"Long-lingering, enthralling short stories set in London, the Caribbean and the USA exploring courageous lives lived away from home, and being black in white worlds."
Like the very best short stories, Wandeka Gayle’s Motherland and Other Stories are multi-layered, long-lingering, and delivered in a deceptively simple style - vivid vignettes of life from varied corners of the globe with lasting impact that grows over time and draws you back.
Many of the tales take turns down unexpected paths - purposeful detours and changes of direction that reveal new truths. Others present intimate, intense portraits of their protagonist’s complex relationship to home (Jamaica). All of them exude elegance and insights into the human condition. In my book, that’s pretty much short story perfection.
Though distinct, the twelve stories are united by the courage of their protagonists, and an exploration of what it is to be black in white worlds. In Motherland we meet compassionate Roxanne, who moved from Jamaica and works in a London care home. She encounters racism, but strikes a bond with an elderly writer resident. Then there’s Ayo in Finding Joy, who leaves Jamaica to study in Louisiana and finds agency through personal upheavals “in this foreign place.” Each story, and each woman’s experiences, had me utterly in their thrall.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
Win a Copy of The Sisters of Hope Square by Faith Hogan and a Bucket List Scratch Book
Closing date: 04/07/2026
From London, the USA and the Caribbean, Wandeka Gayle’s mostly young black women protagonists win our hearts as risk-taking, adventurous explorers of the white world, away from home, which at some point has been Jamaica.
They include Roxanne who starts work in a care home in London, who strikes up a rapport with a depressed old man who used to be a writer; Ayo who heads to college in Louisiana, and fights off the internalised voice of her godly, tambourine-beating aunt to begin an affair with an engaging, slightly older white man; there’s Sophia who comes to work in Georgia, who struggles to know whether her inability to engage more deeply with other people is really about racism or, rather, a more personally embedded reluctance. What characterises these women is a readiness to encounter, an attempt to get to grips with the oddities and strangeness of the white world, and like Ayo to engage with it, whilst being pretty sure that Forrest “could never understand her world”. They take risks and are sometimes forced to pay for their courage.
Other characters have to confront situations of their own making, like Angela returning from the USA for her mother’s funeral, trying to find some point of contact with the now almost grown children she abandoned, or Melba who, after her husband dies, must confront the silence she has permitted in their marriage.
The situations that Wandeka Gayle writes about are in the main the stuff of everyday life, but what really elevates this collection is Gayle’s skill, empathy, grace and acute psychological understanding of her characters.
Motherland and Other Stories features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Shorter Reads, General Fiction, Fiction, Fiction: special features, Sharing Diverse Voices, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Narrative theme: Love and relationships, Narrative theme: Interior life, Narrative theme: Identity / belonging, Narrative theme: Displacement, exile, migration, Racism and racial discrimination / Anti-racism, Fiction: narrative themes, Social discrimination and social justice, Social and ethical issues, Society and culture: general, Society and Social Sciences, Books of the Month, Star Books, Recommendations
Motherland and Other Stories is available in Ebook, Paperback
Motherland and Other Stories was written by Wandeka Gayle and published by Peepal Tree Press Ltd
Motherland and Other Stories has 184 pages
£8.99
.jpg)
