CANR

• Tea by the Sea Red Hen Press (Pasadena, CA), 2020
• The House of Plain Truth Zibby Books (New York, NY), 2024

1. The House of Plain Truth : a novel LCCN 2023934636 Type of material Book Personal name Hemans, Donna, 1972- author. Main title The House of Plain Truth : a novel / Donna Hemans. Published/Produced New York : Zibby Books, 2024. Projected pub date 2401 Description pages cm ISBN 9798986241814 (hardback) 9781958506073 (paperback) (epub) Item not available at the Library. Why not? 2. Tea by the sea LCCN 2019042533 Type of material Book Personal name Hemans, Donna, author. Main title Tea by the sea / Donna Hemans. Edition First edition. Published/Produced Pasadena, CA : Red Hen Press, [2020] Projected pub date 2006 Description 1 online resource ISBN 9781597098533 (ebook) (trade paperback) Item not available at the Library. Why not?

• Donna Hemans website - https://www.donnahemans.com

  Donna Hemans is the author River Woman, Tea by the Sea and Tree of a Thousand Feet (forthcoming from Zibby Books). In 2015, she won the Lignum Vitae Una Marson Award for Adult Literature for the unpublished manuscript of Tea by the Sea and was named co-winner of the 2003-4 Towson University Prize for Literature for River Woman.

  Donna’s short fiction and essays have appeared in Slice, Electric Literature, Ms. Magazine, The Rumpus, Crab Orchard Review, among others.

  She was the 2007-2008 Black Mountain Institute (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) International Women's Forum Fellow and twice served as the Lannan Visiting Creative Writer in Residence at Georgetown University. In addition, Donna has received grants from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Prince George's County Arts Council, as well as residential fellowships from Hedgebrook, Millay Colony for the Arts and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

  Donna received her undergraduate degree in English and Media Studies from Fordham University and an MFA from American University. She lives in Maryland, and is also the owner of DC Writers Room, a co-working studio for writers based in Washington, D.C.

• Authors Unbound - https://authorsunbound.com/donna-hemans/

  Tea By the Sea is a powder keg of a novel, where secrets and lies explode into truth and consequences, all told with spellbinding, shattering power. Hemans doesn’t just fulfill the promise of her debut— she soars past it.” —Marlon James, Man Booker Prize Winning author

  Donna Hemans is the author of River Woman and Tea by the Sea. Her third novel, The House of Plain Truth, is forthcoming from Zibby Books in fall 2023. Donna’s short fiction and essays have appeared in Slice, Electric Literature, Ms. Magazine, The Rumpus, and Crab Orchard Review, among others.

  Her first novel, River Woman, was named co-winner of the 2003-4 Towson University Prize for Literature, and in 2015, she won the Lignum Vitae Una Marson Award for Adult Literature for the unpublished manuscript of Tea by the Sea.

  Donna was the 2007-2008 Black Mountain Institute (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) International Women’s Forum Fellow and twice served as the Lannan Visiting Creative Writer in Residence at Georgetown University. Donna has received grants from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Prince George’s County Arts Council, as well as residential fellowships from Hedgebrook, Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

  Donna received her undergraduate degree in English and Media Studies from Fordham University and an MFA from American University. She lives in Maryland, and is also the owner of DC Writers Room, a co-working studio for writers based in Washington, D.C.

• The Rumpus - https://therumpus.net/author/donna-hemans/

  Donna Hemans is the author of two novels, River Woman and Tea by the Sea. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Slice, Shenandoah, Electric Literature, and Ms. Magazine. She lives in Maryland and is the owner of DC Writers Room, a co-working studio for writers.

• The Rumpus - https://therumpus.net/2020/06/12/the-rumpus-interview-with-donna-hemans/

  An Exploration of Belonging: Talking with Donna Hemans
  AIMEE LIUJUNE 12, 2020

  Jamaica-born writer Donna Hemans has been said to hear “life sung by a chorus, not a single voice.” Her plots are as intense as thrillers yet as resonant as poetry, and the lyricism and emotional honesty of her work has earned her comparisons to Jamaica Kincaid and Edwidge Danticat.

  When released in 2001, her debut novel River Woman won the Towson University Prize for Literature. Tea by the Sea, which earned Hemans the Lignum Vitae Una Marson Award for Adult Literature, is her long-awaited second novel.

  Tea by the Sea spans seventeen years and the two distinctly different worlds that Hemans knows best: Jamaica and urban America. It revolves around one of the most shattering and complex betrayals I’ve ever come across in literature.

  Needless to say, I was eager to talk with Hemans about the story of Tea by the Sea and the themes that haunt her, as well as process, structure, agency, and that sticky issue of being identified as a postcolonial Caribbean immigrant writer.

  ***

  The Rumpus: The creation of a novel is a major and lengthy commitment. With Tea by the Sea, what sparked that commitment, firing your imagination and refusing to let you go?

  Donna Hemans: This book’s origin is like a three-act play. Act I: I had an idea for a story set in a church with a random group of people who refused to leave. I had that idea for a little while but couldn’t figure out what drew them to that specific church. So I let the idea sit.

  Act II: One day I sat down to write and started with a litany of things a mother was doing as she got her daughters ready for school. She dropped off the girls, got to the subway steps, and stopped cold. Right there she made the decision not to go to work, and she headed to that church. Still, I had no idea why that church and what she wanted.

  Now to Act III: Not long after that, I was in Jamaica. On Sunday evenings there’s a radio program on one of the stations called “Sunday Contact,” where people call in to find people they’ve lost touch with. That particular Sunday a mother called in looking for her son, who was about eight at the time. She knew the father had taken the boy, but she didn’t know where he had gone with the child, whether they were still in Jamaica or living here in America or elsewhere. And when I heard that, I knew that was my story. That was why the mother went to that church and refused to leave.

  Rumpus: What’s the connection between the missing child and the church? I’m going to take a wild guess that you spent much of the writing of this novel in search of that answer. Or did you know right away?

  Hemans: Once I heard the caller on the radio, I knew I wanted to write about the mother’s search, and I knew the search would take her to the church. When I began writing, though, I didn’t know the circumstances under which her daughter was taken. It took some time to work out. But what we learn at the outset of the novel is that Lenworth has taken his newborn daughter, and the child’s mother, Plum, wakes in the hospital after giving birth to find that her daughter and her boyfriend are both gone. We follow her search for them throughout the novel.

  Rumpus: The orchestration of time in the book is quite complex, especially since the plot spans seventeen years. How did you work out the structure of the book?

  Hemans: The structure of the book was the last thing that came, and it came after I thought I was done. When I start a book, I like to think about time as a way to shape the story. In this case, I wanted to write a non-linear story that takes place over a twenty-four-hour period. While that structure can work with some books, what I found was that I had a story that looped back and forth in flashback after flashback. The story lacked energy and momentum. I sat down with an editor and we mapped out the plot points, and then I was able to see clearly that I had to drop the twenty-four-hour timeframe and spread the story out. So I went from twenty-four hours to seventeen years.

  Rumpus: I want to talk about the tension between patriarchy and agency that runs through this novel. Within the story, both Lenworth and her parents infantilize Plum while never doubting their own agency in making decisions for her. This pattern mirrors the colonial attitudes that once dominated Jamaica. How intentional was this mirroring for you as you developed the story? And how do you feel about Lenworth?

  Hemans: Colonial attitudes linger in Jamaica in many ways, and with Lenworth especially I wanted to capture how some of those attitudes continue to affect our lives. We learn later in the book why Lenworth takes the child and what he hoped to achieve. I don’t want to give away his reasoning. But there’s also a moment in the book when we learn that Lenworth was sent from his home to live with wealthy relatives. He did odd jobs around the house and the relatives paid for his schooling. That is something I saw growing up. Sometimes the children were treated well; sometimes they were the primary household help. When Lenworth goes to live with the relatives in Trelawny he finds a girl there who was also sent from her home under similar circumstances. But what bothers him is that his relatives wanted to lend the girl to another family so she could help with preparations for a party. It really bothers him that neither he nor that young girl has agency over their lives. It’s a pivotal moment for him. He also recognizes that the lack of agency in that specific situation stems from colonial attitudes.

  I want readers to determine for themselves whether Lenworth is sinister or pitiable, a combination of the two, or something else altogether. He tries to be good and he fails in some ways—as all of us sometimes do.

  Rumpus: It’s devastating to read this novel now, in the context of family separations at the border. So many immigrant parents have been forced into situations where, like Plum, they have no idea where their children are or whether they will ever find them again. Have you had a parallel personal experience in your own life, or did you research the psychic impact of family separation?

  Hemans: No, I don’t have any personal experience with separations of this sort. All writers, I imagine, borrow from their own experiences to create fiction. By that I mean we don’t have to experience the pain of having a child kidnapped to imagine the breadth of Plum’s loss, to imagine the milestones she would miss and mourn, or to imagine how her entire life would be shaped by such a loss.

  I remember when I first started hearing about the border separations, I was a bit taken aback because I didn’t think such a thing would happen again on such a wide scale in a country like the United States. It’s hard enough when a family is torn apart by parental kidnapping, but when a government is behind it, it is even more horrendous. But even more concerning is hearing people cheer on these separations.

  Rumpus: Agreed. The politics of this moment reflect the ugly underbelly of this nation, of its history of usurpation. I’ve been thinking a lot about the struggle that your characters feel as they move back and forth between Jamaica and Brooklyn, both of which feel like home and not like home to them. That struggle for a sense of belonging, acceptance, and kinship permeates this story and also your first novel, River Woman. Could you talk about this issue of belonging and how you process it in your work?

  Hemans: In some ways, most of my work is an exploration of belonging. Where do we belong and to whom? As an immigrant, where is home, and will it always be there for me when I choose to return? Is home with a person, or is it a specific place? These are questions I ask myself from time to time. And they’re questions my characters ask themselves over and over. In Tea by the Sea, the question of belonging expands a bit: To whom does the missing girl belong? Does Opal belong to Plum? And as a mother, does Plum have the inherent right to raise her child?

  Generally as a people, we are all trying to belong. That’s why we look for ourselves in stories. We want our existence to be acknowledged. That’s the beauty of fiction and of letting people tell their own stories. I’ll tell you about an experience I had after River Woman was published.

  River Woman, by the way, is a story about a young mother, Kelithe, whose child drowns. Kelithe’s mother then returns to Jamaica for the child’s funeral—a trip she makes for the first time in nearly twelve years. So a woman came up to me after a reading, and described the first time she met her mother. Her mother had also migrated when she was a toddler, I believe, and several years passed before she saw her mother again. The day her mother returned, she was walking with a group of children along the road. A car stopped and a woman, dressed to the nines, got out. She and the other children started laughing at the woman who was overdressed for that place and time. She didn’t recognize her mother at all.

  For that reader, River Woman was a validation of her experience, the experience of a child growing up away from her migrant parents. Fiction helps give a sense of belonging.

  Rumpus: You’re so right. The worlds we create in fiction aren’t just mirrors of the real world. They can also be places of comfort and refuge, places of welcome. Sometimes fiction creates a space of safety where readers can make peace with experiences that are too painful to reconcile in their own lives, and sometimes that peace can make those lives a bit more bearable.

  The portraits you draw of both Jamaica and Brooklyn are gorgeous, and both settings seem to function as characters in themselves. Tell me how you engage with these two places and how you developed them in the writing of the novel.

  Hemans: It’s easy for me to recreate in my mind a place I’ve lived in. In fact, it’s easier to write about a place I’m no longer living in. I gain a different perspective. With Jamaica, for example, Plum sees Jamaica both as a tourist and as a resident. When she first arrives in Jamaica as a teenager, she sees the island with the fresh perspective of a newcomer. And having lived in America for my entire adult life, I see Jamaica the same way, both as a tourist and as a resident.

  I was just thinking earlier today that spring in the DC area feels very different from spring in Brooklyn. When I first moved to DC for graduate school, I felt like spring was vivid and vibrant and in your face. That’s not the feeling I have of spring in Brooklyn. In the DC area I’m more aware of the awakening, so to speak. Of course, there are more green spaces here in DC, many more trees and plants that burst with blossoms as spring emerges. Maybe that explains the differences in the way I portray Brooklyn and Jamaica.

  Rumpus: Some writers, especially writers of color or genre writers, feel that it’s a good idea to use a wide-open title to counter the trend toward categorization. There’s a commercial need to shelve books and their authors into categories, which can limit both readership and the perceived breadth of the author’s capabilities. Tea by the Sea would seem to be a wide-open title that beckons all readers. Could you tell us about the selection of that title?

  Hemans: I hadn’t thought of using a wide-open title to break categorization. For me it’s a lot simpler: I like the way it sounds. I wish I could say there’s more to it than that, but I often make notes of words and phrases I think would make great titles. I don’t remember why I originally wrote down “Tea by the Sea.” But I loved the sound of it, and once I found the story, it worked. Usually, I like to have a title at the outset because it helps me to center the story and the characters.

  Rumpus: I understand that you recently bought the co-working space, DC Writers Room. How did that happen?

  Hemans: I finished up the edits to Tea by the Sea at the DC Writers Room. I get so distracted at home watching or playing tennis, cooking, you name it. So I got a membership to eliminate the distractions. In a way, I was running away from myself. The previous owner had some changes in her life and decided to sell. Of course, the members were anxious about whether they’d have a space to write. It was the perfect opportunity to blend my writing life with continuing to build a community for other writers in the DC area.

  Rumpus: I’m a firm believer in the power of newness to awaken sense memory and secure our recollection of unfamiliar settings. Perhaps that’s why cultural nomads seem to have a unique perspective. One of my favorite Michael Ondaatje lines is from Running in the Family: “I am the foreigner. I am the prodigal who hates the foreigner.” Do you share that feeling of straddling cultures and countries?

  Hemans: Absolutely. That’s the very reason I write about belonging. That’s the reason my characters straddle dual cultures. I’ve told myself I want to write a purely Brooklyn story, but even if I write a book set entirely in Brooklyn, I will always write from a Caribbean perspective. It’s almost impossible not to.

  Rumpus: That raises the sometimes thorny question of authorial identity. How do you feel about being described as a Caribbean writer?

  Hemans: I tend not to get hung up on labels like that. I am from the Caribbean and I am an immigrant, and those two factors influence who I am and what I write. There’s no getting around that. At the same time, though, these labels sometimes serve as boxes that readers and publishers want your story to fit in. If you’re an immigrant there’s an expectation that your story should be about immigration or the struggle in America, and colonialism, of course.

  But our lives and our stories are larger than that. So yes, I embrace “Caribbean writer” because that is who I am, that is the culture that centers my life. But it’s also not a box with distinct walls that determines or limits what I write.

  ***

  Photograph of Donna Hemans by Shala Graham.

• Electric Lit - https://electricliterature.com/el-author/donna-hemans/

  Donna Hemans is the author of River Woman and Tea by the Sea. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Slice, Shenandoah Literary, Ms. Magazine, among others.

• The Book Decoder - https://thebookdecoder.com/2020/06/07/tea-by-the-sea-by-donna-hemans/

  Book Review: Tea by the Sea by Donna Hemans
  tea by the sea
  Title: Tea by the Sea

  Author: Donna Hemans

  Published on: 9th June 2020

  Genre: Contemporary Fiction

  Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Red Hen Press

  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
  Rating: 5 out of 5.
  Plum Valentine was seventeen when she gave birth to a baby girl. She never saw her daughter as the father took away the child. Plum went back to New York, devastated by the loss of her daughter and betrayal by the man she loved. Plum never gave up hope. Eight years later, she returns to Jamaica in search of her missing daughter but no luck.

  Lenworth has moved to Anchovy with a day-old baby. He has no idea how to tend to the baby. He takes help from his neighbours and years later, meets a woman who later becomes his wife. But Lenworth is restless. Will his past catch up with him? Opal, his daughter, resembles her mother Plum and Lenworth cannot look at her in the eye – his betrayal stares back at him…

  Advertisement

  Tea by the Sea is a heart-wrenching and touching story of a mother searching for her lost child. A difficult labor followed by her lover taking away her child has left Plum in an abyss. Plum never had a good childhood either. No matter how hard she tried, her parents were never impressed by her nor did they have any time for their only child.

