House of Anansi advertised this gorgeous reprint during Black History month, and I just had to get it. Between the title, and the cover (and I love A-List prints), I knew I needed to read it, and have it. 

This is a collection of short stories that take place in Barbados, and Toronto, and are about the experiences of leaving home in search of a new one, as well as the racism that immigrants face on arrival in Canada. What I really liked is the short stories all had the same cast of characters in them, so over the course of the book I felt like I got to know them all somewhat. 

I loved the tone and style employed by Clarke in this book. The stories were very descriptive of the emotional and physical environment of the characters, and the turns of phrases used were beautiful, heartbreaking, and perfect. I found myself underlining so many sentences, descriptions, and sparklets, and still left so many hidden on the page to find on my next read through. If you are a reader who appreciates beautiful language, pick up this book.

I think my favourite story was “They Heard a Ringing of Bells”, simply about a trio sitting in some grass to hear church bells ringing. One is being deported back to Barbados, and the other is dying of TB. It was the second in the book and was so simple in its story, but so much was packed in that it really showed me what Clarke was capable of. Two others that really stuck with me was “A Wedding in Toronto” and “What Happened”, the first about an interracial couple’s wedding, not attended by the bride’s family and broken up by the police. The latter is about the husband coming to terms with his wife’s racism, previously hidden behind “appreciation”, but which was truly exoticization and fetishization, but how he still loves her. 

Each of these stories weave together a community, telling stories of their life in Canada and Barbados, finding love and success, or not, and each densely packed with feeling. After reading this book, I can’t wait to get to the other two Clarke books on my TBR.