We've Been Here Before

A family saga stretching from the Caribbean to Canada where womanhood and mothering demands what the body wants to forget. We've Been Here Before begins with the childhood stories of Lise-Rose, who struggles with speech and coming of age in a community anchored on both West African spirituality and the Catholic church. Lise-Rose must choose either to follow the ancestral ways of her father who is spiritually bound to the sea or her mother who has rooted herself in Catholicism. In the end her options are limited through events that connect her to the shape shifters of the village. From Ma Lise-Rose's ancestors to her descendants, we see the struggle to honour ancestral knowledge while living on foreign lands. Francesca, Lise-Rose's granddaughter, leaves her family behind in Dominica as she embarks on a new life in Canada that seems limitless and oppressive all at once. The stirring intergenerational saga is woven together with folklore and memory, and is based loosely on stories from the author's own family storytelling traditions.