  Plum is sent to Jamaica on false pretenses and this hurts her even more. Just when she thought she had lost everything, she meets Lenworth. They fall in love and she’s expecting their first child.

  She wakes up in the hospital after a tiring labor to see her baby missing. The shock of her child taken away hasn’t begun to settle and she’s sent back to New York. Alan, her best friend, decides to wait for her – he wants to marry her but Plum has only one aim – find the missing daughter.

  Advertisements

  REPORT THIS AD
  Advertisements

  REPORT THIS AD
  From Jamaica to New York, Tea by the Sea takes the reader on a roller coaster emotional journey. Beautifully written by Donna Hemans, Tea by the Sea is a wonderful piece of literature. I was hooked on to the story and couldn’t put it down until the end. In fact, I didn’t want the story to end.

  Donna Hemans has done a wonderful job in portraying Plum’s grief – surely makes the reader emotional. The ending is unexpected. Plum sees a newspaper article with a photo of a man who looks very similar to Lenworth. He’s now a priest at a church in Brooklyn. Plum finally ends her search – she’s going to confront him and demand answers. But is it going to be easy for her? Seventeen years of wait and grief – will Plum be able to confront the man who betrayed her?

  Moving, heart-wrenching and exceptionally brilliant, I absolutely recommend Tea by the Sea by Donna Hemans.

  EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK

  He remembered her as the girl in the red dress on the shop piazza, waving at him, her face scrunching up into a ready smile, her fingers reaching out to grasp at his then pulling back. The girl on the beach, hiding her bathing suit and her body beneath an oversized T-shirt, holding her head in her hands and sobbing, comparing herself to a discarded bag of old clothes her parents found and shipped abroad. She hadn’t been allowed to return to Brooklyn, to the brownstone on President Street, to the friends she hadn’t bid goodbye, to summertime hopscotch and jumping rope. A single summer vacation had turned into one long, unexpected expulsion from the only life she’d known. Expelled. Excommunicated. Exiled. Each day, she had another word for what her parents had done, for how they had re-engineered her life without her knowing it, for how they had sent her away as if she hadn’t mattered at all. Unforgettable. And forgettable. He walked out of the hospital with the baby girl and left Plum there, asleep and expecting to wake and nurse her child. Abandoned. Left again like a bag of old clothes. Liberated, was what he preferred to think. Without a baby holding her back, she would be free to pursue a fuller life – an education and a career – all the things that he had taken from her by making her a mother too early, all the possibilities his own sister, who had left home for the police academy and returned with a baby boy, hadn’t had. He could list more than a handful of girls he knew with stilted and stifled ambitions. He didn’t wish that for Plum.

  Advertisements

  REPORT THIS AD
  INTERVIEW WITH DONNA HEMANS
  Donna Hemans
  Hello Donna and welcome to my blog The Book Decoder. Tell us about yourself and when you first decided to become a writer.

  I’m the author of two novels, River Woman and Tea by the Sea. In addition to writing, I own the DC Writers Room, a co-working space for writers in Washington, DC. My path to writing was quite straightforward. As a child, I was certain I wanted to become a lawyer to stand up for defenseless and downtrodden people. So when I started college, I decided to major in English because I thought that would be the perfect foundation for a law degree. In my second or third year, I took a creative writing class and loved it, and ended up creating an independent study class with the professor from my fiction writing class. For the independent study, we read Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and I was so taken with the language and community Hurston depicted in that book, I knew I wanted to do something similar. All my thoughts about law school went out the window and I shifted my energy to writing—both as a journalist and fiction writer.

  What is the inspiration for Tea by the Sea?

  I had an idea to write a story about two or three strangers who entered a church and refused to leave. Initially, I didn’t have a reason they were there or what they wanted. But a few weeks after writing a section with a mother heading to the church, I was in Jamaica visiting my parents and happened to hear a mother’s call to a radio program called Sunday Contact. Callers typically call the show to make contact with long-lost relatives and friend. That particular day, a mother called in hopes of locating her young son. The child’s father had taken the boy, who at that point was about eight years old. She hadn’t seen the child in years and she didn’t know whether the father and son were still in Jamaica or had migrated. Once I heard the mother’s story, I knew I had the reason the fictional mother had gone to the church and refused to leave. I wanted to capture the lengths to which a mother would go to find a child taken away from her.

  What was the most challenging part of writing Tea by the Sea?

  The structure proved to be the most challenging. When I first started writing the novel, I wanted to write a story that took place over a 24- to 36-hour period. I envisioned Plum leaving her house and heading to the church where she knew Lenworth would likely be, and refusing to leave. With that version a lot of the story ended up being told via flashback upon flashback. While a story told with a series of flashbacks can work, I found that I was in an endless loop of flashbacks that slowed the pace of the story. So two drafts later I dropped the original 24-hour timeline and spread the story out over 17 years. That was a big challenge, but one I’m willing to tackle again if I ever find the right story that works well with that structure.

  Are you currently working on a new book?

  Yes, I’m finishing up a novel that I started ages ago and set aside to work on other projects. Now that I have returned to it, I’ve seen it with new eyes, and written a version of that story that a younger me would not have been able to write.

  What does a day in Donna Hemans’ life look like?

  My days are hard to describe now. The COVID-19 lockdown’s changed my routines in a number of ways, and it might be some time before I can get back to what is normal for me. But generally, I like to get up before sunrise, and write fiction before I do anything else or have a chance to be distracted. After breakfast, I turn to the freelance writing I do or the administrative tasks of running the DC Writers Room.

• Women Writers, Women's Books - http://booksbywomen.org/authors-interviewing-their-characters-donna-hermans/

  Authors Interviewing Their Characters: Donna Hermans
  June 9, 2020 | By Donna Hermans | Reply
  Donna Hemans interviews Plum, who, in her novel, Tea by the Sea, spends seventeen years searching the daughter taken from her at birth.

  Tell us a little about yourself.

  My name is Plum Valentine. I live in Brooklyn with my husband and two daughters, and work as a lab technologist.

  Tell us a little about your job.

  I work in a hospital lab and run tests that help your doctor figure out what is wrong with you and what organs in your body are functioning well, whether your cholesterol is too high, if your kidneys are functioning properly, if your body is making too much or too little of an enzyme.

  How did you fall into that line of work?

  My mother was a nurse, so I was always aware of medical things. But growing up, that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a historian or an archaeologist. I wanted to learn about how people lived in the past and restore old houses. I wanted to find all the little buried artifacts that tell everything about a person’s life. But I guess I’m doing that in a different way. Instead of digging around in the dirt and cleaning up old artifacts and old houses that our ancestors left behind, I’m pulling stories from people’s body.

  Yes, you are right. I never thought about it that way.

  I sort of fell into it. After I finished high school in Jamaica I came back to Brooklyn and I had to find something to do. Life didn’t go the way I had planned. And studying to become a lab technologist was one of the easier choices.

  You spent some of your childhood in Brooklyn, yes?

  Yes, my teenage years. I finished high school in Jamaica.

  How did you come to attend high school in Jamaica?

  I got into a little trouble as a teenager. Well, not me really. My cousin got into trouble and my parents were worried I would get into trouble too. So they took me to Jamaica and sent me to a boarding school there so I could get away from the bad influences in Brooklyn. It’s the sort of thing immigrant parents like mine threaten their children with. “If you don’t behave, I’m sending you back home so you can learn some discipline.” Only difference was my parents followed through on the threat. They didn’t even tell me they were sending me away. They took me to Jamaica for summer vacation, made school arrangements in secret and left me there.

  Where in Jamaica did you live?

  I lived with my aunt in Discovery Bay. It’s a little town on the north coast, about an hour or so from Montego Bay. Her house was about a mile from the beach, and when I was at her house I would walk down to the beach and spend my mornings there. I would love to go back to that beach now, and sit under one of the gazebos, watch the sun come up and see the sun reflecting on the water. Just me, a cup of tea, the sea breeze and the sound of the waves.

