How to Love a Jamaican: Stories

n In these kaleidoscopic stories of Jamaica and its diaspora we hear many voices at once. All of them convince and sing. All of them shine.--Zadie Smith n An O: The Oprah Magazine Top 15 Best of the Year - A Well-Read Black Girl Pick n n Tenderness and cruelty, loyalty and betrayal, ambition and regret--Alexia Arthurs navigates these tensions to extraordinary effect in her debut collection about Jamaican immigrants and their families back home. 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. n n 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. n nAlexia Arthurs emerges in this vibrant, lyrical, intimate collection as one of fiction's most dynamic and essential authors. n nPraise for How to Love a Jamaican n n A sublime short-story collection from newcomer Alexia Arthurs that explores, through various characters, a specific strand of the immigrant experience.--Entertainment Weekly n n With its singular mix of psychological precision and sun-kissed lyricism, this dazzling debut marks the emergence of a knockout new voice.--O: The Oprah Magazine n n Gorgeous, tender, heartbreaking stories . . . Arthurs is a witty, perceptive, and generous writer, and this is a book that will last.--Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties n n Vivid and exciting . . . every story rings beautifully true.--Marie Clairen