Kingston Noir

by Colin Channer (Editor)

Overview

Following in the Caribbean footsteps of Haiti Noir and Trinidad Noir, now come dark stories from Jamaica's capital city.

“Kingston Noir subverts the simplistic sunshine/reggae/spliff-smoking image of Jamaica at almost every turn . . . The collection amply rewards the reader with a rich interplay of geographies and themes.” —The Los Angeles Times

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

Brand-new stories by: Marlon James, Kwame Dawes, Patricia Powell, Chris Abani, Marcia Douglas, Leone Ross, Kei Miller, Christopher John Farley, Ian Thomson, Thomas Glave, and Colin Channer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617750748
Publisher:	Akashic Books, Ltd.
Publication date:	05/29/2012
Series:	Akashic Noir Series
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

COLIN CHANNER was born in Jamaica to a pharmacist and cop. Junot Díaz calls him “one of the Caribbean Diaspora’s finest writers.” His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Harvard Review, the Common, and Renaissance Noire, among other places. Channer has served as Newhouse Professor in Creative Writing at Wellesley College and Fannie Hurst Writer in Residence at Brandeis University. His many books of prose include the novella The Girl with the Golden Shoes, “a very moving and mesmerizing journey” in the words of Edwidge Danticat. He won the Silver Musgrave Medal in Literature in 2010 and currently lives in New England. Providential is his first poetry book.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: Hard Road to Travel

“My Lord” by Kwame Dawes (Portmore)

“The White Gyal with the Camera” Kei Miller (August Town)

“Tomcat Beretta” by Patricia Powell (New Kingston)

“A Grave Undertaking” by Ian Thomson (Downtown Kingston)

Part II: Is This Love?

“Immaculate” by Marlon James (Constant Spring)

“Roll It” by Leone Ross (Mona)

“One-Girl Half Way Tree Concert” by Marcia Douglas (Half Way Tree)

“Leighton Leigh Anne Norbrook” by Thomas Glave (Norbrook)

Part III: Pressure Drop

“54-46 (That’s My Number)” by Christopher John Farley (Trench Town)

“Sunrise” by Chris Abani (Greenwich Town)

“Monkey Man” by Colin Channer (Hughenden)

Editorial Reviews

Akashic's latest in its series of city-specific noir anthologies (beginning with Brooklyn Noir and eventually moving overseas to include Moscow, Haiti, and many more) explores Kingston's "turbulent dynamics, the way its boundaries of color, class, race, gender, ideology, and sexual privilege crisscross like storm-tangled power lines" through 11 original stories. Editor and Kingston native Channer lays out his perception of his hometown's culture, which he likens to that of New Orleans, "its cultural cousin on the Mississippi," in his too-brief introduction (which could use some background history regarding Jamaican crime writers) as "liquor-loving, music-maddened, seafood-smitten, class-addicted," and that image comes through loud and clear in these thoroughly well-written stories. Of them all, Kei Miller's powerful "The White Gyal with the Camera," about a naïve photographer's sojourn in one of the city's grittiest neighborhoods, August Town, is most likely to linger in readers' memories. The collection, which features many stories that seem to stop before they're finished, doesn't live up to Channer's hope that it be "nothing less than a classic," but fans of noir will still enjoy this batch of sordid tales set in the sweltering heat of the tropics. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"Several of the stories in Kingston Noir succeed brilliantly in reproducing the simultaneously estranging and horrifying effects of urban violence in Jamaica. And there is something appropriately unsettling about the differences between the stories, collected and edited by Colin Channer, such that the sense of being dislodged somewhere puzzlingly dissimilar from the place one began sometimes mimics the feeling of moving through Kingston . . . traversing this collection as if going ‘down the road,’ with all the abrupt stops, shifts, and turns that Jamaicanism implies, does offer a way of connecting, piece by piece, story by story, to fragments of the city tucked away in consciousness and memory. It is a city rarely encountered in fiction; this collection satisfies a need and makes one hungry for more."

SX Salon

"Kingston Noir is an eclectic and gritty melange of tales that sears the imagination . . . Kingston Noir proves its worth as a quintessential piece of West Indian literature—rich, artistic, timeless, and above all, draped in unmistakable realism."

The Gleaner (Jamaica)

"Kingston Noir goes darker and deeper than any before . . . the purest of noir, and the richest depictions of Jamaica."

Huffington Post

"There is much to be admired in this anthology. Technically, the standard is very high throughout, but in several of the stories the writing soars."

Wasafiri (UK)