4 Books by Caribbean Authors You Should Read
By: Uju Onyishi
Tags: Reading, Books, Book Review, Book Recommendations, Caribbean

June is recognized as Caribbean-American Heritage Month. It is a time to recognize the significance of Caribbean people and their descendants in US history and culture. One way to learn about Caribbean influence, not just in the US, but globally, is through books. Hence my writing this post to encourage you to purchase and read books by Caribbean authors or authors of Caribbean heritage.

These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card

These Ghosts Are Family is a transgenerational family sage spanning over 200 years that details the ripple effect of ancestral decisions on present-day life.

The novel begins by revealing that Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley, a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend.

And now, nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley, a home health aide who has shown up for her first day of work to tend to the father she thought was dead.

These Ghosts Are Family revolves around the consequences of Abel’s decision and tells the story of the Paisley family from colonial Jamaica to present-day Harlem.

The story of each member of the family was very unique as they try to create an identity outside of their family history and trauma. I haven’t read much about slavery in Jamaica, so it was “interesting” and educational to read this. We often learn about the life of slaves in the American South, but not so much in the Caribbean so the book opened my eyes to the experiences of slaves in Jamaican plantations. I did feel like the book jumped around a lot between generations and character, so it was a little difficult to follow at first. However, once I got used to the structure it flowed much smoother.

“Even though they were just words, they built a world that she couldn’t stop thinking about, that she felt trapped inside every night.”

Surge by Jay Bernard

Image by Uju Onyishi

Surge is a collection of poems about the 1981 New Cross Fire, a house fire at a birthday party in south London that killed thirteen people all of whom were Black. The fire was initially believed to be a racist attack, but there was a sense of indifference from the police, the government and the press.

The collection also talks about the Grenfell fire on 14th June 2017. A case where institutional indifference to working-class lives left 72 people dead. The lack of justice and accountability in both cases exemplify Britain’s racist past and present.

The collection begins with the arrival of the Windrush Generation into Britain, followed by the New Cross Fire and then into present-day. The first few poems are told through the voices of ghosts and then it goes into real bodies. There was a lot of shifts in perspectives both between and within poems and that was done so effortlessly. I really enjoyed reading the collection. Some of the poems really spoke to me. But there were some that I didn’t quite understand (the struggles of reading poetry), though I was able to find some Youtube videos where Bernard reads and discusses the poems and that was extremely beneficial.

“Me seh blood ah goh run for di pain of di loss”

The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus

Image by Uju Onyishi

The Perseverance is a collection of poems about the D/deaf experience in a hearing world, the author’s identity as a British-Jamaican and some poems about his father.

Reading this collection made me confront a privilege that I have, but hardly ever think about. I don’t know what else to say about this except that it was powerful and incredible. So much so that less than 12 hours after reading it for the first time I decided to reread the collection.

“Proving people wrong is great but tiring.”

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Image by Uju Onyishi

Queenie is a year in the life of a 25-year-old Black woman of Jamaican heritage living in London. At the start everything is okay. She’s living with her white boyfriend and has a job she worked hard to get. But then he wants to go on a break, so Queenie has to move out. And let’s just say she did not handle the break well.

She starts doing badly at work and having unprotected sex with various guys that showed her no respect. As the story goes on we learn that she experienced some childhood trauma that completely destroyed her self esteem and self-regard. And because of that, her default is self-sabotage.

The book touches on so many heavy topics including racism in Britain, micro-aggressions in the workplace, complicated family dynamics, the fetishization of the Black woman’s body and mental health issues. It did a good job in portraying the stigma surrounding going to therapy in the Black community. I also liked that Carty-Williams did not rush Queenie’s healing process. The story flowed so smoothly and it was written so vividly.

I was really rooting for Queenie, but I couldn’t help but be annoyed by a lot of her actions. She is also such a contradictory character but the fact that she is such a flawed character make things more realistic. She stays current on the issues of police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement but then she harbours so much self-hate and allows her body to be used by white men that just don’t care about her. Oh and don’t get me started on her relationship with Black men. It just goes show hoe white supremacist ideologies are so deeply rooted in our subconscious.

I can’t recommend this book enough.