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Angel
Merle Collins
Novel, 1987
Follows three generations of Grenadian women from the 1950s Gairy years through the 1979 revolution to the 1983 US invasion.
Books by country North America
Books set in Grenada
Six books by writers from Grenada, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with Angel and Pynter Bender.
About the literature of Grenada
The 1979 revolution and the 1983 US invasion loom large in Grenadian writing, notably in the novels and poems of Merle Collins. Writers mostly use English, shading into Grenadian Creole speech in dialogue and verse, and village life is a constant setting. On Carriacou, the Big Drum ceremonies join music, dance and ancestry, as Lorna McDaniel shows in The Big Drum Ritual of Carriacou.
Collins's Angel traces three generations of Grenadian women from the 1950s through the revolution to the invasion, and her Because the Dawn Breaks! gathers poems on the same years. Jacob Ross's Pynter Bender sets a boy's childhood in rural Grenada in the aftermath of Hurricane Janet. Jean Buffong's Under the Silk Cotton Tree portrays a village coming-of-age shaped by folk belief, family and community.
By writers from Grenada
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Pynter Bender
Jacob Ross
Novel, 2008
A boy grows up in rural 1950s-70s Grenada, shaped by village life, the aftermath of Hurricane Janet and the island's political turmoil.
Under the Silk Cotton Tree
Jean Buffong
Novel, 1992
A Grenadian village coming-of-age novel showing rural island life, folk belief, family and community in mid-twentieth-century Grenada.
Rain Darling
Merle Collins
Short stories, 1990
Short stories of Grenadian village life, from childhood and migration to the revolution years, in Creole-inflected voices.
Because the Dawn Breaks!
Merle Collins
Poetry, 1985
Poems on the Grenada Revolution, its hopes, the 1983 invasion, and everyday Grenadian life and speech.
The Colour of Forgetting
Merle Collins
Novel, 1995
A village on a fictional island closely modelled on Grenada confronts memory, colonial history and the 1983 invasion.
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