“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 An O: The Oprah Magazine “Top 15 Best of the Year” • A Well-Read Black Girl Pick 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. 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. Alexia Arthurs emerges in this vibrant, lyrical, intimate collection as one of fiction’s most dynamic and essential authors. Praise for How to Love a Jamaican “A sublime short-story collection from newcomer Alexia Arthurs that explores, through various characters, a specific strand of the immigrant experience.”—Entertainment Weekly “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 “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 “Vivid and exciting . . . every story rings beautifully true.”—Marie Claire

In this thrilling debut collection Alexia Arthurs is all too easy to love' – Zadie Smith A riveting exploration of a nation's heart and soul, How to Love a Jamaican sees Alexia Arthurs weave profound stories of Jamaican emigrants and the complex bonds tying them to their families back home. From close-knit Jamaican communities to bustling New York streets, this evocative collection paints an intimate, nuanced portrait of immigrant experiences. It includes the story ‘Bad Behavior’, for which Arthurs won the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize. Filled with both tenderness and cruelty, ambition and regret, How to Love a Jamaican is a compelling examination of identity, culture, and the nuances of human disposition.

The Jamaican male mind on sexThe Jamaican male mind on women Recipes to keep your Jamaican man StrongWhat to expect in your Role as WifeyHow to handle a Cheating Jamaican ManHow to Bring your Jamaican Man to America10 Rules for Dating a Jamaican man3 Things a Jamaican man must Have The Truth about the Rastafari Jamaican Man

Set in the neighbourhood of “Little Jamaica,” Frying Plantain follows a girl from elementary school to high school graduation as she navigates the tensions between mothers and daughters, second-generation immigrants experiencing first-generation cultural expectations, and Black identity in a predominantly white society. Kara Davis is a girl caught in the middle — of her North American identity and her desire to be a “true” Jamaican, of her mother and grandmother’s rages and life lessons, of having to avoid being thought of as too “faas” or too “quiet” or too “bold” or too “soft.” In these twelve interconnected stories, we see Kara on a visit to Jamaica, startled by the sight of a severed pig’s head in her great-aunt’s freezer; in junior high, the victim of a devastating prank by her closest friends; and as a teenager in and out of her grandmother’s house, trying to cope with ongoing battles of unyielding authority. A rich and unforgettable portrait of growing up between worlds, Frying Plantain shows how, in one charged moment, friendship and love can turn to enmity and hate, well-meaning protection can become control, and teasing play can turn to something much darker.

A pan-Caribbean anthology of original short stories culled from the very best entries to the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

Born and raised on an island paradise, Akime knows that no amount of sun and sand can hide the hypocrisy, hatred, and danger that fill his days. As a gay man in Jamaica, hes skilled at hiding the truth from others. When he meets Nathan, an Adjunct Professor at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, he dares to believe that he has found the one person from whom he has nothing to hide. For one glorious year, Akime and Nathan live the dream together, even though they must keep their love hidden. They spend weekends on Jamaicas lush and more open north-eastern coast, but Nathan has dangerous secrets of his ownincluding an intensifying relationship with Nicole, an American woman. Without warning, Nathan leaves the island, and Akime, behind to start a new life with her in New York City. Devastated, Akime decides to follow Nathan to New York, where the former lovers are touched by tragedy. In a desperate moment, one lays dying of a gunshot, and the other must act upon his own mortality. Meanwhile, Nicole has questions of her own about Nathans history with Akime. Now only time will tell if the man left behind has any hope of happinessor whether the tortured ghosts of his past will haunt him forever.

11 April 1982: a smell is coming down John Golding Road right alongside the boy-child, something attached to him, like a spirit but not quite. Ma Taffy is growing worried. She knows that something is going to happen. Something terrible is going to pour out into the world. But if she can hold it off for just a little bit longer, she will. So she asks a question that surprises herself even as she asks it, "Kaia, I ever tell you bout the flying preacherman?" Set in the backlands of Jamaica, Augustown is a magical and haunting novel of one woman’s struggle to rise above the brutal vicissitudes of history, race, class, collective memory, violence, and myth.

One Blood offers a wealth of ethnographic material, skillfully using traditional Jamaican images and expressions to present a coherent and systematic depiction of the Jamaican body, of how it works and of how health is maintained. Sobo explains some of the more complex issues of medical anthropology in a clear and accessible fashion and shows how gender and kinship tensions are expressed through culturally constructed syndromes. The book explores the ways in which the body serves as a medium for the expression of ideas about the social and moral order. Childhood socializations and ideas about gender relations, kinship, social obligations, sorcery, and deceit are investigated in association with beliefs about nutrition, procreation, sexuality, cleanliness, bodily flow, and sickness.

Juvenile novel about growing up centered on Amanda, the only girl among four brothers, determined to be one of the boys.

Traveling to an island country proves to be quite an adventure and a fun way to learn for two young children who visit Jamaica.