Say You by Sara Collins Essay

Say You by Sara Collins

”Say You” Is a short story written by Sara Collins, a London-based award-winning author. She is of Jamaican descent and worked as a lawyer for 17 years, before realizing that writing was what she really wanted to do. She tells us the story of the narrator and her friends’ romantic summer encounter with Cuban immigrants. One of the friends called Jewel falls in love with one of the Cuban boys named Abel. The two get together and Jewel becomes pregnant. While carrying his child she decides to visit him at the refugee camp, but without luck. She is told that there is no one in this camp by that name. She desperately walks around the camp from outside the fence and finds him at last, only to find out that he is with another woman and they have a child.

 The story takes place somewhere in between Miami and Cuba, probably the Bahamas as it is the only country that you will see before coming to the US when sailing from Cuba. On line 17 the narrator says, “The story of any island is basically the story of men, arriving.” This confirms that the setting is on an island, and The Bahamas consists of 700 islands. We also know it takes place in a coastal area because they on line 47 tells us that “It was mid-august, the height of hurricane season.” On line 80-81 Abel also points to the ocean and tells that “He is there.”

On line 1 and 2 we are told that “Lionel Richie topped the charts and we spent weekends grinding to Say you, say me.” According to Wikipedia the single was released in October 1985 and became number 1 on US charts December 1985. This means that the story probably takes place in the summer of 1986. This was also a period where many Cubans migrated because of economic reasons.^[1] 

The story is told from a first-person narrator. The story is unusual in the sense of the main character. Often the first-person narrator is also the main character but, in this story, I would say that Jewel is the main character. She is described as being very beautiful. “Pennycoloured hair that spilled over her shoulders like melting butter, dark eyebrows and a full cheeked face.”^[2] But her appearance changes as soon as she becomes pregnant. “Jewels cheeks began to look pinched, she lost weight.”^[3] She appears very confident and outgoing because she is the first of the girls to find a boyfriend.