Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness and Becoming

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The story felt both familiar and fresh, and through all the heartbreak I appreciated the author’s ability to capture an optimistic grind towards resilience and belonging. COMPLEX participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means COMPLEX gets paid commissions on purchases made through our links to retailer sites. In his mid-thirties, increasingly addicted to escapism, attention, and sex, Downing realizes he has become a “Saga Boy”—a Trinidadian playboy archetype—like his father and grandfather before him.

SAGA BOY | Kirkus Reviews

Noticeably absent are his mother and father, whom he doesn’t really meet until he’s older and who pop in and out of his life, often bringing chaos with them.

The eleven-year-old Downing seems to fall asleep in the jungle and to wake up in a blizzard: he is sent to live with his devoutly evangelical Aunt Joan in rural Canada, where they are the only Black family in a landscape starkly devoid of the warm lushness of his childhood. In 2017, he was named by the RBC Taylor Prize as one of Canada’s top Emerging Authors for non-fiction. We must say their names, we must remember their pain and we must fight for justice for them and all our women! Antonio shared deeply personal experiences from his early childhood in Trinidad to moving to Canada with such honesty that was so engaging for me as a reader.

Saga Boy Hey Choppi releases a highly-anticipated 12-track album, Saga Boy

You can see, behind me, my new Union Jack paintings [gestures at canvases coated in colorful, modern-art renditions of England’s flag by artist Barry Lorne]. This year is Chrono Trigger's 25th anniversary, so it would've been perfect timing to bring it to Switch. And while he talks about how he's chasing his family, what's clear is that, even if it's not a "traditional" family, his family is vast, diverse, and deep loving, even if they remain human and flawed.Mic Dainjah, Molasses, John Orpheus: the adult musician who changes names, musical styles, and stage personas often as he attempts to stitch his broken life back together. But Downing takes these transformations to new levels, mainly because they are forced upon him by a tumultuous family situation that leaves him moving from country to country and trying to heal from childhood traumas with essentially no help. Following her death, he and his brother were sent to live with their hyper religious aunt in Wabigoon, Ontario.