This is a reminder of just how wonderful short story collections can be. Each story is strong on its own, and joined together, it paints an incredible picture of the Jamaican experience. The characters are evocative and real, and the prose is straight forward but also deeply emotional. Alexia Arthurs is definitely a writer to watch.

I enjoyed most of the stories in this collection; I felt like another world that I knew nothing about was opened up to me. However, some of the stories started and ended rather abruptly, which is often the nature of short stories. It also might have to do with the ARC formatting, but I would turn the page and suddenly it would be talking about different characters and it would take my brain a minute to shift gears and realize the other story had ended. Some stories had more defined endings and I knew when the book transitioned to a new story. Hopefully that will be more clear in the published version.

(Below is an abridged version of the review I posted on my blog.)

What on Earth did I just read?

I really wanted to love this book, but I couldn’t. I’ll say outright that the first and last stories are the most poignant, the others are forgettable. Though I love the idea of having Caribbean representation, I feel How to Love a Jamaican failed to provide a holistic picture. Because Arthurs opted to write a series of short stories, I expected to see multiple different aspects of Jamaican life. Instead, all of the characters are more or less the same, and they’re all victims.

While I was reading, I kept feeling like I’d seen the story before. In fact, one of the stories seemed lifted directly out of the New York Times. I felt like I was reading trauma porn. To be honest, I wouldn’t have minded the trauma porn if there were character growth and if the composition has a bit more artistry. I actually think it would have been better for Arthurs to choose a selection of the stories and drawn them out more. I’d have liked to seen more sides of the characters, rather than the same aspect portrayed in all of them.

But Sarabi, if you hated the book so much, why are you giving it three stars instead or just one or two?

Even though the book is not for me, I will still acknowledge that it’s not that bad. I’m not Caribbean, but I still see myself represented in How to Love a Jamaican. I’m sure there are plenty of others will see themselves as well.

In the first story, which is my favorite of all of them. Arthurs explores the intersection between race and class. Later on, we see several versions of sexuality. We see men with men, women with women, men with multiple women and women with multiple men. Each of these stories shows us the Jamaican attitude towards sexuality, and make it clear that while “slack” men are frowned upon, their sexual exploits are much more acceptable than those of “slack” women in the Caribbean community.

Frankly speaking, even I’ll admit that three stars is a little harsh for this book, but 3.5 is also too much. It has the potential to be a four star collection but it’s just not there for me yet. Some days I think about the book and I want to give it two stars, then I remember some truly terrible collections get two stars and I want to give How to Love a Jamaican four stars.

I can see this book winning awards. It ticks all the boxes: it’s a debut collection from a Black female author, it discusses sexuality in detail, it serves trauma for breakfast and it’s full of introspection rather than action. All of the books that have been nominated recently seem to be pretty much the same thing: “innovative” ways to see women’s/minority’s stories. There’s nothing particularly innovative if you belong to that community, but the people making the decisions usually don’t, therefore the novels are praiseworthy.

DNF at 33%. I was excited, a book about Jamaican love. Jamaicans -people of vigor, waggish, full of passion, intensity and humor. My love for the country and their people runs very deep.

Unfortunately falling short in completing this nook lies with the book being a collection of short stories. Each story unique and personal, gut wrenching at times. As soon as I invested in these characters it ended, leaving me feeling exposed and raw. The only balm being a new completely unrelated short story equally as ardent, yet heart breaking. This by no means is a light read, and I punked out.

What a debut novel, what a great #ownvoice read. Although I couldn't finish it, I am curious to see what this author produces in the future.

I enjoyed the nostalgic feelings these short stories brought me because the author and I both come from similar backgrounds. I enjoyed the way Arthurs painted pictures with the skill of a visual artist, with plot lines that are as familiar as if I was looking at snapshots from a time gone past, and characters that resembled celebrities I follow or as if people I knew in real life were playing the parts. But I struggled with the writing. Some of the sentences were awkwardly constructed and each gaffe took me out of the literature. For a title that reads like a general self-help book, the book seemed to promise a more varied scope than what it delivered and some of the stories seemed to use the same themes and characters without much connection. Several stories are woven with a mermaid thread without much other explanation or link. Some of the descriptions of interracial relationships and sexual fluidity felt like forced attempts to critique the notoriously homophobic Jamaican atmosphere and I didn't like that the book then, was trying to be something other than what it was. In a way, the result was that some of the complex characters that were being created became reduced to what they did behind closed doors and that just detracted from the rest of their personas.
In a book that seems to hint at a revelation of Jamaican secrets, the title story includes a line about what Jamaican men really want, that is quite anticlimactic and patriarchically backward.
"Dat woman really know how fi love a Jamaican man... Because wat a man need more dan good food in him belly, a clean house, and someone fi hug up wid at night?" [sic] page 161
This cliched oversimplification is a line that would have been lifted from a book printed in another century, except that in the story, the female character who hears this line doesn't object, and the male speaker is one who has left such a woman and traded her in for a younger, more appealing woman, both of whom offer him this kind of "love" without condition.
Furthermore,there is no attempt at balancing the gender expectations. The stories never seem to answer the question of how to satisfy the Jamaican woman. The female characters are either self-sacrificing older women or flighty young ones, the ones who all forget themselves when a man comes around, whether they marry or have a child out of wedlock, or change their relationships with other women, all these women are walking contradictions since none of them seem sufficiently content to even love themselves, let alone give or receive love to others.
Despite the critique, I think this is extremely promising as a debut collection and I would like to read more from this new author.

