Reading Goldenborn, which was written by first-time novelist Ama Ofosua Lieb, it was obvious how much love the author has for clothes.
One of the things this writer has learned, after interviewing hundreds of people, is that when someone loves clothing, deeply and truly, they often have an early memory that taught them how important apparel or costume is to them. So, when I met the author over Zoom, one of the first questions I asked was if she remembered an event that had taught her how important apparel was, if there was a memory or a garment in her past which had connected the right dots and became a fashion lover’s origin story.
“I think I have a couple,” Ama Ofosua Lieb responded with a giant smile. “I remember Halloween, this was at this time we were living in the Bahamas, and trying to figure out what to wear. And for my costume, we just pulled from the fabric that we had at home, the Ghanaian fabric, and wrapped it around myself and my head. It was a fun thing to do, and it was one of those things where, in my mind, I was like, ‘well, it’s not really a costume, it’s not Halloween.’ But it was an opportunity to represent. And then there’s also we had a dear, dear family friend. She died last year, but when we lived in Canada, she was like the closest to a grandmother I had, and she would send me boxes and boxes of Barbie doll clothes that she had sewn. It was the fact that she had taken the time to sew these elaborate, beautiful dresses and pants and tops. I just had so much fun mixing and matching with my Barbie dolls. And just from an early age, understanding, even with a doll that like, you know, clothing was just a form of expression, and fun and joy.”
A First Time Author On Creating A Whole World
Lieb, the mind behind Goldenborn, was born in Ghana and has lived all over the world, Canada, the Bahamas, Nigeria, to name just a few places, before settling in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband and their two children. Lieb attended Stanford, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in sociology, before becoming a first-time published novelist.
The cover of ‘Goldenborn’, by Ama Ofosua Lieb and published by Scholastic.
Courtesy of Ama Ofosua Lieb
Having a novel published, selling a book to a publisher as well known as Scholastic, both things are an incredibly big deal, literally the dream of untold thousands. But those things are not the only accomplishments the author has made with this book. When it debuted, back in June of 2026, Goldenborn immediately became a Top-10 pick for the American Booksellers Association’s Indies Introduce Winter/Spring 2026 list, the author dubbed a 2026 Publisher’s Weekly Writer to Watch, and her novel chosen as a Good Morning America YA Book Club pick.
I’d read that it had taken Lieb six years to write her debut novel, time dedicated to making sure that her words felt right, complete enough, to share it with others. I wanted to know about that process, how she worked out the illimitable number of details which make up a story as complex as this one.
“When my kids were really young,” the author told me, “I was teaching, and I was entertaining them with bedtime stories. Some of the stories I included were the Anansi stories, one’s I loved, and now they love Anansi, they’re obsessed. But eventually, I ran out of stories to tell them. And they’re like, ‘oh, let’s go to a bookstore and find books about Anansi written by authors from Ghana.’ So we went, we tried, but we couldn’t find any at the time, and this was several years ago. But they were so disappointed, and I told them not to worry, I would write one for them. They took it as a promise and kids expect you to deliver. I started the process of writing, trying to figure out what direction I wanted to take. I did know it could probably take me a little bit of time to write, but in my head, I was like, oh, a year, two years, not so much.”
The best intentions absolutely go out the window, for almost any writer, when faced with the reality of conceiving an entire world; what to include, what to cut, what is absolutely necessary and what can be left in an older draft. I asked the novelist what her specific challenge had been, if there was any such singular thing holding her back in those first years of writing.
Ama Ofosua Lieb wears a kente cloth wrap.
Courtesy of Ama Ofosua Lieb
“I think I wanted to really authentically represent Ghana on the page,” Lieb said. “And Ghana is not a monolith, there are 80 languages, 75 ethnic groups. So, how do you represent all of that? I think that’s what had me in a chokehold. Once I figured that I could not represent all of Ghana on the page, that I could represent my experience of Ghana on the page, my family’s ethnic group experience on the page, it just loosened up and started getting a little easier. Then I realized that Anansi represents all of Ghana, because regardless of what ethnic group we’re in, we all celebrate Anansi through oral storytelling tradition. And then also fabric, fashion, like kente cloth is Ghana, so to incorporate that in. Then the word started flowing, the story started coming, and I had a lot of fun.”
“A cool thing that happened in the last couple years around kente cloth is that it was given a geographical indication status, kind of like champagne or tequila, which is it was a huge win because it prevents global misuse and legally you can’t market kente as kente unless it came from Ghana. And then UNESCO did a whole UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list and recognized its profound cultural significance and craftsmanship. This was a wonderful thing to happen for Ghana, kente is so iconic, people use it in graduations, they use it to celebrate and in all different types of cultural events.”
A Magical World Inspired By Mythology
Lovely Reader, please know, as we dive a little deeper now into the magical world this author created, I have made a point of not spoiling any of the twists and turns which take this novel to its incredible conclusion. Any details I tell you about here are from the very first chapters; this book is too exceptional, too much fun to devour, for me to be ok with robbing you of the experience of reading it for yourself.
