Blackgirl on Mars (Repeater/HarperCollins) is the second non-fiction book by Lesley-Ann Brown following her memoir debut, Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Black Woman to her European Son (2018). Brown journeys through the United States during the zenith of the Black Lives Matter movement, ending up in T&T to perform last rites for her grandmother. She employs personal narrative against the backdrop of world affairs to produce urgent, activated reportage on the crisis of belonging.

Hungry Ghosts (Bloomsbury, UK; Ecco, US), the new novel by 2018 Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner Kevin Jared Hosein, plots the misfortunes and secret pleasures of two vastly different families in 1940s Trinidad. Tackling the concept of T&T as a “frontier” in that era, the novel signals a marked evolution in Hosein’s published fiction to date, building on the strengths of his previous books (Littletown Secrets; The Repenters; The Beast of Kukuyo). Hungry Ghosts is an often violent, propulsive reckoning with a Trinidad of the recent past.

On a Woman’s Madness (Two Lines Press), by 2021 Dutch Literature Prize winner Astrid Roemer, is reissued from its original 1982 publication, translated from the Dutch by Lucy Scott. Recognized as a hallmark LGBTQ+ novel of its time, Roemer’s novel follows Noenka, fleeing an abusive marriage in a reclamatory act of self-searching, taking her from rural Suriname to its capital, Paramaribo. Roemer was the first Surinamese writer to win the Dutch Literature Prize; this is the first time On a Woman’s Madness has appeared in English.

The Last Train (Broadstone Books), the eighth full-length collection of poems by Mervyn Taylor, journeys through the poet’s Trinidadian upbringing through his travels across the archipelago, incorporating reflections on Carnival traditions and creating roots in Brooklyn. The immediate political climate of police brutality against Black American lives is captured in a specific section of the poems, bringing a Caribbean diaspora perspective to the ruthlessness of racism in the US, where so many Caribbean people find a home. 

Windward Family (Thread/Kindle Scribe), subtitled “An atlas of love, loss, and belonging,” is a memoir by Vincentian-descended, UK-based Alexis Keir, in which he explores his profound attachments to St. Vincent across the decades. Choosing to return some twenty years after his childhood there, Keir unwinds a tangled skein of family secrets, betrayals, and grim realities. Melding fictional accounts with autobiographical details, Windward Family explores the complexities of what constitutes a Black British Caribbean existence.

Radio Plays (Methuen Drama/Bloomsbury) collects several plays by Kittitian-British novelist, playwright and essayist Caryl Philips. Featuring an introduction by scholar Bénédicte Ledent, the book compiles the following radio dramas: The Wasted Years; Crossing the River; The Prince of Africa; Writing Fiction; A Kind of Home: James Baldwin in Paris; Hotel Cristobel; A Long Way from Home; Dinner in the Village; Somewhere in England. Radio Plays marks the first time these works have appeared together in print.