In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. They’ll have their own interpretation of this story.We can’t choose what we inherit. And so it’s very exciting to think that they’re interested. “But it’s really exciting to think of the people - these are people I admire. I thought, ‘Well, isn’t that nice?’” Wilkerson says. “I think it was a kind affirmation for the story. Not only the stories that are told, but the stories that are not told.”Īs for the early interest in a screen adaptation, Wilkerson says she was pleasantly surprised and is eager to witness how the filmmakers interpret her world. And it also had me thinking about the power of stories to shape our identities. “A younger member of my family asked for the recipe several years ago and I thought, ‘Well, I’m surprised that he would care, that he would think of it.’ And that started me thinking about the ways in which we inherit family identity through food. “She made a legendary rum cake or plum pudding, and that’s what a lot of people call black cake in the Caribbean,” Wilkerson says.
The story is fiction, but her mother’s Jamaican heritage often comes into play, particularly with the cake theme. It’s just that there are things that interest us, and they stay in the back of our minds.” But I didn’t set out to write a book about these things. So all of these things together have always had me thinking about family, identity, home. “And yes, I’ve moved around quite a bit, lived in three countries, but also I’ve come from a multicultural family where few of us have had quite the same upbringing or even look alike.
“I’m always thinking about things like identity and family and shifting concepts of home,” she says. Her nomadic life has impacted the way she writes fiction, she says, noting her interest in multicultural families like her own. (“I like to joke that people go to Italy to study art history or they go for love. Born in New York, Wilkerson moved to Jamaica as a child, which influenced the book (the story follows a Caribbean family) and has lived in Rome for the past 20 years. It’s Wilkerson’s first novel, after a career in journalism and news and communications. Cannes Film Festival 2023: Live Updates of All the Looks From Red Carpets, Arrivals and Photocalls
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