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![]() | ![]() | Abbott, Elizabeth. Haiti: The Duvaliers and Their Legacy. New York. 1988. McGraw Hill. 0070460299. 432 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Renee O'Brien. Jacket painting by J. E. Gourgue from the collection of Selden Rodman. This is the first inside account of the Duvaliers, father and son, and their legacy, which includes the recent election day massacre, followed by a five-month experiment in ‘democracy,’ and then the coup d'état that restored a military junta to power. In 1803 the enslaved people of Haiti vanquished their French masters after a bloody war which left tens of thousands dead. In 1986 Haitians celebrated another victory, as Baby Doc Duvalier fled to France, ending three de- cades of brutal dictatorship. The Duvalier regime slaughtered at least 50,000 people, many in the infamous Fort Dimanche. Duvalierism drove a million Haitians into exile, cowed the six million who remained, and tortured hundreds of thousands, often in the Palace where Papa Doc lived and raised his son. The Duvalier dynasty, begun by Papa Doc Duvalier and continued by his son, Baby Doc, has left a grim legacy. Today Haiti is synonymous with poverty, voodoo, murder, and dictators. AIDS ravages its people. Water and food are scarce. Soil erosion and creeping desertification threaten to extinguish life altogether. Yet while the masses suffer, the elite live and play in an opulent world of tennis courts and swimming pools, with staffs of servants to tend their needs. Corruption is rampant, and increasingly Haiti has become a transit point in the international cocaine trade. This is the legacy of the repressive dictatorship known as Duvalierism. The story of the Duvalier years is one of degradation and repression, of orgies and drug-taking, and shocking life-and-death struggles for power and riches. This book tells the shocking story of Haiti under the Duvaliers from the vantage point of Haitians from every level: a former Tonton Macoute, political prisoners, a pig farmer, a voodoo priest, powerful cabinet ministers, even Papa Doc's general chief of staff. Their recollections are woven into this astonishing account of the political, economic, religious, and social forces that shaped the turbulent Duvalier era. Here is an extraordinarily vivid story that brings the reader up to date with tie recent re- installation of Lieutenant General Henri Namphy and his military junta in June of 1988. Elizabeth Abbott (born 1942) is a Canadian writer and historian. She has a doctorate in 19th-century history from McGill University. She has written numerous books, and has contributed to many publications, including Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, The Gazette (Montreal), Quill & Quire, Huffington Post and London Free Press. She is the former Dean of Women for St. Hilda's College at the University of Toronto and is currently a Senior Research Associate at Trinity College, University of Toronto. |
![]() | ![]() | Adisa, Opal Palmer. It Begins With Tears. Portsmouth. 1977. Heinemann. 0435989464. Caribbean Writers Series. PEN award-winner Opal Palmer Adisa’s first novel. 239 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by David Bridgeman When the seductive Monica returns to her village, she wants to make a new start. But Kristoff village, set in the heart of rural Jamaica, is about to become a whirlpool of emotion. Every encounter with Monica stirs up women’s dissatisfactions and men’s desires. When those emotions develop into hatred and jealousy, Monica is made to pay for what she has done. In this novel Opal Palmer Adisa brings to life a whole community and writes with understanding and compassion about the frailties of its inhabitants. Drawing on Jamaican folklore, she shows what is at the heart of village life, and how that life can be sustained. Opal Palmer Adisa (born 1954) is a Jamaica-born award-winning poet, novelist, performance artist and educator. Anthologised in over 100 publications, she has been a regular performer of her work internationally. She was raised ten miles outside Kingston, Jamaica, and attended school in the capital. In 1970 she went to study at Hunter College, New York, and in 1979 moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to pursue an MA in creative writing. As noted by David Katz, ‘Adisa’s work has been greatly informed by her childhood experience of life on a sugar estate in the Jamaican countryside, where her father worked as a chemist and her mother as a bookkeeper. It was in this setting that young Opal was introduced not only to the art of storytelling, but also, after her parents divorced, to the ceaseless oppression faced by women and the ongoing injustices heaped on the poor. Such formative experiences, coupled with her mother’s efforts to improve the lives of those around her, gave Adisa the desire to ‘give voice to the voiceless’ at an early age.’ Since 1993, Opal Palmer Adisa has taught literature and served as Chair of the Ethnic Studies/Cultural Diversity Program at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. Dr. Adisa has two masters degrees from San Francisco State University, and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. She has previously taught undergraduate and graduate courses at California College of the Arts, Stanford University, University of Berkeley, and San Francisco State University. In the spring of 2010, she became a member of the teaching staff at the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI), St Croix Campus, and also served as editor of The Caribbean Writer, UVI’s famous journal of Caribbean literature, for 2 years. An important element of her poetry is the use of nation language, about which she has said: ‘I have to credit [Louise] Bennett for granting me permission, so to speak, to write in Nation Language, because it was her usage that allowed me to see the beauty of our language. Moreover, there are just some things that don’t have the same sense of intimacy or color if not said in Nation language.... I use nation language when it is the only way and the best way to get my point across, to say what I mean from the center of my navel. But I also use it, to interrupt and disrupt standard English as s reminder to myself that I have another tongue, but also to jolt readers to listen and read more carefully, to glean from the language the Caribbean sensibilities that I am always pushing, sometimes subtly, other times more forcefully. Nation language allows me to infuse the poem with all of the smells and colors of home.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Agard, John and Nichols, Grace (editors). A Caribbean Dozen: Poems From Caribbean Poets. Cambridge. 1994. Candlewick. 1564023397. Illustrated by Cathie Felstead. 96 pages. hardcover. Thirteen Caribbean poets share their memories, stories, and images of the islands, in a poetry anthology illustrated with robust collages and highlighted by brief essays describing each poet's roots. John Agard (born 21 June 1949 in British Guiana) is an Afro-Guyanese playwright, poet and children's writer, now living in Britain. In 2012, he was selected for the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Agard grew up in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana). He loved to listen to cricket commentary on the radio and began making up his own, which led to a love of language. He went on to study English, French and Latin at A-level, writing his first poetry when he was in sixth-form, and left school in 1967. He taught the languages he had studied and worked in a local library. He was also a sub-editor and feature writer for the Guyana Sunday Chronicle, publishing two books while he was still in Guyana. His father settled in London and Agard moved to Britain with his partner Grace Nichols in 1977, settling in Ironbridge, Shropshire. He worked for the Commonwealth Institute and the BBC in London. His awards included the 1997 Paul Hamlyn Award for Poetry, the Cholmondeley Award in 2004 and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2012. Agard was Poet-in-Residence at the National Maritime Museum in 2008. His poems Half Caste and Checking Out Me History has been featured in the AQA English GCSE anthology since 2002, meaning that many students (aged 14 – 16) have studied his work for their GCSE English qualification. He lives in Lewes, East Sussex, with his partner, the Guyanese poet Grace Nichols. Grace Nichols (born 1950) is a Guyanese poet, who moved to Britain in 1977. Her first collection, I is a Long-Memoried Woman (1983), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Grace Nichols was born in Georgetown, Guyana, and lived in a small village on the country's coast until her family moved to the city when she was eight years old. She took a Diploma in Communications from the University of Guyana, and subsequently worked as a teacher (1967–70), as a journalist and in government information services, before she immigrated to the UK in 1977. Much of her poetry is characterised by Caribbean rhythms and culture, and influenced by Guyanese and Amerindian folklore. Her first collection of poetry, I is a Long-Memoried Woman won the 1983 Commonwealth Poetry Prize. She has written several further books of poetry and a novel for adults, Whole of a Morning Sky, 1986. Her books for children include collections of short stories and poetry anthologies. Her latest work, of new and selected poems, is Startling the Flying Fish, 2006. Her poetry is featured in the AQA, WJEC (Welsh Joint Education Committee), and Edexcel English/English Literature GCSE anthologies - meaning that many GCSE students in the UK have studied her work. Her religion is Christianity after she was influenced by the UK's many religions and multi-cultural society. |
