"Collins' writing tossed and tumbled me"

In Ocean Stirrings, Merle Collins, like the Good Witch of Oz, challenges us to take a journey - not down the proverbial yellow brick road - but over the many moods of the ocean blue. Grenada, itself a central character, boasts countryside pathways, fruit thumping on zinc and ground, living rooms of creole and classrooms of Royal Readers. Yet the island also hosts the creeping fingers of colonialism, and the leering gaze...and grip... of entitled men. Growing up amidst all this, at the turn of the 20th century, is Oseyan - the book's leading character. Lapping waves filled with golden light of hope and love, become dangerous tumultuous swells and surges of hard reality as Oseyan goes from girl to woman, from daughter to wife, from loved to lonely, emigrating from her beloved island to the literal and figurative cold of America... first Canada and then the United States of America. Reading, I was resistant to Oseyan's leaving that familiar sun-filled place. I felt it personally. Collins' writing tossed and tumbled me within Oseyan's ruminations, her words plunging one on top the other like a waterfall over the edge. I found myself trying to draw breath as the waves of words, prose and poetry engulfed me. Collins seeks to give story to the Mother of Malcolm X, Louise Little, in the character Oseyan. "Some stories can only be finally understood in fiction" Collins says. Ocean Stirrings - "a fictional story with factual scaffolding" - opens the portal for readers to better understand and empathize with the Grenadian woman who would birth one of the greatest minds of our time.