2021 RWL Reading Challenges - Reading Deliberately & For Fun

Reading should always be a challenge but never a chore. After the year we had in 2020, we decided to scale our 2021 reading challenge into two small 6-book challenges that will inspire you to enjoy the books you read while expanding your worldview.

If you want to join a community of fellow readers and share your challenge progress, check out the Read Deliberately and the Read Widely Storygraph challenges. You can also use the #RebelWomenLit hashtag all over social media to share your books and each post enters gives you an opportunity to win a monthly prize from our book(ish) store.

Read Deliberately

1. A book nominated for the OCM BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Literature

2. A book translated into English

3. A book with a focus on mental health

4. A book written by a new-to-me Caribbean writer

5. A non-fiction book on a social justice issue I care about

6. An immigrant story not set in the US, UK or CAN

Read Widely (& For Fun)

1. A book with a reputation for being unputdownable

2. A book from a country you've always wanted to visit

3. A book you were excited to buy but haven't read yet

4. A book from a genre you typically avoid

5. A book you've already read

6. A book you bought/borrowed because of the cover

We’ll be sharing book suggestions for each prompt in our newsletter, on Instagram and Twitter

Don’t just read, read with intention :)

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Get our printable Reading Journal/Planner to help you document your 2021 books

Winners of the Caribbean Readers' Awards 2020

Over 5000 people voted in our inaugural Caribbean Readers’ Awards, and we are excited to announce the winners!

The Caribbean Readers’ Award recognizes outstanding works in Caribbean Literature, as chosen by readers across the world. The prize is given to one fiction novel, YA novel, middle grade/tween novel, nonfiction works, short stories, and translated literature. Rebel Women Lit also recognized individuals who embody the spirit of Rebel Women Lit and have made recognizable contributions in their field and in the Caribbean Literature community. The selected awardees are highlighted as Rebel Women Lit  Critics and Honorees.

Best Novel (Adult)

Winner: Tea by the Sea by Donna Hemans

Shortlist
A Million Aunties by Alecia McKenzie
Birthday Shot by Rilzy Adams
Black Rain Falling by Jacob Ross
Book of The Little Axe by Lauren Francis-Sharma
Daylight Come by Diana McCaulay
Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud
Polar Vortex by Shani Mootoo
Tea by the Sea by Donna Hemans
The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey
These Ghosts are Family by Maisy Card
 

Best Young Adult Novel

Winner: Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo

Shortlist
Cane Warriors by Alex Wheatle
Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
Facing The Sun by Janice Lynn Mather
Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
Off Track By Tamika Gibson

Best Middle Grade/Tween Novel

Winner: When Life Gives You Mangoes by Kereen Getten

Shortlist
Letters from Cuba by Ruth Behar
The Madre de Aguas of Cuba (The Unicorn Rescue Society #5) by Adam Gidwitz and Emma Otheguy, illustrated by Hatem Aly
When Life Gives You Mangoes by Kereen Getten 

Translated Works

Winner: The Sea Needs No Ornament / El Mar No Necesita Ornamento edited by Loretta Collins Klobah & Maria Grau Perejoan

Shortlist
The Belle Créole by Maryse Condé, translated by Nicole Simek
The Black Cathedral by Marcia Gala, translated by Anna Kushner
The Sea Needs No Ornament / El Mar No Necesita Ornamento edited by Loretta Collins Klobah & Maria Grau Perejoan
The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana by Maryse Condé, translated by Richard Philcox

Poetry

Winner: New Voices: Selected by Lorna Goodison, Poet Laureate of Jamaica, 2017-2020

Shortlist
Feels Like Home by Natalya Muncuff
Guabancex by Celia Sorhaindo
New Voices: Selected by Lorna Goodison, Poet Laureate of Jamaica, 2017-2020
Running with Daffodils by Samantha R.S.
The Dyzgraphxst by Canisia Lubrin
The Sea Needs No Ornament / El Mar No Necesita Ornamento edited by Loretta Collins Klobah & Maria Grau Perejoan

 

Best Non-Fiction (Book)

Winner: Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World by Jessica Marie Johnson

Shortlist
An Autobiography of the Autobiography of Reading by Dionne Brand
Beyond Homophobia: Centring LGBTQ Experiences in the Anglophone Caribbean edited by Moji Anderson and Erin C. MacLeod
Carnival Is Woman: Feminism and Performance in Caribbean Mas edited by Frances Henry and Dwaine Plaza
Musings, Mazes, Muses, Margins, by Gordon Rohlehr
Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire by Annette Joseph-Gabriel
The Undiscovered Country by Andre Bagoo
The Millennial Mind by Daniel Francis
Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World by Jessica Marie Johnson
 