![]() | ![]() | Agard, John and Nichols, Grace (editors). Under the Moon and Over the Sea: A Collection of Caribbean Poems. Cambridge. 2003. Candlewick. 0763618616. Illustrated by Cathie Felstead, Jane Ray, Christopher Corr, Satoshi Kitamura, and Sara Fanelli. 80 pages. hardcover. Sparkling crystal waters and coral beaches, velvet- smooth dolphins ana flying fish; the can of the six o' clock bee and the chorus of frogs; the flavor of coconut water; pawpaw, and Johnnie Bake; whispered ghost stories about Duppy Dan and the Jumbie Man. Divided into five sections, each magnificently illustrated by major contemporary artist, this glorious collection of poetry conjures the sights and sounds, tastes and tales of the Caribbean: the experience of living there — and of leaving for other lands. UNDER THE M00N AND OVER THE SEA contains more than fifty poems, many of them previously unpublished, by more than thirty poets, including John Agara, Grace Nichols, James Berry, Valerie Bloom, and Benjamin Zephaniah. It is a volume truly to be savored. John Agard (born 21 June 1949 in British Guiana) is an Afro-Guyanese playwright, poet and children's writer, now living in Britain. In 2012, he was selected for the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Agard grew up in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana). He loved to listen to cricket commentary on the radio and began making up his own, which led to a love of language. He went on to study English, French and Latin at A-level, writing his first poetry when he was in sixth-form, and left school in 1967. He taught the languages he had studied and worked in a local library. He was also a sub-editor and feature writer for the Guyana Sunday Chronicle, publishing two books while he was still in Guyana. His father settled in London and Agard moved to Britain with his partner Grace Nichols in 1977, settling in Ironbridge, Shropshire. He worked for the Commonwealth Institute and the BBC in London. His awards included the 1997 Paul Hamlyn Award for Poetry, the Cholmondeley Award in 2004 and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2012. Agard was Poet-in-Residence at the National Maritime Museum in 2008. His poems Half Caste and Checking Out Me History has been featured in the AQA English GCSE anthology since 2002, meaning that many students (aged 14 – 16) have studied his work for their GCSE English qualification. He lives in Lewes, East Sussex, with his partner, the Guyanese poet Grace Nichols. Grace Nichols (born 1950) is a Guyanese poet, who moved to Britain in 1977. Her first collection, I is a Long-Memoried Woman (1983), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Grace Nichols was born in Georgetown, Guyana, and lived in a small village on the country's coast until her family moved to the city when she was eight years old. She took a Diploma in Communications from the University of Guyana, and subsequently worked as a teacher (1967–70), as a journalist and in government information services, before she immigrated to the UK in 1977. Much of her poetry is characterised by Caribbean rhythms and culture, and influenced by Guyanese and Amerindian folklore. Her first collection of poetry, I is a Long-Memoried Woman won the 1983 Commonwealth Poetry Prize. She has written several further books of poetry and a novel for adults, Whole of a Morning Sky, 1986. Her books for children include collections of short stories and poetry anthologies. Her latest work, of new and selected poems, is Startling the Flying Fish, 2006. Her poetry is featured in the AQA, WJEC (Welsh Joint Education Committee), and Edexcel English/English Literature GCSE anthologies - meaning that many GCSE students in the UK have studied her work. Her religion is Christianity after she was influenced by the UK's many religions and multi-cultural society. |
