PATSY: A Journey to Love & Freedom

Season 1, Episode 4 Transcript

(Note: following this transcript is a list of resources and other books by Caribbean authors, which you may purchase through The Lift Up’s shop on bookshop.org*)

T: Happy Wednesday! I’m Tamara Crawford, here with Vina Orden. And this is The Lift Up Podcast — inviting you to discover empowering reads by marginalized writers. In this Episode #4, in celebration of Jamaica’s Independence on the 6th of August, we’re discussing Nicole Dennis-Benn’s novel, Patsy.

Nicole Dennis-Benn was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. She is the founder of the Stuyvesant Writing Workshop and lives with her wife in Brooklyn, New York. Her bestselling sophomore novel, Patsy, is a 2020 Lambda Literary Award winner, a Stonewall Book Awards Honor Book, a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and long-listed for The Pen/Faulkner Award in Fiction. It was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a Financial Times Critics Choice, a Today Show Read with Jenna Book Club selection, and named Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, TIME, NPR, PEOPLE Magazine, Washington Post, Oprah Magazine, and The Guardian, among others.

Dennis-Benn’s debut novel Here Comes the Sun was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for Best First Book, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award.

So, without any further ado, let’s get right into it …

T: Hi Vina! So happy to feature Jamaican authors this month here on The Lift Up. Happy Independence Day, Jamaica! I remember when we chatted during our intro episode, I mentioned Queenie as a book that resonated with me as a person with Jamaican heritage living in London, however Patsy is almost a closer reflection of my life as a Jamaican-American born in Brooklyn and raised in New York City. There were so many parts of this book that brought me back to my childhood, which we’ll explore later on through our discussion on a number of themes. And while some parts of the book are hilarious, there are other parts that are sad and heartbreaking. But Nicole Dennis-Benn does an amazing job making this so vivid for the reader and bringing us into her characters, Jamaica, and New York City — so much so that at times I felt transported while reading …

V: Yeah. And by the way, before we talk about Patsy, we should definitely congratulate Candice Carty-Williams on being the first Black author to win Book of The Year at the British Book Awards for Queenie. She wrote a really thought-provoking article for The Guardian on her conflicted views around that honor, which we’ll link to on our Medium blog … So, congratulations, Candice!

Tamara, I did want to go back to something you mentioned in our first episode … That, growing up, your parents shared with you traditional Jamaican literature, like the stories of Anansi and Jamaican history … But the stories of the Caribbean diaspora seemed to resonate with you once you moved to the UK. Can you speak more about that, and why you think that is?

T: Sure … I think when I was younger in the US, finding novels that talked about what it was like being first-generation American with Jamaican parents or West Indian parents in New York City, or even anywhere else, was not available to me. I don’t think that means that those books weren’t written, but I couldn’t find them, and I never heard of them. So aside from family and West Indian friends, I didn’t think anyone could relate, like there was this world where no one could understand pressures, celebrations, fears, or ambitions from that perspective. Now, to be fair, I left the US in 2004, so never really got to know if there was anyone who did publish this story as we know some stories don’t make it across the waters (East or West), but I also realized after leaving that once I met more people with different backgrounds I found a lot of our experiences were similar; and that same feeling when I read different stories, and I started finding more to relate to, but I think more recently after moving to the UK, where there is a different connection — there’s this commonwealth connection to the West Indies compared to the US — it seems to be a lot easier to find more stories here from the Caribbean diaspora, like Andrea Levy’s Small Island, and Queenie. Even Marlon James’ book A Brief History of Seven Killings came out while I was in the UK, and I remember being just so excited. I love that Patsy was written by a Jamaican who moved to Brooklyn, because I had never seen that story written before, and it gave me a perspective that was a lot more personal that I wanted to read.

V: It’s heartening to hear you say that, and I do think that publishing has been changing. I remember when Jessica Hagedorn was the only Pilipina contemporary author I could find back in the ’90s. And it was probably only because of the fall of the Marcos dictatorship and America’s obsession with Imelda Marcos that her book Dogeaters was published in the first place. And I do feel there’s been a “renaissance” of Pilipinx writing. Of course, many authors like Gina Apostol have been writing for a really long time, but it’s only in the last 5 years that publishers have been paying attention.

