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TimeOff Books

FICTION
From Jamaica,

with heartache

By Joshunda Sanders

Patsy, The sTunning second novel by nicole
Dennis-Benn, chronicles the often hidden
sacrifices that black immigrant women make in
pursuit of the ever elusive American Dream. As in
her first novel, the acclaimed Here Comes the Sun,
Dennis-Benn crafts a narrative set between her
native Jamaica and her current home of Brooklyn,
this time following a mother and child on distinctly
different paths over the course of a decade. Patsy,
28, is the ambivalent mother to 5-year-old Tru.
When Patsy departs Jamaica for the U.S. in 1998, in
search of opportunity, she leaves Tru behind.
Readers will judge Patsy at the outset for
abandoning her only child, who is wrestling
with her own identity back home—approaching
adolescence as a gender- nonconforming athlete in
a country that offers neither language nor tolerance
for what it means to be black, working class or
queer. Her mother has chosen a life without her;
when Patsy does acknowledge Tru, she sends a
package with glittery nail files, hair bows and Hello
Kitty stationery—a sign that further distances the
mother from the person her child is becoming.
But Patsy is struggling too: she’s in conflict over and her father’s partner tells her she has to stop
her decision to leave Tru and suffering from an playing soccer and climbing trees, Dennis-Benn
unrequited love for a childhood friend now back in describes an ache that both mother and child
her life. Dennis-Benn forces readers to grapple with share: “The pain of her immediate isolation,” she
an impossible tension within the story, demanding writes, “is as sharp as the one inside her womb.”
that we examine both our condemnation of Patsy Though set in the past, the story and its
for choosing herself over her child and the array of reflections on borders and boundaries carry an
forces that made her feel she had no other option— urgent timeliness. Patsy’s pursuit of a better life
forces that continue to keep her down. in the U.S. and the costs that come with it mirror
In America, just when Patsy thinks she the struggles of black women who immigrate with
can easily enroll in school or follow a path to dreams they soon find unreachable. She comes to
success—like the ones told in popular tales of discover, like so many women, that the bootstrap
striving immigrants who overcome their lot—her myth can only inspire so much.
undocumented status relegates her to a certain △ There have been few narrative epics that
kind of labor. She cleans bathrooms at a mediocre Dennis-Benn’s effectively tally the emotional, logistical, physical,
Jamaican restaurant before becoming a nanny, follow-up to her psychological and financial trials of the black female
caring for white children with more focus and acclaimed debut immigrant and mother or, likewise, the impact on
intention than she ever offered Tru. The irony follows a mother the family of a black woman who dares transform
crushes her. When she seeks medication to ease and child on herself. Dennis-Benn maps the internal terrain
her depression, Patsy encounters bias in the diverging paths of black women yearning to be free— without
medical system all too common for black women romanticizing or ignoring their flaws. Yes, her
and the working poor. And so the cycle continues. central characters are persistent, but they can also be DENNIS - BENN: OZIER MUHAMMAD; BOOKS: KIM BUBELLO FOR TIME
naive. Yes, these are strong black women, but they’re
Dennis-Benn, who herself immigrated from also human, and they’re nearly broken by loneliness,
Jamaica to the U.S. as a teenager, depicts despair and a sense that they’ll never belong.
coinciding journeys toward self- actualization for Showing us the triumphs and pitfalls of these two
characters whose agency is often trumped by the parallel rites of passage, Patsy fills a literary void
whims of others. When Tru begins menstruating with compassion, complexity and tenderness. 
84 Time June 3–10, 2019