![]() | ![]() | Alexis, Andre. Childhood. New York. 1998. Henry Holt. 0805059814. 256 pages. hardcover. Set in Petrolia, a Southern Ontario town close to the U.S. border, in the 1950s and 1960s and in Ottawa in the years that follow, the story is narrated by Thomas MacMillan. Through his clear-eyed vision and his unsentimental ordering of events, we meet a cast of characters. Among them are Edna MacMillan, Thomas's volatile, unpredictable Trinidadian grandmother, and Katarina, the mother who left Thomas at birth and then, ten years later, in the company of the sinister Mr. Mataf, swoops him up and takes him from Petrolia. Soon after, we meet the unforgettable Henry Wing, a Black man with Chinese blood, a gentle conjurer who lives in faded Victorian splendor and whose life's work as a self-styled scientist is collecting esoteric facts of the natural world. Childhood is an intricately textured chronicle of a life in which a man's quest for what is lost discloses the ambiguous nature of the past and leads him closer to the truth about himself. André Alexis (born 15 January 1957 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago) is a Canadian writer who grew up in Ottawa and currently lives in Toronto, Ontario. His debut novel, Childhood (1997), won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and was a co-winner of the Trillium Award. In addition to his writing, he is a member of the editorial board of This Magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | Alexis, Andre. Despair and Other Stories. New York. 1999. Henry Holt. 0805059792. 224 pages. hardcover. A haunting story collection from the award-winning author of CHILDHOOD. Following on the heels of his award-winning first novel, CHILDHOOD, André Alexis’s story collection, DESPAIR, offers further proof of his brilliance and showcases his talent for spinning disturbing but elegant tales. Emerging from the landscapes and folklores of Trinidad and Canada, DESPAIR reveals a world both recognizable and shockingly strange. A failed artist with beautiful hands is driven by a fetish for injuries in ‘The Third Terrace.’ While on an excursion to a bakery, a man wrestles with his capacity for evil deeds in ‘The Metaphysics of Morals.’ In ‘The Night Piece,’ a boy is haunted by a story about a soucouyant, a vampire in the guise of an old woman. In these eight beautifully crafted stories, shimmering with malevolence and longing, Alexis has fashioned an underworld and limned it with light. André Alexis (born 15 January 1957 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago) is a Canadian writer who grew up in Ottawa and currently lives in Toronto, Ontario. His debut novel, Childhood (1997), won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and was a co-winner of the Trillium Award. In addition to his writing, he is a member of the editorial board of This Magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | Alexis, Andre. Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa. Toronto. 1994. Coach House Press. 0889104786. 231 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Linda Watson A haunting story collection from the award-winning author of CHILDHOOD. Following on the heels of his award-winning first novel, CHILDHOOD, André Alexis’s story collection, DESPAIR, offers further proof of his brilliance and showcases his talent for spinning disturbing but elegant tales. Emerging from the landscapes and folklores of Trinidad and Canada, DESPAIR reveals a world both recognizable and shockingly strange. A failed artist with beautiful hands is driven by a fetish for injuries in ‘The Third Terrace.’ While on an excursion to a bakery, a man wrestles with his capacity for evil deeds in ‘The Metaphysics of Morals.’ In ‘The Night Piece,’ a boy is haunted by a story about a soucouyant, a vampire in the guise of an old woman. In these eight beautifully crafted stories, shimmering with malevolence and longing, Alexis has fashioned an underworld and limned it with light. André Alexis (born 15 January 1957 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago) is a Canadian writer who grew up in Ottawa and currently lives in Toronto, Ontario. His debut novel, Childhood (1997), won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and was a co-winner of the Trillium Award. In addition to his writing, he is a member of the editorial board of This Magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | Alexis, Jacques Stephen. General Sun, My Brother. Charlottesville. 1999. University Press Of Virginia. 0813918898. Translated from the Haitian French & With An Introduction by Carrol F. Coates. 