Sleep On, Beloved - Hardcover

Foster, Cecil

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345390156 ISBN 13: 9780345390158

Publisher: One World/Ballantine, 1995

Synopsis

When Cecil Foster's No Man in the House was published, E. Annie Proulx proclaimed that "he shows the brave characters of West Indian women as no one else has." Now, in Sleep On, Beloved, Foster tells the moving story of a Caribbean immigrant woman who leaves behind everything in order to build a better life for her family.
Ona Morgan is a passionate, determined woman who leaves her Jamaican home, her friends and traditions, and her newborn daughter, Suzanne, to come to North America. Thwarted by the demons of bad luck, lack of money, and an unfortunate marriage, Ona is plunged into an alien culture and a painful struggle against racism. As her young daughter grows up in Jamaica, devotedly cared for by her beloved grandmother, Ona must defer her plans to bring Suzanne to Toronto again and again.
It takes twelve long years before Suzanne and Ona are reunited. But Suzanne cannot warm to this mother who left her behind, and who never prepared her for the harsh realities of life in North America. Now Ona is left to struggle with the rebelliousness of her beloved daughter.
Ona and Suzanne find themselves locked in battle, each too proud and too damaged to ask for help. Suzanne punishes her mother by hiding the obedient, devout Suzanne of Jamaica and creating a new, urban Suzanne--hard, rebellious, and detached. It is only when Ona, overwhelmed by worldly pressures, becomes utterly lost that Suzanne allows her true self to emerge--strong, resourceful, and able to rebuild her mother's shattered hopes.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

The author of the well-received No Man in the House offers a poignant portrayal of a Jamaican woman's struggle to build a new life in Canada. Ona Nedd emigrates to Toronto during the 1970s to escape her mother's ceaseless surveillance and to avoid inheriting her role as a church leader. She departs Jamaica without her baby daughter, planning to send for the child with the money she earns as a caregiver. In Canada, as in Jamaica, men abuse Ona's trusting nature, while a coldhearted bureaucracy and scarce resources increase her vulnerability. When Suzanne, now an adolescent, at last joins her mother up north, the bond between the two, based on name and blood rather than experience, is tested to the limit. Foster's characters impress with their lifelike assortment of strengths and failings. Even so, they're sometimes overwhelmed by the novel's many complex themes. The author's apparent desire to include every unhappy nuance of "the immigrant experience" leads to a contrived plot. Still, he shows how daily small defeats can erode the firmest of objectives, and he leaves us questioning traditions that encourage immigrants to abandon their own culture in order to achieve material success in another. 25,000 first printing.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Three years after No Man in the House (LJ 10/15/92), Foster again writes a most engaging story, this time about Ona Morgan, a Jamaican woman who emigrates to Canada. The twists and turns of the plot reveal what it is like for a single, immigrant woman to leave her daughter in her homeland while she tries to make a living as a domestic worker. Her daughter, Suzanne, must also learn to cope with the separation. Eventually, when Suzanne comes to Canada, she must adjust to a new stepfather, a mother so different from what she's been told to expect, and a new school where she is misunderstood and thrown into a remedial class. Despite Ona's single-minded determination that all her "dreams and aspirations [must] be attained somehow," in the end she is disappointed. Foster is a little shaky with the dialects of the different regions, and he aims to include almost everything possible about this West Indian immigrant community, even if much of it seems stereotypical. Nonetheless, this is enticing reading; most libraries should consider.
Corinne Nelson, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: One World/Ballantine
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0345390156
• ISBN 13: 9780345390158
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 325