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Email updates Twitter Facebook RSS FeedsThe autobiographical themes of Elizabeth Nunez’s new novel, “Anna In-Between,” are not far from the surface.
The book stems from “my sadness as an immigrant in the early part of my move here,” said the writer, a native of Trinidad who has been teaching at Medgar Evers College since 1972. “I was moving forward on my career, but the future caught up with me and I said, ‘Where do I belong? Where are my roots?”
So in the novel, when Anna Sinclair, a book editor in her 40s, returns to her native Caribbean island, she finds nothing familiar — and everything from class to colonialism to discrimination to even breast cancer are thrown into the mix.
And the plight of the black literary writer is also a part of the novel.
“Literary writers have a hard time [because] publishers tend to throw all their attention to more commercial writers,” said Nunez. “They don’t see an audience for black literary fiction. It’s unfortunate.”
Not every publisher fits that “unfortunate” mold. Johnny Temple, founder of the Park Slope-based Akashic Books, was eager to publish “Anna In-Between.”
“I wanted it sight unseen because I love her work,” said Temple.
Elizabeth Nunez will read at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch [Grand Army Plaza at Eastern Parkway, (718) 230-2100] on Oct. 10 at 4 pm.
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