299 pages. hardcover. The first novel of the Haitian novelist Jacques Stephen Alexis, General Sun, My Brother appears here for the first time in English. Its depiction of the nightmarish journey of the unskilled laborer Hilarion and his wife from the slums of Port-au-Prince to the cane fields of the Dominican Republic has brought comparisons to the work of Emile Zola, André Malraux, Richard Wright, and Ernest Hemingway. Alexis, whose mother was a descendant of the Revolutionary General Jean-Jacques Dessalines, was already a mature thinker when he published General Sun, My Brother (Compère Général Soleil) in France in 1955. A militant Marxist himself, Alexis championed a form of the ‘marvelous realism’ developed by the Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier, who called for a vision of historical reality from the standpoint of slaves for whom the supernatural was as much a part of everyday experience as were social and other existential realities. General Sun, My Brother opens as Hilarion is arrested for stealing a wallet and imprisoned with an activist named Pierre Roumel-a fictional double for the novelist Jacques Roumain-who schools him in the Marxist view of history. On his release, Hilarion meets Claire-Heureuse and they settle down together. Hilarion labors in sisal processing and mahogany polishing while his partner sets up a small grocery store. After losing everything in a criminally set fire, the couple joins the desperate emigration to the Dominican Republic. Hilarion finds work as a sugarcane cutter, but the workers soon become embroiled in a strike that ends in the ‘Dominican Vespers,’ the 1937 massacre pf Haitian workers by the Dominican army. The novel personifies the sun as the ally, brother, and leader of the peasants. Mortally wounded in crossing the Massacre River back into Haiti, Hilarion urges Claire-Heureuse to remarry and to continue to work for a Haiti where people can live in dignity and peace. Jacques Stephen Alexis (Gonaïves, Haiti, 22 April 1922–Mole St-Nicolas, Haiti, c. 22 April 1961) was a Haitian Communist novelist. He is best known for his novels Compère Général Soleil (1955), Les Arbres Musiciens (1957), and L'Espace d'un Cillement (1959), and for his collection of short stories, Romancero aux Etoiles (1960). Alexis was born in Gonaïves, the son of novelist and diplomat Stephen Alexis. After completing medical school in Paris, he traveled throughout Europe and lived for a few years in Cuba. Writer, poet, activist - A descendent of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Alexis was born on 22 April 1922, in Gonaïves. His father was a journalist, historian and diplomat, and Alexis grew up in a family in which literary and political discussions were the norm. At the age of 18, he made what was regarded as remarkable literary debut with an essay about the Haitian poet, Hamilton Garoute. He collaborated on a number of literary reviews, before founding La Ruche, a group dedicated to creating a literary and social spring in Haiti in the early 1940s. In 1955, his novel Compère Général Soleil, was published by Gallimard in Paris. The novel has been translated into English as General Sun, My Brother, and is a must-read for all those with an interest in understanding Haiti. He followed up with ‘Les Arbres Musiciens’ (1957), L'Espace d'un Cillement (1959), and ‘Romanceros aux Etoiles’ (1960). More than just an intellectual, Jacques Stephen Alexis was also an active participant in the social and political debates of his time. In 1959, he formed the People's Consensus Party (Parti pour l'Entente Nationale-PEP), a left-wing political party, but he was forced into exile by the Duvalier dictatorship. In August 1960, he attended a Moscow meeting of representatives of 81 communist parties from all over the world, and signed a common accord document called ‘The Declaration of the 81’ in the name of Haitian communists. In April 1961, he returned to Haiti, but soon after landing at Mole St Nicholas he was captured by Tontons Macoutes. He was taken to the town's main square where he was tortured and then put on a boat to Port-au-Prince he was never seen again. Later his death was confirmed by an obscure notice in the government newspaper buried on page 14. |
![]() | ![]() | Alexis, Jacques Stephen. In the Flicker of An Eyelid. Charlottesville. 2002. University Press Of Virginia. 0813921392. Translated from the French by Carrol F. Coates & Edwidge Danticat. Simultaneous Hardcover Edition. 