Zilla Jones’ debut novel explores a mixed-race woman’s search for identity and belonging

Manitoba writer Zilla Jones’ debut novel The World So Wide is coming out in April 2025. The book tells the story of Felicity Alexander, a mixed-race opera star, who spends her life chasing love and validation.

It is a story of betrayal, revolution — set within the context of the United States invasion of Grenada — and the healing power of music. 

“I always wanted to write fiction about some of my experiences as a Black singer in spaces that are still overwhelmingly white, and about the immense dedication, but also the isolation and loneliness, of working to become excellent at a craft, whether music or writing,” wrote Jones in an email to CBC Books.

Jones is a Black Canadian author based in Winnipeg. She’s won many literary awards including the Journey Prize,  the Malahat Review Open Season Award, the Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction and the FreeFall short fiction award.

Jones made the 2020 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Our Father and has longlisted twice for her story How to Make a Friend, in 2022 and 2023; in 2024, Jones was included on the CBC Short Story Prize shortlist. The same year, Jones made the longlist for the CBC Nonfiction Prize. She was also named a writer to watch by CBC Books in 2024.

Jones explained that growing up, she often heard stories about the political events in Grenada from members of her family.

“The rise of Felicity’s career parallels the ascent of Grenada’s aspirations. The thread tying the two stories together is Felicity’s search for identity and belonging as a mixed-race woman. This is a topic dear to my heart that I have wrestled with for most of my life and so it is no surprise that my first novel is infused with it,” she said.

“My short story How to Make a Friend, which was shortlisted in the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize, is also a story of Black resistance and liberation. After it was published, readers from across the country let me know how universal the themes of bullying and exclusion were, how human a story it was. Likewise, The World So Wide is for everyone who has felt silenced or left out. This is a book that honours all of our brokenness and offers healing.”

The World So Wide will be out in April 2025. You can read an excerpt below. 

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St. George’s, Grenada, October 8, 1983

A soldier with a gun and a conductor with a baton: both men who derived power from pointing sticks at women. Felicity Alexander had seen many sticks in her time, and she knew the best way to respond was to ignore the men who wielded them. Continue to sing her tempo, or keep digging this hole under the fence with her bare hands.

“I askin’ you, what you doin’?” The gun shook. The holder had a smooth face, with gangly limbs protruding through the sleeves and cuffs of his uniform; he was a boy, not yet a man.

“I’m trying to get out of here.” Fireflies lit the night with circling brightness, tiny moving stars. The heat draped over Felicity’s shoulders was a wet towel, laced with the scent of the ocean that glinted in the distance. She had chosen a spot shielded from the rest of the yard by a cluster of banana trees, but somehow this kid had found her.

“You know everyone in the house does have to stay in.” He jabbed the gun in her direction, but its mouth wavered and dipped to the ground.

“Everyone in the house who’s a member of the government of Grenada.”

“And you. You from the enemy, from USA.”

Felicity regretted that lie. It had been told on impulse, when the army first arrived.

“Why on earth do you want to waste your time performing in a showcase for the People’s Revolutionary Government of Grenada?” her agent had asked her, when she was still safe in Winnipeg. “Besides the political implications, the arrangements seem rather lacking. Quite amateur.”

Felicity had lied then too. “It has to do with my ancestry. Finding myself.”

“Yes,” her agent said. “You knew Neville Carpenter as a student, didn’t you? The thing is, Felicity, Neville Carpenter is a controversial figure. He’s a media darling, he’s sexy, he’s an international womanizer, but then there are lots of people who think he’s a bloodthirsty Communist. A roll in the hay for old times sake isn’t worth the potential blow to your career.”

“I could just fire you and go anyway.”

Her agent swallowed so hard Felicity heard it on the other end of the line. “Well, all right, go, but for God’s sake, keep it low profile. Get in and get out quickly.”

When the soldiers asked Felicity to identify herself, she remembered her agent’s words, and she gave them the name she had used at the clinic in Sauteurs twelve years before.

When the soldiers asked Felicity to identify herself, she remembered her agent’s words, and she gave them the name she had used at the clinic in Sauteurs twelve years before. Lydia Felix: her middle name, and her former husband’s last name. Lydia Felix, an American, a friend of Prime Minister Neville Carpenter. Not Felicity Alexander, Canadian opera singer, still in love with Neville’s deputy, Claude Buckingham, eighteen years after they had met.

“You’re a dirty American,” said the boy with the gun. “All you have a real ass of a president.”

“Black Americans don’t like him either,” said Felicity. “America won’t lift a finger to help a Black woman.”

“Who is Black? You?”

Felicity remembered that her racial identity was not in question in Canada, or England, or the United States, but here in Grenada, her lighter shade of brown and her thick curly hair came with distinctions, and with privileges.

“You has to go inside,” the boy soldier said. He grew brave and jabbed Felicity in her side with the butt of the gun. “All of you is under heavy manners.”

“You’re holding it wrong,” Felicity said. “Your hands go here. Look.” She stood next to him and allowed her body to brush against his. She wore only Neville’s Malcolm X T-shirt and a pair of his boxer shorts with the waist rolled over to hold them up. The young soldier shuddered as she peeled his fingers from around the weapon and placed one hand near the scope, one near the trigger, as Hans had shown her at the shooting range in Vienna. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Elrick,” he said. His teeth chattered in the warm breeze that stirred the broad leaves of the banana trees.

“How old are you, Elrick?

“Sixteen.”

“You should be in school.” Felicity raged at Neville’s intransigence and stupidity that had led to boys like this taking up guns instead of books.

“Who can afford school?” asked Elrick, and Felicity was reminded of her cousin Arnold so many years ago. School is for you people from foreign, he had told her.

“I thought Neville made schools free.”

“Free? It ain’t free if you have to eat.” Elrick spat on the ground. “Brother Carp ain’t done nothing to feed we families. That’s why we had to remove him from power.” He brandished the rifle at Felicity again. “And all you who support him have to stay inside.”

“Okay,” Felicity said. “Okay.” She held out her hands, palms up. “I’ll go.” She knew he wouldn’t intentionally shoot her, but she didn’t trust him not to discharge the gun by accident. She turned towards the white walls of Government House that gleamed through the shadows. Mosquitos had settled on her arms and legs, but she dared not slap at them, lest the motion or sound alarm Elrick. She started to walk, and the gravel, also painted white, crunched under her bare feet. After a few steps, she turned back to see Elrick still watching her. “Elrick,” she said. “How does this all end?”

She couldn’t read his face in the dark as his voice rolled towards her. “It ends,” he said, “when Brother Carp accepts the transfer of power, Brother Henry is we new leader, and we all has worker solidarity and no more bourgeoisie.”

Felicity doubted he knew what those words meant. To be honest, neither did she.  

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Excerpted with permission from The World So Wide by Zilla Jones, 2025 Cormorant Books.