  Sounds heavenly. What brought you back to Brooklyn?

  I had a baby right after high school. Things didn’t work out with my child’s father. Whew. That’s an understatement. The truth is, he took my child away from me. And I couldn’t find him. I had nothing. No money. No job. No longterm plan. So I came back home to my parents in Brooklyn with a plan to get my life back on track.

  That is a lot to go through.

  Yes it is. It is a lot for any mother.

  Tell me more about that. How did he take your child and why?

  Well…we were young…He just…

  Is it still difficult to talk about?

  Yes, it is. It’s not the sort of thing you get over easily. Every day I look at my girls and I worry about them being taken from me. You never let go of that fear that they could be taken from you in an instant. Sometimes, just sitting on the train I worry about a random person’s baby and what could happen to that child. No matter what happens, it’s always at the back of your mind.

  Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. Let’s talk about something else that you love. You mentioned teas earlier. What is your favorite tea?

  Anything with fruit—orange peel, lemon, sorrel. Some people call sorrel hibiscus. Sorrel is the traditional Jamaican Christmas drink. Every Jamaican household has a few bottles of sorrel at Christmas time. You take the dried petals and steep it in hot water with grated ginger overnight. Strain it, sweeten it and add some rum. That’s the way we drink it at Christmas. Cold. Now, I prefer it hot. Just the sorrel, a little ginger and a little sugar. If I have dried orange peel, I add it as well.

  Tea is comforting. It keeps me going when I am stressed. And every herb or bush tea serves a healing purpose. So I get two things from my teas—comfort and healing.

  I could talk about food all day. I cook when I am stressed about something. I make elaborate dinners for my family. Curried shrimp. Curried goat. Rice and peas. All the Jamaican foods my mother cooked. That, too, comforts me.

  —

  Jamaican-born Donna Hemans is the author of the novel River Woman, winner of the 2003-4 Towson University Prize for Literature. Tea by the Sea, for which she won the Lignum Vitae Una Marson Award for Adult Literature, is her second novel and will be published on June 9thby Red Hen Press. Her short fiction has appeared in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Caribbean Writer, Crab Orchard Review, Witness, and the anthology Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad, among others. She received her undergraduate degree from Fordham University and an MFA from American University. She lives in Maryland. For more information visit https://www.donnahemans.com/.

  TEA BY THE SEA
  From Brooklyn to the island of Jamaica, Tea by the Sea traces a mother’s circuitous route to finding the daughter taken from her at birth.

  A seventeen-year-old taken from her mother at birth; an Episcopal priest with a daughter whose face he cannot bear to see; a mother weary of searching for her lost child: Tea by the Sea is their story—that of a family uniting and unraveling.

  To find the daughter taken from her, Plum Valentine must find the child’s father who walked out of a hospital with the day-old baby girl without explanation.

  Seventeen years later, weary of her unfruitful search, Plum sees an article in a community newspaper with a photo of the man for whom she has spent half her life searching. He has become an Episcopal priest. Her plan: confront him and walk away with the daughter he took from her.

  From Brooklyn to the island of Jamaica, Tea by the Sea traces Plum’s circuitous route to find her daughter and how Plum’s and the priest’s love came apart.

• PREE - https://preelit.com/2019/09/09/an-interview-and-cover-reveal-with-donna-hemans-author-of-tea-by-the-sea/

  AN INTERVIEW AND COVER REVEAL WITH DONNA HEMANS, AUTHOR OF TEA BY THE SEA
  Sep 9, 2019 | 0 |

  An Interview and cover reveal with Donna Hemans, author of Tea by the Sea
  Tea by the Sea, Donna Heman’s second novel, will be published by Red Hen Press in June 2020. The winner of the 2015 JaWS JAMCOPY Lignum Vitae Award for unpublished manuscripts Heman’s new novel is an important addition to the world of books from the Caribbean. Below is an interview with Donna Hemans, who is also a member of PREE’s editorial team, by Annie Paul along with a brief essay on the image she chose to use on the cover of Tea by the Sea.

  Donna, thanks for your very engaging, thought-provoking new novel. Agency is mentioned several times in Tea by the Sea and is a consistent theme throughout, the female protagonist’s lack of it, the male protagonist’s abuse of it, blithely enacting decisions that completely deprived a woman and her child of agency for example. Why is personal autonomy and agency so important today?

  Marginalized groups—women and black and brown people—have spent a long time fighting for agency, for the right to make our own free choices. We’ve made a lot of headway, of course, but each day there’s another group trying to chip away at those rights. You can see the extent of the worry about the loss of personal autonomy and agency in the current interest in Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, about a society that totally restricts the freedom of all women. We’re not yet living in that type of society but where are we headed?

  Tea by the Sea looks at one small area where the female protagonist, Plum, is deprived of agency. The decision the male protagonist makes hangs like a cloud over the rest of her life. Even one decision, or being deprived of an opportunity to make a decision for oneself, can have a big impact on the entirety of one’s life.

  What kind of background do you yourself come from? Was it rural? Urban? A big family? Religious? The thing that is remarkable about Tea by the Sea is how ordinary the characters seem. These are not riotous Bohemians or heroic warriors or lords and ladies. Just regular people whom family and kinship fails, and postcolonial society lets down, forcing them to improvise as they go along, to work out their problems themselves in order to make their lives.

  I grew up in a small town—Brown’s Town—with my parents and two sisters. But we always had a full house, either boarders attending one of the local high schools or somebody staying with us for one reason or another. A rotating cast of characters.

  I try to write about the people who I would encounter in my everyday life, whether they’re in Brown’s Town or some other small town across Jamaica or they’ve migrated. I want readers to feel they know the people I write about. I want my own people to feel that I am writing about them, writing about their communities, telling their stories. And that means, I’ll leave the riotous Bohemians and lords and ladies and heroic warriors to others who are better equipped to portray those groups. That’s just not my reality. That’s not to say I can’t write outside of what I know, because I do. Everything I write is an attempt to understand something I don’t know. But it’s based on the culture I know and my writing will always reflect that.

  In a sense, it goes back to the whole business of agency. For a long time, our stories were told by someone else. Our history was told by someone else. It matters that we own our stories and that we tell them. And that means writing about ordinary people living ordinary lives and working out problems the best way they know.

  The fugitive male, a familiar trope in the Caribbean both in real life and in literature, plays a pivotal role in Tea by the Sea. The novel is in many ways an anti-romance, an anti-love story almost like a reminder to girls and women that reality is considerably harsher than stories in which people live ‘happily ever after’. Could you talk about this?

  I’ve never understood the “happily ever after” ending. That’s where the story really begins. What kind of trials will that couple encounter? How do they survive the trials and what kind of person emerges from that trial? That’s the real story. We do a great disservice to girls and young women when we push the idea of happily ever after, when we push the idea that earning or getting someone’s love is life’s biggest trial.

  But rather than thinking about the book as an anti-romance or an anti-love story, I like to think of it as an exploration of belonging. Where do we belong and to whom? For most of the novel, Plum searches for the daughter taken from her at birth. And throughout the novel there is the ever present question of to whom the missing girl belongs. Does her daughter belong to her and with her? As a mother, does she have the inherent right to raise her child? And the other question it asks is “where is home?” Is home with a person or in a specific place? Those are the questions that I think about more.

  There was quite a long interval between River Woman, your first novel published in 2002 and Tea by the Sea which will be published in 2020. Was this intentional? Or are you the writing equivalent of a ‘slow cooker’? Will there be another long wait after Tea by the Sea?

  The long wait after River Woman wasn’t intentional, and I hope there won’t be a long wait after Tea by the Sea is published next year. The fact is that I’ve written two other novels that just weren’t quite ready even after multiple revisions. One part of the writing process that is often overlooked is revision. I like to think of it as re-vision, the process of seeing the work with new eyes. With some stories, there’s a clear sense of the edits and rewrites needed, and with others it takes a longer while to see the work again with new eyes.