277 pages. paperback. Cover art - detail from 'The Game of Hearts' by Marilene Phipps. Cover design by Chris Harrison In his third novel, IN THE FLICKER OF AN EYELID, Jacques Stephen Alexis brings his characteristically vivid scenes, political consciousness, and powerful characters to the dramatic age-old question of whether a prostitute can leave ‘the life’ to find her own identity and true love. The racism of the U.S. military, the selfish and profit-oriented machinations of Haitian politicians, the oppression of workers by the Cuban dictator Batista, the exploitation of women, and the particularly noteworthy links between Haiti and Cuba all form the figurative backdrop for a novel driven by unforgettable characters. . The Haitian novelist Jacques Stephen Alexis (1922-1961) had already gained international recognition for his four works of fiction when he returned to Haiti from Cuba in 1961 as part of a small invasion force. He disappeared and presumably died at the hands of Duvalier’s Tontons Macoutes. Jacques Stephen Alexis (Gonaïves, Haiti, 22 April 1922–Mole St-Nicolas, Haiti, c. 22 April 1961) was a Haitian Communist novelist. He is best known for his novels Compère Général Soleil (1955), Les Arbres Musiciens (1957), and L'Espace d'un Cillement (1959), and for his collection of short stories, Romancero aux Etoiles (1960). Alexis was born in Gonaïves, the son of novelist and diplomat Stephen Alexis. After completing medical school in Paris, he traveled throughout Europe and lived for a few years in Cuba. Writer, poet, activist - A descendent of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Alexis was born on 22 April 1922, in Gonaïves. His father was a journalist, historian and diplomat, and Alexis grew up in a family in which literary and political discussions were the norm. At the age of 18, he made what was regarded as remarkable literary debut with an essay about the Haitian poet, Hamilton Garoute. He collaborated on a number of literary reviews, before founding La Ruche, a group dedicated to creating a literary and social spring in Haiti in the early 1940s. In 1955, his novel Compère Général Soleil, was published by Gallimard in Paris. The novel has been translated into English as General Sun, My Brother, and is a must-read for all those with an interest in understanding Haiti. He followed up with ‘Les Arbres Musiciens’ (1957), L'Espace d'un Cillement (1959), and ‘Romanceros aux Etoiles’ (1960). More than just an intellectual, Jacques Stephen Alexis was also an active participant in the social and political debates of his time. In 1959, he formed the People's Consensus Party (Parti pour l'Entente Nationale-PEP), a left-wing political party, but he was forced into exile by the Duvalier dictatorship. In August 1960, he attended a Moscow meeting of representatives of 81 communist parties from all over the world, and signed a common accord document called ‘The Declaration of the 81’ in the name of Haitian communists. In April 1961, he returned to Haiti, but soon after landing at Mole St Nicholas he was captured by Tontons Macoutes. He was taken to the town's main square where he was tortured and then put on a boat to Port-au-Prince he was never seen again. Later his death was confirmed by an obscure notice in the government newspaper buried on page 14. Carrot F. Coates, Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Binghamton University, State University of New York, has translated many works of francophone literature, among them Alexis’s GENERAL SUN, MY BROTHER (Virginia). Edwidge Danticat won the American Book Award for The Farming of Bones and was a National Book Award nominee for Krik? Krak |
![]() | ![]() | Allen-Agostini, Lisa and Mason, Jeanne (editors). Trinidad Noir. New York. 2008. Akashic Books. 9781933354552. 345 pages. paperback. Cover photo by Alex Smailes. Coiver design by Jon Resh Launched by the summer 2004 award-winning, best-seller BROOKLYN NOIR, Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. The Caribbean provides no shelter from the delicious terror of the Akashic Noir Series Brand-new stories by: Robert Antoni, Elizabeth Nunez, Lawrence Scott, Ramabai Espinet, Shani Mootoo, Kevin Baldeosingh, Vahni Capildeo, Willi Chen, Lisa Allen-Agostini, Rian Marie Extavour, Keith Jardim, Jaime Lee Loy, Darby Maloney, Reena Andrea Manickchand, Judith Theodore, Tiphanie Yanique, and others. Trinidad Noir delivers all the crime a reader expects from Akashic’s Noir Series: murder, kidnapping, rape, drugs, prostitution, theft, extortion, and more. Yet in fictionalizing crime in the real crime setting of Trinidad, acclaimed authors Lawrence Scott, Robert Antoni, Elizabeth Nunez, Ramabai Espinet, Keith Jardim, Tiphanie Yanique, Willi Chen, and others have created a decidedly literary noir collection. These authors’ quality characterizations, plots, and styles concurrently reveal the country’s darkness and its appeal with an unexpected and gratifying result: In their captivating and occasionally humorous stories, the Trinidad that emerges is as intriguing and contradictory as the island and its people. TRINIDAD NOIR is as much a delightful crime romp as it is an expose of the seedy side of life. Lisa Allen-Agostini is a poet, playwright, and fiction writer from Trinidad and Tobago. She is the author of a children's novel, The Chalice Project. An award-winning journalist, she is the Internet editor and a columnist with the Trinidad Guardian. Jeanne Mason is a freelance editor who also writes short stories and poetry. She has lived in Paris, France, where she edited medical articles for U.S. and U.K. journals. She currently resides in Trinidad and Tobago. |
