Off-White - Softcover

Roemer, Astrid

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1949641252 ISBN 13: 9781949641257

Publisher: Two Lines Press, 2024

Synopsis

It's 1966 in Suriname, on the Caribbean coast of South America, and the long shadow of colonialism still hangs over the country. Grandma Bee is the proud, cigar-smoking matriarch of the Vanta family, which is an intricate mix of Creole, Maroon, French, Indian, Indigenous, British, and Jewish backgrounds. But Grandma Bee is dying, a cough has settled deep in her lungs.

The approaching end has her thinking about the members of her family she's lost, and especially one of her favorite granddaughters, Heli, who has been sent away to the Netherlands because of an affair with her white teacher. Ultimately, there's only one question Bee must answer: What is a family? If her descendants are spread across the world, don't look similar, don't share a heritage, and don't even know each other, what bond will they have once she has died?

A moving portrait of a woman finding peace in the legacy that is her daughters and granddaughters, Off-White, keenly translated by Lucy Scott and David McKay, is also a searing and complex portrait of male violence, the legacy of colonialism, and a dismantling of what it means to be "white". Written after a nearly 20-year break from publishing, Off-White is another masterpiece from the only Surinamese author to win the prestigious Dutch Literature Award.

About this title

About the Authors

In 1966, at the age of 19, Astrid Roemer emigrated from Suriname to the Netherlands. She identifies herself as a cosmopolitan writer. Exploring themes of race, gender, family, and identity, her poetic, unconventional prose stands in the tradition of authors such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. She was awarded the P.C. Hooft Prize in 2016, and the three-yearly Dutch Literature Prize (Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren) in 2021.

Lucy Scott is a translator of Caribbean literature written in Dutch and French. Her short story and essay translations thus far have appeared in Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee Review and in Wilderness House Literary Review. She's the translator of Astrid Roemer's On a Woman's Madness (Two Lines Press, 2022) and Off-White (Two Lines Press, 2024).

David McKay is a literary translator in The Hague, best known for his translations of novels by the Flemish author Stefan Hertmans, including The Ascent. Other recent publications include Charlotte van den Broeck's Bold Ventures, described in the New York Times as "a small marvel: a monument to human beings continuing to reach for the skies." He has been shortlisted for various translation prizes and won the Vondel Prize for Hertmans's War and Turpentine. He will serve as the American Literary Translators Association Dutch-English mentor for the second time in 2023. In recent years, he has translated work by various Dutch and Flemish playwrights, including Freek Mariën, Anna Carlier, Abke Haring and Jibbe Willems. His translation of Mariën's The Wetsuitman is being premiered in 2022 by The Cherry Arts (Ithaca, NY) and Foreign Affairs (London) and has been published in The Mercurian.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I lie on my mother’s bedspread, thinking about my own body and its secrets. I must have fallen into a deep sleep around eleven in the morning; when I wake up it’s two p.m. and Louise still hasn’t returned. My two younger sisters and my little brother left for summer camp two weeks ago and will probably get home this afternoon, tired, grumpy, filthy. And in a week a relative will be moving in with us—Mama’s youngest brother, a medical student, who’s decided he’d rather live with his sister than in his childhood home in Jacobusrust. He bought a new scooter. He’s been on a camping trip. And he’ll decorate his bedroom himself. Through the lives of others, I am beginning to understand that life presents opportunities for charting your own course, and I’ll figure out the details without anyone’s help. On my mother’s vanity table lies a large Bible. She read to me from the Bible this morning. Mama likes to say God is her co-pilot. And I believe her. My mother was assigned a bungalow at a T-intersection. A bad location, because in the evening the headlights of passing cars shine into our living room. It’s not a busy road, but the lights get on my nerves. Mama won’t even shut the blackout curtains before ten at night. She assumes that by then everyone has made it home for the night, but as long as there are still people out, she wants to prove she has nothing to hide. There are half-finished roads between the houses: dirt tracks without sidewalks, grassy roadsides still teeming with slippery creatures. The construction worker my mother hired to lay tile in the yard, build a boundary wall, and install a heavy gate is very dark-skinned and very good-looking. When he sees my mother, he breaks into a flirty grin.

Edition details

• Publisher: Two Lines Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1949641252
• ISBN 13: 9781949641257
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 377