At once cinematic yet intimate, Broughtupsy is an enthralling debut novel about a young Jamaican woman grappling with grief as she discovers her family, her home, is always just out of reach
Tired of not having a place to land, twenty-year-old Akúa flies from Canada to her native Jamaica to reconnect with her estranged sister. Their younger brother Bryson has recently passed from sickle cell anemia--the same disease that took their mother ten years prior--and Akúa carries his remains in a small wooden box with the hopes of reassembling her family.
Over the span of two fateful weeks, Akúa and Tamika visit significant places from their childhood--the home they grew up in, their mother's grave, a favorite beach--where Akúa slowly spreads Bryson's ashes. But time spent with her sister only clarifies how different they are, and how years of living abroad haves distanced Akúa from her home culture. "Am I Jamaican?" she asks herself again and again. But beneath these haunting doubts lies her anger and resentment at being abandoned by her own blood. "Why didn't you stay with me?" she wants to ask Tamika.
Wandering through Kingston as she reminisces about the ex-girlfriend she's left behind, Akúa meets Jayda, a brash stripper who shows her a different side of the city. As the two grow closer, Akúa confronts the difficult reality of being gay in a deeply religious family, and what being a gay woman in Jamaica actually means.
By turns diasporic family saga, bildungsroman, and terse sexual awakening, Broughtupsy is a profoundly moving debut novel that asks: what do we truly owe our family, and what are we willing to do to savor the feeling of home?
Christina Cooke's writing has previously appeared in The Caribbean Writer, Prairie Schooner, PRISM international, Epiphany: A Literary Journal, and elsewhere. A MacDowell Fellow, Journey Prize winner, and Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award winner, she holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of New Brunswick and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Born in Jamaica, Christina is now a Canadian citizen who lives and writes in New York City.
- Publisher: Catapult (January 23, 2024)
- Language: English
- Hardcover: 240 pages
- ISBN-10: 1646221885
- ISBN-13: 9781646221882
- Item Weight: 1 pound
