October 16, 2023
Cooke makes an assured debut with the story of a queer Jamaican Canadian woman reckoning with her roots. In 1996 Vancouver, 20-year-old narrator Akúa loses her beloved 12-year-old brother Bryson to sickle cell anemia, the same illness that killed their mother when Akúa was nine and the family still lived in Jamaica. Overcome with grief, Akúa takes her brother’s ashes home to her stubborn older sister, Tamika, in Jamaica. Tamika’s prior refusal to visit a dying Bryson continues to upset Akúa and exacerbates the sisters’ strained dynamic, as does Tamika’s homophobia. There’s still love between them, though, and Cooke uses Akúa’s return to examine the meaning of home, be it familial or geographic. “Am I Jamaican?” Akúa asks herself as she struggles to understand patois after Tamika labels her “foreign.” The god-fearing Tamika also hits Akúa and demands she “renounce” her sexuality. Defiant, Akúa strikes up a relationship with a stripper named Jayda. Akúa’s chronicle of self-determination is stirring, as are the flashbacks to her childhood in Texas, where the family first moved from Jamaica and where Akúa resisted her teachers’ attempts at assimilation. Cooke successfully evokes the temerity and rebellious intelligence of Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse. Agent: Monika Woods, Triangle House.
October 15, 2023
After her brother's untimely death, a young, queer Jamaican woman living in Canada travels home to Kingston. Twice during her bumpy attempt to reacquaint herself with the city of her birth, Ak�a is accused of having no "broughtupsy"--manners. " 'Yuh see dis?' the woman says, nudging someone beside her. 'Gyal nuh 'ave no broughtupsy.' " Though she was born and lived there until her mother's death from sickle cell anemia when Ak�a was 10, she is now 20 and making her first return visit. It is 1996; the occasion is a sad one. Her 12-year-old brother has also died of sickle cell, and she is returning to spread his ashes. It is the first time she's seen her older sister, Tamika, since their widowed father left the island for Texas, then Vancouver, taking Ak�a with him; Tamika chose to stay on and attend boarding school. As a committed Christian, Tamika is appalled by Ak�a's sexuality (she's just parted ways with a longtime girlfriend), warning her that she will not be accepted. " 'They will laugh at you and spit in your face, ' Tamika says. 'Are you listening? They will stone you. They will bring their machetes and guns. Listen to me, mi seh! They will butcher you in broad daylight then leave you to rot. And the police will pay you no mind.' " The style mixes a straightforward simplicity with patois vocabulary and, ultimately, more graphic language after Ak�a gets sexually involved with a woman who works in a strip club. As Ak�a's time in Kingston moves forward, as she deposits bits of her brother's ashes at key locations from her childhood, the story builds to a fierce, then sweetly redemptive, climax. The voice of innocence, the violence, and the sibling dynamics of Cooke's debut recall Justin Torres' We the Animals (2011), also a queer coming-of-age story--but this blend of those elements is as unique as a thumbprint. Vivid, emotionally intense, and unafraid of the dark.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
November 1, 2023
Cooke's debut is a moving coming-of-age story about a young Jamaican woman coming to terms with her family and the tragedies that have befallen them. In 1996, 20-year-old Ak�a is on her way to Jamaica to visit her older sister, Tamika. It's the first time Ak�a has returned in the 10 years since her father moved them to Texas and then Canada. Deaths precipitated the family's departure and this return trip: first Ak�a's mother's, and now that of her 12-year-old brother, Bryson, both from sickle cell anemia. Ak�a is in a bad place; she is grieving, she just broke up with her girlfriend, and she resents Tamika for returning to Jamaica when they were young, for not visiting while Bryson was dying, and for her homophobia. Her three-week stay in Jamaica, which finds her exploring and working to understand and communicate in patois, is interspersed with flashbacks to her childhood. While the tenor shifts abruptly when Ak�a meets a stripper, the book's themes of family, regret, and who and what make a home are ever present.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.