![]() | ![]() | Anderson, Alston. Lover Man. London. 1959. Cassell & Company. Illustrations by Val & Judith Valentine. Introduction by Robert Graves. 178 pages. hardcover. The Jamaica-born African American writer's 15 stories offer numerous vignettes of African American life in the US. Anderson was born in Panama of Jamaican parents, was schooled in Kingston, NYC at Columbia, and Paris at the Sorbonne. His three WWII years in an all-Black battalion give some of the material here. Alston Anderson was an African American of Jamaican birth who wrote one other book, the novel All God's Children (1965), after which he slipped into obscurity. He died in poverty in 2008. |
![]() | ![]() | Anderson, Alston. Lover Man. New York. 1960. Pyramid Books. Illustrations by Val & Judith Valentine. Introduction by Robert Graves. 160 pages. paperback. G538. Cover painting by Tony Kokinos The Jamaica-born African American writer's 15 stories offer numerous vignettes of African American life in the US. Anderson was born in Panama of Jamaican parents, was schooled in Kingston, NYC at Columbia, and Paris at the Sorbonne. His three WWII years in an all-Black battalion give some of the material here. MEET SUSIE Q... a purely lovin' woman who can tire a man clear down to his toe and land him on the chain gang because of every warm brown meltin' inch of her. MEET' LIL ONE ... the nice-to-the-bone boy impaled on the hurting sword of adolescence, having a high old time in boarding school just like any other kid his age – except that he's black and the world that counts is white. MEET MISS FLORENCE... the prim, prissy, straight-backed schoolteacher living alone in a town where the men ain't wolves. Jackson – them is werewolves, hongry as, they is for women". MEET ALSTON ANDERSON… the brilliant young teller of these tales who writes, with eloquence and economy, of women and men, of tragedy and laughter, of poignant tenderness and ribald lust. 'One of the finest collections of short stories to be published recently. - NEW YORK POST. Alston Anderson was an African American of Jamaican birth who wrote one other book, the novel All God's Children (1965), after which he slipped into obscurity. He died in poverty in 2008. |
![]() | ![]() | Anderson, Vernon F. Sudden Glory. London. 1987. Heinemann. 0435988085. Caribbean Writers Series. 274 pages. paperback. SUDDEN GLORY, published here for the first time, is a rich and absorbing novel in the finest tradition of Latin American writing. Set in Guatemala, it tells of a team of archaeologists who come to study Mayan ruins. Enveloped in the forest, they confront an unfamiliar, violent world, which cuts them off from civilization and brings them face to face with a terrible and profound crisis. With frightening inevitability the mask of the Totonacs, a psychologist's encounter with insanity, and Karen Farr's prescription of 'sudden glory' insidiously take over, and in the search for a kind of truth, their world begins to split apart. Anderson handles a large and diverse cast of characters and skillfully weaves together myth, reality and folklore to create a haunting, magical study of the human condition that has been compared with the great works of Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Vernon F. Anderson was born in Jamaica in 1900. After displaying an early aptitude and interest in medicine, he was sent to London to train as a doctor, and studied at Kings College, University of London and Westminster Hospital Medical School. In 1928, he applied for a post in the British Colonial Civil Service and was sent as a medical officer to British Honduras, where he went on to head the medical division. To diversify, he also studied public health and tropical medicine, and spent time in Greece and Albania, examining how the respective governments coped with malaria. In 1946, Dr Anderson represented the Belize government in his home country, helping to plan the University of the West Indies. On retirement from government services in Belize, he was awarded an OBE in recognition of his work. He returned to Jamaica and set up a private practice, in which he continued working until 1971. SUDDEN GLORY is his only novel, inspired by his work in medicine, his growing interest in the literature signifying the ‘coming of age’ of Jamaica, and a quote by the seventeenth century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, ‘Laughter is a passion without name, it is a Sudden Glory.