Hold the Pum Pum Jokes: Learning to Love Leone Ross’s POPISHO
“Everyone in Popisho was born with a little something-something, boy, a little something extra. The local name was cors. Magic, but more than magic. A gift, nah? Yes. From the gods: a thing so inexpressibly your own.
Somewhere far away – or maybe right nearby – lies an archipelago called Popisho. A place of stunning beauty and incorrigible mischief, destiny and mystery, it is also a place in need of change.
Leone Ross’s Popisho is a masterful delight: a playful love story, a portrait of community, a boldly sensual meditation on desire and addiction, and a critique of the legacies of corruption and colonialism. Inspired by the author’s Jamaican homeland, inflected with rhythms and textures of an amalgam of languages, it is a dazzling, major work of fiction.” Description from Twigge Books
Let’s be honest — when the Spoilers first started reading Leone Ross’s Popisho, they were kind of confused. But as this lively conversation reveals, we came to really love this strange, original, endearing book. It never missed an opportunity to surprise and delight us. Take a listen to this episode to hear how we go from perplexity to wonder and happiness. Take our word for it — this episode was made especially for you.
Mentioned in the Show
What the Spoilers are up to!
- Vagabonds by Eloghosa Osunde
- Border Less by Namrata Poddar
- Wakanda
- Alice Walker, The Color Purple
- “The Cook, the Chef and the Gender Gap”
What We’re Watching, Reading, Eating, etc:
- Crystal: Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey
- Todd: The Land by Mildred Taylor (The Well and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry also mentioned – from the Logan Family Saga)
- Anita: Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
