My Own Dear People

A young Jamaican man struggles to overcome toxic masculinity—his culture’s and his own—in this Caribbean coming-of-age novel

In Montego Bay, Jamaica, teenager Nyjah Messado witnesses a brutal assault by some of the boys in his circle of friends. Torn between the masculine code at his private all boys’ school and his own conscience, Nyjah fails to intervene, and comes of age haunted by the guilt of his inaction.

Stylistically engaging, ambitious in scope, and brimming with poetic patois, the n...