When we meet Akoma, the protagonist/main character of Goldenborn, she does not know that there are members of her family with secret magic and access to a world beyond our own. Part of this magic is related to gold; some of Akoma’s most beloved friends and relatives literally have the precious metal within them and can pull it from inside to coat their skin like form-fitting liquid armor. I wanted to know how the author thought of this, if it was a reference to something I didn’t know enough to know or if it was an invention entirely her own.
“Um, I love gold,” the author told me with a laugh, “and I literally just threw everything I love into this. But also, gold is one of Ghana’s resources. A long time ago, before independence, before the name got changed to Ghana, we were the Gold Coast. I mean, the flag is gold. It was another call out to the culture, and there was just something visually pleasing in my mind about gold coming out of the skin and being a form of protection and a form of magic.”
One of the characters with this ability is Kofi, a friend of Akoma’s and her Grandma Esi, a weaver of transcendent textiles that are sold through her branded boutique, Maison Accra, named after is capital city of Ghana. (If you haven’t yet noticed, Lovely Reader, there is symbolism layered into almost every detail of this book, Easter Eggs galore.) Early on in the book we begin to learn about the different sorts of magic which are possible in this world, the different ways powers or gifts are expressed in the characters who have them. Kofi had one of my favorites, connected to clothing and the writing recherché.
Kofi has a weapon embroidered into his clothing and he needs only to put his hand near his blade to pull it from one reality to another, when he does not need it any longer he can store it away with no one the wiser.
“It was a way of marrying fashion and magic,” Lieb explained. “I was trying to think of a way where instead of a character walking around and being laden with heavy swords and knives, how could I make it in such a way that his uniform is beautiful. It’s black, it has a hood, it’s got a nice trim to it, but then it’s beautifully embroidered so he could even walk around town and no one would think twice about the fact that he’s heavily armed. He’s just beautifully presented and his fashion is great. There is a scene where a couple of the characters who were guarding the portal had embroidery in their shoes. You don’t see them taking it out of the shoe, but again, it’s the same concept. I thought it was visually fun to see someone put their hand over this embroidery and all of a sudden a weapon comes out that they can wield, and when they’re done, it disintegrates into gold dust that goes right back into the uniform.”
Fashionable Details That Help Tell A Story
Akoma, our leading lady, has a birth defect we learn about almost at the start of this story; she has holes in the centers of her palms. Please know, this is not as gruesome as it sounds, and it gave the author of this book another opportunity to work clothing into the narrative. Akoma feels no shame about this, she is a character accepting of herself, but because she understands that holes in hands can make others uncomfortable this young woman has embraced wearing gloves as a fashionable affect. It is something the teenager takes pride in, and I wanted to know about the certainty with which her sense of self is explored, and of course I had to ask about how she turns something different about herself into a place to play with fashion and style.
“The book starts with her introducing the reader to this hole in her hand,” Lieb said. “You’re like, ‘wait, does she have a hole in her hand? Is she holding something that has a hole?’ You figure out that actually, it’s a physical birthmark or,, I don’t want to use the word deformity, but it’s something that’s different about her. You later discover that it’s a mark of the gods. It’s something that they all have, but she doesn’t know that’s what she is. But then for her, you go through her internal monologue about how it makes people uncomfortable. So, it’s one thing to see a scar, but to actually see a hole you can see through that makes people uncomfortable. She discovered that she could make people more comfortable, but also have a sense of self-expression, by having these gloves. And then it just became a fashion statement for her, something she’s known for. And she does it for work, she wears them when going to a party. I love the fact that, when she’s going on that date-slash-work-event, she made a point to get a special glove to match her outfit.”
The scene the author was telling me about, it involves Akoma getting dressed in the back of a van, it was one I had particularly liked. It wasn’t like she just had a pair of gloves and she always put them on, it was the purposeful way the character planned her looks, designed her outfits with one of many pairs of gloves, whichever set would work best for a specific occasion.
“She makes it a point to be proud of,” Lieb told me. “She has all kinds of different ones. She has a collection.”
There are many references to fabrics in this novel, but they never feel abrupt or jammed into the story. The fit is natural, every mention of a specific textile is connected to a point which matters to the direction the book is taking its readers. This is true about the gloves and it is true about Akoma’s Grandma Esi and her weaving business. There is a wonderful bit where the author explains about Ghanaian textiles, a perfect example of how fiction can teach without feeling heavy-handed. Readers are either introduced to kente cloth or they learn more about it, in much the same way that we get an insider’s perspective of Adinkra symbols and how they can be used to decorate and adorn fabrics.
“Adinkra are proverbial symbols,” Lieb explained. “The block pattern, that’s handmade molten wax manually applied to cloth with brushes or stamps, and that tends to be on lighter material like silk and linen. Then there’s Ankara, which are beautiful geometric patterns, but that tends to be mass produced with machines. Whereas kente is hand the hand weaving, and labor intensive. They are woven, the thin strips of kente stools, and then they get combined together to make the huge fabrics. Kente used to be for royalty and for ceremonial purposes, reserved for sacred ceremonies and occasions. But now everybody can wear kente. And it’s definitely for still for ceremonies, weddings and events like that. But it’s now been incorporated in like dresses and shirts.”
