A Million Aunties

Jamaican author Alecia McKenzie (Sweetheart) offers her readers delightful characters and thoughtful themes in A Million Aunties.

Chris seems to be running from something when he arrives in the Jamaican village of Port Segovia from New York City. In the opening chapter, "How to Paint Flowers," his grief is gradually revealed: a woman, Lidia, now gone; Chris's dark paintings; the impulse now toward light, as if to make up for what is lost. His friend and agent, Stephen, has sent him to Auntie Della in Port Segovia, promising, "You'll have anything and everything you want. The whole range of tropical beauties: hibiscus, bird of paradise, bougainvillea." Della owns a local nursery.

Just as readers settle into Chris's pain and paintings, McKenzie shifts the focus. Chapter two is told from the point of view of Chris's father, aging in Brooklyn. He worries about his son and their frayed relationship. Chris was born in the United States, to a Black man from Alabama and a Jamaican woman. His father remembers first meeting her, and noting "the arrogance and confidence of growing up as a majority. The shortsightedness of it."

Chris and Della are the heart of this story, but a kaleidoscope of other perspectives enriches it. The myriad characters offer a textured background to this central story. A Million Aunties is an exquisite novel about beauty and pain, and what binds us together. Through captivating character studies, quiet lovely writing and deceptively simple storytelling, McKenzie illuminates basic commonalities and rethinks what family and home mean. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

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