Broughtupsy

“I don’t know her mother and she will never know my brother,” thinks Akúa, sitting next to the sister she has known only from a distance over the past decade. Akúa has just returned to Jamaica with her late brother’s ashes, seeking to reconnect and build a bridge from her life abroad to the life she lived in Jamaica as a child. Alisha Bailey narrates this compelling story of a family broken by the turmoil of sickness, death, and abandonment but finally reunited under the guise of a solemn occasion. Cooke’s debut novel showcases the family’s struggles through a nonlinear structure, using flashbacks to provide information about Akúa’s childhood, sexuality (she’s recently broken up with her longtime girlfriend), and emotion-filled memories of moving to Texas and then Canada. Bailey narrates the sisters’ unfolding relationship, run through with familiarity, rivalry, envy, and empathy, all in a rhythmic patois spiked with years of unspoken angst.