5 Twisted Novels for Caribbean Heritage Month

In a 1983 interview, Toni Morrison reflected on her career and the aim of her writing. “I also want my work to capture the vast imagination of black people . . . all the parts of living are on an equal footing. Birds talk and butterflies cry, and it is not surprising or upsetting to them.” Morrison’s fiction presents an expansive world occupied by people of color, and in this world, we experience strange, indescribable phenomena. Birds talk, ordinary people wield unpredictable and extraordinary power. It’s interesting to me that magical realism persists in fiction across the diaspora. A touch of magic, of the surreal, helps us tell our stories. - Aatia

Black Cake, Charmaine Wilkerson

When Eleanor Bennett dies, she leaves her sons Byron and Benny a black cake, that highly-coveted fruit cake, soaked in rum and a staple of Caribbean cuisine, and a mysterious voice message that unravels the secrets of her history, her youth on an unspecified Caribbean island. The book twists and turns in a truly gripping way and it asks big questions about origin and identity.

When We Were Birds, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

When We Were Birds is transportive magical realism set in Trinidad, blending lore and a love story. Set between a bustling town and the countryside, the world of this story is both lush and chaotic. Darwin is a gravedigger whose religious mother warned him off of death and magic. Yejide comes from a powerful matrilineal line, and once a generation, a woman in her family has the power to shepherd the city’s souls into the afterlife. Their meeting in the gates of the cemetery sets something powerful in motion.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton, Sara Collins

In 1826, Frannie Langton is on the world’s stage for the murder of her employer and his wife. Born in slavery in Jamaica, she escapes a malevolent master and runs to London where slavery is outlawed. Still, she finds herself at the mercy of a revolving door of abusive white people, particularly white, middle class men. Reading this, I naturally thought of Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace, which fictionalizes a real murder early in Canada’s colonial history. This one was thrilling and dark and rarely a comfortable read.

The Taste of Sugar, Marisel Vera

Marisel Vera’s The Taste of Sugar offers a historical look at puertorriquenos during a pivotal moment in history. At the onset of the Spanish-American War, a conflict that would bring the US in possession of Puerto Rico, we meet a farming couple, Valentina and Vincente. When a hurricane tears across their land, they along with thousands of other Puerto Ricans are herded to the sugar plantations of Hawaii. I loved the characters at the center of this novel, and a good story about migration and ambition and social climbing will always get me.

Land of Love and Drowning, Tiphanie Yanique

Captain Owen Arthur Bradshaw sits at the top of a crooked and gnarled family tree. Ruled by insatiable appetites, passion and greed, the story follows his three unnaturally beautiful children who are left impoverished after his death. Each sibling has their own narrative, and Eeona, Annette and Jacob fall into incestuous relationships that made my head spin reading. It is tangled, high-drama magical realism in a rare historical setting, The Virgin Islands in the twentieth century. Fans of Toni Morrison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez will like this one.