So, back to Patsy … In an interview with Roxane Gay at the Center for Fiction, Nicole Dennis-Benn explains that she wrote this novel because, as a reader, she never saw a “Patsy” on the page and wanted to see her story. At the same time, she was also trying to write against something.

And it reminded me of something the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche had said about the publishing industry expecting this “single story” from ethnic writers … In her case, that “African” authors (as a broad category) could only tell one kind of story and show people one kind of way, until that’s what they become. And I feel that one of the most interesting things about Patsy is that it does break a mold in terms of the typical “immigrant story.”

T: Yeah, in a way I agree, as there are a number of themes in this book. But there was so much in her story that sounded both familiar and sad for me. I think the theme around motherhood, gender norms, but also, that search to fulfill a better destiny or path, so to speak, for yourself and your family is so strong here, and it also highlights the struggles in trying to achieve that in America …

V: Yeah. To be honest, I was surprised about how much of Patsy’s immigrant story really resonated with me. Setting and place are so central to the novel. So, it goes back and forth between Pennyfield in Jamaica and Crown Heights in Brooklyn. And in one scene in a cab from the airport when Patsy first arrives in New York, she’s surprised to see all these Jamaican restaurants flying flags on their awnings and black and brown people, who she never saw on TV or in movies like Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

And it kind of reminded me of my own arrival as an immigrant at Newark airport … If you’ve ever been on that stretch of the I-95, it’s just such an uninspiring view. I mean, you just look out the window and it’s all these factories, smoke stacks, railyards, and shipyards … And then, how surprising it was to see a sign for “Manila Avenue” right off the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. And I think that these contradictory feelings are so true among immigrants. So, on the one hand, it’s kind of disappointing to find that “America” is, in some ways, like any other place and not exactly the better life you were dreaming of — especially for immigrants of color who come here and can’t necessarily “pass” in America. But, on the other hand, it is a relief to have a sense of familiarity or community in a new place. So, I was wondering if that’s something that resonated with you as well — in terms of your family’s experience in New York, or your own experience moving to different places?

T: To start off with, I would say in Patsy, all the descriptions of Brooklyn felt so real for me. I remember while reading — and this is just thinking a little bit more about my life in Brooklyn as a kid — and while this isn’t in the book, every time I think about Brooklyn and I think of being West Indian in Brooklyn, I always think about going to this place on Nostrand Avenue as a kid called Allan’s Bakery. It’s this Caribbean bakery that we used to go to on Sundays after church for currant rolls. And I’m so glad it’s still there, because every time I go back to New York City, I still go back for currant rolls without fail — and I’ve been doing that for the past 15 years.

V: Okay, you’ll have to take me the next time you go …

T: Definitely — it is a must-stop on a trip home. And for those days that I can’t go, I definitely have learned to make them to tide me over. But it’s something that connects me to Brooklyn and connects me to being West Indian in Brooklyn. And it’s just a small little thing, and I mean, there’s so many other things that she illuminates in terms of the markets, and seeing people in the restaurants.

But, in terms of my family, I think it’s hard to talk about my parents’ experience because they didn’t really share that much with us about their story of coming to America. I think my mom was probably a lot more open, but even then, I don’t know that much. Of what I do know, I know they came to the US for University, and it was definitely a new world for them and an adjustment. There was a lot for them to get used to as well. And Patsy covers some of that — some of them quite humorously when she talks about the weather, some sad when you talk about opportunity. But I think for me as a person who constantly moves countries, in my experience, my motivations are going to be different, because unlike those characters, I moved to Japan and England for work that I already had. So when I read Patsy, I actually think a bit more about my mom’s parents, my grandparents, moving to the UK from Jamaica in the ‘50s, as well as my aunts and uncles who moved here as well, and some of whom are still here. And I think of the kind of shock they must have felt coming, the feeling of not truly being welcome but being told that they are British because they’re part of the “commonwealth.” And I wish I really had known some of the things they faced in finding work and enjoyment in life here — I know that my grandfather was a carpenter, my grandmother was a seamstress, from what I was told. But I also wonder what it was like for them to leave their ten kids behind in Jamaica as well … I mean if they hadn’t left them behind, who knows what our lives would have ended up like …

V: Yeah. So, in the book, Patsy leaves behind her five-year-old daughter Tru with her dad. And, for me, the story of family separation is something I haven’t really seen in fiction … even though I know it happens pretty frequently in real life. And, just looking at my own family history, my maternal grandmother pretty much raised her four children on her own while my grandfather worked in Guam. So, my mom loves Christmas. And gift-giving is still very big for her, because it was the one time her dad came home with all these presents to kind of make up for his absence.

