My Own Dear People

A young Jamaican man struggles to overcome toxic masculinity—his culture’s and his own—in this Caribbean coming-of-age novel “Manhood, masculinity, what it means to grow up in a world where who you are and who you are expected to be exist in powerful, soul-deep struggle . . . Dwight Thompson’s My Own Dear People tackles all these issues and more, in an important, beautifully written novel about a young man’s struggle to come to terms with the actions (and inactions) of his own past. This is one of the best books I have read in a long, long time.” —Jerry Stahl, author of Nein, Nein, Nein! In high school in Montego Bay, Jamaica, teenager Nyjah Messado witnessed the rape of Maude Dallmeyer, a teacher trainee. Some of the boys who committed the assault are his friends and he’s soon torn between the masculine code at the all boys’ school and his own conscience. This guilt haunts him during his years away at college. It continues to weigh heavily upon him when he returns home, and Nyjah finds it increasingly difficult for him to spend time with his best friend, Chadwell, who participated in the rape. A unique chance to reunite with Maude gives Nyjah the opportunity to admit his complicity as a do-nothing witness, and ask for forgiveness. But will he take it? And will she accept it—or will his own journey for inner peace only renew her trauma? My Own Dear People is a multilayered story exploring both the effects of toxic masculinity and the bonds of friendship. We see Nyjah trying to come to terms with his own place in multiple worlds: in his family; at school, with its colonial Eurocentric ethos; and within the religion and politics of Montego Bay and the city’s criminal gangs. Through his time away at college, he is beginning to develop his own sense of accountability and an understanding of the life he is living. Stylistically engaging and ambitious in scope, the novel takes us through a sweeping movement between the younger and more mature selves of Nyjah: from the homophobia prevalent in Jamaican boys’ schools and the institutionalized form it takes, to the paranoia and denial surrounding adolescent sexuality, to the corruption of a society that runs so nakedly on power relations and social class. Similar to Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life and Kate Walbert’s His Favorites, My Own Dear People looks unflinchingly at proclivities toward cruelty, particularly toward women and LGBTQ+ people. Dwight Thompson elevates the tradition of the coming-of-age novel by boldly examine how sexual predation crosses both gay and straight worlds.