  “Once a book is published, it can’t be unpublished.” A professor and writer once told me that and I’ve never forgotten it. So rather than rush the process or the stories, I’ve waited for them to be just right, to ensure that I am telling the story I want to tell. And right now I can say that at least one of the two is just right.

  When did you know you wanted to be a writer and why? Were there models? Who were they?

  I knew for sure that I could and wanted to write fiction in college. I took an independent study class, and one of the books the professor had me read was Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston wrote about people whose dialect sounded like mine, and that stayed with me. Nothing I read in undergrad literature classes sounded like that. Of course, I had read Caribbean literature in high school in Jamaica, read stories with characters who used dialects from the Caribbean. But the dialect and community of Their Eyes Were Watching God resonated with me in a different way. Perhaps because I was older and reading literature differently, reading it without any concern for themes and message and what high school literature classes tell us to focus on. I was reading the book alongside a fiction writer and learning how to look at how a writer builds a story. And I knew I wanted to do what Hurston did. I knew I wanted to write about Jamaican communities in the same way.

  Are there writers you admire who inspire you?

  We just lost the writer who has inspired me most: Toni Morrison. I admired her way of looking at the world, her certainty about who she was writing for and why. I recently saw the documentary “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am,” and what stays with me as a writer—especially as a writer who grew up in a post-colonial Jamaica that in some ways still holds on to colonial-era ideas—is the presence of the white gaze. She called it, “the little white man that sits on your shoulder and checks out everything you do or say. You sort of knock him off and you’re free. Now, I own the world. I can write about anything, to anyone, for anyone.” Imagine how much more we can do when we stop limiting ourselves by trying to fit into a mold created by and for a culture that’s not our own.

  THOUGHTS ON THE COVER OF TEA BY THE SEA
  DONNA HEMANS
  A baby taken from her mother at birth, an Episcopal priest with a daughter whose face he cannot bear to see, a mother weary of searching for her lost child: Tea by the Sea is their story—that of a family uniting and unraveling.

  From the moment I saw the cover image of a girl with her back turned and face hidden—from Brooklyn-based photographer Keisha Scarville’s Mama’s Clothes series—I knew it perfectly captured the perspectives of these three family members around whom the novel revolves.

  There is a moment in Tea by the Sea when Plum imagines how her daughter, then a year old, would look: “Plum pictured her daughter like this: hair parted in four distinct sections, each section a mini afro puff; pudgy cheeks; a smile that opened up dimples; skin the color of chocolate batter; pudgy arms and legs in a frilly yellow dress. Except the baby wasn’t hers. Just a stranger on the train, a baby who smiled openly at anyone who caught her eye.” With her back turned and face hidden, the girl captures the essence of Plum’s search. Any dark-skinned girl could be hers. From Plum’s perspective, this is how her missing daughter appears: hidden, covered, faceless.

  The photo also evokes the sense that at any moment the girl will turn around and reveal herself. I imagine Plum walking up to the girl, Plum’s heart full with hope and longing for a positive outcome. And I imagine the girl finally turning, showing a playful smile and running quickly to someone outside the camera’s view, perhaps to Plum herself, perhaps to someone else entirely.

  Hidden, the child on the cover is also the daughter that Lenworth cannot bear to see. As his daughter ages and her resemblance to her mother grows, Lenworth becomes more uncomfortable around his daughter. Rather than look at her and face the consequences of his actions, he hides her pictures. The child’s hidden face captures his way of “unseeing” his daughter. “Lenworth looked at her as if she had been reborn, a newborn shedding her birth-day wrinkles and mottled skin, growing each day into her own. Seeing how she became Plum’s life-sized wax doll or commemorative figurine that moved around and haunted him. Seeing how he had managed to make every woman and girl in his life seem inconsequential and small. And then he looked away. He didn’t exactly pretend that Opal didn’t exist at all. But it was close. He did it subtly, turning down her third-grade photos. In the photos, she had smiled instead of staring back at the camera stubbornly, defiantly refusing to smile. He removed Opal’s photos from the wall and replaced them with photos of the boys caught in the midst of a mischievous antic, surprise or amusement oozing from their faces.” Here, with her back turned, she is the daughter Lenworth doesn’t want to see.

  And the child on the cover reflects Opal’s vision of herself as “a darker-skinned other with unusual topaz eyes.” From appearances only, it is hard to tell that Opal belongs to the family her father creates with his wife Pauline. Opal longs to be seen and longs to feel that she belongs. Here, on the cover, holding up the dress to shield her face, the child reflects what Opal feels she is, the unseen child longing to belong, the unseen child thinking: “[S]he wanted to be his. His daughter. His offspring. His family. His ballerina at the front of the stage, on her toes, lifting her arms as gracefully as a butterfly fluttering its wings, leaping like an acrobat suspended in air.”

• Karukerament - https://www.karukerament.com/interviewscollection/q-and-a-with-donna-hemans-author-of-tea-by-the-sea

  Q&A with Donna Hemans, author of "Tea By The Sea"
  It’s an honor for me to officially open this Literature interview section with Donna Hemans. She just released her new book “Tea By The Sea” and was on a blog promo tour all throughout June. Today she is with Karukerament. We talked about her writing process, the diaspora experience as well as parenthood and her take on Caribbean literature.

  TeabytheSea CVR 600dpi CMYK (002).jpg
  Let’s start with your writing process. What’s your favourite place among the ones you described in the story?

  Anchovy. My father grew up in Anchovy and the house that Lenworth chooses as his refuge is actually my grandparents’ house. I have a lot of memories of Sunday afternoon visits, my grandfather standing on the verandah and looking down the hill at my parents, my sisters and me arriving. When I first thought of using the house as the setting, I had in mind the way the house and yard looked on one of my visits. The house was empty then. The last tenant had left, the yard was overgrown and there was a random bedsheet on the verandah. It looked like someone was either squatting or had come to use the empty house for a late-night tryst.

  Like so many other Caribbean families, mine is a family of migrants. And, one of the things about migration in general is the broken ties with a family home, land, customs. Within my family there has been a lot of talk about selling family land, about who will take care of it now that so many of us have migrated and my father’s siblings who now own it are elderly. Aside from those practical discussions, I also think about what it meant to my grandparents who were born some 70 years after the abolition of slavery in Jamaica, to own land and build a house they could pass on to future generations. In the end, I realized that using the house as the setting and describing it so fully was part of my attempt to preserve in writing a place that I believe will soon pass out of my family.

  Although the physical descriptions of your characters were concise, the way you described their Black skin stood out to me as you made them look matter-of-factly luminous. How did you decide on your characters’ appearance? And what is your approach on how to describe them to your readers?

  When I’m writing, I can see a person in my mind. I have a sense of how that person looks but I’m usually more concerned with what the individual character does. Too often in literature or even in movies, the darker-skinned person is associated with less desirable traits or is made out to be the villain. That is not an idea I want to perpetrate in any way at all.

  Generally, I describe a character only when the description is pertinent to the story. In the case of Opal, her resemblance to her mother—and specifically her unusual eye color—were important to Lenworth’s response to his child. When he looks at his daughter, he always sees Plum—the woman he abandoned—and he is always confronted with the weight of his decision to take the baby. Throughout Opal’s life, she appears to be the odd member of her family; she looks different from her father, step-mother and brothers. Her physical difference helps to bring home the point that Opal feels isolated within the family unit.

  There are a couple of references to real-life historical events such as the Panama Canal construction, the slavery system, did you make specific research to incorporate these elements into the story?

  Yes, I did some research to incorporate some pieces of history into the story. But some real-life references are based on pieces of information I’ve long known. In some ways, mentioning these events is a not to the fact that the past is always with us in small and large ways.

  As someone from Guadeloupe living in France, I was particularly interested in the representation of the diaspora in this book. The story takes place between Brooklyn and Jamaica. What would be “home” for Plum and Opal, your two main female characters?

