Broughtupsy

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. (Jan.)