How To Love A Jamaican

How To Love A Jamaican is a short story collection by Alexia Arthurs. I chose the audio version of the book, and I am glad I did. I felt like I had an authentic experience of what the speech was intended to sound like, capturing the intonations that we sometimes can miss when we read [given that the books I read are all in written in English and yet it is not my native language].

The short stories explore themes of home and belonging, identity and self-discovery, love and loss. The characters are easily relatable: from the girl craving to be seen and accepted, to the old man with a secret he would rather his wife died before ever finding out about [no, he does not kill her or try to; just the selfish desire for your secret to remain secret, where it makes more sense that others die and not so much yourself…ok, I am making this worse 😊] but some secrets are hard to hide. There are elements of coming to America for a better life, and here I feel that many Africans who travel abroad to study can relate.

The stories are rich with Jamaican culture; for me it stood out most in the food some of the characters preferred, as well as sayings that we so casually throw out regarding how to keep a home or a marriage without ever considering that perhaps human beings are just very complex and are trying to fit in boxes developed to curtail these complexities. Is it any wonder we are leaking through the vertices, spilling over the edges, their faces completely flooded?

Good reading/listening.