Non-Fiction (Individual Pieces)

Winner: Cross Words in Lockdown: #WhatIAmDoingWithMyTime by Olive Senior

Shortlist
After the Aftermath: Hurricane Dorian by Alexia Tolas
Cross Words in Lockdown: #WhatIAmDoingWithMyTime by Olive Senior
F is for …” by Joanne C. Hillhouse (from the Caribbean Literary Heritage Forgotten Caribbean Books Series)
Jewellery for Re-membering in the Afterlife of Slavery: A View From the Disappearing Beach by Maziki Thame
Life on Stilts by Carinya Sharples
Strategies to Escape the Eyes of the State” by Gervais Marsh

Short Story (Collection)

Winner: Stick No Bills by Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw

Shortlist
Dominoes at the Crossroads by Kaie Kellough
Stick No Bills by Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw

Short Story (Individual Pieces)

Winner: “A Bright Future for Tomorrow” by Andre J P Warner

Shortlist
A Bright Future for Tomorrow by Andre J P Warner
A Mermaid by Zaniah Pigott
Belonging to Barbuda by Barbara Arrindell
Cruising on Wrangler Avenue by Kaleb D’Aguilar
Fabled Truth by Aria-Rose Browne
Invisible Scars by Pietra Brown
Saffy’s Song by Sharma Taylor
Tom, the Ninja Crab by Cheyanne Darroux
The Beast of Barbados by William Henderson
Vizay by Hadassah K Williams 

New Content Creators

Winner: @Ambi_reads on Instagram

Shortlist
ambi_reads
booksnbushtea
di_good_books_dem
oddgyalreads
rayningbooks
therosepetals_

Critics and Honorees

Kelly Josephs

Gabrielle Bellot

Shivanee Ramlochan

Joanne C. Hillhouse
 

The Inaugural Caribbean Readers’ Awards was live-streamed on Youtube on Sunday, January 3rd 2021 Thank you to everyone who voted and showed their support for their favourite author and works written in 2020. We look forward to making it even better in 2021, until then Stay Lit!

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Our Most Anticipated Caribbean Books of 2021

2020 was an incredible year for Caribbean literature and after announcing the Caribbean Readers’ Awards everyone couldn’t wait to hear the line-up for 2021. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it is representative of what the Rebel Women Lit community is excited about getting on our bookshelves.

Quick Index:
Contemporary and Literary Fiction
Poetry
Speculative Fiction
Young Adult Novels
Romance
Historical Fiction
Short Story Collections
Translated Works
Reprints
Biographies, Autobiographies, Memoirs
Essays, Creative Non-Fiction, and Literary Criticism
Academic Texts

If you’d like to make any suggestions or corrections for our 2021 Caribbean Book List, feel fee to send us a message.

Contemporary and Literary Fiction

Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden (January - Cannongate)
Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour (January - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Vanishing Girls by Callie Browning (February - Self-Published)
How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones (February - Little, Brown and Company)
What’s Mine and Yours by Naima Coster (March - Grand Central Publishing)
This One Sky Day (UK) / Popisho (US) by Leone Ross (April - Faber Faber (UK) and Farrar, Straus and Giroux (US))
Waiting for the Waters to Rise by Maryse Condé (August - World Editions)

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Poetry Collections

Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Twenty Years of British Poetry from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (August - Corsair)
Mother Muse by Lorna Goodison (June - Carcarnet)
Thinking with Trees by Jason Allen-Paisant ( June - Carcarnet)

(Photos to be added once released - Dunno why dem always leggo the poet dem artwork late)

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Speculative Fiction

(Fantasy, Magical Realism, Sci-Fiction, and a Seamless Blend of Our Spiritual and Physical Worlds)

A River Called Time by Courttia Newland (January - Cannongate and June- Akashic)
A Master of Djinn (Fatma el-Sha’arawi #3) by P. Djèlí Clark (May - TOR)
Witches Steeped in Gold by Ciannon Smart (April - HarperTeen US and Hot Key Books UK) (Also in Young Adult)
No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull (Sep - Blackstone Publishing)

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Young Adult Novels

One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite & Maritza Moulite (January - Inkyard Press)
Your Corner Dark by Desmond Hall (January - Simon & Schuster)
Your Heart, My Sky: Love in a Time of Hunger by Margarita Engle (March - Simon & Schuster)
Hurricane Summer by Asha Bromfield (May - Wednesday Books)
Josephine Against the Sea by Shakirah Bourne (July - Scholastic Inc.)

