You Were Watching from the Sand

Playful, kinetic, and devastating in turn, You Were Watching from the Sand is a collection in which Haitian men, women, and children who find their lives cleaved by the interminably strange bite back at the bizarre with their own oddities. In ';belly,' a young woman abandoned by her only living relative makes a person from the mud beside her backyard creek. In ';We Feel it in Punta Cana,' a domestic child servant in the Dominican Republic tours through his own lush imagination to make his material conditions more bearable. In ';The Oldest Sensation is Anger,' a teenager invites a same-aged family friend into her apartment and uncovers a spate of disturbing secrets about her. Written in a mixture of high lyricism, absurdist comedy, and Haitian cultural witticisms, this is a collection whose dynamism matches that of its characters at every beat and turn.