She's Gone - Tapa blanda

Kofi, a Jamaican Reggae musician, and Keisha, a social researcher from South Carolina, meet at a club where Kofi's band is playing on the tail end of a United States tour. A spark ignites between them and Kofi convinces Keisha to take a chance and follow him to Jamaica. Yet the Jamaica that Dawes writes about is thick with the politics of class and identity, full of characters with distinct agendas and needs - a world quite different from the stereotype of sea and sun. Keisha feels immediately like a stranger on the island, especially as Kofi succumbs to a bout of depression. She's Gone delves into the enigmatic challenge of two virtual strangers trying to negotiate differences of culture, nationality, class, and gender. If it is a love story, it is one marked by the harsh realities of human existence revealed in the songs of Bob Marley and the cool sensual intelligence of Milan Kundera.

Kwame Dawes teaches at the University of South Carolina, where he is Distinguished Poet in Residence and director of the USC Arts Institute and the South Carolina Poetry Initiative.