Excerpted from a novel in progress, June Aming’s chapbook debut Yellow Is Not for Girls Like Me takes us back to Trinidad in 1939, and the arrival of fifteen-year-old Elsie at the home of her aunt. Why has Elsie’s mother sent her away? Why does Aunt Fan treat her with such disdain? And how does the sad occasion of a neighbour’s death and wake become the moment for Elsie’s awakening into early womanhood?
Chapbook · Poetry
Yellow Is Not For Girls Like Me
by June Aming
$50.00 TTD
“With uproarious humour and a deftness of language that only a Trinidadian with a perfectly trained ear could bring to the page, June Aming’s writing mesmerises. This is a story worth your attention, as she reawakens a past Trinidad with all its complexities intact. An unforgettable cast of characters who will leave you yearning for more.”
Available from Paper Based Bookshop, Port of Spain.
About the book
Yellow Is Not For Girls Like Me by T&T author June Aming presents an excerpt from a a novel in progress. Selected as a Bocas Breakthrough Fellow, Aming worked on her novel during her fellowship term, which included mentoring by Lauren Francis-Sharma, author of Casualties of Truth.
The Bocas Breakthrough Fellowships were awarded in 2024 to five early-career Caribbean writers, to support them in advancing or completing a debut book of fiction or poetry, The fellows were Heather Barker of Barbados, Stephanie Koathes and Rhea Manley of Jamaica, and June Aming and Amílcar Peter Sanatan of Trinidad and Tobago.
The Bocas Breakthrough Fellowships are funded by Creative Caribbean, a joint project implemented by UNESCO, the CARICOM Secretariat and The University of the West Indies (UWI), with funding from the European Union and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, under the ACP-EU 11th EDP Culture Programme. Creative Caribbean brings together to achieve shared goals and initiatives for the advancement of the Caribbean as a cultural and creative space and economic player.
Meet the author
June Aming
June Aming is an award-winning writer based in Trinidad and Tobago. She was shortlisted for the Small Axe Literary Competition in 2014, won the BlackIn Writing Competition in 2023, and was longlisted for the BCLF Short Fiction Story Contest in 2024. Her work has been featured in several journals and anthologies, including The Caribbean Writer, Moving Right Along, 16, and Voicing Our Vision. She has presented her work at the Miami Book Fair in 2013, 2014, and 2015, as well as at Carifesta XII in Haiti in 2015. In 2020, Aming earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.
This chapbook is an excerpt from her debut novel in progress, which she worked on during her 2024 Bocas Breakthrough Fellowship, mentored by author Lauren Francis-Sharma.
