Best Books of 2019:
Washington Post • O, The Oprah Magazine
•
Time •
NPR •
People •
Buzzfeed A
TODAY
Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Selection Winner • Lambda Literary Award [Lesbian Fiction] A
Washington Post
Lily Lit Club Selection Longlisted • PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction American Library Association • A Barbara Gittings Literature Award Honor Book (Stonewall Book Awards) Finalist • Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist • Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize Apple Books • Best Books of the Month
New York Times Book Review
• Editors’ Choice Selection
Kirkus Reviews
• Most Memorable Fictional Families of the Year Longlisted •
The Morning News
Tournament of Books A
Rumpus
Book Club Selection
A beautifully layered portrait of motherhood, immigration, and the sacrifices we make in the name of love from award-winning novelist Nicole Dennis-Benn.
Heralded for writing “deeply memorable . . . women” (Jennifer Senior,
New York Times)
, Nicole Dennis-Benn introduces readers to an unforgettable heroine for our times: the eponymous Patsy, who leaves her young daughter behind in Jamaica to follow Cicely, her oldest friend, to New York. Beating with the pulse of a long-withheld confession and peppered with lilting patois,
Patsy
gives voice to a woman who looks to America for the opportunity to love whomever she chooses, bravely putting
herself
first. But to survive as an undocumented immigrant, Patsy is forced to work as a nanny, while back in Jamaica her daughter, Tru, ironically struggles to understand why she was left behind. Greeted with international critical acclaim from readers who, at last, saw themselves represented in
, this astonishing novel “fills a literary void with compassion, complexity and tenderness” (Joshunda Sanders,
Time
), offering up a vital portrait of the chasms between selfhood and motherhood, the American dream and reality.