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Broughtupsy

A Novel

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Ms., A Must-Read Book
Cosmopolitan, A Best New Book of January
Nylon, A Best Book of the Month

Named a Most Anticipated Book by Elle, Goodreads, Write or Die, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, Lambda Literary Review, Bookshop, and LGBTQ Reads

Akúa is returning home to Jamaica for the first time in ten years. Her younger brother has died suddenly, and Akúa hopes to reconnect with her estranged older sister, Tamika. Over three fateful weeks, the sisters visit significant places from their childhood where Akúa spreads her brother's ashes. But time spent with Tamika only seems to make apparent how different they are and how alone Akúa feels.

Then Akúa meets Jayda, a brash stripper who reveals a different side of Kingston. As the two women grow closer, Akúa is forced to confront the difficult reality of being gay in a deeply religious family, and what it means to be a gay woman in Jamaica. Her trip comes to a frenzied and dangerous end, but not without a glimmer of hope of how to be at peace with her sister—and herself.

By turns diasporic family saga, bildungsroman, and terse sexual awakening, Broughtupsy asks: What are we willing to do for family, and what are we willing to do to feel at home?

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 16, 2023
      Cooke makes an assured debut with the story of a queer Jamaican Canadian woman reckoning with her roots. In 1996 Vancouver, 20-year-old narrator Akúa loses her beloved 12-year-old brother Bryson to sickle cell anemia, the same illness that killed their mother when Akúa was nine and the family still lived in Jamaica. Overcome with grief, Akúa takes her brother’s ashes home to her stubborn older sister, Tamika, in Jamaica. Tamika’s prior refusal to visit a dying Bryson continues to upset Akúa and exacerbates the sisters’ strained dynamic, as does Tamika’s homophobia. There’s still love between them, though, and Cooke uses Akúa’s return to examine the meaning of home, be it familial or geographic. “Am I Jamaican?” Akúa asks herself as she struggles to understand patois after Tamika labels her “foreign.” The god-fearing Tamika also hits Akúa and demands she “renounce” her sexuality. Defiant, Akúa strikes up a relationship with a stripper named Jayda. Akúa’s chronicle of self-determination is stirring, as are the flashbacks to her childhood in Texas, where the family first moved from Jamaica and where Akúa resisted her teachers’ attempts at assimilation. Cooke successfully evokes the temerity and rebellious intelligence of Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse. Agent: Monika Woods, Triangle House.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

Languages

  • English

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