...in telling the mermaid’s story, roffey dives deep into the caribbean’s complicated colonial history and its legacy—the book touches on the genocide of its indigenous populations, the nuances of white creole identity, the racialized class dichotomy defining local populations, the problematic nature of economic tourism, and local government corruption. it also explores gender in its depictions of love and sex between multiple sets of characters, and in its exploration of women’s treatment of one another (a byproduct of societal pressures, economic and cultural).
