House of Fossils

By Marilene Phipps

Book Overview

Following her amazing memoir Unseen Worlds: Adventures at the Crossroads of Vodou Spirits and Latter-Day Saints, Maril ne Phipps offers us House of Fossils, an autobiographical novel in the Joycean tradition, with the same high-octane emotionality and vivid characterization that makes all her work so riveting. Io-a form of the author's soul-seeks beauty and timelessness in gestures, manner and thought, but finds herself caught in a world where human beings are held hostage to their racial origins, skin color and culture. She is an immigrant in America, aiming to develop an identity and feel accepted, freed from the kind of fossilization imposed on her psyche by ancestry, family expectations and cultural norms. Haiti's abiding idiosyncrasies built around color and class, cognitive dissonance between Vodou and Christianity, and an irruptive political condition, are issues Io seeks to escape but to which she finds herself forever bonded. Io can never fully leave and can never fully return. The relevance of this book will be clear to readers in the rich western democracies experiencing the shock of multicultural evolution.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1950743217
• ISBN13: 9781950743216
• Release Date: March 2020
• Publisher: Calumet Editions
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"