Beyond the Limbo Silence - by Elizabeth Nunez (Paperback)

About the Book

A young woman leaves her native Trinidad to attend college in America in 1963--and is irrevocably pulled into its exploding civil rights movement.

Book Synopsis

"[A] haunting story . . . Bears witness to the struggles of an African Caribbean woman as she seeks to find her place in America without selling her soul." -BEBE MOORE CAMPBELL, Author of Your Blues Ain't Like Mine

When Sara Edgehill is given a scholarship to leave Trinidad and attend a college in Wisconsin, she is thrilled. America, the one she has seen in the movies, is a land of dreams, prosperity, and equality. Not like Trinidad, where her parents cast disappointed glances her way because she wasn't born with lighter-colored skin. But when Sara leaves her island's brilliant green fields and warm sparkling waters for the pale cornfields of the Midwest, the ties to her home and her past grip her as strongly as America's cold, winter winds.

For as soon as Sara sets foot in her new home, she must make tough decisions. Wanting desperately to fit in, she begins to understand that in America, the color lines run deeper than they did even in Trinidad. And as Sara forms ties with two other West Indian students-the beguiling, haunted Courtney and the passionate, vivacious Sam-she is irrevocably pulled into the very center of America's exploding civil rights movement.

Review Quotes

"This powerful illumination of race and culture by the light of dreams, ritual, and Vodoun will remind many of Toni Morrison or Alice Walker." -Booklist (starred review)

"The reader has the pleasure of experiencing Sara's discovery of American life through Nunez's wonderful, descriptive voice." -The Bloomsbury Review

About the Author

Elizabeth Nunez, PhD, is the bestselling author of 10 novels, including Bruised Hibiscus, winner of an American Book Award. Nunez's book Boundaries was selected as a New York Times Editors' Choice and was a 2012 NAACP Image Award nominee. She immigrated to the United States from Trinidad and is a distinguished professor at Hunter College, the City University of New York.