How to Be Unmothered

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Mapping the fault lines between mother and child (humanity's first and supposedly strongest bond), and with a poet's homeric vision of her native Trinidad, Camille U. Adams weaves the Caribbean island's history of colonial violence with her own family's legacy of abandonment. For generations, the women of Camille U. Adams' family have left their daughters. Some follow the siren call of rum, the centuries-old vice which alighted on Trinidad's shores from European ships. Others flee the behind-closed-doors beatings of husbands, fathers, and brothers, rushing into any arms that offer refuge. Some simply disappear, their passage marked by unkept promises and open wounds. As a young girl, Adams finds solace in Trinidad's whispering fever grass, sweet ixora flowers, and the cradling branches of the rose mango tree—all of their roots connecting her to the land's long memory. But where flora gives way to the rank pavement of Covigne Road, gunshots