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by Nalo Hopkinson
Caribbean-Canadian author Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring) is an internationally beloved storyteller. This long-awaited new collection of her deeply imaginative short fiction offers striking journeys to far-flung futures and fantastical landscapes.
In Nalo Hopkinson's first collection of stories since 2015, a woman and her cyborg pig eke out a living in a future waterworld; two scientists contemplate the cavernous remains of an alien life-form; a trans woman at a funeral might be haunted by more than just bad memories; and an artist creates nanotechnology that asserts Blackness where it is least welcome and most needed.
Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as having "an imagination that most of us would kill for," Hopkinson and her Afro-Caribbean, Canadian, and American influences shine in truly unique stories that are gorgeously strange, inventively subversive, and vividly beautiful.
"Hopkinson's singular voice shines throughout these thought-provoking flights of imagination. In centering the historically marginal experiences of Black and queer workers, islanders, mothers, the old and the very young, she articulates the prevalent fears and concerns of those communities, including sea level rise, the distribution of power, and degradations of industry. Complete with contextual notes from the author and a loving foreword from Nisi Shawl, this is a joyous celebration of Hopkinson's abiding legacy as a titan of both speculative fiction and Caribbean literature." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A commanding short story collection, Caribbean Canadian Nalo Hopkinson's Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions blends ecological awareness, cultural heritage, and fantastical happenings ... Climate change is a recurring theme: there are diseased, parched landscapes and ravaging floods. Many of the characters are resourceful women of color who are determined to improve their troubled environments; they summon remarkable scientific, technological, and mechanical abilities to heal others and solve problems. Enriched with a marrow of emotion, the short stories of Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions move beyond bleak dystopian landscapes into a curious universe marked by damage and possibility." ―Foreword (starred review)
"[E]ngaging...This is only scratching the surface of this wildly inventive collection, perfect for fans of Karen Lord, Tobias S. Buckell, and Tananarive Due." ―Booklist
"Hopkinson's stories hold deep messages at their core, yet flow with a dreamlike etherealness, even when they're nightmares." —Library Journal
"Each story in Jamaica Ginger surprises and delights. Nalo Hopkinson repeatedly draws on wild magic to examine human experiences so familiar that the tales feel like they're shaped from collective memories." ―Emily Pohl-Weary, author of Not Your Ordinary Wolf Girl and How to Be Found
"Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions is a treasure box, a mojo pot of stories to break your heart and mend it too. Nalo Hopkinson's fables, ghost tales, alien encounters, and automaton adventures are a sheer delight. Magic on the page. Hopkinson's language carries you to revelation and joy. Characters you've been lusting after do tricks with your mind. These dazzling stories will reacquaint you with your spirits!" ―Andrea Hairston, author of Archangels of Funk
"This carefully curated collection is a tapestry of Nalo's mastery and truly displays what a master of the form can do." ―John Jennings, New York Times bestselling author and Hugo Award-winning comics creator
This information about Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Internationally renowned Nalo Hopkinson was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and also spent her childhood in Trinidad and Guyana before her family moved to Toronto, Canada, when she was sixteen. In 1997, Hopkinson won the Warner Aspect contest for Brown Girl in the Ring, and she received the John W. Campbell and Locus Awards for Best First Novel. Her collection Skin Folk received the World Fantasy and Sunburst Awards. The Salt Roads received the Gaylactic Spectrum Award for positive exploration of queer issues in speculative fiction. The New Moon's Arms also won the Prix Aurora and Sunburst Awards, making Hopkinson the first author to receive the award twice. In 2020, Hopkinson was named the Damon Knight Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, and is the youngest and the first woman of African descent to receive this lifetime honor. As a professor of Creative Writing at the University of California Riverside, she was a member of the Speculative Futures Collective. Hopkinson is currently a professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia, and she lives in Vancouver, Canada.
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