To the dismay of her ambitious mother, Bolanle marries into a polygamous family, where she is the fourth wife of a rich, rotund patriarch, Baba Segi. She is a graduate and therefore a great prize, but even graduates must produce children and her husband’s persistent bellyache is a sign that things are not as they should be. Bolanle is too educated for the ‘white garment conmen’ Baba Segi would usually go to for fertility advice, so he takes her to hospital to discover the cause of her barrenness.

Where Women Meet Boys captures the bitter-sweetness of youth—when every experience feels like a revelation and every relationship brings with it the thrill of discovery. These short stories of friendship, love, heartbreak, and grief, explore the defining moments of life’s early lessons.
There’s a story of a man who tries to save his marriage by using Viagra; a young boy discovers porn with his cousin at his grandma’s house; broken by her father’s departure, a young girl frolics with men and seduces her sister’s boyfriend.
From shared laughter over mundane routines to life-changing events, each story reveals what it’s like to experience endings and beginnings in equal measure. Set in Kigali and beyond, this collection speaks to the rawness of growing up and the ache of a youth that fades too fast.

Diaka charts this constellation of interconnected lives in thirteen stories, exploring themes which run through the collection like a current: corruption and economic hardship, trauma and infidelity, shame, neglect, and the tribulations of the female body. In telling their stories, Diaka illuminates hope, freedom, and triumph that can be found in the everyday—the bonds between women, the joys of love and sex and art and dancing, the possibility of repair and redemption.
Renowned for her spoken word artistry, Ama Asantewa Diaka demonstrates her lyrical brilliance in this emotionally rich work that unveils profound truths about her country, its inhabitants, and the universality of human experience.