Description
Book SynopsisSuite as Sugar is a testimony to the unseen forces, always vigilant, ever ready, imbuing the characters in this collection with both resilience and trauma.From Winnipeg winterscapes to Toronto's condo culture, from Havana's haunted streets to Trinidad's calamitous environs, the stories in
Suite as Sugar are permeated with the violence of colonial histories, personal and intimate, reflecting legacies of abandonment and loss. The veil between the living and the dead is obscured, chaos becomes panacea, and characters take drastic measures into their own hands.
Survivors of all kinds seek strategy and solace: a group of homeless people organize an occupation of vacant condos, a new resident to a disturbing neighbourhood tries to make sense of madness, a dog investigates the sudden disappearance of his owner. The five intertwined vignettes in the title story are set in a Caribbean country where the spectre of the sugar plantation haunts everyone. Tyin
Trade ReviewSuite as Sugar offers transatlantic prose flavoured with ingredients from the Caribbean and Canada. Camille Hernández-Ramdwar's stories span sexuality, spirituality, academia, crime and history, giving the reader plenty to chew on and much to savour. * Lisa Allen-Agostini, author of The Bread the Devil Knead *
Hernández-Ramdwar looks directly into the heart of things and does not hesitate to follow them into whatever cracks and crevasses they open up.... This is a writer with a deft hand, secure in her craft and daring in its execution. * Ramabai Espinet, author of The Swinging Bridge *
Whether in Trinidad, Canada or Cuba the characters in these stories inhabit the margins of their societies, some in search of easier ways to make money, refusing to even try to be part of a system that does not want them, while others struggle for significance and survival in brutal environments. In the five vignettes that give the collection its title,
Suite as Sugar, the themes that connect the stories in the collection converge in a powerful, resonant climax. Camille Hernández-Ramdwar is a talented storyteller with a gift for acute social observation and a clear eye for cultural contrasts. * Ifeona Fulani, author of Ten Days in Jamaica *
Table of ContentsContents
It’s Lit
Amberine
Obfuscation
How to Build a Saddis
Yellow Dog Blues
Chupito’s Last Stand
The Christmas House
Miguel Street Redux
The Biggest Fête
I’s de Man Lane
Mr. Bull’s Garden
Ghosts of La Rampa
“The Death of Caribana”
Suite as Sugar
Acknowledgements
About the Author
