Motherland and Other Stories Ahmed Barakat Kira always feels gloomy when

Kira always feels gloomy when it rains

Duna Ghali – Excerpt from the novel When the Scent Awakens

Brian Whitaker

We can relish in the way that in poem after poem the poet finds language that is restorative in the face of the crises she evokes

Motherland and Other Stories Ahmed Barakat Kira always feels gloomy whenWandeka Gayles mostly young black women protagonists win our hearts as risk taking, adventurous explorers of the white world, away from home, which at some point has been Jamaica. They include Roxanne who starts work in a care home in London, who strikes up a rapport with a depressed old man who used to be a writer; Ayo who heads to college in Louisiana, and fights off the internalised voice of her godly, tambourine beating aunt to begin an affair