caribbean women writers
Explore the best books by Caribbean women writers, featuring powerful stories and diverse voices from the region. Discover acclaimed novels, poetry, and essays that celebrate Caribbean culture and heritage.

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Unburnable
by Marie-Elena John
Set partly in contemporary Washington, D.C., and post-World War II Dominica, this debut novel deftly intertwines the cultures of blacks in the United States and the West Indies as an extraordinary multigenerational family saga unfolds.

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A Small Place
by Jamaica Kincaid
Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright by turns, this memoir is a brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua, by the author of "Annie John."

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The Salt Roads
by Nalo Hopkinson
- The Salt Roads was published in Warner hardcover (0-446-53302-5) in 11/03 and received rave reviews. - Nalo Hopkinson made her debut with Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), winning the Aspect First Novel Contest and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. - The author's previous book, Skin Folk (Aspect, 2001), won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection, was named Recommended Fiction for 2002 by Black Issues Book Review, and was named a New York Times Best book of the Year. Hopkinson's Midnight Robber (Aspect, 2000), a New York Times Recommended Book of Summer 2000, received an Honorable Mention for the Casa de las Americas Prize. It was a finalist for the Nubula Award for Best Novel, the Hugo Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award.
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Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys
"A considerable tour de force by any standard." ?New York Times Book Review"


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The True History of Paradise
by Margaret Cezair-Thompson
A woman in mourning over the death of her dear sister in violence-torn Jamaica is lured to America by voices of the spirit world.
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Small Island
by Andrea Levy
Told in four distinct voices, the winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction 2004 is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, encapsulating the most American of experiences: the immigrant's life.
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White Teeth
by Zadie Smith
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The blockbuster debut novel from "a preternaturally gifted" writer (The New York Times) and author of On Beauty and Swing Time—set against London's racial and cultural tapestry, reveling in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, and embracing the comedy of daily existence. Zadie Smith’s dazzling debut caught critics grasping for comparisons and deciding on everyone from Charles Dickens to Salman Rushdie to John Irving and Martin Amis. But the truth is that Zadie Smith’s voice is remarkably, fluently, and altogether wonderfully her own. At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith. “[White Teeth] is, like the London it portrays, a restless hybrid of voices, tones, and textures…with a raucous energy and confidence.” —The New York Times Book Review

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Segu
by Maryse Conde
“Condé’s story is rich and colorful and glorious. It sprawls over continents and centuries to find its way into the reader’s heart.” —Maya Angelou “A wondrous novel” (The New York Times) by the winner of the 2018 New Academy Prize (The Alternative Nobel prize in literature) and author of The Gospel According to the New World The year is 1797, and the kingdom of Segu is flourishing, fed by the wealth of its noblemen and the power of its warriors. The people of Segu, the Bambara, are guided by their griots and priests; their lives are ruled by the elements. But even their soothsayers can only hint at the changes to come, for the battle of the soul of Africa has begun. From the east comes a new religion, Islam, and from the West, the slave trade. Segu follows the life of Dousika Traore, the king’s most trusted advisor, and his four sons, whose fates embody the forces tearing at the fabric of the nation. There is Tiekoro, who renounces his people’s religion and embraces Islam; Siga, who defends tradition, but becomes a merchant; Naba, who is kidnapped by slave traders; and Malobali, who becomes a mercenary and halfhearted Christian. Based on actual events, Segu transports the reader to a fascinating time in history, capturing the earthy spirituality, religious fervor, and violent nature of a people and a growing nation trying to cope with jihads, national rivalries, racism, amid the vagaries of commerce.