Phase Eight x Penguin Books
We’re so pleased to be partnering with Penguin Michael Jospeh to bring you some brilliant
summer reads. Following on from our exclusive interview with Marian Keyes, our June
book club pick is the Sweetness in the Skin by Ishi Robinson –
a fantastic debut novel that’s perfect for sunshine reading.
Behind the Book
with Ishi Robinson
Watch Ishi talk through her book in the video below.
How would you describe the story?
It’s a story about finding yourself and loving what you discover. It’s about finding your place in the world, where you are loved simply for being you. It’s a story about family – the one you find, not the one you’re born into.
It’s a trip to Jamaica, for those who’ve never been there, and a return home for those who have. And it is definitely a story that will make you hungry!
What did you enjoy most about writing Sweetness in the Skin?
My whole life I was told that I was not an emotional person, but that’s because I wasn’t taught or modelled how to sit with my feelings and work through them, so I was going through life kind of numb.
A few years ago I started to let that go. This story is the first I’ve ever told that is full of emotion. It is my most vulnerable piece of work. While writing it, I laughed, and I also wept (like, a real ugly cry), and I wasn’t afraid to really feel the pain of some of the things I wrote about. I have realised over the years that, contrary to what I was told, I am actually a highly emotional and very sensitive person, and I love that this came through in this book.
We loved the themes of making your own family and following your heart that come through in Pumkin’s story, are there any biographical elements in the story?
Yes! I am very close with my parents so Pumkin and I do not share that in common, but I left Jamaica more than 20 years ago to follow my dreams of seeing the world, and in every place I went, I found a community of people who became family to me.
It is so important to surround yourself
with people who love you for who you are, who support you, who accept you, who make you feel seen.
Pumkin has a lot to deal with for a young girl, how did you approach the balance of layering in serious issues with the overall lighter tone of the novel?
It was important for me to show the real Jamaica, not just the beach vacation stereotype that many people have. There are a lot of young people in JA who have to fend for themselves too early. There are a lot of people who still suffer from – or benefit from – the effects of colourism and classism on the island. But I also don’t like reading ‘heavy’ books. I wanted people to enjoy this trip to Jamaica, but also see a different perspective.
Parts of the dialogue in Jamaican patois really worked to immerse us as we read – was this important for you to add to the reading experience?
The most crucial I would say. Since I want the reader to feel like they’re in Jamaica, then it’s absolutely important that they ‘hear’ the way we speak. Even when the characters speak ‘standard English,’ I’ve written it in the way we speak it. Our patois also works to amplify the ideas about class in the book.
Growing up, I was taught that patois was the language of the uneducated, and the Queen’s English was the proper way to speak. Patois was called ‘broken English.’ But my relationship to patois has changed: it is not a broken language. It is the language that our enslaved people deliberately created in order to form community, to plot and plan, to regain our freedom.
Patois is a language of survival, of reclaiming power, of independence. That we hold it in such poor regard as compared to the Queen’s English is just another example of the legacy of colonialism that still exists in Jamaica. We should be proud of our unique and colourful language.
In terms of summer reads, who are your go-to authors?
Authors who make me squeal when I see they have a new book out: Jay Kristoff, Stacey Halls, Leigh Bardugo, Jess Kidd. But I have been discovering new authors who are completely blowing me away: Rebecca Makkai, Bonnie Garmus, and Emilia Hart to name a few.
And lastly, who is your favourite fictional character?
I read way too many books to have one favourite character so I’ll just mention the one that’s strongest in my mind now, and that’s Marcellus McSquiddles, the octopus from Remarkably Bright Creatures, who I Iove deeply and really want to be friends with.
Thank you so much, Ishi!
