Prince George's County Memorial Library System

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2019

Format:	Ebook, Electronic Resources, Book
Author:	Dennis-Benn, Nicole.
Title:	Patsy [electronic resource] : a novel / Nicole Dennis-Benn.
Publisher, Date:	[S.I.] : Liveright, 2019.
Description:	1 online resource
Summary:	From nationally celebrated novelist Nicole Dennis-Benn, a brave, stirring portrait of a Jamaican woman who leaves her daughter behind for a new life in America. When Patsy gets her long-coveted visa to America, it's the culmination of years of yearning to be reunited with Cicely, her oldest friend and secret love, who left home years before for the "land of opportunity." Patsy's plans do not include her religious mother or even her young daughter, Tru, both of whom she leaves behind in a bittersweet trail of sadness and relief. But Brooklyn is not at all what Cicely described in her letters, and to survive as an undocumented immigrant, Patsy is forced to work as a bathroom attendant, and ironically, as a nanny. Meanwhile, back in Jamaica, Tru struggles with her own questions of identity and sexuality, grappling every day with what it means to be abandoned by a mother who has no intention of returning. Passionate, moving, and fiercely urgent, Patsy is a haunting depiction of immigration and womanhood, and the silent threads of love stretching across years and oceans.
Subjects:local	Self-realization in women -- Fiction. Women -- Jamaica -- Fiction. Mothers and daughters -- Fiction. Jamaicans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Fiction. Immigrants -- New York (State) -- New York -- Fiction. Sexual minorities -- Fiction.
Genre:	Electronic books. Domestic fiction. Psychological fiction.
Other Author:	OverDrive, Inc.
Web Site:	Web Link Click here to access book Excerpt
ISBN:	9781631495649 163149564X
Other Number:	1090892375
System Availability:	1
Current Holds:	0
# Local items:	1
Control Number:	1099109
Call Number:	OverDrive
Course Reserves:	0
# Local items in:	1
# System items in:	1
Medium:	[electronic resource]

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Best Books of 2019: Washington Post ' O, The Oprah Magazine ' Time ' NPR ' People ' Buzzfeed
A TODAY Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Selection
Winner ' Lambda Literary Award [Lesbian Fiction]
A Washington Post Lily Lit Club Selection
Longlisted ' PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
American Library Association ' A Barbara Gittings Literature Award Honor Book (Stonewall Book Awards)
Finalist ' Aspen Words Literary Prize
Finalist ' Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize
Apple Books ' Best Books of the Month
New York Times Book Review ' Editors' Choice Selection
Kirkus Reviews ' Most Memorable Fictional Families of the Year
Longlisted ' The Morning News Tournament of Books
A Rumpus Book Club Selection

A beautifully layered portrait of motherhood, immigration, and the sacrifices we make in the name of love from award-winning novelist Nicole Dennis-Benn.

Heralded for writing 'deeply memorable . . . women' (Jennifer Senior, New York Times), Nicole Dennis-Benn introduces readers to an unforgettable heroine for our times: the eponymous Patsy, who leaves her young daughter behind in Jamaica to follow Cicely, her oldest friend, to New York. Beating with the pulse of a long-withheld confession and peppered with lilting patois, Patsy gives voice to a woman who looks to America for the opportunity to love whomever she chooses, bravely putting herself first. But to survive as an undocumented immigrant, Patsy is forced to work as a nanny, while back in Jamaica her daughter, Tru, ironically struggles to understand why she was left behind. Greeted with international critical acclaim from readers who, at last, saw themselves represented in Patsy, this astonishing novel 'fills a literary void with compassion, complexity and tenderness' (Joshunda Sanders, Time), offering up a vital portrait of the chasms between selfhood and motherhood, the American dream and reality. - (WW Norton)

