Sharing to inspire all worldwide college students!

First the motivation. That’s the drive. Right here’s mine : My guide is impressed by my father who copied a US Navy electronics textbook by hand onto brown paper as a result of he couldn't afford a photocopy. Forty years later, his son earned a graduate diploma from Columbia College , knew York, designed a nuclear reactor, and named it after his two daughters.

Six weeks in the past I used to be gazing that190,000-word manuscript questioning if I'd ever get it out of Google Docs.

Right now the 190,000-word guide about that chain is stay on Amazon Prime !, and the official launch lands Monday, Might 11, 2026, the day the Reedsy Discovery skilled assessment drops. I wished to share the story early, as a result of this sub was one of many locations I lurked for months whereas attempting to determine if self-publishing a brick of a memoir was even doable.

To be clear: the writing wasn't six weeks. The writing was over ten years. I began taking notes on the New York Metropolis subway as a Columbia grad pupil greater than a decade in the past — fragments within the margins of reactor physics drawback units, essays drafted between stops on the 1 practice, observations scribbled on the again of Con Ed payments. These notebooks traveled with me throughout fourteen airways and 13 nations. The final six weeks had been simply the ultimate meeting — the forge the place a decade of uncooked materials lastly turned a guide.

The story behind the guide:

My father was a instructor in Kumasi, Ghana. He earned 100 {dollars} a month and graded train books by kerosene lantern. He grew up barefoot, copied a US Navy electronics textbook by hand onto brown paper as a result of he couldn't afford a photocopy, and taught himself electronics. He handed away February 27, 2024, whereas I used to be in the midst of scripting this guide.

I'm his son. I left Ghana in my late teenagers on a scholarship to Northern Italy, discovered Italian in six months, earned a nuclear engineering diploma summa cum laude in Wisconsin and a graduate diploma from Columbia. I now design reactor gas loading patterns for a dwelling. Alongside the best way I constructed a free scholarship pipeline that's positioned about 40 college students at Google, Netflix, MIT, Cornell, Columbia, J.P. Morgan, and Bloomberg — funded completely out of my very own wage.

Then the system tried to grind me down. A staged emergency. An arrest. Eight months separated from my daughters. I responded by designing a reactor and naming it after them — the VioletMadison-20.

The guide:

"THE GLOBAL CITIZEN" is a trilogy — Mud & Stardust / The Crucible / Unleashed — 25 chapters, 190,000 phrases, informed in two interwoven tracks: uncooked chronological memoir, and standalone essays on faith, race, immigration, the victim-mentality virus, the comfort-zone lure, and why America remains to be the best land of alternative on Earth for anybody keen to do the work. A lot of these essays started life as subway notes ten years in the past and waited patiently for the remainder of the story to catch up.

It's not an inspirational guide. It's an engineering report on what occurs when a father chooses the pink pen over the prayer mat — documented throughout three continents, 4 languages, and twenty-five years of verified outcomes. Each declare is receipted. Each pupil is called. Each trajectory is timestamped.

📖 Learn the opening free proper now: Amazon's Look Inside preview is enabled on the Kindle version. You may learn the complete opening of THE TEACHER'S SON — the kerosene lantern, Konkori village, the Navy textbook copied by hand onto brown paper — straight from the product web page earlier than you resolve something. Simply search "The World Citizen" by Kwadwo AduTwum on Amazon.

🗓️** Official launch: Monday, Might 11, 20**26. That's the day the Reedsy Discovery skilled assessment drops — a credentialed reviewer's impartial evaluation of the complete 190,000 phrases. If the opening chapter earns your belief, Might 11 is the day to return again.

A be aware on why this issues to me:

I might be genuinely grateful for sincere suggestions — the great, the tough, the locations the place a sentence might have minimize deeper. I’m not on the lookout for five-star courtesy. I’m on the lookout for the sort of sincere studying that makes the subsequent version sharper. Greater than something, bringing this story to the world is how I honor my father — the instructor who sacrificed a lot in order that Mud & Stardust might exist in any respect. Each web page he won’t ever learn is a web page I owe him. Each reader who finishes the guide is a reader who meets him. That’s the actual launch. The gross sales are secondary.

What I discovered within the final six weeks of ultimate meeting (completely satisfied to go deeper on any of those within the feedback):

Writing 190k phrases whereas holding down a full-time engineering job + elevating children — the routine that really labored

KDP Choose vs going large at launch (I went Choose, right here's why)

Hardcover full-wrap cowl design at 300 DPI — the precise KDP dimensions that just about broke me (14.768 × 10.417 for case laminate)

Print specs that cross KDP assessment first time: 6×9 trim, 0.875" inside margin, 527 pages below the 550 restrict

Reedsy Discovery ($50) — skilled assessment dropping Might 11

IngramSpark + Lightning Supply Sharjah for Center East distribution

Amazon Adverts marketing campaign construction for a memoir with no comp-title playbook

The one mistake I made on my first cowl add that value me two days

The place to seek out it:

Search "The World Citizen" by Kwadwo AduTwum on Amazon. All three editions — Kindle $9.99, paperback $29.99, hardcover $39.99 — are on the identical product web page.

In the event you're engaged on a memoir, an extended manuscript, or simply caught someplace within the self-pub pipeline — drop your query within the feedback. I'll reply each single one right now. This sub helped me; I need to pay it ahead.

The reality is sort of a lion. You wouldn’t have to defend it. Let it free. It is going to defend itself.

In loving reminiscence of Matthew Osei Baffour — the instructor who began all of it. February 27, 2024.