Read more
'An outstanding debut' CHERIE JONES, author of How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps her House'Vivid and authentic' LEONE ROSS, author of This One Sky Day'Cacophonic, alive and heartbreaking' KIRAN MILLWOOD HARGRAVE, author of The MerciesAs featured on BBC's Cultural Frontline podcast
At eighteen years old, Dinah gave away her baby son to the rich couple she worked for before they left Jamaica. They never returned. She never forgot him.
Eighteen years later, a young man comes from the US to Kingston. From the moment she sees him, Dinah never doubts - this is her son.
What happens next will make everyone question what they know and where they belong.
A powerful story of belonging, identity and inheritance,
What a Mother's Love Don't Teach You brings together a blazing chorus of voices to evoke Jamaica's ghetto, dance halls, criminal underworld and corrupt politics, at the beating heart of which is a mother's unshakeable love for her son.
'Delicate but gut-wrenching' JOSIE D'ARBY, broadcaster'Irresistible' CURDELLA FORBES, author of A Tall History of Sugar'Arresting' LISA ALLEN-AGOSTINI, author of The Bread the Devil Knead'Wonderful' JACOB ROSS, author of The Bone Readers'Exciting' YEWANDE OMOTOSO, author of An Unusual Grief'Thrilling' CELESTE MOHAMMED, author of Pleasantview
About the author
Sharma Taylor is a Jamaican writer and lawyer living between Jamaica and Barbados. She holds a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, obtained on a Commonwealth Scholarship. Her short stories have been shortlisted three times for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and have won several prizes including the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Prize, Johnson and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writers Prize and the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize.
What a Mother's Love Don't Teach You is her first novel.
Summary
'An outstanding debut' CHERIE JONES, author of How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps her House
'Vivid and authentic' LEONE ROSS, author of This One Sky Day
'Cacophonic, alive and heartbreaking' KIRAN MILLWOOD HARGRAVE, author of The Mercies
As featured on BBC's Cultural Frontline podcast
At eighteen years old, Dinah gave away her baby son to the rich couple she worked for before they left Jamaica. They never returned. She never forgot him.
Eighteen years later, a young man comes from the US to Kingston. From the moment she sees him, Dinah never doubts - this is her son.
What happens next will make everyone question what they know and where they belong.
A powerful story of belonging, identity and inheritance, What a Mother's Love Don't Teach You brings together a blazing chorus of voices to evoke Jamaica's ghetto, dance halls, criminal underworld and corrupt politics, at the beating heart of which is a mother's unshakeable love for her son.
'Delicate but gut-wrenching' JOSIE D'ARBY, broadcaster
'Irresistible' CURDELLA FORBES, author of A Tall History of Sugar
'Arresting' LISA ALLEN-AGOSTINI, author of The Bread the Devil Knead
'Wonderful' JACOB ROSS, author of The Bone Readers
'Exciting' YEWANDE OMOTOSO, author of An Unusual Grief
'Thrilling' CELESTE MOHAMMED, author of Pleasantview
Foreword
A novel told in multiple voices, set in the Kingston ghetto, about a mother's unshakeable love for her son. 'An outstanding debut' - Cherie Jones
Additional text
In the opening chapter of What A Mother's Love Don't Teach You, Dinah describes her home, the tenement yard at Lazarus Gardens, as a place where, "is like everyday, the water have to decide if to come inside." In essence, the novel is about just that: choices. Written in alternating voices - sometimes Jamaican patois, sometimes Standard English - Sharma Taylor reveals how and why the choices of the denizens of Lazarus Gardens necessarily differ from the choices of Jamaica's uptown folk. Taylor's great accomplishment is how she captures the darkness of the ghetto while never dimming the vivacity, determination and exuberance displayed by its people. This is a thrilling read.