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Romance

Scandal in the VIP Suite by Nadine Séïde Gonzalez (January - Harlequin Desires)
Where the Rhythm Takes You by Sarah Dass (May - Balzer + Bray)
Sweethand (Island Bites Book 1) by N.G. Peltier (March - self-published)

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Historical Fiction

Island Queen by Vanessa Riley (July - William Morrow)

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Short Story Collections

Folk Stories from the Hills of Puerto Rico / Cuentos folklóricos de las montañas de Puerto Rico edited by Rafael Ocasio (May 2021, Rutgers University Press)

Translated Works

Folk Stories from the Hills of Puerto Rico / Cuentos folklóricos de las montañas de Puerto Rico edited by Rafael Ocasio (translated by Spanish) (May 2021, Rutgers University Press)
Waiting for the Waters to Rise by Marse Condé (translated from French) (August - World Editions)

Reprints

Sprucing up some favourite Caribbean Classics for today’s readers to enjoy

The Fat Lady Sings by Jacqueline Roy (February - Penguin UK)
Minty Alley Black Britain by C.L.R. James (February - Penguin UK)
Without Prejudice by Nicola Williams (February - Penguin UK)
The Dancing Face by Mike Phillips (February - Penguin UK)

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Biographies, Autobiographies, and Memoirs

The Gift of Music and Song: Interviews with Jamaican Women Writers by Jacqueline Bishop (January - Peepal Tree Press)
Bird Uncaged: An Abolitionist's Freedom Song by Marlon Peterson (April - Bold Type Books

Essays, Creative Non-Fiction, and Literary Criticism

We Must Learn to Sit Together and Talk About a Little Culture: Decolonizing Essays 1967-1984 by Sylivia Wynter (February - Peepal Tree Press)
In the Eye of the Storm: Edgar Mittelholzer 1909–2009: Critical Perspectives by Juanita Cox (Feb - Peepal Tree Press)
The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (March - Bold Type Books)
The Shape of That Hurt by Gordon Rohlehr (Mar - Peepal Tree Press)
Things I Have Withheld by Kei Miller (May - Canongate)
Writing the Caribbean in Magazine Time by Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann (June - Rutgers University Press)

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Academic Texts

Talawa Theatre Company: Theatrical History and the Brewster Era by David Vivian Johnson (January - Bloomsbury)
The Haiti Reader: History, Culture, Politics editors: Editor(s): Laurent Dubois, Kaiama L. Glover, Nadève Ménard, Millery Polyné & Chantalle F. Verna (January - Duke University Press)
A Contested Caribbean Indigeneity: Language, Social Practice, and Identity within Puerto Rican Taíno Activism by Sherina Feliciano-Santos (February - Rutgers University Press)
Black Flags of the Caribbean: How Trinidad Became an ISIS Hotspot by Simon Cottee (February - Bloomsbury)
The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edwidge Danticat edited by Jana Evans Braziel & Nadège T. Clitandre (February - Bloomsbury)
The Struggle of Non-Sovereign Caribbean Territories Neoliberalism since the French Antillean Uprisings of 2009 edited by H. Adlai Murdoch (February - Rutgers University Press)
Kincraft The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality by Todne Thomas (March - Duke University Press)
Colonial Debts: The Case of Puerto Rico by Rocaio Zambrana (May - Duke University Press)
Selected Writings on Race and Difference by Stuart Hall (April Duke University Press)
Ian Fleming and the Politics of Ambivalence by Ian Kinane (May - Bloomsbury)
Slavery in Africa and the Caribbean: A History of Enslavement and Identity Since the Eighteenth Century edited by Olatunji Ojo & Nadine Hunt (May - Bloomsbury)
The Jamaica Reader: History, Culture, Politics editors: Diana Paton and Matthew J. Smith (May - Duke University Press)
The Natural, Moral, and Political History of Jamaica From the First Discovery of the Island by Christopher Columbus to the Year 1746 by James Knight (May - University of Virginia Press)
Beyond Man: Race Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion editors An Yountae & Eleanor Craig (June - Duke University Press)
Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer (September - Simon & Schuster)

