Uses metaphors drawn from the fauna and flora of Jamaica and images drawn from painting as the over-arching devices. The author explores the tensions between plenitude and emptiness, presence and absence, the nourishing and the poisonous in her memories of the rural Jamaican childhood that has shaped her.

Uses metaphors drawn from the fauna and flora of Jamaica and images drawn from painting as the over-arching devices. The author explores the tensions between plenitude and emptiness, presence and absence, the nourishing and the poisonous in her memories of the rural Jamaican childhood that has shaped her.