Join author Camille Hernández-Ramdwar of Suite As Sugar at the Toronto International Fesitval of Authors for a conversation with Sophie Jai.
Recently nominated for the 2023 Toronto Book Award, and winner of the 2023 Fred Kerner Book Award for Fiction, Sophie Jai’s debut novel Wild Fires (“Exquisite, evocative prose.” – Quill and Quire) explores the ways we mourn and why we avoid the very things that can save us. In her debut collection of short stories, Suite as Sugar, Camille Hernández-Ramdwar writes of the violence wrought upon humans and animals alike – as well as the resilience and will to survive. These novels travel from the streets of Trinidad to Toronto and back, as well as Havana’s haunted streets and Winnipeg’s winterscapes. Moderated by Tiara Chutkhan.
This event will be followed by a book signing.
For more information please visit: https://festivalofauthors.ca/event/diaspora-dialogues-the-violence-of-us/
Suite As Sugar by Camille Hernández-Ramdwar
Suite as Sugar is a testimony to the unseen forces, always vigilant, ever ready, imbuing the characters in this collection with both resilience and trauma.
From Winnipeg winterscapes to Toronto’s condo culture, from Havana’s haunted streets to Trinidad’s calamitous environs, the stories in Suite as Sugar are permeated with the violence of colonial histories, personal and intimate, reflecting legacies of abandonment and loss. The veil between the living and the dead is obscured, chaos becomes panacea, and characters take drastic measures into their own hands.
Survivors of all kinds seek strategy and solace: a group of homeless people organize an occupation of vacant condos, a new resident to a disturbing neighbourhood tries to make sense of madness, a dog investigates the sudden disappearance of his owner. The five intertwined vignettes in the title story are set in a Caribbean country where the spectre of the sugar plantation haunts everyone. Tying this collection together is the casual brutality of our everyday lives, whether seen through the eyes of animal, spirit, or human being.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK