Heathcliff and Catherine, both outsiders in different ways, fall in love, even though it may mean catastrophe in a retelling of the classic.
Spoiler alert! Unlike the original, this iteration of Wuthering Heights doesn't end on a grim note of death and despair. Instead, Catherine and Heathcliff break the cycle of abuse and take a leap of faith, running away to build a new future together.
After the British colonized India, it wasn't uncommon for white men to settle there and have mixed race children. If the children "passed" as white, they were often sent to England to be cut off from their Indian heritage and assimilated into "proper" society. If they didn't "pass," they were left behind. This Wuthering Heights remix shines a light on this long-hidden piece of history.
"I'm of Indian descent, born and raised in the UK. When I was little, the history of people of color in the UK just wasn't taught. If I'd relied on what I was taught in school and what I saw on television, I would have believed Britain had always been white. But when I read Wuthering Heights, in my early teens, I saw a hint of another history I hadn't been told. Canonically, Heathcliff was not white. But what was he? I didn't know. I chose to write this book to ground him and Cathy--and Wuthering Heights, a creepy and awful and wonderful book I love--in one particular strand of Britain's very long and complicated history: one involving Lascar sailors, the East India Company, and Britain's fraught relationship with India. I didn't want Heathcliff to be other anymore. I wanted him to be us." -Tasha Suri
The fourth book in our Remixed Classics series, wherein authors from marginalized backgrounds take different classics and reinterpret them through their own unique cultural lens. This collection will serve YA readers as both a series of fun, engaging reads as well as a subversive overall look at what our society has typically deemed "classic"--works that are overwhelmingly cishet, white, and male.