How to Escape from a Leper Colony - Tiphanie Yanique

See larger image
See Hi-Res Jpeg image

How to Escape from a Leper Colony

A Novella and Stories

Graywolf Press Paper, March 2010
ISBN: 978-1-55597-550-0, ISBN10: 1-55597-550-X,
6 x 9 inches, 240 pages,
Trade Paperback, $15.00

Praise
Biography

Share this book with friends through your favorite social networking site.

Shelve:

add this book's widget
to your site or blog

Categories and Subcategories

See All Categories Latin American & Caribbean Studies Latin American & Caribbean Studies - All Titles Literature World: Latin America & Caribbean

Set mostly in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the stories in this nuanced debut are lyrical, lush, and haunting. The inhabitants of an island walk into the sea. A man passes a jail cell's window, shouldering a wooden cross. And in the international shop of coffins, a story repeats itself, pointing toward an inevitable tragedy. Part oral history, part postcolonial narrative, How to Escape from a Leper Colony is ultimately a loving portrait of a wholly unique place.

Praise

“With turns to the wild, clever, and magical that seem at once fantastic and inevitable, Tiphanie Yanique has crafted a beautiful collection of short and not-so-short fiction. This is an exciting new voice.”—Percival Everett

“Let us hail this new literary voice, vibrant, humorous, original and powerful. These stories introduce us to a new world free of the old images and too familiar clichés of the Caribbean.”—Maryse Condé

"In this Widest of Sargasso Seas Tiphanie Yanique gives us the pan-Caribbean, from the old lepers' colony on Chacachacare, off the coast of Trinidad, to St. John, Accra, and London. It's an astonishing debut collection—as brutal, sexual, magical, and seductively disturbing as if Jean Rhy had written it today."—Robert Antoni

"How to Escape from a Leper Colony is fiction of the first rank. Tiphanie Yanique explores the ferociously complex terrain of her native Caribbean to show what it means to live in a world where accidents of culture, country, history, race, and place figure so bewilderingly in, as the author puts it, 'the divine risks of love.'"—Ben Fountain

"Anyone who has ever been an outcast will recognize himself or herself in these short stories by Yanique, which center mostly on the island of St. Thomas. The heartache of each character is vivid, but what is a real triumph here is the simple, eloquent prose, which doesn't work too hard to achieve its purpose. While the title story is the best, others are still excellent, and they all describe people who are struggling between two worlds—not just the case of being marginalized by race, culture, or religion but the simple feeling of always being an outsider. Yanique portrays this position well, over and over, throughout the book. VERDICT A beautiful and insightful read, this will be of interest not only to academic libraries but also to all drawn to the best contemporary American and Caribbean fiction."—Shalini Miskelly, Highline Community College Library, Des Moines, Washington, Library Journal

"The effects of colonialism throb in Yanique’s vivid debut collection. The chilling title story is set in 1939, when the Trinidadian island of Chacachacare was still used as a leper colony; the narrator, a 14-year-old orphan with leprosy, befriends a curious boy her age, Lazaro, whose mother was murdered there when he was a baby, and whose troubled relationship with the nuns leads him to a terrible retribution. 'The Bridge Stories' are elucidating snapshots of islanders struggling to carve out lives for themselves on St. Thomas and elsewhere amid an exploitative tourist economy. Yanique frequently dips into rich, fanciful vernacular, such as in 'Street Man,' a beautiful, sad glimpse at a doomed love affair between a college student and a St. Croix local. In the affecting novella, 'International Shop of Coffins,' Yanique depicts characters of mixed African/Creole/Indian descent torn between the white and island worlds in all their complexity and conflictedness. A smattering of dark humor leavens the tense narratives as Yanique penetrates the perils and pleasures of lives lived outside resort walls."—Publishers Weekly

About the Author(s)

Tiphanie Yanique

Tihpanie Yanique is from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. An assistant professor at Drew University, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, and St. Thomas with her husband, the photographer and teacher Moses Djeli.