I read novels for so many reasons including to travel, to learn, to think, to escape, to immerse myself in the lives of characters, and to appreciate language. Christina Cooke’s debut novel, Broughtupsy, meets all of these markers and more. Broughtupsy is the story of Akua, a twenty-year-old queer Jamaican woman living in Canada via Texas. We meet Akua at her twelve-year-old brother, Bryson’s, hospital bedside. Bryson dies early in the story leaving Akua and her father bereft. The final member of the family, Tamika, the older sister, comes neither for Bryson’s last days nor his funeral. Akua, grieving the loss of a brother and a relationship decides to return to Jamaica with Bryson's ashes in a wooden box to find her long-lost sister.
We quickly see that the relationship between the sisters is tense. Akua is angry with her sister for abandoning the family. Tamika, devoutly religious, is openly hostile to her sister’s sexuality, calling her “strange” and telling her that has no place in Jamaican society. Early on, Cooke gives us the intimacy of a car scene, complete with all the sights and sensations of the Kingston road. The language soars.
We continue up, up, passing half-built houses with rebars turning red with rust. Silence fills the car like smoke as Tamika turns down a side street, pulling off the road then parking on a green bank. I turn to her, my questions shattered into splinters burrowing deep into my insides.
The image of splinters gives us a visceral view into Akua’s state of mind as she tries to cope with both her sister and native land. The narrative continues with the tension between the sisters ramping up. To get away, Akua sets out solo to explore the city, often stopping to leave literal bits of Bryson across the city. These trips are ones which encompass the past and the present as Cooke’s expertly takes us back and forth in time, following the patterns of Akua’s mind.
Wild goats munch on patches of weeds next to shops closed up behind zinc shutters, graffiti scrawled on top. … Boys in dirty khakis and girls in pink dresses come running toward the bus and I remember! I don’t know where I’m going, but I know where I’ve been. I remember staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, at my own brown tunic with pleats starched crisp. First day of first form. I was ten years old.
As Akua grapples with her past across three countries, in the present, she meets Jayda, another “strange” woman. Here Cooke ratchets up the novel’s tension several notches. We see intense scenes between the sisters, passion between the queer women, and roof blowing scene on the occasion of Akua’s baptism in Tamika’s church. Cooke’s prose captures the big and the small, from street-level details to the largest of emotions. No spoilers, but the novel’s last scene is as beautiful as anything I’ve read in a while.
This rich novel takes us on a multifaceted journey though space, time, identity, sexuality, and the struggles of family. Broughtupsy (a phrase used several times in the novel) is a force and a must-read. I read in an interview with Cooke where she said she hoped her future works would involve “more insightful explorations of who we are and what we want as told from a Jamaican and immigrant lens.”
Yes, yes, yes. Read Broughtupsy as we await more exceptional work from Christina Cooke.