How to Love a Jamaican is Alexia Arthurs’ confidently-written debut collection, featuring eleven immigrant and return-migration vignettes. I refer to them as vignettes because they are more “slice of life” or reflection essays than they are short stories. The first couple of entries have a Young Adult flavor in terms of both the topics addressed and the writing style, but, taken as a whole, the multiple characters of Jamaican descent vary in genders, sexual preferences, ages, choices and concerns, and the author’s writing style – while straightforward – is not Young Adult for the remainder of the included tales.

Relationships between Jamaican-born adults and their country of origin, their mothers who remain resident in Jamaica, between friends, between generations -- all offer fodder for Arthurs’ story telling talents. The imagined sights and aromas of oxtail, Jamaican apples, rice, peas, mangoes, curry, callaloo and more permeate every story. Some characters live in Jamaica. Others have made their home in America, but plan to retire to Jamaica. Still others have left for good, but their memories of the island are ever-present. That variety of experience propels the reader through the collection.

I found this collection most interesting for how grounded it was in Jamaican culture – varied as it is. The patois, the expectations of sexual behavior and what makes for a desirable partner for young women, the values, dreams, adaptations on display – all make How to Love a Jamaican worth a reader’s time. I am in the minority of readers who did not find either the first or last stories to be at the same level of either significance or writing quality as the rest of the collection. The last story, Shirley From a Small Place, based on Barbados-born Rihanna, struck me as particularly un-worthy of inclusion, or at least should have been buried somewhere in the middle instead of featured at the end. I waited a couple of weeks after finishing How to Love a Jamaican to write my review, in part, to put some distance between Shirley and my brain and try to recall all the good of the tales presented before it.

Arthurs is at her best when telling the story of characters who don’t quite belong anywhere, those for whom loving a person or a country are insufficient to provide the answers to life. My favorites were Island, Mermaid River and Bad Behavior. I look forward to reading Arthurs' first novel, if she pens it.

I was excited to see that this was written in part in vernacular. J. California Cooper is one of my favorite authors and I also enjoyed Marlon James' work. <b>How to Love a Jamaican</b> begins with an exchange between two college women Kimberly and Cecilia, Both are of Jamaican descent but one is American raised. Their different views about race particularly those on interracial relationships and colorism within the black community are the focus in the first short story <i>Light-Skinned Girls and Kelly Rowlands</i>. The short story collection ends with the tale of a young Jamaican woman who has achieved success in the American music industry but has lost her way, dipping into depression as she assimilates into American culture. Throughout <b>How to Love A Jamaican</b> the common thread throughout as can be gathered by the title is the challenges faced by Jamaican immigrants. Many of the stories are based in the Midwest and show how immigrants cling to their communities here in the United States while also still yearning for home. A lot of the stories seem to be woven together. Mermaids make an appearance in the tragedy <i>Slack</i> and then reappear again in <i>Mermaid River</i> and <i> Shirley From a Small Place</i>. The idea of a young girl being sent home to her family in Jamaica so she can be "straightened out" is also a recurring theme. Perhaps the biggest thread throughout all of these stories is that of a strong, if at times overbearing mother, who wants the best for her child but loves hard and carries her own baggage. <b>How to Love a Jamaican</b> is Alexia Arthurs's debut work.

When is the last time you had a serendipitous moment? A moment that defined getting out of bed that morning and putting on clothes? Have you ever read something so dear that it made you exhale alongside the character? How To Love A Jamaican is full of short stories just like those moments.

Alexia Arthur’s debut How To Love A Jamaican is a tender compilation of short stories that are heartbreaking and vulnerable. The collection explores the lives of Jamaicans, both American born and from their homeland. These stories explore belonging in a myriad of ways. “Light Skinned Girls and Kelly Rowlands” is a story that takes its name from the Kanye West song Power from 2010. This particular story deals with two Jamaican college friends. One young woman was raised in Northern California in an upper-middle-class home and is more familiar with lattes than oxtails. The other, raised by her mother in a New York Jamaican community and would take an hour commute on the train to NYU each day. The story weaves in an intricate tale of friendship, racial identity and culture.