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Bookmark this page to check back for any updates we have throughout the year.
Subscribe to our newsletter to get updates about Rebel Women Lit book picks, our podcast and so much more

Index:
Contemporary and Literary Fiction | Poetry | Speculative Fiction | Young Adult Novels | Romance | Historical Fiction | Reprints
Biographies, Autobiographies, Memoirs | Essays, Creative Non-Fiction, and Literary Criticism | Academic Texts

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Three Short Books You Can Finish In A Weekend

Let's be honest, most of us either spent the year devouring books to escape the chaos outside or only read the subtitles for Emily in Paris (that show is frustratingly addictive 🤣 )

Either way, we can all use a few short books to end the year on a high note, so are three of our fav quick reads you can finish before the ball drops.

70 pages
Rhythmic Poetry Collection 🪘
Jamaican Writer 🇯🇲
4 or 5 ⭐️ ratings from every Jamaican on Goodreads

Imagine your introverted & witty friend telling you all the news, gossip and things they observed while taking route taxis around Kingston, that's how we'd describe In Nearby Bushes.

This 70-page poetry collection about place and consciousness will help you forget about all the time you had to spend inside this year.

190 pages ⏳ (longest one on the list we promise)
Multiple Points of View 🔎 🔍
Jamaican Writer 🇯🇲
Hopeful / Heartwarming 🥰
Short Story(ish) 📑

If you like the structure in Girl, Woman, Other, A Tall History of Sugar, or These Ghosts Are Family this is your book!

Though this book addresses grief, it focuses on warmth, healing and feelings of hopefulness that we only receive from our chosen families.

Also, check out our A Million Aunties playlist on Spotify.

110 pages ⏳
Nigerian - American Main Character 🇳🇬
Stream-Of-Consciousness Meets Multiple Points of View 📑
Elderly Main Character We All Aspire To Be 👵🏾 🏎

We read this in November for book club when we realised we hadn’t read many books with elderly main characters and oh my days. It was perfect. Manyika does a perfect at crafting a seamless streams of consciousness with real world humour, tension and in multiple points of view. This novella will leave you unsure about if you’ve fallen in love with the main character or if you just want to be her.

Best Caribbean Middle Grade and Tween Books of 2020 - Readers' Award

These three books have been nominated the best three books in the Caribbean Redaers’ Awards for 2021. Have you read any?

Letters From Cuba - Ruth Behar (PenguinRandomHouse)

https://www.facebook.com/Ruth-Behar-999319306766100/

IG @ ruthbeharauthor

Twitter @ruthbehar

www.ruthbehar.com

Things have gotten dire for Esther’s family in Poland as discrimination against Jews has intensified. With the family store shuttered, her father has fled to Cuba to work to bring his family over, and now Esther’s made sure she’s the first child to join him.

Being separated from her beloved sister is heart-wrenching, but Esther promises to write everything down that happens until they’re reunited. And many good things do happen. First of all, the Cuban people are welcoming and treat her with dignity. Then she chances upon a way to make more money than her peddler father could dream of when she discovers her talent for making lightweight dresses. All of a sudden there is a demand for her designs, and it looks like they will soon be able to afford to bring the family over. But it turns out not everyone is pleased with her success and there are pockets of anti-Semitism in Cuba too. Now it’s a race to get her family out of Poland and into Cuba before it’s too late, and to see if there is a way to stop the hate from spreading through Cuba too.

 

Unicorn Rescue Society The Madre de Aguas of Cuba (PenguinRandomHouse)

Adam Gidwitz (author)

Twitter @AdamGidwitz

https://www.adamgidwitz.com/ 

Emma Otheguy  (author)

Twitter @EmmaOtheguy 

http://emmaotheguy.com/

https://www.facebook.com/emma.otheguy

Hatem Aly (Illustrator)

Twitter @metahatem

https://www.metahatem.com/

In Cuba, it is believed that a mysterious water serpent–the Madre de aguas–is responsible for providing and protecting the fresh water of the island. But the serpent is missing, and a drought has gripped the island. Uchenna, Elliot, and Professor Fauna fly to Cuba and endeavor to rescue the Madre de aguas. Unfortunately, it tries to kill them. Meanwhile, the Schmoke Brothers’ goons are driving around Havana, dumping pink sludge into the sewers. What is going on? Can Elliot and Uchenna end the drought? Stop the Schmokes? Or will the creature they are trying to save just eat them instead?

