Batty Bwoy: Volume 1 - Tapa blanda

The coming of age story of Mark Palmer, a black, gay, Jamaican where “Boom bye bye inna batty bwoy head” (meaning, gunshot to gay men) has replaced the island’s motto “Out of many one people.” The son of an overbearing neglectful mother, he is thrust in an environment that requires a thick skin from torments and socio-economic disparities. Suppressing his “gay tendencies” to detract being bashed or murdered, he migrates to America and breaks free from the closet to a world where he is marginalized. As his life spirals from bad choices, he clings to desperate measures and finds hope.

Jamaican-born Max-Arthur Mantle studied Journalism and Photography at Howard University and served in the US Navy. Mantle has been an internationally published fashion photographer for over 15 years, garnering magazine covers, fashion editorial spreads and a photo book, BEACH BOYS, published by Bruno Gmunder (Berlin, Germany). Mantle took a break from the lens and returned to writing his debut novel BATTY BWOY, the first in the trilogy. Max-Arthur Mantle is an avid abstract painter and self- preserving enthusiast with the dream of having a dog. He resides in Miami Beach.