My two favorite stories are extremely different from one another. “Slack” is heart wrenching and devastating. The story begins with twin sisters who drown in a water tank in Jamaica, but the heart of the story goes back to their mother as a child and walks us through the cascade of events that lead to their death. Then comes “Island” and the story of a queer woman who recently came out to her best friends and finds herself on a trip back to Jamaica for a wedding. “Island” explores the crazy way that lifelong friends can be merely tolerating, rather than accepting of who some of us are. Arthurs has a keen way of writing to show how the subtle actions of loved ones are really larger than life and clear in their unspoken intentions.

There are stories in How To Love A Jamaican that will make you yearn for more of those characters. Unfortunately, there are also a few stories that will make you wish for a stronger narrative. “Mash Up Love” happens to be the latter. A twin brother spends his days recounting the ways he and his brother are different and how differently they were loved by their mother. It seems to be more a stream of consciousness ramble than a fully fledged out story. You’ll find some recurring characters throughout the entire book, which happens to be one of my favorite traits of a collection. It isn’t a trait that makes this a more cohesive collection, but it doesn’t take away from everything that is right with it.

Don’t worry. The heavy hitters are there, including “We Eat Our Daughters” that explores the intricate mothering and daughtering of Jamaican women through small vignettes. Relationships between mothers and daughters are tricky, to say the least.

How To Love A Jamaican is a vibrant read. It’s definitely been a book in my back pocket, a.k.a. purse, all season. If you didn’t preorder this collection, don’t worry. How To Love A Jamaican hits shelves July 24, 2018 and can be found in hardback, digital and audio versions.

“How to Love a Jamaican” is an engaging collection of eleven short stories from debut author Alexia Arthurs. These are not your “typical” immigrant stories, however. Arthurs is not afraid to delve deeply into the lives of her characters and discuss complex issues of sex, class, and race both in Jamaica and within the lives of Jamaicans living in America.

All of these stories are about Jamaicans and cover a wide variety of their lives–male and female, straight and gay, old, young, and middle aged, on the island and in America. The characters are not linked, but this is definitely a cohesive collection of stories. In “Mash Up Love,” a set of identical male twins vie for the attention of their mother and loved ones. “The Ghost of Jia Yi” is about a young college student’s adjustment to America and her realization that she is an outsider. “Light Skinned Girls and Some Kelly Rowlands” is about the class conflicts within a friendship between two college girls, one Jamaican born, the other U.S. born with Jamaican born parents. “Bad Behavior” is about a free-spirited teenage girl sent to the island for disobeying her parents, with the hope that her stern Jamaican grandmother will ‘straighten’ out her wayward behavior. I also liked “Shirley from a Small Place,” about a Jamaican American pop star who finds international success and deals with the pitfalls of fame.

It’s hard to choose a favorite story here, I really liked every single selection. Even though the stories share similar themes, there were no repeats and not a single word was wasted.

4.5 stars. I will definitely read the next thing that Alexia Arthurs writes.

Title: How to Love a Jamaican
Author: Alexia Arthurs
Publisher: Ballantine
Reviewed By: Arlena Dean
Rating: Four
Review:

"How to Love a Jamaican" by Alexia Arthurs

My Thoughts...

What a interesting bunch of interesting entertaining collection of stories that will keep you turning the pages to see what was happening not only in Jamaica but also America. This Jamaica culture was really one intriguing read. I enjoyed reading how each story had a 'person of Jamaican descent with most of the story being of self discover, remembrance and moments of transcendence.' I loved how the read made the reader be caught up in the 'everyday voices that dealt with just everyday life. The reader will get a little bit of it all from such as ...'Who are these brothers and sisters, mothers, old loves and absent fathers?.' Be ready for a read full of not only 'tender but some heartbreaking stories' that will definitely leave you only wanting more of these collection of stories.

How To Love A Jamaican is a collection of eleven short stories by debut author Alexia Arthurs, all centered on the theme of Love. You might expect a collection of falling in love, and out of love, and happily ever afters, or not. That is not what this collection is. Arthurs’ has created eleven very unique stories to define the way love appears in our lives, from heterosexual romance to a son loving his mother and trying to please her. While probably not unique to Jamaicans, the context of these variations on love within Jamaican culture is wholly readable and fascinating.

Five standout, five-star stories in the collection are -

“Island” - a story of how lesbianism and female love in Jamaican culture and on the island itself, told through the eyes of a woman returning home to Jamaica for a wedding and feeling out of place amongst new American friends with male lovers and even more out of place on the island where she’s meant to get married and have babies.

“Mermaid River” - a story of the love and bond between a man and the grandmother who raised him, told through the passage of time when he gave up time with friends to help her and his adult reluctance to be pulled back into taking care of her in actual old age and then to mourning her when she is gone.

