The Pagoda

Lowe, the Chinese immigrant, is in his fifties–the owner of a small shop in an impoverished plantation village, and the guardian of a secret that is gradually revealed. Writing to a long-estranged daughter, Lowe tells her what happened during their years apart–a tale of exile from China, of estrangement from family, of shipboard adventures, of an unwanted pregnancy, of the arrangement that was made to avoid a possible scandal, of the three decades of living as man and wife with a light-skinned black woman named Sylvie. It is a story of the destruction of a world: the burning of Lowe’s shop. It describes Lowe’s dream of building a Pagoda–a school where Chinese workers might learn about their history and become a part of Jamaican life.

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Patricia Powell

Patricia Powell (born 1966) is a Jamaican writer, she moved to the United States in her late teens. She received her bachelor’s degree at Wellesley, and an MFA in creative writing from Brown University, where she studied with Michael Ondaatje, among others.

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