New Reads Book Club: Frying Plantain

The New Reads Book Club focuses on contemporary literature and is hosted by Drawn and Quarterly staff members. The book club meetings take place every 4-6 weeks, and are open to all.

For our February 26th meeting, we will meet at La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly (176 Bernard O.) at 7 pm to discuss Frying Plantain, by Zalika Reid-Benta. The evening will be hosted by Drawn & Quarterly’s Bookstore Director Rebecca Lloyd!

Join us for discussion and drinks!

**We offer a 20% discount on FRYING PLANTAIN by Zalika Reid-Benta from now until the meeting date.**

By purchasing your book at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly you help support free events like this one, independent publishing and retailing, our neighborhood, and authors both local and from around the world who depend on independent bookstores for their livelihood. You also get to take advantage of a great discount! Your support is appreciated.

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FRYING PLANTAIN
Kara Davis is a girl caught in the middle — of her Canadian nationality and her desire to be a “true” Jamaican, of her mother and grandmother’s rages and life lessons, of having to avoid being thought of as too “faas” or too “quiet” or too “bold” or too “soft.” Set in “Little Jamaica,” Toronto’s Eglinton West neighbourhood, Kara moves from girlhood to the threshold of adulthood, from elementary school to high school graduation, in these twelve interconnected stories. We see her on a visit to Jamaica, startled by the sight of a severed pig’s head in her great aunt’s freezer; in junior high, the victim of a devastating prank by her closest friends; and as a teenager in and out of her grandmother’s house, trying to cope with the ongoing battles between her unyielding grandparents.

A rich and unforgettable portrait of growing up between worlds, Frying Plantain shows how, in one charged moment, friendship and love can turn to enmity and hate, well-meaning protection can become control, and teasing play can turn to something much darker. In her brilliantly incisive debut, Zalika Reid-Benta artfully depicts the tensions between mothers and daughters, second-generation Canadians and first-generation cultural expectations, and Black identity and predominately white society.