Frying Plantain - Readings

Description

This is the book I ve been waiting to read my entire life on the diasporic Caribbean experience. The writing is sharp, intelligent and everything you d expect from a talented Jamaican writer. I honestly love this book Symeon Brown Frying Plantain is every bit as delicious as the title suggests Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie In her brilliantly incisive debut, Zalika Reid-Benta artfully depicts the tensions between mothers and daughters, second-generation immigrants and first-generation cultural expectations, and Black identity and predominately white society. Kara Davis is a girl caught in the middle ? of her Canadian nationality 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 . Set in Toronto s Little Jamaica , Kara moves from girlhood to the threshold of adulthood, from elementary school to high school graduation, in these twelve interconnected stories. 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.

About the Author

Zalika Benta-Reid is a Toronto-based writer who received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University in 2014 and is an alumnus of the 2017 Banff Writing Studio. Frying Plantain is her debut and she is currently working on a young-adult fantasy novel drawing inspiration from Jamaican folklore and Akan spirituality.