She's Gone

by Kwame Dawes

Overview

The debut novel from the award-winning Ghanaian-born Jamaican poet.

Winner of the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Best First Novel

“Dawes offers vibrant characters and locales in this diaspora of black culture and strong emotions, bordering the fine line between love and madness between two troubled people.” —Booklist

Kofi, a Jamaican reggae musician, and Keisha, a social researcher from South Carolina, meet at a club where Kofi’s band is playing on the tail end of a United States tour. Kofi and Keisha come together that night, seeking relief from the uneasy circumstances of their life—Keisha still trying to make up her mind about an ex-lover who keeps coming back into her life, and Kofi realizing that he is teetering on depression and the tyranny of his older lover in Jamaica. Something happens in their first meeting and Kofi convinces Keisha to take a chance and follow him to Jamaica.

She’s Gone explores the complex dynamics of two virtual strangers trying to negotiate the complicated terrain of cultural difference, class difference, and issues of gender. The Jamaica that Dawes writes about is thick with the politics of class and identity, full of characters with distinct agendas and needs—a world quite different from the stereotype of sea and sun. Keisha feels immediately like a stranger on the island, and Kofi’s return to Jamaica transforms him into a brooding man who finds comfort in withdrawing into himself.

Keisha takes off for the north coast, where she tries to make sense of her decisions. She is sure that she has made a mistake in coming to Jamaica. While there, she is physically attacked and left to feel as if she has no one to care for her. Kofi’s inertia is a disappointment and Keisha decides to return to America. Kofi succumbs to a deep depression and only when he discovers that Keisha is pregnant with their child does he begin a long journey across the US to find her. His travels take him to South Carolina, to her family, to her landscape and her history, teaching him more about Keisha and more about how much he needs her. It is never certain whether Kofi will find Keisha—her commitment is to find a new life for herself, a new space for herself.

She’s Gone delves into the psychology of desire and need as it contends with issues of culture and class. If it is a love story, it is one marked by the harsh realities of human existence that we see in the most revealing of Bob Marley’s love songs, or the cool sensual intelligence of the best of Milan Kundera. Dawes is a poet, but he never lets his poetry detract from the sheer pleasure of storytelling.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781933354187
Publisher:	Akashic Books, Ltd.
Publication date:	02/01/2007
Pages:	350
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

KWAME DAWES’s debut novel She’s Gone (Akashic) was the winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (Debut Fiction). He is the author of twenty-one books of poetry and numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. In 2016, his book Speak from Here to There, a cowritten collection of verse with Australian poet John Kinsella, was released along with When the Rewards Can Be So Great: Essays on Writing and the Writing Life, which Dawes edited. His most recent collection, City of Bones: A Testament, was published in 2017. His awards include the Forward Poetry Prize, the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, the Musgrave Silver Medal, several Pushcart Prizes, the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, and an Emmy Award. He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and is Chancellor Professor of English at the University of Nebraska. Dawes serves as the associate poetry editor for Peepal Tree Press and is director of the African Poetry Book Fund. He is series editor of the African Poetry Book Series—the latest of which is Tisa: New-Generation African Poets, A Chapbook Box Set—and artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. Dawes is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 2018 was elected as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Bivouac is his latest work published by Akashic.

Editorial Reviews

"A masterly tour de force, the language here is elegant, seductive, and tender, the irony is sharp, the humor subverts, and hope shines through. Kwame Dawes is always reinventing the Caribbean narrative, fusing myth, legend, reggae, and his own sense of style to create a powerful and tremendous art. He never ceases to amaze."

Chris Abani

"She’s Gone explores the complex dynamics of cross-cultural relationships with deep insight and compassion. The two protagonists—Kofi, a Jamaican musician, and Keisha, an African-American social researcher—are gorgeously imagined. In their commitment to searching out the truth, both within themselves and in the world around them, despite their human frailties, Kwame Dawes’ lyrical prose explores the true meaning of courage."

Kaylie Jones

"She’s Gone is the kind of debut novel that stuns its readers into silence. Set in the American South, New York City, and the Caribbean, this probing novel takes us on a risky expedition to the swampy bottom of the human psyche, a murky world where dreams of love, escape, and artistic freedom swim dangerously close to heartbreak, alienation, and madness . . . She’s Gone is a work of incandescent genius."

Colin Channer

"This striking debut novel is from the heart and about the heart. The characters are true, the landscapes exquisite, and the relationships dynamic, insightful, and complex. Read it and be transported."

Bernardine Evaristo

A checkered romance between a Southern social science researcher and a Jamaican reggae musician is the subject of this debut novel from the Ghanian-born Dawes. Keisha meets Kofi, the scion of a wealthy but troubled Jamaican family, at a South Carolina club where his band is playing, and they are immediately attracted to each other. He follows her to New York, where she is involved in a research project, and she eventually follows him to Jamaica. There, her history of involvement in destructive relationships collides with his bouts of depression, resulting in a breakup despite her pregnancy, and she returns to South Carolina. A drawn-out cat-and-mouse game ensues, with Kofi pursuing Keisha and Keisha rejecting him. By turns sensual and painful, violent and tender, the novel explores love in the very real context of the human psyche, featuring two people who in the end don't necessarily triumph over their pasts but instead realize their willingness to work toward overcoming the history and habits that would push them apart. Recommended for public libraries.
—Lawrence Rungren

Library Journal