Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond has
written for AOL, Parenting
Magazine, the Village Voice,
Metro and Trace
Magazine. Her short story "Bush
Girl" was published in the May 2008
issue of African Writing
and her poem, The Whinings of a
Seven Sister Cum Laude
Graduate Working Board as an
Assistant, was published in 2006's
Growing up Girl Anthology.
A cum laude graduate of
Vassar College, she attended
secondary school in Ghana.
Powder Necklace is loosely
based on the experience.
As a kid, I lived in
Ghana for three years where I
attended boarding school and
encountered a small group of kids
whose parents had also sent them to
Ghana from Europe and the States. I
wanted to write a book about that
unique hybrid experience of being
from two places at the same time,
reconciling a first world
superiority complex with respect for
your immigrant parents,
crisscrossing the globe to visit
family "back home" and on other dots
of the map, and figuring out how to
answer when people ask you where
you're from -- all while meeting the
challenge of growing up.
Growing
Up Girl
What happens to
sheltered, horny Lila Adjei when her
mother sends her packing on an
indefinite "vacation" to her
unfamiliar homeland, Ghana?
Suddenly thrust into
the Third World nation's alien
reality of water shortages, petty
corruption, and intense religious
faith, Lila turns her shell shock
into an adventure of cultural,
spiritual and self discovery. But
when her mother finally allows her
to return to England, it becomes
clear that her globe-spanning quest
to find herself has only just begun.
Inspired by a true
story, Powder Necklace
explores what happens when cultures,
generations, and powerful
personalities collide ' in one
family. Like
Zadie Smith'sWhite Teeth,
Edwidge Danticat'sBreath,
Eyes, Memory and Jhumpa
Lahiri's The Namesake it
mingles laughter with bitterness,
community with loneliness, desperate
preservation of culture with the
rebellious ache to assimilate in a
fresh, sharp, and powerful new
voice.
Powder
Necklace: A Novel 
Growing
Up Girl