{"id":1113,"date":"2019-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-29T00:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=1113"},"modified":"2025-01-02T11:30:28","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T22:30:28","slug":"patsy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2019\/01\/01\/patsy\/","title":{"rendered":"Patsy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nicole Dennis-Benn<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Oneworld<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Otago Daily Times, 2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The essence of Nicole Dennis-Benn\u2019s hard-hitting second novel is captured in its opening sentences: \u201cJust two years shy of thirty, Patsy has nothing to show for it besides the flimsy brown envelope she uses to shade herself from the white-hot glare of the sun…it carries her dream, a dream of every Jamaican of a certain social ranking shares: boarding a plane to America. For the destination, and for the ability to fly\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The envelope in question contains a US visitor\u2019s visa, a document allowing Patsy to join her childhood sweetheart, Cicely, in New York, leaving her past \u2013 and six-year-old daughter Tru \u2013 behind forever. The first cracks in the illusion appear the instant she steps off the plane, only to find her lover has changed beyond recognition. For, having purchased citizenship and the American Dream through marriage, Cicely has subsumed herself body and soul in the role of trophy wife, burying all vestiges of her Caribbean heritage beneath layers of cosmetics, hair-dye and high-end fashion, and dancing attendance to her domineering husband\u2019s every whim and desire. Seeing her formerly proud and rebellious friend so diminished tears at Patsy\u2019s heart, but what hurts most of all is that, despite years of promises, Cicely now prefers a life of material security with an abusive and controlling man over a fresh start with the woman she loves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heartbroken and destitute but too guilty and ashamed to return home, Patsy joins the undocumented multitude who service the American economy while enjoying none of the benefits, while back in Jamacia, Tru waits in vain for her return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The novel follows the fate of mother and daughter in a series of snapshots across the course of a decade as Patsy moves from one menial job to another before becoming \u2013 in an irony not lost on her \u2013 an accomplished nanny, and Tru struggles to establish an identity in a society where her sexuality and Patsy\u2019s abandonment are indelible marks of shame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having experienced first-hand the realities of growing up gay in a country in which male homosexuality remains illegal and where financial, racial and class inequalities define almost every aspect of life, Dennis-Benn writes with vivid and brutal honesty about the moral ambiguities created and reinforced by such social and structural disparities. For those of us whose knowledge of Jamacia is limited to tourist brochures and Bob Marley posters, the poverty, corruption, racism, homophobia and misogyny that permeate every aspect of the world that Patsy is fleeing and in which Tru is trapped are eye-opening, to say the least, but she is equally clear that, for many in America, identity and opportunity are just as clearly defined by sex, colour, class and income as the land of her birth. What is most striking about the novel, however, is how it confronts the question of motherhood and the assumption that all (or any) woman loves her children unconditionally is a myth. Patsy\u2019s guilt at leaving her daughter derives primarily from how easy it was to do rather than the fact of the separation itself. Still, her decisions are as much about self-preservation as self-interest,  and in many ways, her actions are better (or at least more honest) than those of her own<\/em> mother, who abandoned her emotionally, if not physically, when she needed her most. None of this makes for easy reading, but in many ways, that is Dennis-Benn\u2019s point: until we face up to the uncomfortable reality of our individual and collective failings, forgiveness and reconciliation will continue to elude us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicole Dennis-Benn Oneworld Otago Daily Times, 2019 The essence of Nicole Dennis-Benn\u2019s hard-hitting second novel is captured in its opening sentences: \u201cJust two years shy of thirty, Patsy has nothing to show for it besides the flimsy brown envelope she uses to shade herself from the white-hot glare of the sun…it carries her dream, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[305,370,324],"class_list":["post-1113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-305","tag-fiction","tag-nicole-dennis-benn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1113"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1951,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113\/revisions\/1951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}