By Alya Somar
Caribbean Canadian literary fiction has been present for many years in the CanLit scene. As immigration policies have shifted and changed over the decades, so has the work being produced by authors in Canada. Writers that have either come from the West Indies, or have heritage there, have used their lived experiences to craft vivid and powerful works for generations.
Caribbean writing has a unique ability to decentre colonial narratives from stories, while understanding the complexities that such realities have in shaping not only the tropics, but Canada as well. Every year, #readcaribbean is filled with new, essential narratives from countless Caribbean Canadian writers brimming with talent and tenacity. Here are a few of them to get you started.
1) The Hidden Keys by André Alexis (Coach House Books)
As one of the FOLD’s 12 Books that Shaped the Way We Read, André Alexis’s The Hidden Keys is an ambitious romp through Toronto as protagonists
Tancred and Willow set out to find the mementos used to unlock Willow’s billion-dollar inheritance from her late father, while evading foes at every turn. Willow and Tancred are not the only ones after the billion dollars; with siblings and nefarious drug dealers also hot on the trail to riches, Alexis examines what it means to be a good person and do the right things.
Through complex characters and the relationships they maintain, readers will find themselves enthralled by the depth of both the adventure at hand, and the people entangled within it. The Hidden Keys is one of many testaments to Alexis’ skill as a writer and value as a thinker in contemporary literary fiction. No wonder he won the Giller!
2) Broughtupsy by Christina Cooke (House of Anansi Press)
Akúa is returning home to Jamaica for the first time in ten years. Her younger brother has died suddenly, and Akúa hopes to reconnect with her estranged older sister, Tamika. Over three fateful weeks, the sisters visit significant places from their childhood where Akúa spreads her brother’s ashes. But time spent with Tamika only seems to make apparent how different they are and how alone Akúa feels.
Then Akúa meets Jayda, a brash stripper who reveals a different side of Kingston. As the two women grow closer, Akúa is forced to confront the difficult reality of being gay in a deeply religious family, and what it means to be a gay woman in Jamaica. Her trip comes to a frenzied and dangerous end, but not without a glimmer of hope of how to be at peace with her sister—and herself.
By turns diasporic family saga, bildungsroman, and terse sexual awakening, Broughtupsy asks: What are we willing to do for family, and what are we willing to do to feel at home?
3) The Island of Forgetting by Jasmine Sealy (HarperAvenue)
Barbados, 1962. Lost soul Iapetus roams the island, scared and alone, driven mad after witnessing his father’s death at the hands of his mother and his older brother, Cronus. Just before Iapetus is lost forever, he has a son, but the baby is not enough to save him from himself—or his family’s secrets.
Seventeen years later, Iapetus’s son, the stoic Atlas, lives in a loveless house, under the care of his uncle, Cronus, and in the shadow of his charismatic cousin Z. Knowing little about the tragic circumstances of his father’s life, Atlas must choose between his desire to flee the island and his loyalty to the uncle who raised him.
Time passes. Atlas’s daughter, Calypso, is a beautiful and willful teenager who is desperate to avoid being trapped in a life of drudgery at her uncle Z’s hotel. When she falls dangerously in love with a visiting real estate developer, she finds herself entangled in her uncle’s shady dealings, a pawn in the games of the powerful men around her.
It is now 2019. Calypso’s son, Nautilus, is on a path of self-destruction as he grapples with his fatherless condition, his mixed-race identity and his complicated feelings of attraction towards his best friend, Daniel. Then one night, after making an impulsive decision, Nautilus finds himself exiled to Canada.
The Island of Forgetting is an intimate saga spanning four generations of one family who run a beachfront hotel. Loosely inspired by Greek mythology, this is a novel about the echo of deep—and sometimes tragic—love and the ways a family’s past can haunt its future.
4) Yesterdays by Harold Sonny Ladoo (Couch House Books)
After years of suffering at the hands of white missionaries trying to convert Trinidadians to Christianity, Poonwa has decided, as payback, to go to Canada and start a Hindu mission. His father, Choonilal, doesn’t want to borrow the money Poonwa needs from the corrupt local priest. The whole village gets dragged into the fight, a distraction from the usual arguments over latrines and sexual dalliances.
First published in 1974, Yesterdays is a ribald, outrageous portrait of Trinidadian village life, and a prescient proto-parody of what would become the archetypal immigrant story. Sacred cows both literal and figurative are skewered in a series of increasingly absurd encounters between villagers who can’t keep their noses – and other body parts – out of their neighbours’ business.
A foreword by Kevin Jared Hosein contextualizes this important book, which was politically and aesthetically ahead of its time but lost after the untimely death of Harold Sonny Ladoo.
The FOLD Admin