(New York, NY)— Marie-Elena John wasn’t considering a writing career when she left her Caribbean island for New York’s City College. There, thanks to a semester spent at the University of Nigeria, she became fascinated by the intertwined cultural commonality of the Continent, the Caribbean, and the African-American experiences. This fascination became the basis for her debut novel, Unburnable a multi-generational narrative of family, betrayal, and vengeance, publishing in April 2006 by Amistad/Harpercollins.
Provocative and set partly in post World War II Dominica and contemporary Washington, D.C., Unburnable entails a brutal rape with a broken shard of a Coke bottle, and a suspenseful murder mystery.
From a Washington, D.C. base throughout the 1990s, Marie Elena-John worked with non-profit organizations, traveling throughout Africa, first in support of grassroots development efforts, later working with pro-democracy and human rights movements, and eventually becoming best known in her field for her pioneering work on the denial of women’s inheritance rights in Africa.
Recently though, she channeled her vast knowledge of and passion for the African Diaspora into her literary debut, that Booklist hailed as a “page-turner.” Lillian Baptiste is willed back to her island home of Dominica to finally settle her past. Haunted by scandal and secrets, Lillian left Dominica when she was fourteen after discovering she was the daughter of Iris,
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