Exploring Ancient Mythology With Exceptional Fiction
One of my favorite characters in Goldenborn is Webb, a mysterious figure whose motives are not exactly clear to our heroine, and whose appearance coincides with the events which will change Akoma’s life, not to mention her understanding of reality forever. Even Webb has connections to clothing, he works with textiles and is the owner/founder of Bijou, a luxe high fashion brand that’s name, when translated into English, means ‘jewel’.
Readers who are familiar with the canon of Ghanaian folklore and mythology, or who, like this writer, have spent time in love with trickster tales, will recognize the cues and clues which connect Webb to the half-arachnid Anansi, a name that means ‘spider’ in the Twi language spoken by the more than 20 million people who in Ghana and in parts of the Ivory Coast. I told the author how much I enjoyed Webb, how much fun his character was to follow, and how while reading the book, the cleverly included details which hint at who Webb really is felt like a wink from the author to her readers. I asked how she had decided what such an important, not to mention intense, character would look like, how she chose the character’s name.
“I thought it was so funny,” Leib said with a giant smile, “just calling him Webb. And I love the fact that in the beginning, when they first meet, Akoma doesn’t know about his identity. She doesn’t know that he’s Anansi, and she doesn’t know about his billionaire textile status. But he hones in on the glove that she’s wearing. He’s already telling you, he has a keen interest in fabrics and it’s kind of like a hint as to where it’s going.”
I asked how she chose what parts of the traditional Ghanaian stories to include- specifically I suspected- so that readers who knew enough to know would recognize him. Do not worry, Lovely Reader, if you have no familiarity with Anansi you will not be missing out. Instead you are likely to discover a rich vein of folktales which are very much worth the time it takes to explore them.
“I thought that Anansi being a spider and weaving webs would be interesting,” Lieb explained, “because of the history of the folktale behind Kente. There were these two brothers, Nana Karuga, and Nana Amaya, and they watched a spider weave its web and found it fascinating. They were inspired by watching a spider weave, and then they created kente cloth. Including this was me doing a callback to all of that, to Anansi as inspiration for Kente cloth. And Webb working with textiles, it kind of puts all of that together.”
Beyond the trickster Anansi there are many other connections and references to mythology, and one I really enjoyed was the many masks which are vitally important to Goldenborn. When I finished the book I found myself going down an entire rabbit warren of reading and discovery, an exceptionally pleasant afternoon which made me appreciate the deft and dexterous way the author had merged her fictional world with folktales important to a culture which has been sharing them for more than a thousand years. I was very curious about how she wove those disparate components together, and how the novelist did so in a way that felt as lyrical as each chapter of Goldenborn reads.
“I went back to Ghana two summers ago,” Lieb said. “And walking through the markets, you just see masks everywhere, beautifully carved, just so intricately made. I even have one that I got from a market. It’s upside down and it has the Sankofa bird on it, the bird that’s on the mask from the book. In those cases, it’s wood but I thought it’d be beautiful to have the mask in the story be gold, and still have an Adinkra symbol on it that had meaning, and this one means ‘it’s not never too late to go back to the past and learn from it.’ And then the jewels around it, I wanted something beautiful that, eventually, you’ll find out has to do with the gods. That’s why they had to be gold, and they had to be jeweled.”
A YA Book For Every Reader Who Loves Worldbuilding
“I had such a fun time writing this book,” Ama Ofosua Lieb told me about her first book, “and the fashion and fabric and all of that was part of my form of visual storytelling. You can tell someone’s personality based on what they’re wearing, like Akoma in her gloves and the self confidence we see in her because of that. I would love people to pick it up and see for themselves and enjoy it.”
Really great YA writing, that is stories written with teenagers as the target audience, have had a major impact on much older readers for decades now. There was once a sort-of stigma about being an adult and reading a book intended for older children, which thanks to stories like The Hunger Games, Uglies, and this writer’s favorite, E. Lockhart’s Liars books, has been deflated and relegated to an outdated opinion from an earlier era. Goldenborn is exactly that sort of story, it does not matter if you are 15, 35 or 60; this is a book you will not want to stop reading, and when you arrive at the last page you will find yourself Googling the release of Ama Ofosua Lieb’s follow-up novel. Hopefully, for the hundreds of thousands of people who have quickly become diehard fans of her work, we will not be forced to wait another six years.
Netflix, HBO, Disney- on the tiny chance that those who develop your content read this, please know that Goldenborn would be an incredible miniseries and it is a fantasy of a show that this writer is already rather desperate to watch.
‘Goldenborn’ the debut novel by Ama Ofosua Lieb, is now available to purchase in hardcover, or as a digital book, from your favorite bookseller.