Skye Papers

Twentysomething and restless, Skye flits between cities and stagnant relationships until she meets Scottie, a disarming and disheveled British traveler, and Pieces, an enigmatic artist living in New York. The three recognize each other as kindred spirits—Black, punk, whimsical, revolutionary—and fall in together, leading Skye on an unlikely adventure across the Atlantic. They live a glorious, subterranean existence in 1990s London: making multimedia art, throwing drug-fueled parties, and eking out a living by busking in Tube stations, until their existence is jeopardized by the rise of CCTV and policing. In fluid and unrelenting prose, Jamika Ajalon's debut novel explores youth, poetry, and what it means to come terms with queerness. Skye Papers is an imaginative, episodic group portrait of a transatlantic art scene spearheaded by people of color—and of the fraught, dystopian reality of increasing state surveillance. "SKYE PAPERS is a debut novel by Jamika Ajalon that follows three Black queer artists, musicians, and poets-Skye, Scottie, and Pieces-as they meet in New York and travel to London, navigating the 1990s underground art scene as it becomes increasingly threatened by the rise of CCTV and state surveillance."-- Provided by publisher A Dreamy And Experimental Portrait Of Young Black Artists In The 1990s London Underground Scene, Whose Existence Is Threatened By The Rise Of State Surveillance.