Donna Hemans, The House of Plain Truth (2024)
She would not carry forward her family’s legacy of failure to another generation. Her father had tried and failed; he migrated to Cuba with the belief that he would make his fortune there. But he came back to Jamaica with next to nothing [...]. Once he returned, most everything he touched thereafter failed. Pearline couldn’t repeat her father’s mistake. And didn’t. But at what cost?
Thoughtfully constructed and enjoyable to read, this novel of return explores complex family dynamics and different kinds of grief -- including the one that stems from the family's failed migration from Jamaica to Cuba.
Historical context: By the early 1930s, between 150,000 and 200,000 Caribbean immigrants (antillanos) were living and working in Cuba. Around that time, multiple economic crises and anti-immigrant sentiments not only toppled the Machado dictatorship but also led to a series of political decisions, such as the 1933 Ley de Nacionalización del Trabajo, that resulted in mass repatriations of people from the then British Caribbean islands and mass deportations of people of Haitian origin.
