I've Been Meaning to Tell You
A Letter to My Daughter
In the tradition of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, acclaimed novelist David Chariandy's latest is an intimate and profoundly beautiful meditation on the politics of race today.
When a moment of quietly ignored bigotry prompted his three-year-old daughter to ask "what happened?" David Chariandy began wondering how to discuss with his children the politics of race. A decade later, in a newly heated era of both struggle and divisions, he writes a letter to his now thirteen-year-old daughter. David is the son of Black and South Asian migrants from Trinidad, and he draws upon his personal and ancestral past, including the legacies of slavery, indenture, and…
DAVID CHARIANDY lives in Vancouver and teaches literature and creative writing in the department of English at Simon Fraser University. His first novel, Soucouyant, was nominated for several prizes, including the Governor General’s Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. His second novel, Brother, was also nominated for several prizes, winning the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the Toronto Book Prize. Brother was also named a book of the year by The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Toronto Star, The Montreal Gazette, The New York City Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, Esquire Magazine, and The Guardian. His most recent book is a memoir entitled I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You: A Letter To My Daughter. David’s…
The Journey Prize Stories 33
Selected by David Chariandy, Esi Edugyan and Canisia Lubrin
NISHGA
Jordan Abel
I've Been Meaning to Tell You
David Chariandy