#Kemosha of the Caribbean

[semper-legens]

87. Kemosha of the Caribbean, by Alex Wheatle

Owned: Yes Page count: 306 My summary: Kemosha Tate was born into slavery. After her mother died, she was left the only guardian of her younger brother, trying to save him from the harsh plantation life they both must lead. But when she’s sold away, a rare opportunity to escape arises. When she gains her freedom, she knows what she must do. But there are so few opportunities for a black woman in the Caribbean - so she must rely on her skills and wits to survive. My rating: 3.5/5 My commentary:

If you know me at all, it's really obvious why I picked up this book. A story about Caribbean piracy? Hell yeah! I had high hopes going in, hopes which were in retrospect possibly somewhat misplaced. Or at least, my expectations were too high and not really based on anything other than my own desire for the book to be great. It's not bad or anything, I ultimately enjoyed it, but there were a lot of problems in the writing that led to it being a somewhat disappointing experience, which is annoying because it genuinely had a lot of promise.

My biggest problem with this book is that the prose often seemed kind of bland and matter-of-fact. Plot beats happened because it was the right time for them to happen; actions didn't always feel earned. I think the book might have been written for younger readers than I was expecting? This reads a lot more middle-grade than young adult. Everything is very black and white - sure, I wasn't really expecting sympathetic enslavers or anything, but it does fall into that trap of good people liking Kemosha, and bad people disliking her, with no in-between. One particular bugbear of mine was when songs and chants were mentioned - none of them bore any resemblance to any sea-songs or shanties that I knew, they didn't have any real rhythm and most didn't even rhyme, which was a weird choice. The prose was just far too simplistic and bland for me to really engage.

Which is a shame, because there was some really neat stuff in this book! The author explains in an afterword that he was in part inspired to write a young, black, female protagonist after seeing how black people in stories of Caribbean piracy get shafted or ignored. Seriously, I saw a book claim once that there were no black Caribbean pirates, as the white Caribbean pirates just saw them as property to be bought and sold. Which is true for some pirates, but the reality is that pirate crews weren't exactly working to some rulebook. There were as many pirate crews who set enslaved people on the ships they raided free as crews who treated them as property. Kemosha herself is a compelling protagonist, single-minded and determined to gain not just her freedom, but the freedoms of all of her loved ones. Some of the supporting characters were great as well, like Ravenhide, Kemosha's mentor, and Isabella, her lady love.

One last thing I thought was a nice touch is the use of dialect. While the book's first-person narration is in Standard English, Kemosha's direct speech and thoughts (as well as the speech of other characters) is written in Jamaican Patois, a creole language that evolved among enslaved people on Jamaica. It's not strict Patois (as far as my limited understanding goes) but a more anglicised version using English spelling so that it is more intelligible to an English speaking audience. Nevertheless, it still retains the grammar and sound of Patois, in particular Kemosha using 'me' as a first-person pronoun. It's really cool! I love the linguistic diversity on show here, and the characterisation that is borne from the dialects spoken by each character. Ravenhide, himself a black man, speaks Standard English - others from Kemosha's plantation speak a mix of Spanish and Patois. It did annoy me that the Spanish was rendered in Spanish and then translated by Kemosha's narration every time; either do something like '"Example!" she said in Spanish' or leave bits untranslated, we can pick up the context. But anyway, this was overall a fairly decent book, I just wish it could have been so much better.

Next, some tales from a crematorium.

[mydemonsdrivealimo]

which little queer books are bryce reading 👀

thank you this is the question i always wanted

currently it's kemosha of the caribbean, which is not the best quality but it's gay And pirates so he counts it as a win anyway

and some other ones he'll be reading are the final strife, the unbalancing, and the oleander sword (bc he loves fantasy books) <3

[ya-world-challenge]

13 YA Books about Pirates for Talk Like a Pirate Day

Seeing as September 19th is Talk Like a Pirate Day, what better way to do that than to dive into a pirate adventure, savvy? I've pulled together a list that is deliciously diverse and plenty of queer, from the South China Sea to the waters of Caribbean. Aye matey! ☠️🏴‍☠️

Pirates!, Celia Rees The Sea Knows My Name, Laura Brooke Robson The Unbinding of Mary Reade, Miriam McNamara The Black God's Drums, P. Djèlí Clark Hurricane Dancers, Margarita Engle The Assassin's Curse, Cassandra Rose Clark The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, Mackenzi Lee Fable, Adrienne Young Kemosha of the Caribbean, Alex Wheatle Clash of Steel, C.B. Lee Deeper Waters, F.T. Lukens Ballad & Dagger, Daniel Jose Older The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea, Maggie Tokuda-Hall

[haveyoureadthisqueerbook]

Tash Hearts Tolstoy, A Marvellous Light, Transmogrify! 14 Fantastical Tales of Trans Magic, The Secret History, Black Water Sister, Spell Bound (F T Lukens), Hench (Natalie Zina Walschots), The Foxhole Court series, Six of Crows duology, Legends and Lattes, She Drives Me Crazy, The Atlas Six, These Violent Delights (Micah Nemerever), The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry, Elatsoe, The Charm Offensive, In Deeper Waters, The Girls I've Been, Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses, Between Perfect and Real, Kemosha of the Caribbean, Tarnished are the Stars, Iron Widow, Golden Boys (Phil Stamper), Vespertine, Malibu Rising, The Henna Wars, Annie on My Mind, I'm Afraid of Men, The Sky Blues, The Gilded Wolves trilogy, That Inevitable Victorian Thing, Girls of Paper and Fire, This is How You Lose the Time War, Daja's Book, If We Were Villains, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Ramona Blue, The Fascinators, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, On a Sunbeam, Pet (Akwaeke Emezi), Dread Nation, The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass, Finding Home series by Hari Conner, The Sea in You, Love Letters by Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West

sorry that is just so many and I checked your blog to see if there were any repeats but I used the search function and we all know how awful that can be so there may be some you already have.

Hey there! Just glancing through this list, there are a number that are already on the masterlist: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15zgZxkR3Uxb5qfP9o8vO2EkeyAdPTWsifYGNmMfynBA/edit?usp=sharing

I need to have both the title and author for every book. For anything more than a couple books, each title/author needs to be separated onto its own line. A block of text like this is pretty much impossible for me to keep my place in as I'm jumping around between the different tabs I need to have open to queue posts.

If you'd like to resubmit these following the guidelines laid out in the pinned post, I'd be happy to get them into the queue.

[mydemonsdrivealimo]

ty for the tags @choicesfrog @jerzwriter !!

currently reading: kemosha of the caribbean and the mermaid the witch and the sea (are they both queer pirate books? mayhaps)

fav color: darker sage greens and desaturated periwinkle

last song: run rabbit run by the hoosiers

last movie: puss in boots the last wish <3

sweet/spicy/savory: savory

currently working on: not having a breakdown over the semester starting in 2 days <3 asdfghjk no but actually a few things but ive been working on finishing my sketchbook bc i only have like 15 pages left in this one :)

tagging: nobody bc from what ive seen everyone has been tagged but feel free to say i sent you if you werent