Frying Plantain

“This likkle girl here, she love the plantain, yuh know,” she tells Sister Bernice. “It nah Christmas food but mi cook it on Christmas for her. I bring she back to Hanover last year for my niece's wedding, must've been Kara's second visit to Jamaicar. Nothing troubled her when she visit the first time but last year? Lawd. She had a sickness inna her belly that make she chrow up. Only thing she could keep down was plantain and she nah want Bredda's wife plantain, she only want fi eat what mi fry.”

Frying Plaintain is marketed as a collection of twelve interrelated short stories, but as they are primarily narrated in the first person, by the same main character, and follow a straightforward chronological timeline, this reads like a novel. Further, the chapters don't have that completeness of thought or sudden swerve that one encounters in finely written short stories – I can't imagine any of these chapters standing on their own in a magazine – and honestly, the writing itself is fairly basic. What Frying Plantain does well is to serve as a bildungsroman for a first generation Jamaican-Canadian daughter navigating her single mother's demands and expectations in downtown Toronto (more than anything, this has the feel of a lightly fictionalised memoir; I have no idea how closely these stories match the lived experience of author Zalika Reid-Benta), and although the writing doesn't get very deep, it does shine a light on one of Toronto's largest and most vibrant immigrant communities. 

I could tell she knew I was lying but she didn't ask me any more questions, she only turned the volume back up on the TV. She had to know what I'd only just now discovered: that peace could only exist in this family when we lied about everything, at least to each other.

Frying Plantain is primarily a domestic tale and explores the relationships between three generations: Kara is the main character, born in Canada and strictly controlled by her mother, but under pressure from her friends in their Caribbean-rich neighbourhood to let loose sometimes; Eloise is Kara's Jamaica-born single mother, working and putting herself through university, doing whatever she can to ensure her daughter doesn't compromise her future through teen pregnancy as she did; and Verna is Eloise's Jamaica-born mother (speaking in the dense patois above), who works two jobs to keep her little bungalow (which Verna keeps spotless, down to the plastic-covered furniture), and whose husband, George, steps out with other ladies. There are secrets and lies, screaming, slaps, and stoney silences, months gone by without visiting the grandparents, and everyone seems more worried about how things look to outsiders than any individual's happiness. Much is written about how to avoid frizzy hair and ashy skin; what level of affected accent is acceptable and what appears false; and Kara is warned to neither act like the faas girls from their old neighbourhood or to believe that she can get away with the common acts of rebellion that the white students in her new high school engage in – these stories aren't quite about race, but her hair, her skin, her connection to her culture, and her mother's expectations are challenges that Kara needs to navigate every day. Nothing very surprising happens in this collection, but it was an easy and interesting read.

The longlist for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize:

Days by Moonlight by André Alexis

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Immigrant City by David Bezmozgis
Greenwood by Michael Christie
Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles
The Innocents by Michael Crummey
Dream Sequence by Adam Foulds
Late Breaking by K.D. Miller
Dual Citizens by Alix Ohlin
Lampedusa by Steven Price
Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-Benta

Reproduction by Ian Williams


The prize was won by Ian Williams for Reproduction, but my favourite was Michael Crummey's The Innocents.