Caribbean published children’s literature is my literary happy place. A good story is a good story, regardless of the age group for which it is written. But, there is something particularly delightful and healing about reading books written, by our own, for our own region’s tweens and teenagers, as an adult who missed out on that when I was young. The public narratives in the Jamaican media present our youth as either embodiments of institutional scholastic excellence or imperilled victims. What relief it is to read authors who see no need to elide childhood’s difficulties and allow readers the space to imagine stories of cricket-mad kids on adventures that will end with them wiser and okay.
My Fishy Stepmom by Shakira Bourne is a middle-grade novel set in the fictional town of Fairy Vale, Barbados and centres an almost eleven year old Josephine (“Bean” to Vincent, her father and “Josie Sweets” to overfamiliar stepmother prospects). At the novel’s start, she is fifty-seven days away from her birthday, ten months away from the Common Entrance exam, and zero days away from chasing Gyal Five (likely better known to her friends and family as “Debbie”) out of her father’s life sustainably using material accrued from his fisherman work.
She and Vincent are living in the aftermath of her mother’s unexpected death. Vincent is beginning to date again but Josephine is not ready to move on, succinctly captured in her inability to shed tears when she cries. Josephine describes Fairy Vale life as “slow, slow, slooowww” where nothing exciting happens. Yet her hectic life is always on the go as she balances her home life—managing her father’s mood and curtailing his love life—and come up with a successful plan to get on her school’s cricket team, in defiance of a sexist coach and her father who just can’t bear to see girls get “scrape up or sup’m.
A disruption to her little project manager soul appears as a breach in the father-daughter protocol for Gyal candidates: the unpleasant surprise of “crystal green heels” on their house’s welcome mat. Vincent has started dating someone else without consulting her. Mariss, a jewellery seller, appears with too perfect hair, skin, posture, and a lack of aversion to sustainability. While it is fair to conclude that Josephine’s unresolved trauma has guided her actions up to this point, the protocol breach where Vincent said nothing to his daughter about the woman he is about to usher into their lives, is a red flag. Shakirah Bourne unfolds a story in which Josephine’s age isn’t wielded as a dismissive tool against her. Josephine is validated as a person with both valid insights and room for growth.
It’s always a treat for me to see a certain Caribbean reality reflected on the page: the one where folklore is both extraordinary, marvellous, and a part of the everyday. This is encapsulated in Miss Mo, Josephine’s neighbour and mother of her best friend, Ahkai. She acts as stand-in for so many familiar figures and norms in Caribbean communities—the no nonsense carer who ranks her knowledge of baccoos and herbal remedies with any police’s or doctor’s expertise. Ahkai may appear to be her opposite with his exacting scientific lens but, through Josephine, we see how both can and do co-exist as she often translates one into the other.
‘Tailing is not as simple as people think. It’s hard to stay undetected, because the brain alerts you that something is out of the ordinary, or as Miss Mo would say, “a mind tell me.”’
There are some who would assert that for it to be “authentic” folklore it must be transmitted orally by someone like Miss Mo. Instead, that’s a stagnant, bygone idea that would more likely kill such culture than allow it to thrive within and amongst our changing realities. The matriarch, the librarian with the book on Caribbean and African folklore, the “unofficial groundsman” whose clear sight masquerades as foolish babbles, and the child are all figures Bourne gives due as culture carriers.
But what is folklore’s value? Here, Bourne takes the clichéd figure of the young, devilish seductress and evil stepmother in the form of Mariss to model what an unhealthy relationship looks like both with father and daughter. Her magical powers are the oil that greases her way through violating boundaries with both, reducing bond formations to the transactional: gifts and bounty that eases the family’s financial difficulties for a time. Vincent is a passive victim for the most part, leaving it to Josephine to navigate the troubled waters as best as she can with the help of Akhai (despite his scepticism) and other community members who model the different, sustaining kinds of love.
Bourne goes to some effort to complicate Mariss’ presence in the family and community’s life. Her impact is not wholly negative with Josephine noting some positive changes in her father which directly connect to a slowly changing attitude to the notion of him dating. At social gatherings, we see Mariss’ yearning to connect with other women as well as her destructive jealousy if she sees them as a romantic rival.
Still, the reason My Fishy Stepmom is not one of my favourites is because it doesn’t entirely escape the misogynistic trappings of a vicious woman with special powers and predatory focus over men and boys who must be defeated. Folklore’s power lies in the fact that many more and different kinds of stories can be told about the Mama D’Los, Ol’ Higues, and soucouyants. It is clear from how Bourne wrote Mariss that she sees it too. Hopefully, she follows through on thoughts she shared in her Rebel Women Lit Verandah Talk and writes a prequel that gives us Mariss’ story.
Some readers may know that Scholastic will release the US edition of this book as Josephine Against the Sea (July 2021). The US version manages to be both the same story and radically different, with the Blouse & Skirt edition from Blue Banyan Books more or less treated as a draft that thus underwent several rewrites and revisions. I won’t declare one better than the other. What one considers best will likely depend on what narrative form one prefers: one more reliant on how storytelling developed on the page versus one more grounded in an oral form with a more immediately immersive texture. I will declare which I prefer. While it may have not been intentional, the US edition smooths out a lot of the small moments I connected to as a Caribbean reader: Josephine complaining about sexist uniform policies that force her into a long plaid skirt while the boys wander about, ashy knees out, problem free; the references to DJ Hypa Tension and his karaoke at the rum shop around the corner that sometimes kept her up at night; selling sugarcakes and tamarind balls to save money; even the library scene in which she learns about the different folklore figures.
I would still recommend the Scholastic edition, especially as it may be easier to access for many. Amongst all the recent exploitative, reductive trash US publishers have sought to present as books about Caribbean life in the middle grade and young adult categories, Josephine Against the Sea shines with its language and message, and therefore its heart, intact.
Akilah is a poetry acolyte and duppy conqueror, versed in fiction and claat, and focused on the union of aesthetic and ethics. Her bookstagram is @ifthisisparadise. All editor, review and sensitivity read enquiries should be sent to ifthisisparadise@gmail.com.
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