 

When Life Gives You Mangoes - Kereen Getten (PenguinRandomHouse)

IG @kezywrites

Twitter @kereengetten

Kereengetten.com

https://www.facebook.com/kezywrites-216449442469027

Twelve-year-old Clara lives on an island that visitors call exotic. But there’s nothing exotic about it to Clara. She loves eating ripe mangos off the ground, running outside in the rain with her Papa during rainy season, and going to her secret hideout with Gaynah—even though lately she’s not acting like a best friend.

The only thing out of the ordinary for Clara is that something happened to her memory that made her forget everything that happened last summer after a hurricane hit. Sometimes things come back to her in drips like a tap that hasn’t been turned off properly. Other times her Mama fills in the blanks…only she knows those aren’t her memories and it is hard feeling like she is not like everybody else.

But this summer is going to be different for Clara. Everyone is buzzing with excitement over a new girl in the village who is not like other visitors. She is about to make big waves on the island—and give Clara a summer she won’t forget.

Best Caribbean Novels of 2020 - Readers' Awards Finalists

We are happy to announce our fiction shortlist for the 2020 Caribbean Readers’ Award! The Caribbean Readers’ Award recognizes outstanding books in Caribbean Literature. The prize is given to one fiction novel, YA novel, middle grade/tween novel, nonfiction works, short stories, and translated literature.

A Million Aunties by Alecia McKenzie

After a personal tragedy upends his world, American-born artist Chris travels to his mother’s homeland in the Caribbean hoping to find some peace and tranquility. He plans to spend his time painting in solitude and coming to terms with his recent loss and his fractured relationship with his father. Instead, he discovers a new extended and complicated “family.” The people he meets help him to heal, even as he supports them in unexpected ways. Told from different points of view, this is a compelling novel about unlikely love, friendship, and community, with surprises along the way.

Shop A Million Aunties

Birthday Shot by Rilzy Adams

Shae Abbott has always had a soft spot for her older brother’s best friend, Kofi. But that is old, old news. It was just a childhood crush. When Kofi returns to Antigua for her brother’s engagement party, Shae realizes maybe her crush isn’t such old news after all. But could Kofi be interested in the woman who used to follow him around with hearts in her eyes? Shae’s thirtieth birthday is approaching and she wonders if maybe it is finally the time to shoot her shot. After all, everyone knows birthday sex doesn’t count. Or does it?

Black Rain Falling by Jacob Ross

Delving into issues of family, class and loyalty, Black Rain Falling is a stunning crime novel that asks how far one should go to protect those they love.
On the Caribbean island of Camaho, forensics expert Michael 'Digger' Digson is in deep trouble.
His fellow CID detective Miss Stanislaus kills a man in self-defence - their superiors believe it was murder, and Digger given just six weeks to prove his friend is innocent.
While the authorities bear down on them, Digger and Miss Stanislaus investigate a shocking roadside murder, the first tremors of a storm of crime and corruption that will break over Camaho at any moment.

Book of The Little Axe by Lauren Francis-Sharma

In 1796 Trinidad, young Rosa Rendón quietly but purposefully rebels against the life others expect her to lead. Bright, competitive, and opinionated, Rosa sees no reason she should learn to cook and keep house, for it is obvious her talents lie in running the farm she, alone, views as her birthright. But when her homeland changes from Spanish to British rule, it becomes increasingly unclear whether its free black property owners--Rosa's family among them--will be allowed to keep their assets, their land, and ultimately, their freedom.

By 1830, Rosa is living among the Crow Nation in Bighorn, Montana with her children and her husband, Edward Rose, a Crow chief. Her son Victor is of the age where he must seek his vision and become a man. But his path forward is blocked by secrets Rosa has kept from him. So Rosa must take him to where his story began and, in turn, retrace her own roots, acknowledging along the way, the painful events that forced her from the middle of an ocean to the rugged terrain of a far-away land.

Shop Book of The Little Axe

Daylight Come by Diana McCaulay

It is 2084. Climate change has made life on the Caribbean island of Bajacu a gruelling trial. The sun is so hot that people must sleep in the day and live and work at night. In a world of desperate scarcity, people who reach forty are expendable. Those who still survive in the cities and towns are ruled over by the brutal, fascistic Domins, and the order has gone out for another evacuation to less sea-threatened parts of the capital.

Sorrel can take no more and she persuades her mother, Bibi, that they should flee the city and head for higher ground in the interior. She has heard there are groups known as Tribals, bitter enemies of the Domins, who have found ways of surviving in the hills, but she also knows they will have to evade the packs of ferals, animals with a taste for human flesh. Not least she knows that the sun will kill them if they can’t find shelter.

