The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts

A Novel

by Soraya Palmer

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Pub Date Mar 28 2023 | Archive Date Mar 03 2023

Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press | Catapult

Multicultural Interest

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Description

“Mothers never die. Children love to resurrect us in they stories.”
Folktales and spirits animate this lively and unforgettable coming-of-age tale of two Jamaican-Trinidadian sisters in Brooklyn grappling with their mother’s illness, their father's infidelity, and the truth of their family's past

Sisters Zora and Sasha Porter are drifting apart. Bearing witness to their father’s violence and their mother’s worsening illness, an unsettled Zora escapes into her journal, dreaming of being a writer, while Sasha discovers sex and chest binding, spending more time with her new girlfriend than at home.

But the sisters, like their parents, must come together to answer to something more ancient and powerful than they know—and reckon with a family secret buried in the past. A tale told from the perspective of a mischievous narrator, featuring the Rolling Calf who haunts butchers, Mama Dglo who lives in the ocean, a vain tiger, and an outsmarted snake, The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts is set in a world as alive and unpredictable as Helen Oyeyemi’s.

Telling of the love between sisters who don’t always see eye to eye, this extraordinary debut novel is a celebration of the power of stories, asking, What happens to us when our stories are erased? Do we disappear? Or do we come back haunting?

Advance Praise

“The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts is an all-consuming novel about sisterhood, motherhood, belonging, loss, and self-discovery. Soraya Palmer’s characters are unparalleled and her prose is musical. Read this novel with a sibling, a cousin, or a very close friend.”

—De’Shawn Charles Winslow, author of In the West Mills

“The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts envisions family as always in motion, careening through history, connection, attachment, discovery and warmth, with all the pain, loss, and even violence that might include. Expertly paced, deeply imagined, by turns playful and heartbreaking, I love the way this novel understands that sometimes nothing will sustain us except the right story that is truer than true.”

—Madeline Ffitch, author of Stay and Fight

“At once mischievous and warm, Soraya Palmer’s voice will bewitch you from the very first page, leading you through the complexities of sisterhood and motherhood, belonging and loss. The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts illuminates the transformative power of storytelling itself, and reminds you that the most powerful and potent family stories are as cursed as they are nourishing.”

—Mina Seçkin, author of The Four Humors

“Soraya Palmer’s epic, sweeping debut contains multitudes: it is tender, daring, funny, and exquisitely written. It is a love letter to sisterhood that believes in the power of stories to transform. This book certainly transformed me.”

—Gabriella Burnham, author of It is Wood, It is Stone

“Playful and deft, Palmer’s debut novel spans the brownstones of Brooklyn to the shores of Jamaica and Trinidad, and Tobago. This is a tale that honors the complicated love between immigrant families, the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood, and, above all, the infinite power of storytelling: to haunt, heal, and conjure entire universes into existence.”

—Daphne Palasi Andreades, author of Brown Girls

“The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts is an all-consuming novel about sisterhood, motherhood, belonging, loss, and self-discovery. Soraya Palmer’s characters are...