The Burning Bush Women and Other Stories — Cherie Jones

In these truthful, strange, funny, and tragic short stories set in Barbados and the United States, a path is woven through the joys and suffering of women's lives--from breast cancer, madness, and abortion to love, magic, and a deep connectedness between women--leading always to remarkable, unexpected places. These believable characters' voices rage, weep, and laugh through stories that are sometimes in the form of letters, conversations, whispered secrets, or raw cries for help. Themes of race, gender, and sexual orientation are key to these stories, as is the interplay between modernity and the African traditions of the Caribbean. Also explored are the connections between spirituality and the supernatural and between sanity and madness.