Frying Plantain

An unforgettable debutPaul Beatty, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sellout

Incisive and sharpRefinery29

Kara Davis is a girl caught in the middle - of her Canadian nationality and her desire to be a true Jamaican, of her mother and grandmothers rages and life lessons, of having to avoid being thought of as too faas or too quiet or too bold or too soft.

Set in Little Jamaica, Torontos Eglinton West neighbourhood, Kara moves from girlhood to the threshold of adulthood, from elementary school to high school graduation, in these twelve interconnected stories. We see her on a visit to Jamaica, startled by the sight of a severed pigs head in her great aunts freezer; in junior high, the victim of a devastating prank by her closest friends; and as a teenager in and out of her grandmothers house, trying to cope with the ongoing battles between her unyielding grandparents.

A rich and unforgettable portrait of growing up between worlds, Frying Plantain shows how, in one charged moment, friendship and love can turn to enmity and hate, well-meaning protection can become control, and teasing play can turn to something much darker. In her brilliantly incisive debut, Zalika Reid-Benta artfully depicts the tensions between mothers and daughters, second-generation Canadians and first-generation cultural expectations, and Black identity and predominately white society.

Zalika Reid-Benta announces herself as an enormous voice for the coming decade (and one that is desperately needed)Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story