Patsy

Patsy is a powerful novel about a Jamaican woman who leaves everything behind to go to America, at times heartbreaking and happy, and a moving look at identity and belonging. Patsy manages to get a visa to America, where she hopes to follow her childhood best friend and secret love Cicely who she hasn't seen in years. To do so, she has to leave behind her young daughter Tru, who she cannot connect with like she feels she should. But America isn't what she expected and Cicely's life is different now. As Patsy grapples with years as an undocumented immigrant, trying to fight her own feelings and loneliness, Tru lives with her father's family in Jamaica and is dealing with her own identity and with the abandonment by her mother.

This is an immersive and emotional novel that delves deep into Patsy's mindsets and life, but also manages to weave in Tru's story and the heartbreaking ways in which they are paralleled or separated. Patsy's journey is often bittersweet, with her attempts to find the life she wants to lead often not working out as expected, and immigration being far from her dreams, but at the same time the novel is hopeful and asserts the importance of living your own life and being who you want to be. It provides an insight into race in America, especially as an undocumented immigrant, and into life and class in Jamaica, as well as the gender roles that can be oppressive and not fitting the individual. The combination of Patsy and Tru's stories makes it particularly powerful, bringing a lot of the emotional moments as the novel grapples with ideas of parenting and what is actually best for the people involved, both mother and child.

Written in a way that feels immediate and vivid, Patsy is a novel that draws you in and gives a voice to questions of immigration, sexuality, and gender. It feels like a novel that will linger with you long after the last page, and hopefully will provide some of the representation that Patsy feels is so missing when she goes to America, unable to see people like her in certain places, from both Patsy and Tru's depictions.

From the very start of this book you just get the feeling that it is going to be an excellent read.
It is based around Patsy who is from Jamaica and is trying to make a life for herself in America- yet it does not go quite as well as expected.
It deals with different emotions, sexuality and the feeling of belonging and acceptance.
Patsy is hoping to re-connect with friend and ex lover Cicely. However as the years have gone by life has also changed for Cicely.
Highly recommended read.
Great writing.
Thank you to both NetGalley and Oneworld Publication for my eARC of this book in exchange for my honest unbiased review

Heart-wrenching and evocative, this novel provides a dual-narrative approach of a mother and daughter, separated after Patsy, the mother, leaves their home in Jamaica for a better life. Painful but ultimately hopeful, this story is empathetic and wonderfully told.

Thanks to NetGalley and The Publisher for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is the story of Patsy and what she will do for love. It's the story of an illegal immigrant in America. It's a story about survival. it's a story about parent-child relationships. It's about love, lost and found. its about self acceptance. it's not a nice story, It doesn't have a happy every after. But there was so much beauty in the writing. I couldn't put it down and certainly wasn't disappointed.

Will be highly recommending this one.

My wife has set herself a challenge to read books by black women authors this year and somehow, I find myself reading reviews and gravitating towards the same kind of book. Patsy is the story of a young woman with a five-year-old daughter living in a poor area of Jamaica. She is desperate to get to America to find Cicely, her love and best friend from childhood, at the cost of just about everything she has, including her daughter. She finally manages to get her visa but what she finds in Brooklyn is not quite what Cicely has portrayed in her letters.

This is a beautifully written story which powerfully expresses the life of women who migrate for work or the hope of a better life in another country. It’s written from both Patsy’s and her daughter, Tru’s, points of view giving an incredible account of the trials and development both of them have to go through. Patsy is a complex character who and I found myself constantly having to pull myself back from judgement, even when I’m reading Tru’s point of view.

So much of it is such a stark reality check on the difference in the lives of women with privilege versus women who have so few choices. Women from poor communities have so little say over their lives and their bodies. They do what is expected of them in order to survive. Their bodies belong to men, sex is expected and consent is not needed. Sexual orientation and gender identity is not something they have any power to express. Possibly one of the saddest things though, is that for someone like Patsy, her status is pretty much the same in the US as it is in Jamaica.

I highly recommend it even though it’s quite emotionally draining.

Book received from Netgalley and Oneworld Publications for an honest review.