A review by shansbookspace
Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn

emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This isn’t a ‘Jamaica no problem’ story. It’s the compilation of the parts of lives that don’t often make the news but we all know about. Here comes the sun indeed & what it reveals isn’t pretty. 

In the place where hearts are broken, money is scarce & dreams are wasted time we meet 3 generations of women under a shacked roof, Delores, Margot & Thandi. All hurt in the same way, all coping differently. It is through their eyes River Bank is revealed to us.

We know hurt people hurt people. In this story, that’s the phrase that bounced around in my mind. Everyone in this story was hurt in some way & in trying to live with that hurt they (intentionally & unintentionally) hurt those around them. Without sounding ‘preachy’ this story manages to emphasize the importance of being safe in your community & being able to access mental health care to cope with your traumas. 

I appreciated the commentary on poverty vs the capitalist agenda. In Jamaica & some of the wider Caribbean, tourism is a heavily relied on industry for revenue but when poverty meets tourism what we often see is underpaid & overworked staff, citizens being unable to access tourist destinations & like River Bank, developers displacing citizens from “[their] home[s]…their shabby neighborhoods, away from the fantasy they help create about a country where they are as important as washed-up seaweed”. 

There was so much I appreciated about this story, like the dangers of an education system that perpetuates ‘otherness’, the realities of the sex work industry & the effects of internalized anti-blackness. But what mostly wrecked me were the moments where queerness was weaponized & how it either made you a pariah or cost you your life.