Akúa is returning home to Jamaica for the first time in ten years. Her younger brother has died suddenly, and Akúa hopes to reconnect with her estranged older sister, Tamika. Over three fateful weeks, the sisters visit significant places from their childhood where Akúa spreads her brother’s ashes. But time spent with Tamika only seems to make apparent how different they are and how alone Akúa feels.

Then Akúa meets Jayda, a brash stripper who reveals a different side of Kingston. As the two women grow closer, Akúa is forced to confront the difficult reality of being gay in a deeply religious family, and what it means to be a gay woman in Jamaica. Her trip comes to a frenzied and dangerous end, but not without a glimmer of hope of how to be at peace with her sister—and herself.

By turns diasporic family saga, bildungsroman, and terse sexual awakening, Broughtupsy asks: What are we willing to do for family, and what are we willing to do to feel at home?

CHRISTINA COOKE’s writing has previously appeared in PRISM international, The Caribbean Writer, Prairie Schooner, Epiphany: A Literary Journal, and elsewhere. A MacDowell Fellow, Writers' Trust M&S Journey Prize winner, and 2022 Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award winner, she holds an MA from the University of New Brunswick and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Born in Jamaica, Christina is now a Canadian citizen who lives and writes in New York City.

Christina Cooke's profile page

Descriptive and Imaginative debut … Broughtupsy considers the demands of family, identity, and culture, as well as the complex nature of belonging.

Literary Review of Canada

Broughtupsy … weaves effortlessly between present and past, showing—often at a single glance—historic events and their effect in the present. It’s a dizzying, compelling effect, and one which Cooke achieves with a deceptive ease … A powerful account of an attempt to find a place, both in the physical world, and deep within the self.

Toronto Star

Christina Cooke’s Broughtupsy follows in the tradition of novels that invite readers to step over the threshold and insist on fully realised selfhood in the personal space one occupies: an engaging and rewarding debut.

The Temz Review

Cooke is excellent at showing the contrast between what gets said out loud, and the interior, unvoiced subtext … This novel is full of feelings.

British Columbia Review

The story builds to a fierce, then sweetly redemptive, climax. The voice of innocence, the violence, and the sibling dynamics of Cooke’s debut recall Justin Torres’ We the Animals (2011), also a queer coming-of-age story—but this blend of those elements is as unique as a thumbprint. Vivid, emotionally intense, and unafraid of the dark.

Kirkus

Visceral … Broughtupsy flits between darkness and light.

I've Read This

A moving coming-of-age story.

Booklist

Cooke makes an assured debut … [She] successfully evokes the temerity and rebellious intelligence of Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse.

Publishers Weekly