And when I was nine, my mom was recruited for a job in New York because of a nursing shortage here during the AIDS crisis. And we were separated from her for four years. And I had that similar experience of looking forward to Christmas because it was the only time that she could visit us. But what I remember about those visits is how sad I’d get, like a week before she had to leave again. And at that point, honestly, I didn’t really care about all the gifts she brought from the US.

And there’s this very true-to-life part in the book where Patsy and Claudette go on this shopping spree to fill a barrel to send to Tru, whom Patsy hasn’t seen or talked to in a decade. It’s a detail Roxane Gay brings up in her interview as well, since Haitians have their own version of “barrels full of everything you can get your hands on to send to family back home.” It’s just so interesting, the commonalities in the immigrant experience … Pilipinos too ship these huge balikbayan boxes — they’re like two feet tall by two feet wide cardboard boxes to family back home. And they’re full of the same kinds of things Patsy sends Tru — American chocolates, clothes, etc. And this term balikbayan, or “one who returns home” is also sadly symbolic, since all these things being sent back are meant to, but of course fail to make up for the migrant’s absence.

T: Yeah, it’s so true. I mean, packing and sending barrels were such a big thing for us as kids! I remember when we would get these empty barrels delivered and mom would always pick something up while we were out at the store to make sure she could put it in the barrel, trying to choose carefully for various people, and we would gradually add more and more to it until it was full and then it could be closed and taken away to the airport to be sent. We tended to fill it up, same thing — foods and clothes, always clothes, lots of clothes — and it would be for all different family members and family friends in Jamaica.

And one of the things that sat with me as I was reading about them filling this barrel was the smell of the barrel …

V: I had to look it up — I didn’t realize it was an actual barrel!

T: Yeah — it’s this big cylinder. And especially if you’re in New York City, like if you’re in Brooklyn or you’re in Queens, there are these import and export places that just specifically deal with sending back barrels. And it’s always funny to drive past them in Brooklyn or Queens to see them. But, you know, I remember as a little kid always trying to stick my head into the barrels to see what mom put in there while trying not to fall in, because the barrel at that time was twice my height and me tiptoeing off the edge of the chair …

Just thinking about your story and wanting to be with your mom and having to wait so long, that also sat with me while reading the book. I thought about how my mom and my uncles and aunts must have felt when my grandparents left them in Jamaica to come to the UK — and they left them with different family members to raise them. So, I connected that with Tru’s story in Patsy, where I often wondered how my mom must have felt at being four years old being left by her parents and not knowing if they were going to come back for her … And I wonder what her experience was like moving from another home into another family. And while reading Tru’s story of packing her little suitcase and moving in with her father’s family, it really made me stop, and I cried quite a bit. Because it’s hard — it’s hard to think about that, and I know you’ve gone through that … I just think it’s so hard to think about that and the effect it must have had on any child, and I can only imagine differing effects per family. But I think what’s also comparable to Tru’s story is that missing and wanting a biological parent’s love but also learning to love and appreciate the people left behind raising you and having that relationship, which we see Tru develops with her father. And, again, I think everyone’s story and experience with this will be different. But it really just made me stop and reflect quite a bit …

V: Yeah, the story of how Tru develops this relationship with her father, who was essentially a stranger in the beginning, and how he teaches her and helps her develop as a soccer player — it was just very sweet. Another thing that comes up in the book and that Dennis-Benn brings up in an essay that she wrote in The Good Immigrant — which is the book that we’ll be discussing on The Lift Up next month — is, despite falling short on its promise of “liberty and justice for all,” she and the character Patsy fulfill their American Dream of what’s really personal freedom. She says (Nicole Dennis-Benn, the author, says):

… for me personally, leaving Jamaica was leaving feeling ostracized as a working-class Jamaican, and also as a lesbian, thinking that [America] was actually finding more freedom to explore parts of myself that I couldn’t explore in Jamaica. And if you were to ask me if any parts of the book are autobiographical, that motivation itself is the most autobiographical part — the motive to come to America.