  Home for Plum is Brooklyn. It’s the place of her first memories. In the case of Jamaica, her parents presented the island as punishment, a place to send wayward children who couldn’t be controlled or a place to send her to keep her out of trouble. While Plum does have good memories there, it’s not the place that she thinks makes her who she is. On the other hand, home for Opal is Jamaica. That’s the place of her first memories. In America, as Opal grows older and begins to look more and more like her mother, she also becomes increasingly aware of losing her father. He begins to turn away rather than face the weight of what he has done. Brooklyn is tied to Opal’s “loss” of her father who once treated her like a precious stone.

  I think of “home” as the place where a person feels he or she will always be welcome. Home often is not necessarily a place, but who or what is there for you when you want to return.

  This is very random, but can I just ask something about Alan? Was it important that Alan’s character was not from Jamaica but from another island?

  It wasn’t necessarily important. I know many people with a partner from a different Caribbean island. Especially in Brooklyn, which is home to a diverse population of Caribbean nationals, it seemed natural that he would be from a different island.

  So let’s talk about parenthood with the father figure first. Caribbean fatherhood is usually portrayed in a negative light. Lenworth is the one raising Opal. Yet, he never feels like he’s her father. He just cannot connect with her. Why did you choose this approach to the Lenworth/Opal relationship?

  With Lenworth, Opal’s strong resemblance to Plum is pertinent to Lenworth’s inability to connect with Opal. As Opal grows older and looks more and more like her mother, Lenworth’s guilt grows. Rather than look at her and face the consequences of his actions, he looks away from Opal. If he had been able to forge a stronger bond with Opal, it would mean he felt no guilt about what he had done.

  In addition to his guilt, I think Lenworth’s inability to connect with Opal is tied to his broader character in general. He disconnects from everyone in his life—Plum, his mother, and even his wife, Pauline. He is motivated more by how he is perceived by others and his ability to control his life than by his ability to love.

  How would you describe motherhood from Plum’s POV considering that she didn’t actually raise Opal?

  For Plum, motherhood is tied to loss—loss of her child, loss of her agency. Lenworth makes a choice for her and takes away her ability to make a decision about her own life. While Plum doesn’t become the strong resilient Black woman we often see portray, out of necessity, Plum becomes overprotective. Once she marries Alan and has the twin girls, she keeps the girls close to her because she fears losing them. With the twin’s, motherhood is a choice, an opportunity for Plum to regain agency and make decisions about her own life.

  How hard was it to build the pre-pregnancy Plum/Lenworth couple? Did the age factor make you hesitant about some aspects of the story?

  Certainly, the age factor was an issue. At the time they met, Lenworth was in his early twenties—not significantly older than Plum—but their relationship was complicated by the fact that as an adult working at the school Plum attended he was in a position of authority over her. There’s a long history in Jamaica of older men preying on school girls—some who are barely teenagers. That wasn’t the case with Lenworth, but I wanted to be mindful of what we often see and how some of these relationships stunt the potential for young women. I also didn’t want to veer into making Lenworth appear to be a pedophile. That would be another book altogether. I wanted to focus on the choices he made and the lingering impact on Plum and Opal.

  I’d have another set of questions about the ending, but I don’t want to ruin it for my dear Karukerament readers because the ending lets us find our own interpretation. So let’s talk a little bit more about Caribbean culture and its influence on the international scene.

  In order to promote Caribbean music, I use the hashtag #streamcaribbean and I also make soundtracks/playlists for books I read. Which song would you use to create a soundtrack for Tea by the Sea?

  I think of Etana’s music when I think of Tea by the Sea. The entire “I Rise” album, and especially “I Am Not Afraid” and “Rise,” feel like the soundtrack for the book.

  What’s your take on the place of Caribbean literature on the international scene?

  What I like about Caribbean literature these days is a conscious effort by Caribbean writers to create outside of the boxes that once seemed to define Caribbean literature. While it sometimes appears that the publishing industry generally expects Caribbean writers to write about colonialism and race or the immigrant making his way in the home of his former colonist, our stories have always been broader than that. Yes, those factors can play a significant role in our everyday lives. But our stories are more than how we suffer because of external forces, and our stories should rightly reflect the diversity of our culture and lives.

  Bonus question: What comes to your mind when you read the word Karukerament?

  I’ve been thinking that perhaps there’s a Jamaican equivalent of Karukerament. But I can only think of “bashment,” and though it applies to a dancehall party I want to think of it as a party and broad celebration of Caribbean literature and culture.

  Spot on! Thank you so much for your time with us and I hope “Tea by the Sea” will get translated in French, so I can talk about it with even more people.

  Thank you Donna Hemans. Tea by the Sea is available since June 9th 2020. Make sure to get your copy Red Hen Press, IndieBound, Barnes & Noble, Amazon. Here’s my spoiler-free review.

• The PEN/Faulkner Foundation - https://www.penfaulkner.org/2020/12/10/donna-hemans-2/

  Donna Hemans
  Author, Board Member

  Secretary
  Donna Hemans is the author of three novels, River Woman, Tea by the Sea and The House of Plain Truth (forthcoming in February 2024). Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Slice, Electric Literature, Ms. Magazine, The Rumpus, Crab Orchard Review, among others. She received her undergraduate degree in English and Media Studies from Fordham University and an MFA from American University. She lives in Maryland, and is also the owner of DC Writers Room, a co-working studio for writers based in Washington, D.C.

• Washington Independent Review of Books - https://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/index.php/features/an-interview-with-donna-hemans

  An Interview with Donna Hemans
  Alice Stephens
  May 26, 2020
  The writer discusses identity, belonging, releasing a book during the pandemic, and her ideal cup of tea.

  An Interview with Donna Hemans
  At 15, Plum Valentine is banished from her Brooklyn home and sent back to Jamaica by parents nervous about the pernicious effects of the American lifestyle. Once there, her trust in her parents shattered, she turns to her chemistry teacher, Lenworth Barrett, for solace. Soon, she is pregnant and planning a life with Lenworth.

  Hours after the birth, Lenworth steals away from the hospital with their newborn daughter, leaving a terrible absence in Plum’s life. She never gives up searching for her child, and 17 years later, the trail leads her to a church not far from the Brooklyn brownstone where she lives with her husband and twin daughters…

  Donna Hemans’ second novel, Tea by the Sea, is a moving portrait of identity, belonging, family, immigration, and the power of maternal love.

  Your portrait of the migrant experience is poignant, especially Plum’s. Despite growing up in New York City, she never fully feels at home there, nor back in Jamaica. What irony, then, that it is in Jamaica she gets pregnant at 17. Having to leave her baby behind when returning to the U.S. is a literal depiction of immigration: leaving a part of oneself behind. Can you describe how your own experience with immigration shaped the story?

  I finished high school in Jamaica and moved to Brooklyn at 16, primarily to finish my education. So I was roughly the same age as Plum when she leaves Jamaica to return to her parents in Brooklyn. Migrating is generally not an easy thing. It’s unsettling in a lot of ways. Like Plum, I spent a lot of time thinking back on what I had left, the friends who were no longer a quick phone call away, the option of walking outside and picking a handful of fruit, the clear Caribbean waters. I was able to build upon my own sense of loss to create a similar feeling in Plum.

  As an immigrant, I also live in dual worlds, and I think most first- and second-generation immigrants experience this duality. For me, I’m always asking the question, “Where is home?” Is home a physical place? Is home a place in your heart and mind? Where and to whom do I belong? This book, and perhaps most of my writing, comes back to that question of belonging, a question that is rooted in my experience of immigration.

  Both Plum and Lenworth are determined to exercise agency over their own lives, sometimes to tragic effect. What does agency mean to you, and how does one achieve it?

  Every marginalized group — black and brown people, women — has fought for agency and the right to make choices over their own lives. In Tea by the Sea, my primary focus is on a woman’s right to choose the direction of her own life. Lenworth takes that choice away from Plum. Admittedly, he thinks he is offering Plum a chance at building a life free of the burdens of an early pregnancy. But what he thinks is a gift ends up as a shadow on all of their lives. The situation in Tea by the Sea is just one small area. But I think it reflects the outcome in just about any situation where an individual or a group is deprived of the right to make their own choices.