Diana McCaulay takes the reader on a tense, threat-filled odyssey as mother and daughter attempt their escape. On the way, Sorrel learns much about the nature of self-sacrifice, maternal love and the dreadful moral choices that must be made in the cause of self-protection.

Shop Daylight Come

Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud

Meet the Ramdin-Chetan family: forged through loneliness, broken by secrets, saved by love.

Irrepressible Betty Ramdin, her shy son Solo and their marvellous lodger, Mr Chetan, form an unconventional household, happy in their differences, as they build a home together. Home: the place where your navel string is buried, keeping these three safe from an increasingly dangerous world. Happy and loving they are, until the night when a glass of rum, a heart to heart and a terrible truth explodes the family unit, driving them apart.

Brave and brilliant, steeped in affection, Love After Love asks us to consider what happens at the very brink of human forgiveness and offers hope to anyone who has loved and lost and has yet to find their way back.

Shop Love After Love

Polar Vortex by Shani Mootoo

Polar Vortex is a seductive and tension-filled novel about Priya and Alex, a lesbian couple who left the big city to relocate to a bucolic countryside community. It seemed like a good way to leave their past behind and cement their newish, later-in-life relationship. But there's leaving the past behind - and then there's running away from awkward histories.

Priya has a secret - a long-standing, on-again, off-again relationship with a man, Prakash. In Priya's mind, Prakash is little more than an old friend, but in reality things are a bit complicated. Why has she never told Alex about him? Prakash has tracked Priya down in her new life, and before she realizes what she's doing, she invites him to visit.

Alex is not pleased, and soon the existing cracks in their relationship widen, revealing secrets Alex herself would have preferred to keep. Into the fissure walks Prakash, whose own agenda forces all three to face the inevitable consequences of their choices.

Shop Polar Vortex

Tea by the Sea by Donna Hemans

A seventeen-year-old taken from her mother at birth, an Episcopal priest with a daughter whose face he cannot bear to see, a mother weary of searching for her lost child: Tea by the Sea is their story-that of a family uniting and unraveling. To find the daughter taken from her, Plum Valentine must find the child's father who walked out of a hospital with the day-old baby girl without explanation. Seventeen years later, weary of her unfruitful search, Plum sees an article in a community newspaper with a photo of the man for whom she has spent half her life searching. He has become an Episcopal priest. Her plan: confront him and walk away with the daughter he took from her. From Brooklyn to the island of Jamaica, Tea by the Sea traces Plum's circuitous route to find her daughter and how Plum's and the priest's love came apart

The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey

April 1976: St Constance, a tiny Caribbean village on the island of Black Conch, at the start of the rainy season. A fisherman sings to himself in his pirogue, waiting for a catch—but attracts a sea-dweller he doesn’t expect.

Aycayia, a beautiful young woman cursed by jealous wives to live as a mermaid, has been swimming the Caribbean Sea for centuries. And she is entranced by this man David and his song.

Shop Tea by the Sea

These Ghosts are Family by Maisy Card

Stanford Solomon has a shocking, thirty-year-old secret. And it’s about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley, a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend.

And now, nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley, a home health aide who has unwittingly shown up for her first day of work to tend to the father she thought was dead.

These Ghosts Are Family revolves around the consequences of Abel’s decision and tells the story of the Paisley family from colonial Jamaica to present day Harlem. There is Vera, whose widowhood forced her into the role of single mother. There are two daughters and a granddaughter who have never known they are related. And there are others, like the house boy who loved Vera, whose lives might have taken different courses if not for Abel Paisley’s actions.

Shop These Ghosts are Family

Like A Mule Bringing Ice-Cream To The Sun: Bookstagram Templates

If you read Like A Mule Bringing Ice Cream To The Sun chances are you’re eager to share your thoughts with your friends and other book lovers. So we made templates to make it easier for you to share on IG Stories & Twitter Fleets.

Click to download:

Favourite Quote
Photo of Current Read
Thoughts on Current Read
Book Review

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About Rebel Women Lit
Rebel Women Lit is an open book club, turned literary community, based in Jamaica. We focus on stories from women, non-binary persons, queer persons, and other voices that have been traditionally marginalised in publishing. Yes, everything we do is political and deliberate. We have a podcast, book store, free community library, youtube channel and a few awesome projects.