T: Indeed, and I think that theme of self-determination and the ability to follow your own dreams as well as the freedom to be who you are is a really strong undercurrent in this book — not only with Patsy, but also with all the ancillary characters as they navigate their lives, both in Jamaica as well as immigrants in the US. That vision or dream that is sold internationally, compared to what it’s like when you get there, and then that shock that either breaks you or drives you. What I love about Patsy that is also heartbreaking is the realness, the rawness of that experience and how it jumps off the page. I could feel the excitement, the hopelessness, the depression, the determination, the ambition, and the strength of these characters. And it made the book so much more emotional for me … And I know when we talked offline, I spent a lot of time reading this book in tears … It was just all so relatable through the experiences of people I know and of some of those people who are close to me. And I really, truly commend Nicole Dennis-Benn for crafting such a touching story.

V: Patsy is such a raw and honest book, and I do think that’s why it affects us so much emotionally as readers. One of the themes she explores in the book, for instance, is about womanhood — how it’s defined, how it’s portrayed, and how women who don’t fit that box are marginalized and not represented in the culture. For instance, there’s something really provocative about Dennis-Benn writing a character who’s so ambivalent about something that’s really sacred in society like motherhood. There’s this powerful passage in the beginning of the book:

… the baby wailed. Patsy wouldn’t, couldn’t, move to stop it. Then, out of the blue, the crying ceased. Patsy remembers the relief she felt … But the relief was short-lived. The quiet became frightening … She had a sudden burst of energy that put movement in her legs toward the baby’s crib. There, she caught a glimpse of the small dark face surrounded by a halo of thick black curls … Tru was quietly sucking her thumb, staring up at Patsy as Patsy experienced a small burst of regret. It was as though the child somehow knew, even before she had started to live, that she would have to soothe herself.

And all of this comes back to haunt her later on in New York when she becomes a nanny — which is among the few jobs she can get as an undocumented immigrant. I want to read that section, since it’s just so heartbreaking:

The words Patsy could never say to Tru at that age flow from a small opening inside her at the sight of these children who aren’t hers. All the love she has never known pours out of her now. At night she gathers the babies in her arms and rocks them ‘til they fall asleep … No familiar dark eyes gaze up at her, convicting her of everything she’s done and everything she has failed to do.

T: So heartbreaking! Women, the concept of womanhood, gender norms — they’re all quite central to this novel. As with various cultures around the world, this book exposes us again to gender-conforming norms of what it means to be “lady-like,” what it means to be a woman in Jamaica. And we see this with both Patsy as she grows up, but more visually with Tru, as her inner conflict with wanting to be one of the boys but constantly being pushed to be a “proper” girl is illuminated in her story. We also see how that is reinforced through religion via Patsy mother, Mama G — the way Patsy is forced to have Tru, the way men in Jamaica and New York objectify women throughout the story. And we also see that in the way that Marcus dominates and abuses Cicely and imposes himself on Patsy while she is in the shower while staying at their house. It is as if women have to have permission to exist as they are, the way they want to be, under roles and rules they are forced to accept, and for me, Patsy is trying to break those glass walls of rules that have been boxing her in. However, doing so constantly requires her to pay this price. And it doesn’t matter where you are—I think that’s the interesting bit. You can be in Jamaica in this story, or you could be in America still trying to break these rules. And you think freedom is in America, but it’s not …

V: Growing up in a tradition-oriented Pilipino culture that was also, honestly, macho and misogynist, I really identified with wanting to escape objectification. I mean, I come from a culture where it’s socially acceptable for girls and women to be called “sexy,” while at the same time, there’s this expectation that you’d be chaste until marriage — and also wanting to be free just to be myself without being labeled a “tomboy” for being interested in sports, or an “old maid” for not marrying and having children.

