The Islands
Stories
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize
Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
A Hurston Wright Legacy Award Nominee
Longlisted for the 2023 New American Voices Award
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Powerful stories that explore the legacy of colonialism, and issues of race, immigration, sexual discrimination, and class in the lives of Jamaican women across London, Panama, France, Jamaica, Florida and more
The Islands follows the lives of Jamaican women—immigrants or the descendants of immigrants—who have relocated all over the world to escape the ghosts of colonialism on what they call the Island. Set in the United States, Jamaica, and Europe, these international stories examine the lives of an uncertain and unsettled cast of characters. In one story, a woman and her husband impulsively leave San Francisco and move to Florida with wild dreams of American reinvention only to unearth the cracks in their marriage. In another, the only Jamaican mother—who is also a touring comedienne—at a prep school feels pressure to volunteer in the school’s International Day. Meanwhile, in a third story, a travel writer finally connects with the mother who once abandoned her.
Set in locations and times ranging from 1950s London to 1960s Panama to modern-day New Jersey, Dionne Irving reveals the intricacies of immigration and assimilation in this debut, establishing a new and unforgettable voice in Caribbean-American literature. Restless, displaced, and disconnected, these characters try to ground themselves—to grow where they find themselves planted—in a world in which the tension between what’s said and unsaid can bend the soul.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The characters in Irving's penetrating collection (after the novel Quint), many of whom are Jamaican Canadians, navigate the persistent hurdles of their family relationships as they attempt to build new lives while reckoning with the past. In "Waking Life," Jamaican Canadian travel writer Po meets her Jamaican British mother, Janice, for the first time since early childhood, and her mother's uncompromising independence fuels Po's hope of keeping alive her own fragile romantic relationship. In "Canal," a Jamaican Panamanian Canadian woman, Pilar, travels to Panama from Canada to settle her childhood maid's affairs, realizing only as an adult that it was her maid's history as a Holocaust survivor that shaped the fierce protection she gave Pilar during the 1965 riots that led to her family's emigration. "It is hard to be the last one left," Pilar thinks. Throughout, and in lucid prose, Irving depicts her characters' chilly shocks over unexpected gaps in intimacy with their loved ones as they work to fit into non-immigrant Black spaces, making for stories that are both class-conscious and richly atmospheric. Irving's inviting combination of subjects and style heralds a welcome new voice.
