'Dat’s Love creates an enduring impression of a contemporary Welsh literary giant in-the-making. Through her extant body of short stories, we can only begin to acknowledge the loss of a prodigious literary artist with a breathtaking imagination who was only just warming up. Her depictions of the bustling and multicultural Tiger Bay and Cardiff, and its inhabitants – especially the African diaspora community – are invaluable. Each reading of the collection reveals something new and continues to leave the reader stunned at the nimble skill of Brito’s writing – that deservedly won her the Rhys Davies Short Story Award in 1991. The themes of race, community, a sense of place, history and identity (and specifically a Welsh identity) explored in Brito’s writing are timeless and relevant as ever, making Dat’s Love a must-read for everyone.'
Read the review in full on Wales Arts Review
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About Dat's Love and Other Stories:
Leonora Brito was a writer of exceptional stories. Her professional creative life covered a relatively short period of time, from the early 1990s to her death in 2007, during which she produced an acclaimed collection of short fiction, Dat’s Love, in addition to writing for radio and television.
Brito’s stories engage primarily with the Cardiff of her youth, most notably the Docks and Tiger Bay. She was the first of a group of writers who heralded a feminist renaissance in short story writing in Wales. Her stories are full of light and life, and the descriptions are marked by an unusual exactness and sense of place. They are unique in Welsh fiction in that they present an insider’s perspective on a Black history and culture of Wales only alluded to by other writers. She was working on a second collection at the time her death.
Full of wry humour and startling originality, this collection features some of Brito’s most acclaimed stories, including ‘Mama’s Baby (Papa’s Maybe)’, ‘The Last Jumpshot’, and ‘Dat’s Love’, which won the 1991 Rhys Davies Short Story Prize.
Praise for Leonora Brito:
“truly fresh writing... a collection that is sometimes funny and always highly original. Brito's narrators and characters are freetalkers and freethinkers with strikingly singular perspectives.”
Publishers Weekly
Leonora Brito was born in Cardiff. She studied law and history at Cardiff University. Her story ‘Dat’s Love’ won her the 1991 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition. She also wrote for radio and television, providing a unique insight into Afro-Caribbean Welsh society, largely unrepresented in Welsh writing until her work appeared. She published one collection of stories, Dat’s Love, in 1996. She died in 2007.
