Who is Ma Kemah?

2022 Longlist

 Born in war-torn Liberia, Ma Kemah George has had a series of bad luck in the course of her young life. Among other troubles, she was molested as a child and the only thing that got her through her childhood sane was her best friend, Vincent, who later became her fiancé. Then he died a month after their engagement, and she had to start the next chapter of her life alone as an international student in New York. Her plan was simple. Get over her dead fiancé while getting a master’s degree in the USA. But during her first thirty minutes in the land of the free, she supposedly became engaged to America’s beloved baseball star, Warren McAllister. Now Twitter is going crazy with #whoisMaKemah?

About the Author/Translator

Sianah Nalika DeShield is a Liberian novelist, blogger, mentor, and game-changer, who writes novels about African women living their African dreams. Sometimes, the women in her stories are naughty, but every time they act, they break stereotypes. An avid romance reader, she uses her books to touch upon social, political, and economic issues Africans face around the world.

Librarian’s Comments

The novel is written in simple, straight forward language which made it easy to read. It is filled with dramatic romance. It exposes the reader to the culture of the author’s place of birth, the everyday struggles of the African child especially the girl child(sexual molestation). It exposes the reader to the strong Africa beliefs which made Ma Kemah believed she was cursed forgetting that all that happened to her was not curse but normal occurrence. It further stressed the political situations of Africa countries which are riddled with deaths, trauma, lack, etc. which exposes The Africa child/ families to lots of roller coaster of pain, trauma, perseverance and the ability of an average African to come out of all the myriad of issues. National Library of Nigeria, Nigeria