Twentysomething and restless, Skye flits between cities and stagnant relationships until she meets Scottie, a disarming and disheveled British traveler, and Pieces, an enigmatic artist living in New York. The three recognize each other as kindred spirits—Black, punk, whimsical, revolutionary—and fall in together, leading Skye on an unlikely adventure across the Atlantic. They live a glorious, subterranean existence in 1990s London: making multimedia art, throwing drug-fueled parties, and eking out a living by busking in Tube stations, until their existence is jeopardized by the rise of CCTV and policing.
In fluid and unrelenting prose, Jamika Ajalon’s debut novel explores youth, poetry, and what it means to come to terms with queerness. Skye Papers is an imaginative, episodic group portrait of a transatlantic art scene spearheaded by people of color—and of the fraught, dystopian reality of increasing state surveillance.
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“Skye Papers is not only one of the most addictive reads of this year, it’s a must reread to unlock the living labyrinths of loving madly, performing badly, and surviving oneself while daring to risk everything to experience a creative life beyond the fringes of expectation and limitation.”
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Malik Ameer Crumpler, poet, editor, and rapper