Readers' 20 most favourite stories
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kwasia
I am leaving Accra today. I said goodbye to Nii and Kadija and Mariama, the littlest neighbours, and gave away all my pot plants. Unless I can earn enough money to come back from time ...read more17 readers likefalling, and small, and very far away
I had an email from my partner’s new lover. It was my fault, I wrote to her first. This exchange happened last Saturday night, about three or four hours after he first told me. I'm ...read more15 readers likewhy I blame myself for being raped (hint: not because it’s my fault)
All my life I have been me. I didn't realise it at first. Presumably, as we say of infants, I was an extension of the everything, was my mother, I was the flitting shadows of ...read more12 readers likewalloped
I went to have my hearing tested. This became necessary because a man had walloped me across the face: a man I loved. Needless to say, no man has ever hit me before and I'm ...read more12 readers likethat I fight
The battle to take seriously my own life and prospects, and to treat myself well, is the great absorbing struggle of my life. After fifty or a hundred rapes, before which I had never kissed and ...read more10 readers likebelovedly
Oh, Germany. Sometimes I am just so grateful to you! I came three years ago, for a week, with a suitcase of summer clothes. Stayed on and stayed. Met a man. Made some friends. Found ...read more9 readers likelost girl
Last night a lost soul brushed past me on the street and I could feel the black, sucking wind. She was very beautiful, extremely young, just-enormous eyes. Bare feet and ankles swollen like stumps. Bruises. ...read more9 readers liketo meet my father
I'm going into the difficult embrace of family life to say goodbye to my father. Our family relationships have been fraught with miscommunications, outbreaks of insanity, and violence. Now it's all coming to an end ...read more9 readers likebeautiful is who you are
I came to visit a Ghanaian friend who runs a very tiny, very humble business. When he had no customers he came and sat down. He saw tears in my eyes and leaned forward to ...read more9 readers likebackbone
Over breakfast my partner announced he is falling in love with another woman. I said, "What?" The omelettes had turned out so well. It was a cool, greyish day. I had asked why he kept ...read more8 readers likefor crying out quiet
Eleven weeks ago today my husband walked out. I went to the park and when I came home, he was gone. When I closed the door behind me that morning there was no warning this ...read more8 readers likethat, and all the gods of grief
For four weeks now, this terrible grief. It takes up residence in my throat, is heavy, slides into the sweet solar plexus where self-belief resides. Crushes back my breathing. Gives me the tired. It makes ...read more8 readers likethe family stones
Caring for Dad is painful. I love him, naturally, and now he's very frail and unwell; so it's wrung from me like dark water out of soaked wood. But Dad tormented me with minor sexual ...read more8 readers likegraffiti confetti butt
I was cycling along the river where the water meets the trees, there is a little grove there which is sacred to me and it seems to be a forest in a parallel universe. It ...read more8 readers likewait what
When I got there the doctor said, "You know when we call you in at seven in the morning it's not good." She had called me in at 7.15am on Friday to give this news. ...read more7 readers likepossessive hand
The little cat puts her hand possessively on my arm. After a moment's thought her other hand creeps up to join it and I remember the day I finally found her again, after she had ...read more7 readers likelifesaver
A man saved my life today, deftly and in German. He sped past on his bicycle and veered in to make me stop. Excuse me, your brake cable is dangling and it's gonna tangle in ...read more7 readers likehow tis.
The courage… to get through life without this sense of home, without this refuge, whilst surviving a world which exploits our mothering kindness and assaults us for our femininity, is untold. But many many many ...read more7 readers likemoon over Accra
It’s a beautiful night in Ghana and the moon is very full. Immodestly so. What need has a moon of modesty? She has already pledged her love. “I will follow you though it turn me ...read more7 readers likedead man sleepwalking
In this house of illness and pain I get lonely. Everyone is in bed by eight o'clock and the long night stretches ahead. Tonight I can hear the rain plinking on the skylight which reminds ...read more