With Her Words, Poetra Asantewa Rages and Dreams

With the release of her latest anthology of poems, Woman, Eat Me Whole, Ghanaian poet Ama Asantewa Diaka (AKA Poetra Asantewa) is celebrating a hard-won victory. After two years of rejections, she was picked up by a Ecco Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, who recognized the importance of this debut work. Titled Woman, Eat Me Whole, the book also touches on themes like perceptions of beauty, the betrayals of the body, and what it means to give consent. The 2016 OneBeat fellow has earned critical acclaim for her incisive socio-political commentary through the medium of spoken word and music as heard on projects like 2015’s Motherfuckitude: The Naked Ones and 2019’s The Anatomy of a Paradox. She is also the founder of Black Girls Glow, a feminist nonprofit organization fostering collaborations among women artists and examining ways that art can build community, and Tampered Press, a Ghanaian literary and arts journal.             

SOURCE: OKAYAFRICA