Letting go of that aspect of Pilipino culture and embracing feminism was one of the things that immigrating to the US made possible for me. And so, when Nicole Dennis-Benn talks about that as well in terms of her experience, that just resonated with me. And, as someone who spent significant portions of your life in New York, then Tokyo, and now London, do you find yourself letting go of or adopting things from these different cultures as part of the multiplicity of your identity?

T: Yeah, so I’m actually going to go back to your “tomboy” comment … I related to that “tomboy” label, because I remember as a kid that split between wanting to be what was considered a “tomboy” then — like loving sports and climbing fences with the boys — but then also expecting to be “ladylike” and do what are stereotypically considered girly things. I think I ended up falling somewhere in the middle, but I think those norms are slowly and steadily being chipped away in certain places where you can decide what resonates with you and your personality … And I emphasize, in certain places.

To your question, though, on adopting from different cultures, I do … I think whenever you move somewhere, you do adapt. Otherwise, to a certain extent, you can’t survive, and then one could also question why would you leave home if you have the choice to leave home. But I don’t think that means you stop being who you are either. I think you can try to find balance that honors your heritage as well as accepting the place and, to an extent, the culture of the country you live in or choose to call home … And again, that is if you have a choice, which is a totally different topic for a totally different podcast. But in some ways, I found aspects of Japan to be closer to my personality, which is why I think aspects of assimilating has stuck with me even after leaving; and I think that’s the same with the UK. And even living in Samoa, I found a lot that I could relate to living in the South Pacific that seemed so similar to being West Indian. You know, that whole island culture … But there’s quite a few similarities, I think, between us. And I find that I take in all these aspects. I take them on board, but I’m still who I am, and that’s never going to change. All of these experiences are shaping me holistically.

So, speaking on survival, that’s another huge theme running through the book. And there was one section that stuck with me, which was Patsy’s experience meeting Barrington. In that short section of the book with her meeting him on the train and learning about his experience coming to America, and getting injured, and feeling like he’s failed so that he can’t go home, but still having this sweet conversation with Patsy that makes her feel understood and seen … It’s no wonder it was a game-changing experience for her when he committed suicide so unexpectedly in front of her. I re-read that scene multiple times because it just floored me. And the rawness of her reaction later on, that impact of hopelessness, and shame, and then needing again to find resilience, I found it so powerful in this passage:

Once inside her room, Patsy sinks to the floor, pressing to her chest the shirt of the dead man she will never get to know. What she has kept inside for years, balled up in a steeled fist, explodes as a scream, her throat releasing everything she has kept, every wrong done to her ... She weeps finally, finally with the rage of a woman touching an earlobe for the feel of an heirloom earring and discovering it gone, not knowing when and where it fell, and powerless at this point to find it. Her castaway innocence has long been drowned by the sea, and Patsy weeps for the girl who died with it. The lifelong pain twists her into a fetal position on the floor until the sun slips from the sky and leaves it black. Worn, stripped, and hoarse, Patsy’s cries taper, and something else emerges. A voice. Barrington’s voice. “How is it fate if yuh have control ovah it?”

V: Yeah, I was heartbroken by that section of the book as well. Patsy’s at her lowest point when she meets Barry/Barrington, having been kicked out of her best friend and onetime lover Cecily’s home. I mean, he is a complete stranger to her but is really the first person to make her feel like she can find her place in New York.

Patsy basically leaves everything and everyone behind in Jamaica and risks being undocumented because Cecily writes in a letter, “America is everything that we dreamed about … You have always been my home in this world.” But then when she finally arrives in New York, she realizes that Cecily’s made her choice to stay in her “green card” marriage to a rich man and with their son. And that’s really the only thing I didn’t understand was why she loved Cecily so much that she’d give up everything for her … Especially when we finally meet Cecily and see how she treats or mistreats Patsy.

Then, I listened to her interview with Roxane Gay, and she says something interesting … She says that for Patsy, it was so important that she was chosen as a friend by Cecily, who is fair-skinned, so fair skinned that you could see her flush—in the book, there’s this description, “it’s an ability that made Patsy’s best friend the most worshipped girl in the school.” So, Dennis-Benn poses the question, “Is Patsy really in love with Cicely or the idea of ‘a Cicely’?” and “wanted to explore this idea of ‘friendship’ created out of postcolonial scars.”