“On Shelf” - a story of the delicate balance between wanting to love and to be loved, and living the life we want to live, it is a tale of the desperation caused by society telling us that not only do we need to be loved, that we need to be loved to have value and worth.

“Shirley From A Small Place” - a story of a worldwide pop star who lives the life of a pop star but it’s an unfulfilled life, until she goes home to Jamaica where her mother makes her the food she grew up with and they bond over ignoring the changes that have come between them in favor of remembering the things that define them.

“Mash Up Love” - a story of twins, Esau & Jacob ‘Cobby’, and how their mother loved them as best she could, but differently, leaving Esau to wonder at just how a certain kind of love can maybe make a certain kind of person turn out a certain way.

(I received a copy of How to Love a Jamaican from NetGalley and Ballantine Books in exchange for an honest and original review. All thoughts are my own.)

This is a beautiful and well told collection of stories that intertwine with one another. Her writing style is raw and lyrical and her stories just draw you in. Definitely make sure that you pick up a copy today so that you can discover for yourself just how beautiful this book is. Happy reading!

How To Love A Jamaican is an excellent debut that I recommend to anyone looking for a collection of stories focusing on how people relate, love, and simply navigate each other. Arthurs has the ability to set an environment and open a connection to her characters quickly. The connecting theme of how to be and embrace who you are in a world that tries to make you conform to standards and expectations that aren't what you want or who you are meant to be is evident in each story. Each story presents a different challenge and circumstance that Arthurs uses to showcase the uniqueness of being Jamaican while also showing relatable family, social, and emotional issues many of us face and can relate to. Arthurs' love for Jamaican culture is clear and shines through in her descriptive writing. She doesn't hold punches when it comes to what is good or bad in Jamaican culture, but the love is still clearly there.

How To Love A Jamaican is a really good collection and I am looking forward to hopefully reading a full length novel from Alexia Arthurs in the near future.

This short story collection provides an intimate glimpse into the heart of Jamaica. The author, Alexia Arthurs, weaves together stories of love, promise, heartache, and grief in a poignant style all her own. While reading, I found myself alternating between laughter and sorrow, disappointment and surprise. I especially appreciated the variety of voices and life experiences Arthurs offers in this collection--she represents Jamaican immigrants to the U.S., those that never leave the island, Jamaicans that return to the island in retirement, etc. These different perspectives provide insight into the hopes, dreams, desires, and failures that drive every generation of Jamaicans. My favorite stories were: "Light-Skinned Girls and Kelly Rowlands", "We Eat Our Daughters", and "Shirley From a Small Place".

This lovely set of stories brings to life the Jamaican culture and what happens when immigrants from that culture come to North America- and also when they return to Jamaica. These are tales that touch on race, coming of age, mothers and how controlling they can be, sexuality, assimilation, culture, and more. The characters are brought vividly to life with lush descriptions of food, and the use of patois in conversations (no, it’s not that hard to understand). Arthurs is funny and writes sympathetic characters. The stories touch both things specific to the Jamaican experience and things that are universal. Five stars.

These stories of the world of the Jamaican diaspora are filled with insights into what it means to be Jamaican, both in Jamaica and as immigrants in the United States. Many of the wonderfully written stories examine the influences of family, culture, religion, and sexuality. All are written in a positive view of this influence; even those which have LGBT content. As a gay male, I was surprised by this--knowing the horror stories of the state of LGBT equality in Jamaica.
Much thanks to the publisher and Net Gallery for providing this edition to me.

I absolutely loved reading this collection of short stories! Arthurs' writing style was really good and had my attention from the first page. I really enjoyed how Arthurs incorporated the Jamaican language in her writing with the dialog. This definitely helped me feel closer to their culture and language. I would say it's similar to Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, where you get a sense of familiarity with the Chinese language and their culture. A very enjoyable read for sure.

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC, in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC. This well-written collection of short stories lives up to the buzz. The stories are engaging. The writing is sharp and familiar. I strongly recommend this one.

"How to Love a Jamaican” is a lovely combination of short stories about - you guessed it - Jamaican characters. As with any books with more than one stories, I liked some more than others. But they all have their own challenges and struggles, and many talk about powerful Jamaican women that moved to America looking for a new and better life. If I had to pick just one story, I would choose the first one, because it really got me interested in the rest of the book. But they all touched my senses in a different way. I’m not Jamaican, but I am also a foreigner that emigrated to the United States, and I could see myself in some of those stories, especially the ones that talk about a sense of belonging (and how you can only feel "at home" when you go back to your home country).

My favorite short story collection this year. Arthurs has written beautifully about Jamaicans- especially Jamaican women- who face the challenges of maintaining their heritage while transiting the world. Each story has a special gem in it to make it unique. The voices change with the tale but throughout there is a huge heart. I can't choose one above the others. Like many others, I keep short story collections to dip in and out of - this is perfect for that. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I'm looking forward to more from Arthurs.