  Lenworth is a complicated character. Stealing his newborn daughter is a despicable act, and yet his backstory of thwarted ambition and poverty elicits sympathy for an intelligent man trapped by circumstances (though you do wonder why he keeps on getting into sticky situations with female students). And then he becomes a priest despite a lack of spiritual fervor. What or who inspired him?

  Let me give you the backstory of how I came to write Tea by the Sea. I had an idea to write a story about a group of strangers trapped in a church. Soon after, I began writing a short piece about a mother prepping her children for the school day, dropping them off and, instead of going to work, heading to a church and refusing to leave. I didn’t know why she was heading to the church, but I was intrigued.

  Sometime later, I was in Jamaica and heard a female caller on a radio program called “Sunday Contact.” Individuals call in to find others they have lost touch with. On that particular evening, a mother called in looking for leads to the whereabouts of her son, then about 8 years old, and the child’s father. The father had taken the boy, and she had no idea where they had gone.

  Once I heard that woman’s plight, I knew the woman in the church was there to retrieve her child. From there, I had to build the story of how Lenworth came to be in America with the child. Beyond the larger questions of agency and belonging, there were two other questions I wanted the book to explore: Who has the right to raise a child? How far will a mother go to retrieve her child?

  With Lenworth’s character specifically, I know a good number of individuals with similarly thwarted ambitions. Lenworth wanted to be an engineer, and due to family circumstances and his own actions, he wasn’t able to pursue his studies. But Lenworth’s character was inspired by an experience totally unrelated to ambition and thwarted opportunities.

  Once, when I was still in college and living with my aunt in Brooklyn, I happened to answer the phone when one of my aunt’s friends called. The caller, a man, proceeded to ask what I was studying. I had majored in English and media studies. He didn’t like what I had chosen to study and quite angrily told me I should not be studying the humanities. Of course, I was stunned by the conversation and the idea that a stranger thought he had the right to determine what I studied or what career I ultimately chose.

  I can laugh about the entire conversation now, and how hard I tried not to be rude. But his point was based on the idea that the single end goal of education is not studying or working in a field you love, but making money to survive. And that is what Lenworth ultimately does. He sets aside his dream to find a way to survive.

  I recently read another book based in Jamaica, A Tall History of Sugar by Curdella Forbes, and Marlon James is a giant of the Jamaican literary scene. Do you see a growing interest in Jamaican literature?

  It certainly does seem like there’s a strong wave of Jamaican writers now. But it’s hard for me to say there’s a growing interest in Jamaican literature, at least not in the sense that editors are specifically seeking work from Jamaican writers. Rather, what I see is a growing interest in broader types of stories from the African diaspora in general.

  For too long, the stories we were “allowed” to write or the stories the market seemed to be interested in publishing were about colonialism and its effects, the new immigrant in her new adopted country or escape from poverty. And for a long while, the message from publishers and agents was, “I don’t know how to sell it.”

  But Marlon James’ fantasy novel, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which draws on African history and mythology, is yet another shift in the types of stories coming from the Jamaican diaspora. I’m excited by the growing body of work from Jamaican writers and am looking forward to seeing the creativity in what we continue to write and publish.

  If you were to have your fantasy “tea by the sea,” where would it be, with whom, and what would be served?

  Any beach on the north coast of Jamaica would be ideal. What I picture is a late evening on a patio overlooking the water, and tea served with warm sweet-potato pudding or guava or plantain tarts or some other fruit-filled pastry. Ideally, it would be quiet, with just the gentle shush of the waves lapping against the shore. I would be quite content to sit quietly by myself for that tea by the sea. But since it’s a fantasy, I would love to sit down with my grandparents and ask all the questions I didn’t know to ask when they were alive. They also worked hard, and in their time, sitting down for tea by the sea was a luxury not afforded to them. So I’d want to give them a moment to sit back and enjoy.

  What is it like publishing a book during a pandemic? Have your plans changed?

  Oh, yes, my launch plans have changed significantly. While some of the events I had lined up have been canceled, some are now virtual. Understandably, not all venues have been able to pivot to virtual events or accommodate all the in-store events they had planned before the lockdown. But we’re all learning and adapting as best we can.

  One of the good things, though, is that writers have banded together to help each other through the challenges of publishing in a pandemic. For example, I’m part of a group of authors with 2020 books called Lockdown Literature. The group was the brainchild of author Mary South (You Will Never Be Forgotten), who wanted to create a support group for authors publishing in this crisis.

  And I’m amazed at what the group has been able to pull together: readings, a giveaway, an Instagram page featuring videos of authors reading snippets of their books, and events. We’re all trying to find new ways to reach our readers, and I’m grateful for the communities of writers and artists that have formed because of the coronavirus crisis.

  Alice Stephens is the author of the novel Famous Adopted People.

• NYS Writers Institute website - https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org/post/q-a-with-novelist-donna-hemans

  NYS Writers Institute
  Oct 20, 2020
  5 min read

  Q&A with novelist Donna Hemans
  "... when I began writing Tea By the Sea I wanted to know how far a mother would go to find her child taken from her. When I answered that question fully, I knew the book was finished."

  -- Donna Hemans

  Interviewed by Moriah Hampton, PhD, an instructor in the University at Albany's Program in Writing and Critical Inquiry (WCI)

  Donna Hemans is the author of two novels: River Woman, winner of the 2003–4 Towson University Prize for Literature, and Tea by the Sea, for which she won the Lignum Vitae Una Marson Award for Adult Literature. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Bare Life Review, Caribbean Writer, Crab Orchard Review, Witness, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, among others. She is also the owner of DC Writers Room, a co-working studio for writers.

  You recently published your second novel. Congratulations!
  Thank you. Publishing a book in the midst of a pandemic is a humbling experience, and all writers who published this year will likely tell the same story about opportunities that disappeared—whether expected book reviews, planned book tours, launch events, conference sessions. Despite some of the setbacks, I’ve had some opportunities to interact with readers and other writers virtually. And I hope that the best practices literary organizations and bookstores pivoted to this summer will remain and make for meaningful opportunities for more writers and readers to interact once we return to “normal.”

  Has your writing changed at all since the start of Covid-19? Have you kept to the same routine, for example? Is your process the same? And how about subject matter? Have you been drawn to different subjects?
  Since about March, I haven’t written nearly as much as I would have liked. Covid-19 is partly to blame, but I had also just finished up edits to another book and was getting ready to launch Tea By the Sea. All the promotional requirements can eat into a writer’s writing time. While I wasn’t prolific, I was probably due for a writing pause and a reset.

  In terms of subject matter, I think of my work as an exploration of belonging. Where do we belong and to whom? Where is home? Will it be there for me when I choose to return? Is home with a person, or is it a specific place? These are the kind of questions I explore time and again. What 2020 has shown us, particularly people of African descent, is that we are always being asked to prove our right to exist in the spaces we occupy. We are always fighting to survive in the places in which we live. So while the broad subjects may change, I expect that the idea of belonging will remain a core part of my writing.

  Your new novel, Tea by the Sea, portrays the search of a mother for her daughter who was taken from her. We have been confronted by loss lately due to the pandemic. We have also witnessed even more lives lost to police brutality. What do you think loss has to teach us?
  Certainly when I started working on Tea By the Sea, and even when I finished it, I never imagined we would be confronted with so much loss over a short period of time—from migrant children being taken from their parents, and in some cases adopted out to new families, to where we are today with the seemingly constant barrage of images of police brutality. It’s hard to think of any one lesson from this sustained period of loss.

  But what I think about in regards to loss is resilience—something I wrote about in an essay, “What We Leave Behind: Learning About Resilience From Boney M’s 'By the Rivers of Babylon,'" which was published this summer in Bare Life Review. In that essay, I talked about how I had long associated Bony M’s version of the Psalm to a sense of loss and the feeling of things falling apart around me. That feeling is tied to the period in which I first heard the song—around 1980 when Jamaica experienced a difficult political period and many Jamaicans fled the island. The Psalm explained who is thought to expendable and who isn’t, and the dynamics of power—two things that we have seen over and over this year. Now though when I think of Boney M’s version it reminds me of our resilience and why artists continue to create even as the world falls apart.

