Will I love How to Love a Jamaican?

I simply love these bracingly contemporary stories of Black Jamaican women who span the gamut from self-absorbed teenagers to Rihanna-inspired celebrities and overtaxed elders. These narratives take place both in JA and the USA and weave together elements of our twenty-first-century Black diaspora. Each of Arthurs’ stories sings in its own way, with exquisitely rendered details and moments of moral clarity. I love that these stories chronicle such a wide variety of Black women’s lives in such depth and detail. 

Beyond the complicated portraits of loss and love, of diaspora and belonging, and of pain and joy, what keeps me coming back to How to Love a Jamaican is its prose. The book is so recognizably Jamaican in its humor and its honesty about plots that feel so identifiable that, at times, I could not help but wonder if Arthurs was writing about relatives or friends of mine.