Villette is an 1853 novel written by English author Charlotte Brontë. After an unspecified family disaster, the protagonist Lucy Snowe travels from her native England to the fictional Continental city of Villette to teach at a girls' school, where she is drawn into adventure and romance.
Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 novel by Dominican-British author Jean Rhys. The novel serves as a postcolonial and feminist prequel to Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre (1847), describing the background to Mr. Rochester's marriage from the point of view of his wife Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress. Antoinette Cosway is Rhys's version of Brontë's "madwoman in the attic". Antoinette's story is told from the time of her youth in Jamaica, to her unhappy marriage to an English gentleman, Mr. Rochester, who renames her Bertha, declares her mad, takes her to England, and isolates her from the rest of the world in his mansion. Wide Sargasso Sea explores the power of relationships between men and women and discusses the themes of race, Caribbean history, and assimilation as Antoinette is caught in a white, patriarchal society in which she fully belongs neither to Europe nor to Jamaica.
Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. John's, Antigua. She lives in North Bennington, Vermont and is Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University during the academic year.
Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was published in 1994 and went on to become an Oprah's Book Club selection. Danticat has since written or edited several books and has been the recipient of many awards and honors. As of the fall of 2023, she will be the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.
Mary Martha Sherwood was a nineteenth-century English children's writer. Of her more than four hundred works, the best known include The History of Little Henry and his Bearer (1814) and the two series The History of Henry Milner (1822–1837) and The History of the Fairchild Family (1818–1847). Her evangelicalism permeated her early writings, but later works cover common Victorian themes such as domesticity.
A Small Place is a work of creative nonfiction published in 1988 by Jamaica Kincaid. A book-length essay drawing on Kincaid's experiences growing up in Antigua, it can be read as an indictment of the Antiguan government, the tourist industry and Antigua's British colonial legacy, which includes slavery.
Annie Sophie Cory (1 October 1868 – 2 August 1952) was a British author of popular, racy, exotic New Woman novels under the pseudonyms Victoria Cross(e), Vivian Cory and V.C. Griffin.
Elinor Dashwood is a fictional character and the protagonist of Jane Austen's 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility.
The Book Thief is a historical fiction novel by the Australian author Markus Zusak, set in Nazi Germany during World War II. Published in 2005, The Book Thief became an international bestseller and was translated into 63 languages and sold 17 million copies. It was adapted into the 2013 feature film, The Book Thief.
Marie-Elena John is an Antiguan writer whose novel, Unburnable, was published in 2006. She is an Africanist, development and women's rights specialist, currently serving as the Senior Racial Justice Lead at UN Women.
Lucy (1990) is a novella by Jamaica Kincaid. The story begins in medias res: the eponymous Lucy has come from the West Indies to the United States to be an au pair for a wealthy white family. The plot of the novel closely mirrors Kincaid's own experiences.
No Telephone to Heaven, the sequel to Abeng (novel), is the second novel published by Jamaican-American author Michelle Cliff. The novel continues the story of Clare Savage, Cliff's semi-autobiographical character from Abeng, through a set of flashbacks that recount Clare's adolescence and young adulthood as she moves from Jamaica to the United States, then to England, and finally back to Jamaica. First published in 1987, the book has received attention for its articulation of the paradoxes of history and identity after, and counter to, the experience of colonization.
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009) is a parody novel by Ben H. Winters, with Jane Austen credited as co-author. It is a mashup story containing elements from Jane Austen's 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility and common tropes from sea monster stories. It is the thematic sequel to another 2009 novel from the same publisher called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It was first published by Quirk Books on September 15, 2009.
"Girl" is a short story written by Jamaica Kincaid that was included in At the Bottom of the River (1983). It appeared in the June 26, 1978 issue of The New Yorker.
At the Bottom of the River is a collection of short stories by Caribbean novelist Jamaica Kincaid. Published in 1983, it was her first short story collection. The collection consists of ten inter-connected short stories, seven of which were previously published in The New Yorker and The Paris Review between 1978 and 1982. Kincaid was awarded the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1983 for the collection.
The Book of Night Women is a 2009 novel by Jamaican author Marlon James. The book was first published in hardback on February 19, 2009, by Riverhead Books. The story follows Lilith, a young woman born into slavery, who challenges the boundaries of what is expected of her.
Daryl Cumber Dance is an American academic best known for her work on black folklore.
Zalika Reid-Benta is a Canadian author. Her debut novel River Mumma was a finalist for the 2024 Trillium Book Award and received starred reviews from publications such as Publishers Weekly. It has been listed as one of the best fiction books of 2023 on numerous platforms, including CBC Books. The novel is a "magical realist story" inspired by Jamaican folklore. The main character, Alicia Gale, is a young Black woman having a quarter-life crisis, while adventuring through the streets of Toronto, Ontario.
Here Comes the Sun is a 2016 novel by Nicole Dennis-Benn set in Montego Bay, Jamaica and published by Liveright Publishing Corporation. Dennis-Benn's debut novel, the book examines social issues in Jamaica, including skin bleaching, sex work, homophobia, rape, and the impact of tourism on local residents. The novel won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction.