Best Books of 2019: Washington Post • O, The Oprah Magazine • Time • NPR • People • Buzzfeed
A TODAY Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Selection
Winner • Lambda Literary Award [Lesbian Fiction]
A Washington Post Lily Lit Club Selection
Longlisted • PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
American Library Association • A Barbara Gittings Literature Award Honor Book (Stonewall Book Awards)
Finalist • Aspen Words Literary Prize
Finalist • Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize
Apple Books • Best Books of the Month
New York Times Book Review • Editors’ Choice Selection
Kirkus Reviews • Most Memorable Fictional Families of the Year
Longlisted • The Morning News Tournament of Books
A Rumpus Book Club Selection

A beautifully layered portrait of motherhood, immigration, and the sacrifices we make in the name of love from award-winning novelist Nicole Dennis-Benn.

Heralded for writing “deeply memorable . . . women” (Jennifer Senior, New York Times), Nicole Dennis-Benn introduces readers to an unforgettable heroine for our times: the eponymous Patsy, who leaves her young daughter behind in Jamaica to follow Cicely, her oldest friend, to New York. Beating with the pulse of a long-withheld confession and peppered with lilting patois, Patsy gives voice to a woman who looks to America for the opportunity to love whomever she chooses, bravely putting herself first. But to survive as an undocumented immigrant, Patsy is forced to work as a nanny, while back in Jamaica her daughter, Tru, ironically struggles to understand why she was left behind. Greeted with international critical acclaim from readers who, at last, saw themselves represented in Patsy, this astonishing novel “fills a literary void with compassion, complexity and tenderness” (Joshunda Sanders, Time), offering up a vital portrait of the chasms between selfhood and motherhood, the American dream and reality. - (WW Norton)

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Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* When Patsy finally gets a U.S. travel visa in 1998, she is so sure that she is neither a good mother nor capable of becoming one that she plans to leave her young daughter, Tru, behind in Jamaica and never look back. There's something pulling Patsy, too, the promise of reunion with her girlhood best friend turned lover, Cicely, who left Jamaica a decade ago. But things quickly fall apart when Patsy arrives in Brooklyn to a less-welcoming situation than Cicely suggested in her letters. As Patsy survives the mind-numbing terror of undocumented life, stories from her past seep in to reveal her familiarity with hardship and a well of strength that is nonetheless invisible to her. Meanwhile, Tru deals with her own terror, suffering from her mother's abandonment while living with her father and his family, strangers to her at first. Ten years later, stoic teen Tru is almost undone by the loneliness of her gnawing depression and feelings of queerness, unaware that her mother, now a Manhattan nanny, shares both. Dennis-Benn (Here Comes the Sun, 2016) builds big worlds inside and outside of her touchable characters, writing through their knotty love in all its failures and mercies in this empathic intergenerational epic of womanhood and inheritance. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.

Library Journal Reviews

Author of the multi-best-booked, Lambda-graced, NYPL Young Lions finalist Here Comes the Sun, Dennis-Benn boldly crafts the story of a Jamaican woman named Patsy who joins oldest friend and secretly beloved Cicely in America while leaving behind both mother and daughter. With a seven-city tour.

Library Journal Reviews

Dennis-Benn's second novel (after Here Comes the Sun) is simultaneously about the immigrant experience, the complications of family ties, and sexual awakening. Patsy, a young Jamaican woman, immigrates to the United States to join her childhood best friend, Cecily, with whom she's always had a special bond. Although entering on a tourist visa, Patsy has no intention of returning, even though that means leaving her five-year old daughter, Tru, behind. Cecily's reception is not what Patsy expected, and she spends the next years struggling as an undocumented worker. Owing both to guilt and her lack of success in America, Patsy fails to stay in contact with Tru, who is wounded by her mother's abandonment and grows up wrestling with her own sexuality and gender expression. Near tragedy eventually leads each woman finally to come into her own. VERDICT This work shines as an example of how cultural specificity can highlight universal themes. Recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 12/3/18.]—Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis

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