"This magnificent novel jangles with the tangled dreams, disappointments and desires of a Jamaican woman who leaves her island for the purported Promised Land of America."
As impactful as the author’s Montego Bay-set debut (Here Comes the Sun), this stirring novel sees Patsy fulfill her dream of leaving Jamaica (and Tru, her five-year-old daughter), to join Cicely, her best friend and secret lover, in Brooklyn. But when Patsy reaches her land of milk and honey a chasm gapes between her expectations and the actualities of being an undocumented immigrant: “The job that she had at the Ministry in Kingston was by far a more dignified job than cleaning houses, than wiping the assess of other people’s children, walking a dog and picking up shit.” And Cicely doesn’t live up to expectations, either. “Yuh don’t have to keep up di act wid me,” Patsy says to her friend, whose situation is less than the idyll she’d painted for Patsy. Meanwhile, with the passing of a decade, Tru is becoming her own young woman, defying convention by playing football with boys, and binding her breasts to keep them hidden. Across the ocean, and down the years, mother and daughter have more in common than either might imagine.
Traversing generations and cultures, exposing white privilege and homophobia, exploring sexuality, the pressures of motherhood and the raw struggles of womanhood, Patsy’s plight of fleeing one cage for another, her search for peace and passion, makes for a profoundly stirring and highly readable novel.
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| Primary Genre | Romance / Relationship Stories |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
From award-winning novelist Nicole Dennis-Benn comes this beautifully layered portrait of motherhood, immigration and sacrifice.
For Patsy, a visa to America is her ticket to freedom, a passport to the 'land of opportunity'. She yearns to be reunited with Cicely, her oldest friend and secret lover, but her plans do not include her religious mother or even her young daughter, Tru. As Patsy struggles to survive as an undocumented migrant, Tru grapples with her own questions of identity and sexuality. Can she ever understand, or even forgive, her mother's decision to leave?
Dancing between the jittery streets of New York and the languid rhythms of Jamaica, Patsy is the story of what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman and, ultimately, a survivor. A passionate, moving and fiercely urgent novel tracing threads of love that stretch across years and oceans.
Patsy features in the following genres: Books of the Month, Sharing Diverse Voices, Star Books, Romance / Relationship Stories, Fiction, Recommendations, LGBTQ+ Fiction
Patsy is available in Paperback, Hardback
Patsy was written by Nicole Dennis-Benn and published by Oneworld Publications
Patsy has 426 pages
£9.89
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