  Water features in both titles of your novels currently published. Has water taken on any new significance for you during Covid-19 with the constant handwashing and cleansing routines?

  Yes, in River Woman, water both gives and takes life, and in Tea By the Sea, it is largely rejuvenating. But even with all the hand washing and cleansing routines, I think water is absent in my life. When I think of water, I think of the large bodies: seas, rivers, and strong streams. I want to see the movement, hear the trickle or the swish or the roar, and feel its pull or a gentle wave washing over my legs. Since Covid-19 has, of course, limited travel for very many of us, I’ve missed those opportunities and experiences.

  In an interview in Pree, you mention another novel in the works, which, as I understand, you have been working on for many years but remains incomplete. Can you give us a sense of the novel? Also, when do you know when a work of fiction is finished?
  Since the Pree interview, I’ve finished revising that novel, which traces the migratory patterns of Jamaicans throughout the Americas. It took me some time to get to the heart of the story, and to tell the story I wanted to tell. With some stories, it’s easy to figure out the heart and the plot, and with others it takes many trials.

  With each book, the process of writing and knowing a book is finished changes. The one constant is the question I set out to answer at the outset. For example, when I began writing Tea By the Sea I wanted to know how far a mother would go to find her child taken from her. When I answered that question fully, I knew the book was finished.

  You work with writers as owner of the DC Writers Room. Do you have any words of encouragement for writers who may have lost motivation during this difficult time?
  Early on in the pandemic, there was some talk—some serious, some said jokingly—suggesting people would emerge from the shutdown with whole novels written, or would have acquired new skills and habits. But the reality is that many of us were overwhelmed with keeping ourselves and our families healthy. Our routines and responsibilities changed and yet we were expected to produce at the same level.

  So my first piece of advice is: Take the time you need to rest and heal. If you’re ready but you aren’t as motivated, try a different creative medium. Paint, draw, dance, make paper—do something other than write. The project might be a colossal failure but it will get your creative engines roaring again, and that’s a great step towards writing again.

Tea by the Sea

Donna Hemans

Red Hen Press

P.O. Box 40820 Pasadena, CA 91114

www.redhen.org

9781597098458, $16.95, PB, 256pp

https://www.amazon.com/Tea-Sea-Donna-Hemans/dp/1597098450

Synopsis: To find the daughter taken from her, Plum Valentine must find the child's father who walked out of a hospital with the day-old baby girl without explanation. Seventeen years later, weary of her unfruitful search, Plum sees an article in a community newspaper with a photo of the man for whom she has spent half her life searching. He has become an Episcopal priest. Her plan: confront him and walk away with the daughter he took from her.

From Brooklyn to the island of Jamaica, "Tea by the Sea" traces Plum's circuitous route to find her daughter and how Plum's and the priest's love came apart.

Donna Hermans novel, "Tea by the Sea" is the story of a seventeen-year-old girl who was taken from her mother at birth; an Episcopal priest with a daughter whose face he cannot bear to see; and a mother weary of searching for her lost child--the story a family uniting and unraveling.

Critique: A deftly crafted and entertaining work of impressive literary nuance, "Tea by the Sea" by Donna Hemans is an extraordinary, original, and inherently fascinating novel that is especially and unreservedly commended as an addition to both community and college/university library Contemporary Literary Fiction collections. One of those all too rare novels that will linger in the mind and memory long after the book is finished and set back upon the shelf, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "Tea by the Sea" is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.49).

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Tea by the Sea." Wisconsin Bookwatch, Sept. 2020, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A710684587/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4e6142d4. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023.

Tea by the Sea. By Donna Hemans. June 2020. 256p. Red Hen, paper, $ 16.95 (9781597098458).

One man's drastic decision has heartbreaking consequences for the women in his life in the latest novel from Hemans (River Woman, 2002). Lenworth Ramsey wanted to give the mother of his child a better life. Pregnant at seventeen, Plum Valentine deserved to have a chance to make something of herself. To give Plum the gift of agency, Lenworth does the unthinkable: he absconds with their week-old daughter and disappears without a trace. Plum does not view Lenworth's decision as a gift--instead, she feels that she has been discarded once again. Having been sent from Brooklyn to an all-girls boarding school in Jamaica, Plum is reeling from feeling abandoned by her parents when she meets the older Lenworth. After the abduction, Plum will spend the next seventeen years searching for her child until it leads her to the last place she expected. Tea by the Sea is a well-written novel exploring the themes of agency, love, and loss. The reverberations of Lenworth's decision will be fodder for a great book-group discussion.--LynnDee Wathen

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Wathen, LynnDee. "Tea by the Sea." Booklist, vol. 116, no. 17, 1 May 2020, p. 24. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A623790575/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4ab3191e. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023.

Hemans, Donna. Tea by the Sea. Red Hen. Jun. 2020. 256p. ISBN 9781597098458. pap. $16.95. F

In this second novel from Jamaican American author Hemans (River Woman), set in both Jamaica and Brooklyn, 24-year-old Jamaican high school tutor Lenworth gets a student named Plum Valentine pregnant; he agrees to marry her but then absconds with the baby girl hours after her birth. (This information is no spoiler, as it's revealed in Chapter 1.) Lenworth starts a new life with his daughter on another part of the island, using an assumed name. Though Plum was raised in America, her Jamaican parents parked her in a Jamaican boarding school against her will; after Lenworth disappears with the baby, she returns grief-stricken to Brooklyn and spends years trying to track down her daughter. The narrative is replete with wonderfully evocative descriptions of Jamaica's lush floral beauty, hot climate, and rugged terrain, as well as more sober assessments of its local poverty, but the story is melodramatic when it could have been a more critical take on the Caribbean American immigrant experience. Plot and tone don't quite jibe: Lenworth is presented as a sympathetic character with Plum's best interests in mind, but readers will have difficulty reconciling that portrayal with his despicable behavior. VERDICT A light read, despite the book's serious-sounding themes.--Reba Leiding, emerita, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Leiding, Reba. "Hemans, Donna. Tea by the Sea." Library Journal, vol. 145, no. 6, June 2020, p. 80. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A625861950/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e4e3cfc2. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023.

The House of Plain Truth

Donna Hemans. Zibby, $27.99 (304p) ISBN 979-8-9862418-1-4

A 60-something woman returns home to Jamaica to visit her dying father in this affecting family drama from Hemans (Tea by the Sea). In Brooklyn, where Pearline has lived for decades, people regularly ask her where she's from and why she doesn't want to live there. Upon arriving in Jamaica, she's taunted by her sisters Hermina and Aileen for having spent too much time away (Aileen derisively calls her "Miss America"). Shortly before Pearline's farher, Rupert, dies, he asks her to "find them for me." She believes his dying wish refers to the sisters' older siblings in Cuba, whom Pearline knew as a child when Rupert temporarily moved the family there so he could work on a sugar plantation. Pearline examines her father's documents and attempts to piece together the story of his life and track down the Cuban siblings. Meanwhile, Hermina and Aileen wish she would drop the search, as they plan to sell the house and don't want any complications involving the estate. Though there are no big surprises when the family's secrets are unveiled, Hemans ably depicts Pearline's longing for acceptance and closure. This is worth a look. (Jan.)

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"The House of Plain Truth." Publishers Weekly, vol. 270, no. 40, 2 Oct. 2023, pp. 111+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A770543973/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ec3acf42. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023.

"Tea by the Sea." Wisconsin Bookwatch, Sept. 2020, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A710684587/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4e6142d4. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023. Wathen, LynnDee. "Tea by the Sea." Booklist, vol. 116, no. 17, 1 May 2020, p. 24. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A623790575/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4ab3191e. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023. Leiding, Reba. "Hemans, Donna. Tea by the Sea." Library Journal, vol. 145, no. 6, June 2020, p. 80. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A625861950/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e4e3cfc2. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023. "The House of Plain Truth." Publishers Weekly, vol. 270, no. 40, 2 Oct. 2023, pp. 111+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A770543973/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ec3acf42. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023.

Word Count