In Another Place, Not Here

Acclaimed by Adrienne Rich as “fierce, sensuous . . . a work of great beauty and moral imagination,” In Another Place, Not Here tells of two contemporary Caribbean women who find brief refuge in each other on an island in the midst of political uprising. Elizete, dreaming of running to another place to escape the harshness of her daily life on the island, meets Verlia, an urban woman in constant flight who has returned to her island birthplace with hopes of revolution. Their tumultuous story moves between city and island, past and future, fantasy and reality.
With all the lyrical intensity of a praisesong, Dionne Brand’s luminous debut novel, In Another Place, Not Here, tells of two contemporary Caribbean women one urban, passionate, and idealistic, the other constrained by disillusion and rural poverty, each in her own spiritual exile who find brief refuge in each other on an island in the midst of political uprising.

Elizete dreams of running to another place to escape the harshness of her daily life on the island. Knowing better than to hope for much, she lives in a world of lush inventions that stave off reality. Then she meets Verlia, a woman in constant flight, who lives in Toronto and has returned to her island birthplace with hope of revolution. Both women are dreaming of each other’s reality and of each other. Their tumultuous story moves between city and island, between material and spiritual poverty, between fantasy and reality, in a past and future time where the dream is always, again, deferred.