Ama Asantewa Diaka finally released her debut collection of poems, titled ‘Woman, Eat Me Whole’ this month, following two years of rejections from publishers. The Ghanaian poet emerged victorious after landing a publishing deal with Ecco Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, one of the biggest English –language-publishing companies in the world.
Touching on themes from perceptions of beauty to the betrayals of the body, from what it means to give consent to how we grapple with demons internal and external, Woman, Eat Me Whole is an entirely fresh and powerful look at womanhood and personhood in a shifting world. Moving between Ghana and the United States, Diaka probes those countries’ ever-changing cultural expectations and norms while investigating the dislocation and fragmentation of a body—and a mind—so often restless or ill at ease.
Speaking about the book release, Diaka told OkayAfrica that she hopes readers will get permission to dream, rage and ask for more as women or give women the space to do all the three.
“I hope that they get the permission to rage, to dream and to ask for more as a woman. That book is very entrenched in womanhood – both women in the past, future, present and self. A lot of the work is written from the perspective of womanhood so I hope anyone who reads it regardless of gender will have the permission to either themselves rage, dream, ask for more or give women the space to do all these things,” Diaka said.
Renowned for her storytelling and spoken-word artistry, Ama Asantewa Diaka’s past projects include 2015’s ‘Motherfuckitude: The Naked Ones’ and 2019’s ‘The Anatomy of a Paradox.’
Diaka is also the founder of Black Girls Glow, an organization that celebrates, supports and mentors young Ghanaian women in music and poetry. In 20121, she was spotlighted in the 2019 ‘All I Need campaign’ by French cognac distiller, Hennessy.
