Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond: On Creating Opportunities for Conversation

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is the author of the children’s picture book Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky, illustrated by Caldecott Honor Artist Daniel Minter; and the young adult novel Powder Necklace. Her short fiction for adults has been included in the anthologies Accra Noir, Africa39, New Daughters of Africa, Everyday People, and Woman’s Work. Follow her on X (Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram, and learn more at NanaBrewHammond.com.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond

Photo by Essie Brew-Hammond

In this interview, Nana discusses the process of writing about people trying to make something of themselves in her new literary fiction novel, My Parents’ Marriage, her hope for readers, and more!

Name: Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
Book title: My Parents’ Marriage
Publisher: Amistad Books
Release date: July 9, 2024
Genre/category: Literary Fiction
Previous titles: RELATIONS: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices; BLUE: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky; Powder Necklace: A Novel
Elevator pitch: My Parents’ Marriage is about Kokui Nuga, a young Ghanaian woman traumatized by her father’s flagrant philandering, and by her mother and stepmother’s jockeying for his divided heart. Kokui is desperate to escape the shadow of her parents’ marriage, and believes she has found her ticket out when she meets and marries a man headed for university in the States who seems nothing like her wealthy, domineering dad. But not long after the couple moves to the U.S., she realizes she is pushing against much more than her parents’ turbulent union: She’s battling a web of traditions, systems, and attitudes that conspire to empower the men in her life at the expense and dignity of the women, and she’s fighting to find and value herself.

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

When I first started dating my now-husband, a lot of the disappointment and pain I had experienced in past relationships or witnessed in different marriages around me as a kid started to come up. I felt acutely anxious and fearful of repeating past mistakes, and I started hearing things differently when my friends and I would discuss our dating highs and lows. So much of what we were thinking about, and so many of the choices we were making, tracked back to the unions we had grown up around or those formative first loves. I wanted to explore this in a novel and examine it through the specificity of Ghanaian marriage traditions.

In Ghana, there are three types of marriage: Customary, Mohammedan and Ordinance. Customary and Mohammedan permit men to take multiple wives while Ordinance, instituted in 1884 when Ghana was under British colonial rule, is strictly monogamous. This duality in Ghanaian marriage law mirrors the duality, or tension, in Ghanaian culture. I thought it would be interesting to explore how the union that was forcibly formed between Ghana and Britain through colonialism has impacted not only the political, but the personal.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

The book I sold to Amistad is very different from My Parents’ Marriage, but through the four-year process of revising and rewriting, it became clear to me that I needed to tighten the focus of the story from the 40 years of political turmoil a set of families experienced in Ghana after Kwame Nkrumah and many other activists wrested independence from Britain to this very personal narrative. I realized by going narrower and deeper, I would be able to explore the challenges of a people trying to make something of themselves in a post-colonial context in a more intimate way.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I learned to trust my vision and advocate for it. I had experienced so much rejection that when I heard a “yes” I thought the process of “selling” my idea was over. In fact, that was the moment when I needed to be clearest about my intention.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

A beautiful surprise was that My Parents’ Marriage was hidden in the folds of my original draft. The earliest versions of my novel had two sets of troubled marriages in the background that were driving different characters’ actions, but I didn’t really see that. During my revision and rewriting process, one of my editors asked me what my original goal for writing the novel was.

As I deliberated over that question, I started to peel back the layers. I realized that I was hiding behind all of the wonderful research I had done and decided to rewrite the story from a much more vulnerable place. Once I started doing that, the experience of writing this book felt much more high stakes. I squirmed in my seat as I wrote some scenes. During many sessions, I cried as I typed. I feel connected to every story and character I write, but this book became more personal to me than I’ve ever experienced.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope this book extends community to readers who want or need to acknowledge the impact of foundational relationships on their present life and relationship choices. I hope, too, that My Parents’ Marriage offers strength and perspective to readers who desire to choose a different path than what they have known or seen. Finally, I hope it creates an opportunity for intergenerational conversations in families.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

My advice is: Keep going. If you keep writing, you’ll outpace the rejection. Storytelling is as old as humanity—every known civilization has told stories of life as they lived it, passed down legends of how we got here, and created fables or parables to illustrate morals or deliver lessons. Stories are inextricable from existence which means your story has incalculable value. It is needed by someone, somewhere, and if you keep at it, at some point you will connect with that someone.

With a growing catalog of instructional writing videos available instantly, we have writing instruction on everything from improving your craft to getting published and finding an audience. New videos are added every month!