was finally able to complete an essay I was working on for years with the support of Erin Sharkey. Between then and now, I noticed a natural conversation growing between all those pieces, and that cross-genre conversation is what led to Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies.
What was the most difficult aspect of crafting Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies? Did you have any big doubts?
Mubanga: So, I do this thing, where when I get a rejection, I delete it immediately. After a while, I guess, my mind deletes it too, which means when my Yes comes, it feels like that’s all there ever was. Of course, that isn’t true; there were many rejections along the way, and sometimes that meant a lot of big doubts. But, my friends, Theresa Sylvester, Foday Mannah, Rešoketšwe Manenzhe, and Frances Ogamba really held me up, affirmed my work, and reminded me who I was. That’s what I remember.
What would your life look like if you didn’t write?
Mubanga: My initial training was as an attorney, so that’s probably what I would be doing full time still.
You must have had a good number of conversations about this book. What do you think about its reception so far, and is there any question you wish more people would ask?
Mubanga: I feel really fortunate for the opportunities all my words, including this book, have been bringing me. All the questions this far have been interesting pathways for me.
What do you hope readers carry with them after reading Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies?
Mubanga: Readers bring themselves to the text as much as authors do. They will read the book based on who they are, what their journeys have been, so in that way, we are co-storytellers. I hope that they take from Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies whatever they need to take.
“I still know how to make a smile of our shared features, and death didn’t take everything after all.” This line struck me while I was watching a clip of the book launch. It’s such a hopeful line. Tell me about it, please.
Mubanga Kalimamukwento: That was something I might say to my father, if I could.
How do you feel about hope?
Mubanga: When you lose so much, so young, it can make you pessimistic. And for a long time, that’s what I was. But I didn’t enjoy moving in the world like that, anticipating the worst before it came. It was like punishing myself twice, and it was exhausting. While I am here, I prefer to hope instead for the things I desire, which feels much lighter after the heaviness I had to carry for so long.
Purchase Mubanga Kalimamukwento’s Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies
Chinaza James-Ibe writes and practices photography in Nigeria. Her work has appeared in Poetry Sango-Ota, Akewi, Isele Magazine, Lolwe, The Shallow Tales Review, Agbowo, Brittle Paper, and elsewhere.
