Nadia Owusu

Nadia Owusu is the author and first person narrator of Aftershocks. She was born to Osei and Almas in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. As the biracial daughter of a Ghanaian father and an Armenian mother, Nadia found herself struggling with a dislocated sense of identity from a young age. When she was very little, her mother left the family, and returned to Massachusetts, where she was born. Nadia's father remarried a woman named Anabel shortly thereafter. Without her mother, Nadia began relying on her father for a sense of balance from a young age. Over the years, however, Osei's job with the UN forced the family to relocate repeatedly. Their constant moves further upset her sense of home and family.

When she was just 13 years old, her father died after battling cancer for several years. In the wake of his death, Nadia felt homeless and lost...