My Books

Editor: Chantelle Aimee Osman (Lake Union Publishing)/ Grace Wynter

Salomon graduates high school as his father increasingly distances himself from the family, abusing alcohol, philandering, and suggesting to Salomon that there is more to his Aunt Mirlande’s death than her diabetes. It is a revelation which shakes the tranquility of the family, as Salomon’s mother and grandmother must revisit their beloved’s death. At around the same time, Salomon’s younger brother is involved in a tragic car accident, forcing Salomon to feel torn between being home with his family in Guadeloupe and continuing his studies in Strasbourg. As time passes however, he makes Strasbourg his home, but is nonetheless pulled back to the island. As his mother’s elder son, he feels responsible for the family and is overwhelmed with guilt for having left the island. He feels for his aging grandmother, for his lonely mother, and for his much younger troubled brother whom he barely knows –his father’s illegitimate son. As much as the family wants to put the past behind them, they are forced to continually grapple with it. The freedom they seek, may only be an idealized one, perhaps only attainable in death. 

Editor : Sarah Guan (Erewhon Books)/ Leticia Gomez

When his estranged father murders his mother and uncle, Fidel is sent from the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe to live with his maternal grandmother on the neighbouring island of Dominica. When she, too, dies, Fidel’s Obeah heritage is exposed –a taboo considered witchcraft by the Roman Catholic community. As he comes of age, he increasingly develops an ability to feel the presence of the dead, even interacting with them. He is however, determined to reject Obeah, and moves to North America, embarking on a journey where he manoeuvres through love, loss and the complexities of youth. He has to decide if Obeah is a gift or a curse. It is a story of what we perceive as taboo, colonial domination, and the systemic erasure of cultural identity.  

Editor : Leticia Gomez (Erewhon Books)

In the twelfth house of the zodiac, where the subconscious, old age, and the afterlife rule, the spirit of an unborn child wishes to be born. She wills her father from the coast of the Bight of Biafra, onto a slave ship to the island of a brutally colonized Dominica. After a tragic encounter, her father flees into the night and maroons in the rugged mountains, seeking refuge among the indigenous Kalinago. But his daughter’s unborn spirit is unrelenting –her desire to walk the earth stronger than her father’s own will to live. It is through her spirit that he meets a young Kalinago woman who gives birth to her. However, the twelfth house is also a house of secrets, of dreams, and of death. Her greatest dream is nothing compared to her revenge. An obanje among the stars, the scars on her body to prove it, her will to be born, the most damning of flaws.