It reminded me about growing up in Manhattan. You and I went to a predominantly white high school, and then I chose a career in the predominantly white field of fundraising. I think just three percent of fundraisers are Asian-American. Actually, a Pilipina friend of mine who was also in fundraising for about a decade used to urge me on. She’d say, “You’ve got to keep aiming high and keep at it” … Because it’s this idea of representing a people when you’re in the minority in this particular career path. But the thing is, there was a part of me that always felt like I was performing for the approval of white people, rich white people, in those spaces. And this feeling like I had to be “on,” while at the same time suppressing parts of my identity that could be alienating. And that honestly became a large part of my stress — there’s really something to the psychological stress that, in my case, also ended up manifesting itself physically. And I had to choose between being alive or literally dying for my career or a certain notion of “success.” And it was only quitting that career, which is what made me go back — I can’t explain the feeling of emptiness that I had — and it just made me reconnect in deeper ways to my Pilipina identity and my community. When I think about it, I was really confused about who I was and what I became, and I felt like I had to rebuild myself and my relationships in ways that felt validating and supportive.

T: Wow, Vina. I had no idea you were going through that, but I’m glad that you found your way to what you needed and recognizing that but also sharing that here with us too. I find these all very interesting points. I definitely understand the feeling of having to be “on” and be a version of yourself in order to achieve career success, and therefore losing an aspect of yourself as well. And I think it’s something that Patsy touches on quite a bit, with varying extremes like Marcus and his outright denial of his Jamaican heritage, which is almost akin to this self-loathing, in order to be successful like the non-West Indian side of his family, to Alan the manager at Peta-Gaye’s who’s also Jamaican but treats all the staff terribly while kissing up to his white bosses, or to Patsy who has to constantly hold pieces of herself back to the point where there’s very few people that really get to know her or her story because she’s learned not to get too friendly or to trust anyone, and there’s other characters as well … And I think it’s definitely interesting, and a very well- illuminated point through the various characters.

I also think this book does a great job trying to cast a light on the scourge of colorism, you know, when we think about that relationship between Patsy and Cicely, as you mentioned earlier. Because that’s a remnant of colonialism, and we see how that affects Patsy in terms of how she sees herself and her self worth, how she sees value in Cicely so much so to protect her and take the blame for her, which impacts her chances at success, her chances of getting out of Pennyfield, and we also see how the wider world navigates through colorism. It is a terrible and complex topic, yet I think Dennis-Benn does a great job introducing this and some of the real and lasting consequences this has on Black women.

But as I read through the story, I also reflected on the title of this book, Patsy. Because I’ve heard this before, I’ve heard this as a name you call someone. When I hear the word “patsy,” and even as I looked it up, I understood that the common definition is “a person easily taken advantage of, especially by being cheated or blamed for something; a person easily swindled, deceived, coerced, persuaded …” and in reflecting on that definition, I find it so fitting for this book. Patsy has, in so many ways, been misled or persuaded by other people that have taken advantage of her, especially by Cicely in Jamaica and then again in America and by other people. And I think a bit of why that happens to her — a bit of it is honor, a bit of it is love, a bit of it is trust, some of it is societal norms. And that leads to various instances where she’s taken advantage of by so many different people. But now, she’s looking to break free, to stand on her own, and find her way, albeit the hard way, to finding her own freedom and self-determination.

V: It’s so beautiful. It’s such a beautiful story.

T: It is. So Vina, I know there was one final point from the interview with Roxane Gay that you had wanted to touch on today, and I think that point was around a writer’s connection to their readers?

V: Yeah, that was such a great writerly discussion, and Roxane Gay points out in the interview that the:

… connection to the reader isn’t talked about enough, especially for Black women because we tend to write stories that don’t get seen a lot. The stories exist, and there are plenty of people who write them, but they don’t break through, and so it’s interesting to hear that you (Nicole Dennis-Benn) prioritize that because I find it a satisfying thing … I do care about what my readers think, and I always, of course, care most about what Black women think.

