The human origins of Beatrice Porter and other essential ghosts : a novel

Title:

Author:

Palmer, Soraya, author.

Personal Author:

Palmer, Soraya, author.

ISBN:

9781646220953

Edition:

First Catapult edtion.

Physical Description:

277 pages ; 24 cm

Contents:

What's My Name?: A Prelude -- Anansi's Daughters -- Devil in the Shape of a Rooster -- Tall Tales from Sasha Also Known as Ashes aka the Mannish Girl -- Once Upon a Time: Featuring Star Scars and Dreams of Flight -- Sky Full a Curry and Purple Balloon -- Two Brothers, the Rolling Calf, and the Wind Herself -- Sasha and the Photograph -- n Unfortuante Event on Maple Street -- Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts -- Lost in Her Story -- Dglo -- Anansi Stories -- Instructions for Communicating with Dead Mothers.

Abstract:

Two Jamaican-Trinidadian sisters in Brooklyn, Zora and Sasha Porter, drifting apart as they bear witness to their father's violence and their mother's worsening illness, must come together to answer to something more ancient and powerful than they know--and confront a long-buried family secret.

Subject Term:

Sisters -- Fiction.

Family secrets -- Fiction.

Women, Black -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction.

Genre:

Novels.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Belmont	Book	FICTION PALMER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... East End	Book	FICTION PALMER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Ginter Park	Book	FICTION PALMER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Hull Street	Book	FICTION PALMER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... North Avenue	Book	FICTION PALMER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Westover Hills	Book	FICTION PALMER	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

"Mothers never die. Children love to resurrect us in they stories."

Folktales and spirits animate this lively and unforgettable coming-of-age tale of two Jamaican-Trinidadian sisters in Brooklyn grappling with their mother's illness, their father's infidelity, and the truth of their family's past

Sisters Zora and Sasha Porter are drifting apart. Bearing witness to their father's violence and their mother's worsening illness, an unsettled Zora escapes into her journal, dreaming of being a writer, while Sasha discovers sex and chest binding, spending more time with her new girlfriend than at home.

But the sisters, like their parents, must come together to answer to something more ancient and powerful than they know--and reckon with a family secret buried in the past. A tale told from the perspective of a mischievous narrator, featuring the Rolling Calf who haunts butchers, Mama Dglo who lives in the ocean, a vain tiger, and an outsmarted snake, The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts is set in a world as alive and unpredictable as Helen Oyeyemi's.

Telling of the love between sisters who don't always see eye to eye, this extraordinary debut novel is a celebration of the power of stories, asking, What happens to us when our stories are erased? Do we disappear? Or do we come back haunting?

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

Two Brooklyn sisters are raised on the Anansi stories and then realize their parents lived them. Sasha and Zora Porter are growing up in Brooklyn at the turn of the millennium. They exchange HitClip cartridges and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But their main cultural touchstones are the Afro-Caribbean folkstories their parents have raised them on. Their Jamaican father, a failed writer and abusive husband named Nigel, claims he once slayed a spirit called the Rolling Calf with just a penknife. Their Trinidadian mother, the titular Beatrice, recites the Anansi stories with her own interpretations: Anansi, in Beatrice's telling, is a woman. The family is pulled apart as each member must walk their own path. Sasha explores her attraction to girls and starts to bind her chest; Zora struggles to make good on the literary promise suggested by her first name; Nigel starts a new family with a White woman; and, finally and heartbreakingly, Beatrice develops brain cancer and goes back to Trinidad to be with her Shango healer grandmother. Their story is told from different points of view: Some chapters are matter-of-fact diary entries, while others take on the dramatic tone of fables. Then, thrillingly, Palmer collapses that distance. Nigel really did face down the Rolling Calf, but the truth isn't as heroic as he would like it to be. Palmer is playful as a stylist without undermining her themes of family, identity, and belonging. However, not all of the book's sections are equally strong, and Palmer sometimes struggles with dialogue. Nigel's attempts to speak "White," for example, are often played for comedy ("Their coconut lattes are out of this world") but can sometimes make him sound like an AI chatbot. Yet when the family breaks bread at the novel's end, it's clear that Palmer has threaded her narrative web successfully, using a cast of unique characters as her spider's silk. This uneven but promising debut tells a family fable that rides on its well-developed protagonists. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.