Kirjahaku

" A] haunting story . . . Bears witness to the struggles of an African Caribbean woman as she seeks to find her place in America without selling her soul." -BEBE MOORE CAMPBELL, Author of Your Blues Ain't Like Mine When Sara Edgehill is given a scholarship to leave Trinidad and attend a college in Wisconsin, she is thrilled. America, the one she has seen in the movies, is a land of dreams, prosperity, and equality. Not like Trinidad, where her parents cast disappointed glances her way because she wasn't born with lighter-colored skin. But when Sara leaves her island's brilliant green fields and warm sparkling waters for the pale cornfields of the Midwest, the ties to her home and her past grip her as strongly as America's cold, winter winds. For as soon as Sara sets foot in her new home, she must make tough decisions. Wanting desperately to fit in, she begins to understand that in America, the color lines run deeper than they did even in Trinidad. And as Sara forms ties with two other West Indian students-the beguiling, haunted Courtney and the passionate, vivacious Sam-she is irrevocably pulled into the very center of America's exploding civil rights movement.

"Absorbing . . . Nunez] writes novels that resound with thunder and fury." --Essence Prospero's Daughter is a captivating recreation of Shakespeare's The Tempest set on a verdant Caribbean island during the height of tensions between the native population and British colonists. Using Shakespeare's play as a template to address questions of race, class, and power, Nunez turns an intimate eye to an unlikely bond formed between a boy and a girl of disparate backgrounds.When Peter Gardner's ruthless medical genius leads him to experiment on his unwitting patients--often at the expense of their lives--he flees England, seeking an environ where his experiments might continue without scrutiny. He arrives with his three-year-old-daughter, Virginia, in Chacachacare, an isolated island off the coast of Trinidad, in the early 1960s.Gardner considers the locals to be nothing more than savages. He assumes ownership of the home of a servant boy named Carlos, seeing in him a suitable subject upon whom to continue his amoral medical work. Nonetheless, he educates the boy alongside Virginia. As Virginia and Carlos grow and come of age together, they form a covert relationship that violates the outdated mores of colonial rule.When Gardner unveils the pair's relationship and accuses Carlos of a monstrous act, the investigation into the truth is left up to a curt, stonehearted British inspector, whose inquiries bring to light a horrendous secret. At turns epic and intimate, Prospero's Daughter is one of the finest novels of the past two decades.

"Highly recommended . . . a deeply felt and compassionate novel. Wise and resonant, it will strike a chord with readers." --Library JournalJustin and Sally Peters, both passionate educators--Justin, a hardened, Harvard-educated professor of British and classic literature at a small public Brooklyn college, and Sally, a gentle and spirited elementary school teacher teaching her students that happiness and joy require strength and perseverance--have had a calm and loving marriage, graciously enlivened by their curious four-year-old daughter, Giselle.Suddenly Sally, coming from a wrought past punctured with loss, begins to pull away from the man in whom she originally found comfort and safety. When Giselle starts asking him if Mommy is okay, Justin worries that Sally is on the verge of leaving him. Is she harboring feelings for a lost lover or, Justin wonders, was she ever really meant to be his wife? As Sally retreats deeper and deeper into herself, Justin wonders if her past has really come to claim her once and for all.While Justin reads Hamlet to his students, he tries to find answers in the literature that became his profession. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow, Hamlet concludes. Let be. Does Shakespeare know how to keep Sally from leaving? Should Justin do nothing and wait for Sally to right herself? How deep can he read before he knows how to keep his family together?As deep snow falls in Brooklyn, Justin and Sally's relationship is put to the test. What once was a warm and cozy marriage bed becomes as cold as the encroaching winter frost. Kept in orbit by their curious daughter, Giselle, the couple must decide if staying together is in everyone's best interest.Elizabeth Nunez's classic fifth novel follows Justin and Sally through the harrowing trials of love and family and offers a remarkably tender introspection into the aching and sometimes harsh downturns of a modern-age love story.

Set amongst the struggles of American, Caribbean, and African diplomacy in the late 1980s, Discretion follows the harrowing journey of Oufoula Sindede, a diplomat of rough beginnings, who discovers his desires may be out of his control.Dutifully married to lovely Nerida, Oufoula goes through the motions of marriage, formally keeping his distance from the woman with whom he shares his bed. And yet there is a deeper, buried passion within him that will lead him to question which values he holds sacred and which can be sacrificed.Despite his quiet marriage, the memory of a fiery love affair triggers Oufoula to entangle himself in the life of another woman, a Jamaican-born painter named Marguerite. Soon he discovers that Marguerite is nothing like any of his quick old flames or his gentle wife, Nerida-Marguerite is much more.And so begins a whirlwind affair, spanning over twenty years, between a young woman who wants order and love and a man who is torn between the honors of his profession and his dishonorable love life; the old African customs of polygamy and the American dream; and the passion for a mistress and the duty to his wife. Nunez's heartbreaking fourth novel questions the customs we think we know with the truths that passion and love reveal about ourselves.

Caribbean professor Lila Bonnard arrives in Vermont for a short-term teaching position and is forced to confront the terrible legacy of American (in)justice"In Now Lila Knows, Elizabeth Nunez has crafted an indelible saga, one that is both of the times and timeless; both personal and universal. This beautifully, masterfully written novel is at once a compelling love story, a crucial exploration of the contemporary immigrant experience, and a trenchant critique of American racism."--Mitchell S. Jackson, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of The Residue Years"Timely and essential, Now Lila Knows is a luminous story of discovery and the consequencesof being Black in America."--Bernice L. McFadden, author of The Book of Harlan"Now Lila Knows is a tale of empathy that comes at the necessary cost, however delayed, of losing one's innocence, of trading it for a harsher, more urgent reality. By encircling the reader in what they might think they know--about America, about the Caribbean, and the spaces in between--Elizabeth Nunez challenges us to answer for ourselves not only what we know, but also what we are prepared to do. The magic of this novel is that it opens a window to Black life in America through the eyes of an immigrant. A must read."--Kevin Adonis Browne, OCM Bocas Prize winner, author of High MasLila Bonnard has left her island home in the Caribbean to join the faculty as a visiting professor at Mayfield College in a small Vermont town. On her way from the airport to Mayfield, Lila witnesses the fatal shooting of a Black man by the police. It turns out that the victim was a professor at Mayfield, and was giving CPR to a white woman who was on the verge of an opioid overdose.The two Black faculty and a Black administrator in the otherwise all-white college expect Lila to be a witnessin the case against the police. Unfortunately, Lila fears that in the current hostile political climate against immigrants of color she may jeopardize her position at the college by speaking out, and her fianc advises her to remain neutral.Now Lila Knows is a gripping story that explores our obligation to act when confronted with the unfair treatment of fellow human beings. A page-turner with universal resonance, this novel will leave readers rethinking the meaning of love and empathy.