Synopses & Reviews
Fiction. African American Studies. Kwame Dawes debut novel SHE'S GONE delves into the enigmatic challenge of two virtual strangers trying to negotiate differences of culture, nationality, class, and gender. "A masterly tour de force, the language here is elegant, seductive, and tender, the irony is sharp, the humor subverts, and hope shines through. Kwame Dawes is always reinventing the Caribbean narrative, fusing myth, legend, reggae, and his own sense of style to create a powerful and tremendous art. He never ceases to amaze"-Chris Abani. Dawes teaches at the University of South Carolina, where he is the Distinguished Poet in Residence and director of the USC Arts Institute and the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. His book WISTERIA: TWILIGHT POEMS FROM THE SWAMP COUNTRY is also available from SPD.
Synopsis
"Dawes offers vibrant characters and locales in this diaspora of black culture and strong emotions, bordering the fine line between love and madness between two troubled people." --Booklist
Kofi, a Jamaican reggae musician, and Keisha, a social researcher from South Carolina, meet at a club where Kofi's band is playing on the tail end of a United States tour. Kofi and Keisha come together that night, seeking relief from the uneasy circumstances of their life--Keisha still trying to make up her mind about an ex-lover who keeps coming back into her life, and Kofi realizing that he is teetering on depression and the tyranny of his older lover in Jamaica. Something happens in their first meeting and Kofi convinces Keisha to take a chance and follow him to Jamaica.
She's Gone explores the complex dynamics of two virtual strangers trying to negotiate the complicated terrain of cultural difference, class difference, and issues of gender. The Jamaica that Dawes writes about is thick with the politics of class and identity, full of characters with distinct agendas and needs--a world quite different from the stereotype of sea and sun. Keisha feels immediately like a stranger on the island, and Kofi's return to Jamaica transforms him into a brooding man who finds comfort in withdrawing into himself.
Keisha takes off for the north coast, where she tries to make sense of her decisions. She is sure that she has made a mistake in coming to Jamaica. While there, she is physically attacked and left to feel as if she has no one to care for her. Kofi's inertia is a disappointment and Keisha decides to return to America. Kofi succumbs to a deep depression and only when he discovers that Keisha is pregnant with their child does he begin a long journey across the US to find her. His travels take him to South Carolina, to her family, to her landscape and her history, teaching him more about Keisha and more about how much he needs her. It is never certain whether Kofi will find Keisha--her commitment is to find a new life for herself, a new space for herself.
She's Gone delves into the psychology of desire and need as it contends with issues of culture and class. If it is a love story, it is one marked by the harsh realities of human existence that we see in the most revealing of Bob Marley's love songs, or the cool sensual intelligence of the best of Milan Kundera. Dawes is a poet, but he never lets his poetry detract from the sheer pleasure of storytelling.
Synopsis
A prominent Jamaican reggae singer falls in love with an African American woman while on tour in South Carolina. The two struggle to forge a relationship across a cultural and psychological divide in a story that spans from Jamaica to South Carolina to New York City.
Synopsis
The debut novel from Jamaica's award-winning poet.
About the Author
Kwame Dawes was born in Ghana on 28 July 1962. He grew up in Jamaica and was educated at Jamaica College, the University of the West Indies and the University of New Brunswick, where he gained his Ph.D. He is currently Professor of English and Director of the S. C. Poetry Initiative at the University of South Carolina, where he has taught since 1992, and where he served for several years as Director of the MFA Writing Programme in Creative Writing. A reviewer, broadcaster, actor, storyteller, broadcaster, critic, poet and playwright, his play One Love (2001), an adaptation of Roger Mais' novel Brotherman, was commissioned by Talawa, one of Britain's leading black theatre companies, and premiered at the Lyric Theatre in London in 2001. His poetry collections include Progeny of Air (1994), winner of the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection, Prophets (1995), Jacko Jacobus (1995), Requiem (1996), Shook Foil: A Collection of Reggae Poetry (1997), and Map-Maker (2000). His New and Selected Poems, 1994-2002 was published in 2002. He has also published a book of short stories, A Place to Hide and Other Stories (2002), and the first full-length study of the lyrics of Bob Marley - Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius (2002). He reviews and writes articles widely for newspapers and journals including the Washington Post, Wasafiri, the London Review of Books and World Literature Today, and is currently Criticism Editor for Obsidian II, an African-American literary journal, and author of a regular poetry column with the State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina. He also writes poems and stories for children, which have appeared in various anthologies. Kwame Dawes was Writing Fellow at the University of Iowa in 1986 and was made Associate Fellow at the Centre for Caribbean Studies, University of Warwick, in 1996. In the same year he won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the South Carolina Arts Commission. His book of poems, Midland (2000), draws deeply on personal travels and experiences in Africa, the Caribbean, Britain and the American South, and won the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize from Ohio University Press. His other awards include a Poetry Business Prize (2000) and a Pushcart Prize for Poetry (2001). He was John Henrik Clarke Distinguished Lecturer in Autumn 2001 at the University of Alabama where he delivered a lecture entitled Natural Mysticism: Towards a New Reggae Aesthetic. He is currently the series editor of a new series of Caribbean plays and of Sweet Sop books, a Black British Poetry series, both by Peepal Tree Press. Kwame Dawes lives in the United States. He is married with three children. His most recent books are Gomer's Song (2008) and She's Gone (2008).