Instantly noticeable is the strong Jamaican dialect, which is used throughout the novel, fairly easy to adjust to and does wonders for setting the overall tone. Within the early pages of Gloria, Kerry Young easily transports readers to streets Kingston. The changing political tides make it difficult for Gloria and Pao to be together, but encourage Gloria to become part of a larger social upheaval, allowing her to recognize her own value and strength. Here Gloria meets Pao, a racketeer and enforcer in Chinatown, who soon becomes more than a customer. With few connections or skills, alone in an unfamiliar city, the sisters end up in a brothel run by a pair of strong women willing to take them in. Read moreĪs young teenagers in 1938, Gloria Campbell and her sister Marcia flee Jamaica's countryside for Kingston following a violent incident in their home. It is also an unlikely place to gain a passion for social justice, but it is one of the house's proprietors who instills in Gloria new ideas about the rights of women and all humankind, eventually propelling her to Cuba, where even greater change is underway, and where Gloria must choose between the life she has made for herself and the one that might be.Īlive with the energy of a country at a crossroads, this is a story of love in many forms, and of Gloria's evolution-from a frightened girl on the run to a woman fully possessed of her own power. From a room in a boarding house and a job at a supply store, Gloria finds her way to a house of ill repute on the edge of the city, intrigued by the glamorous, financially independent women within.It is an unlikely place to meet the love of your life, but here she encounters Pao, a Chinatown racketeer and a loyal customer who will become something more. But in a capital city awash with change, a black woman is still treated as a second-class citizen.

Taking along her younger sister, she flees their hometown to forge a new life in Kingston. Gloria Campbell is sixteen years old when a single violent act alters the course of her life forever. Finalist in Fiction for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature

Gloria kerry young