The interview also took place in June, so it was just as Black Lives Matter protests were erupting all over the world with the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and so many others. Gaye asks Dennis-Benn this question, “What’s it like to promote a book while the world seems to be burning?”

And Dennis-Benn answers:

I write on faith. I have an agent who believes in me … and literally for Patsy’s story, I asked her “Please help me,” because we all know our stories don’t get read, it don’t even get sold, and we know this. Bringing this back now to Black Lives Matter, seeing the names of men being killed and Black women are erased. It took pushing to just “say her name.” And as a Black woman myself writing these stories, about Black women protagonists, I have to be forceful about how to get our stories out there for people to care about Black women.

T: Wow, yes. I agree with this conversation between Roxane and Nicole. As we were discussing earlier, I think that is why sometimes we cannot find the stories that relate to us easily, and I’m very appreciative, with Dennis-Benn’s response in needing to be forceful about how to get our stories out there so people do care about us. The thing is, these aren’t new stories, but I’d like to hope that people are now paying attention to them.

V: That is the hope. So once again, great chat about this amazing book Patsy by Nicole Denis-Benn, and of course we got a little bit into Queenie by Candice Carty Williams. We’ll also have a list of books by other Caribbean authors on our Medium blog, in case you’d like to delve more into stories by Caribbean authors. And if you have your favorite Caribbean authors that you want to share with us, please interact with us through our Instagram page @theliftuppod.

T: And to close out, we do want to give you a heads-up on what we are reading. So, for all our listeners out there, for September, we are covering both the US and UK versions of the Good Immigrant, which are a collection of essays curated by Nikesh Shukla. And for October, we’ll be looking to feature books within the sci-fi genre. So, super-excited to be switching gears here in terms of stories we showcase. I’m really excited about sci-fi! So, everyone, feel free to send us questions or suggestions through our Instagram page, again @theliftuppod, and thanks again for listening to us here at The Lift Up Podcast.

*Resources and other books by Caribbean authors/authors of Caribbean heritage (click on links below to purchase titles through The Lift Up’s shop on bookshop.org):

• How to Love a Jamaican by Alexis Arthurs (fiction)
• Queen of the Conquered by Kacen Callender (fantasy fiction)
• These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card (fiction)
• Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams (fiction)
• The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins (fiction)
• Edwidge Danticat’s fiction: Breath, Eyes, Memory, Krik? Krak!, Everything Inside; and her memoir Brother, I’m Dying
• Frantz Fanon’s nonfiction: Black Skin, White Masks, The Wretched of the Earth
• Roxane Gay’s nonfiction: Bad Feminist (essays), Hunger (memoir); Ayiti (collection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry about the Haitian diasporic experience); Black Panther: World of Wakanda (comic book)
• Nalo Hopkinson’s speculative fiction: Brown Girl in The Ring, Midnight Robber, Skin Folk, The Salt Roads, The New Moon’s Arms
• Ishion Hutchinson’s poetry: Far District: Poems, House of Lords and Commons
• The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C. L. R. James (nonfiction)
• Marlon James’ fiction: The Book of Night Women, A Brief History of Seven Killings, Black Leopard, Red Wolf
• Jamaica Kincaid’s fiction: At the Bottom of the River, Annie John, The Autobiography of My Mother; and her nonfiction A Small Place (extended essay) and My Brother (memoir)
• Andrea Levy’s fiction: Small Island, The Long Song
• Audre Lorde’s nonfiction: The Cancer Journals, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (biomythography), Sister Outsider (essays and speeches); and her poetry The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde
• Kei Miller’s fiction: Fear of Stones and Other Stories, Augustown; and his poetry The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (poetry)
• Frying Plantain by Zalika Benta-Reid (fiction)
• Sugar in the Blood: A Family’s Story of Slavery and Empire (nonfiction — family history) by Andrea Stuart
• Tiphanie Yanique’s fiction: How to Escape from a Leper Colony: A Novella and Stories, Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel

Also, you can follow the amazing Cindy Allman @bookofcinz on Instagram for a more in depth list of Caribbean literature and authors, as well as follow #ReadCaribbean to learn more about the efforts being made to ensure the work of Caribbean authors are made available and are well represented globally!

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