based in Toronto. His 2010 debut novel, Molasses, was published to critical acclaim. In 2017 he was named by the RBC Taylor Prize as one of Canada's top Emerging Authors for nonfiction. He performs and composes music as John Orpheus.
Downing's new book is Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness and Becoming.
At Lit Hub he tagged six favorite books about migration and Caribbean identity in America, including:
Audre Lorde, ZamiRead about another entry on the list.
Audre Lorde was, in her own words, a “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior poet.” Born in the Virgin Islands to a father from Barbados and a mother from Grenada, Lorde wrote Zami as a memoir of her early years in New York City and the formative experiences that brought her into living fully “out” as a queer person. What strikes me is not only the vibrancy of her prose but the power of her mythmaking; her sheer determination to draw the contours of her own life in a world where she did not recognize herself. Finally, her celebration of connections between women is triumphant—she writes, “Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me.”
--Marshal Zeringue
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