Frying Plantain, by Zalika Reid-Benta ** ONLINE MEETING **

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 grandmother’s 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,” Toronto’s Eglinton West neighbourhood, Kara moves from girlhood to the threshold of adulthood. In these twelve interconnected stories we see the tensions between mothers and daughters, second-generation Canadians and first-generation cultural expectations, and Black identity and predominately white society.

Zalika Reid-Benta captures this unique upbringing with honesty, tenderness and a profound love for being a diasporic child and teen in inner city Toronto.

From story to story we see Kara find her voice. These are short stories as novel; set firmly in the midst of Toronto’s Caribbean diaspora.