Backstitch - by Idrissa Simmonds-Nastili (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From a powerful new voice in fiction comes a stunning multigenerational epic, spanning from 1920s Haiti to 1990s New York, centered on the disappearance of a little girl from Brooklyn's J'ouvert celebrations

Brooklyn, 1996. Serenity Marcelin and her six-year-old daughter, Jouvay, have spent the summer reeling from an unexpected, devastating loss. Just when the two of them are beginning to find solace within their new family dynamic, Jouvay disappears into a crowd over Labor Day weekend and Serenity's entire world changes in an instant.

In order to understand the events leading to Jouvay's sudden disappearance, Serenity must unearth the long-buried secrets--and ghosts--of her family's shocking past.

Told through the eyes of the unforgettable Marcelin women and the people closest to them, Idrissa Simmonds-Nastili's Backstitch embroiders a profound tale of hope and resistance, maneuvering readers from the city of Jérémie during the years of the US occupation of Haiti to the vibrant streets of New York. A sweeping story of motherhood, sisterhood, resistance, generational trauma, and liberation, this novel charts the lives of the ghosts, secrets, and languages we can't escape from--even when we try to bury them.

About the Author

Idrissa Simmonds-Nastili is a Haitian-American, Jamaican-Canadian writer, poet, and essayist. She is the recipient of the Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize, a finalist for the Commonwealth Short Story Award and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in poetry, as well as co-editor of BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. Her work has most recently appeared in Vogue, LitHub, WIRED Magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, and more. She has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from Hedgebrook, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Poets House, and VONA/Voices, and holds an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson College. She is the curator of Brunch & Word, a bi-coastal literary salon. Her roots are in Brooklyn, New York and Surrey, British Columbia, and she calls Oakland home.