Terminal Maladies
Winner of the 2023 CAAPP Book Prize from the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for African American Poetry and Poetics and Autumn House Press, Okwudili Nebeolisa’s debut poetry collection explores a son’s relationship with his mother through her battle with cancer and his move from his homeland of Nigeria to the United States.
Nebeolisa's poems highlight how the poet and his family shoulder the responsibility of caregiving together and how Nebeolisa works to bridge the physical, and at times, emotional, distance between them. He wonders: “I don’t understand / her smile or why she would be submerged / in pain and wouldn’t want to admit it. / Who did this to our mothers?” The book questions his Nigerian mother’s need to act brave and a son’s need to protect.
Terminal Maladies reminds us that grief is inevitable, yet unique to each of us, and serves as a tribute to Nebeolisa’s mother and is a necessary read for anyone who has faced the challenges of caring for a loved one.
Okwudili Nebeolisa was born in Kaduna, Nigeria. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where he was a Provost Fellow and the winner of the Prairie Lights’ John Leggett Prize for Fiction. His poetry has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Granum Foundation. Currently, he lives in Minneapolis and is pursuing an MFA in fiction at the University of Minnesota where he won the Gessell Award for Excellence in Poetry.
