By Donna Hemans

It's no surprise that islands transformed and reshaped by colonialism continue to experience its lingering effects. In these books, we see the fallout of colonialism in several ways—a white Puerto Rican grandmother shearing her granddaughter’s “bad” hair and describing her worst nightmare as “her white daughters marrying Negros”; a young Dominican girl being led to believe that her green eyes are “a winning lottery ticket”; a Bermudan woman grappling with her white privilege and her reluctance to lose its benefits. The lingering effects of colonialism also underly the ever-present theme of migration in literature of the Caribbean and the diaspora. Four of the seven books in this installment of my year of reading across the Caribbean feature people of Caribbean descent learning the hard way how to make new lives in America or facing the prospect of losing the new lives they’ve built in adopted homes. 

Dominican Republic: Neruda on the Park, Cleyvis Natera

Luz Guerrero is living the immigrant’s dream. Harvard-educated, she is an attorney at a top law firm in Manhattan and craving a lifestyle vastly different from the one her parents could afford. When Luz loses her job, she meets a white man who is also the developer responsible for the construction of luxury condos in Luz’s neighborhood. Luz’s budding romance puts her at odds with her mother, a vocal opponent of the changes to the neighborhood. And Luz struggles with an immigrant’s constant concern: how not to disappoint parents who have sacrificed to give their children the American Dream. 

Dominican Republic: Dominicana, Angie Cruz 

Angie Cruz’s coming-of-age novel, inspired by her mother’s story, follows Ana Canción as she migrates to New York City with her new, much older husband. Married at 15 years old to a 32-year-old man, Ana is at the center of her mother’s plan to move her family from their poverty-stricken community in the Dominican Republic to America. Ana’s husband, Juan Ruiz, also doesn’t marry out of love but to complete a financial transaction. As their transactional marriage implodes, Ana finds herself trapped in a rundown Washington Heights apartment with an abusive husband, no resources of her own, and her mother’s voice in her ear urging her to find a way to bring her family to the promised land. 

Dominican Republic: How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, Angie Cruz

When Cara Romero loses her job at the factory where she has worked for decades, she turns to a Senior Workforce Program to get unemployment benefits and job training. But losing her job is only one of Cara’s many problems. She is estranged from her son, is on the verge of destroying her relationship with her sister, and faces possible eviction, deepening debt, and the rapid gentrification of her neighborhood. Each of these concerns emerge in the twelve sessions Cara has with the job placement counselor in whose office the entire novel is set. 

Haiti: What Storm, What Thunder, Myriam J.A. Chancy 

Since the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti in 2010, several fictional accounts have emerged. Myriam Chancy’s What Storm, What Thunder begins when the earthquake hits, and it explores the diverse ways such a tragedy disrupts lives both on and off the island. The novel is told from the perspectives of 10 interconnected characters, ranging from a wealthy executive at a water company looking to sell water to the devastated people of his home country, to an architect flying back from Rwanda to face the devastation, and a mother who can’t look at the body of her child. Ma Lou, a vendor in the market who has seen it all, is the thread holding these stories together. 

U.S. Virgin Islands: The Lesson, Cadwell Turnbull

In this science fiction novel, the Ynaa—a group of advanced aliens on a research mission—occupy the U.S. Virgin Islands. While the Ynaa have not disclosed the purpose of their research mission, it is their often violent and deadly responses to the islanders that generate conflict. When Derrick takes a job as assistant to Mera, an Ynaa who serves as ambassador, he is ostracized and his developing relationship with Mera sets up the book’s ultimate conflict. The Lesson explores colonialism and how the power of love can transcend culture and race. 

Bermuda: The Drowned Forest, Angela Barry

In Angela Barry’s The Drowned Forest, a teenager named Genesis avoids incarceration when three women step in to share responsibility for her care. Genesis moves between the women’s diverse worlds, from Nina’s respectable Black middle-class home, to Lizzie’s Portuguese family, and Tess’s privileged white upbringing. Genesis clashes with Hugh, a young Welshman who has recently moved to the island to explore Bermuda’s fossils. The Drowned Forest is a novel of the old versus new and an island emerging from its colonial roots. 

Puerto Rico: Ordinary Girls, Jaquira Díaz

At 18 years old, Jaquira Díaz has already survived a lifetime of dysfunction—a chaotic and sometimes violent family life in a housing project in Puerto Rico, a move to Miami Beach, drug addiction, attempted suicides, multiple arrests, sexual abuse, her mother’s downward spiral from drug abuse and mental illness. Like Díaz, each member of her family is complicated: her father pivots from activism to selling cocaine, her maternal grandmother denigrates her grandchildren’s African heritage, her older brother refuses to live with their mother, and her younger sister escapes to Europe as soon as she can. While Ordinary Girls covers tough topics, it is a memoir of resilience and finding a way to save one’s self. 

++

Donna Hemans is the author River Woman, Tea by the Sea, and The House of Plain Truth (forthcoming from Zibby Books in 2023). In 2015, she won the Lignum Vitae Una Marson Award for Adult Literature for the unpublished manuscript of Tea by the Sea and was named co-winner of the 2003-4 Towson University Prize for Literature for River Woman. Donna’s short fiction and essays have appeared in Slice, Electric Literature, Ms. Magazine, The Rumpus, Crab Orchard Review, among others. Donna lives in Maryland and is the owner of DC Writers Room, a co-working studio for writers based in Washington, D.C.