How to Love a Jamaican

Neniu kovrilo — How to Love a Jamaican (Hardcover, Picador)

Rigidkovrila

Eldonita de Picador.

ISBN:: 978-1-5098-8359-2

(1 recenzo)

Sweeping from close-knit island communities to the streets of New York City and midwestern university towns, these eleven stories form a portrait of a nation, a people, and a way of life. In "Light-Skinned Girls and Kelly Rowlands," an NYU student befriends a fellow Jamaican whose privileged West Coast upbringing has blinded her to the hard realities of race. In "Mash Up Love," a twin's chance sighting of his estranged brother--the prodigal son of the family--stirs up unresolved feelings of resentment. In "Bad Behavior," a couple leave their wild teenage daughter with her grandmother in Jamaica, hoping the old ways will straighten her out. In "Mermaid River," a Jamaican teenage boy is reunited with his mother in New York after eight years apart. In "The Ghost of Jia Yi," a recently murdered student haunts a despairing Jamaican athlete recruited to an Iowa college. And in "Shirley from a Small Place," …

Sweeping from close-knit island communities to the streets of New York City and midwestern university towns, these eleven stories form a portrait of a nation, a people, and a way of life. In "Light-Skinned Girls and Kelly Rowlands," an NYU student befriends a fellow Jamaican whose privileged West Coast upbringing has blinded her to the hard realities of race. In "Mash Up Love," a twin's chance sighting of his estranged brother--the prodigal son of the family--stirs up unresolved feelings of resentment. In "Bad Behavior," a couple leave their wild teenage daughter with her grandmother in Jamaica, hoping the old ways will straighten her out. In "Mermaid River," a Jamaican teenage boy is reunited with his mother in New York after eight years apart. In "The Ghost of Jia Yi," a recently murdered student haunts a despairing Jamaican athlete recruited to an Iowa college. And in "Shirley from a Small Place," a world-famous pop star retreats to her mother's big new house in Jamaica, which still holds the power to restore something vital.

This collection of short stories sweeps from close-knit island communities on Jamaica to the streets of New York City and midwestern university towns. In them, Arthurs forms a portrait of a nation, a people, and a way of life. -- adapted from jacket

4 eldonoj

Stephanie Jane recenzis How to Love a Jamaican de Alexia Arthurs

A captivating short story collection

4 steloj

How To Love A Jamaican is a captivating short story collection which, I felt, captured a lot of the experiences of Jamaicans living outside their country and of families split by emigration. The stories are each self-contained narratives, but I liked that they are linked by little hooks and details such as the recurrence of a family name or the reappearance of a man with green eyes. This allowed me to think of the Jamaican characters as people within a larger community, a diaspora perhaps, rather than purely as individuals. The device reminded me of Yoko Ogawa's short story collection, Revenge.

Arthurs' first story explores the importance of race and how a person's family background can affect their perception of this. Several tales depict mother-daughter relationships and ask whether the traditional Jamaican style of upbringing might be a better school for adulthood than the the open American way. I think …

How To Love A Jamaican is a captivating short story collection which, I felt, captured a lot of the experiences of Jamaicans living outside their country and of families split by emigration. The stories are each self-contained narratives, but I liked that they are linked by little hooks and details such as the recurrence of a family name or the reappearance of a man with green eyes. This allowed me to think of the Jamaican characters as people within a larger community, a diaspora perhaps, rather than purely as individuals. The device reminded me of Yoko Ogawa's short story collection, Revenge.

Arthurs' first story explores the importance of race and how a person's family background can affect their perception of this. Several tales depict mother-daughter relationships and ask whether the traditional Jamaican style of upbringing might be a better school for adulthood than the the open American way. I think my favourite story was Island which follows a lesbian woman back to Jamaica for a holiday there with heterosexual female friends. Jamaica, as a former British colony, still has our bizarre and outdated laws that ban homosexuality only for men, although lesbianism is also not tolerated. Yet Arthurs focus is on the attitude to and behaviour of the heterosexual friends which creates a great story with interesting ideas and tensions.

I took away a lot to think about from How To Love A Jamaican. The collection is deceptive in that the stories are good light reads that can be simply entertaining, but they also contain real nuggets of truth concerning families, relationships and interactions. Jamaican culture is obviously at the forefront of these characters' experiences, but I felt that the situations here have a far wider relevance than purely one island. The stories do have a distinctly Jamaican flavour, but their messages and ideas are widely relatable.