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Anthony, Michael. All That Glitters. Portsmouth. 1983. Heinemann. 0435980343. Caribbean Writers Series. 202 pages. paperback. CWS 25. Cover photograph by Bill Heyes. Who has stolen the glittering gold chain? Michael Anthony again returns to Trinidad and to a world of growing up which has enchanted so many in his novels such as THE YEAR IN SAN FERNANDO. ‘. . . ends up cunningly undoing the traditional detective story . . .’ - The Observer. ‘. . . . a wistfully evocative tale. . .’ - The Times. ‘. . . . much to delight in and much that lingers in the memory.’ - British Book News. ‘The richness of the story springs from the boy’s gradually changing perception of the adults around him.’ - The Financial Times. MICHAEL ANTHONY has an exceptional talent for evoking childhood. THE YEAR IN SAN FERNANDO (CWS 1) is an outstanding example but the other titles are equally sensitive portrayals of growing up in Trinidad. THE GAMES WERE COMING (CWS 17). GREEN DAYS BY THE RIVER (CWS 9) and CRICKET IN THE ROAD (CWS 16) all appear in the Caribbean Writers Series. He has also published STREETS OF CONFLICT, a novel set in Brazil. Michael Anthony was born in Mayaro in 1932. He worked as a moulder in an iron foundry at Pointe ‘a Pierre, Trinidad, before he went to England in 1955, where he worked in factories, for the railways and as a telegraphist. He then went to Brazil and since returning to Trinidad has written books about the history of Port of Spain and Trinidad. |
![]() | ![]() | Anthony, Michael. Cricket in the Road. London. 1973. Andre Deutsch. 0233964363. 143 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Laszlo Acs Indian, African and Chinese characters mingle against a brilliant Trinidadian background in these stories. In ‘Sandra Street’ we see a child’s growing awareness of the beauty around him; in the title story a child’s unhappiness looms large and is suddenly dispersed. The solidarity of the community is felt in ‘The Village Shop’ when Ma Moon Peng’s demand for ‘cash today’ brings about a boycott and she is forced to yield to the local tradition of giving credit. ‘The Captain of the Fleet’ is an exciting tale set in the eighteenth century, with great appeal to the romantic imagination. All the stories are remarkable for their truth to life, their humour and their sympathy. Describing one of Michael Anthony’s novels in a talk on the BBC, Fielden Hughes said that it was ‘more than merely full of sensuous love for the moods and colours of nature; it is suffused with a small boy’s vision of them, and this great quality makes the book both real and luminous with beauty’; and Julian Moynihan, writing in The Observer, said ‘no writer since Gertrude Stein has deployed fewer words and dispensed with more elaboration of syntax to greater effect.’ This purity of style and luminosity of vision are beautifully exemplified in his new book: a collection of stories which will be enjoyed by adults and young readers alike. MICHAEL ANTHONY was born in Mayaro, Trinidad, where his mother still lives. The small boy in THE YEAR IN SAN FERNANDO who was sent off to work as a servant was Michael Anthony himse1f, and the descriptions of both village and town are marvels of exactness. His wife Yvette comes from a neighbouring village, though they first met in London. His education at San Fernando’s Junior Technical School ended when he was fifteen. From ’47 to ’54 he worked as a moulder in an iron foundry at Pointe a Pierre. Then he came to England where he worked in several factories, as a parcels clerk at St Pancras Station, and in the GPO telegraph service. He became a journalist after joining Reuters as a teleprinter operator. After two years in Brazil, the Anthony family (they have four children) returned to Trinidad and settled in Chaguanas. Michael Anthony was employed by the National Cultural Council and worked on the production of educational books for children. He began his writing career in 1951, contributing stories and poems to the Trinidad Guardian. Later he had many stories published in BIM, the well-known West Indian literary magazine published in Barbados. We published his first novel, THE GAMES WERE COMING, in 1963; THE YEAR IN SAN FERNANDO in 1965; and GREEN DAYS BY THE RIVER in 1967. |
![]() | ![]() | Anthony, Michael. Green Days By the River. Boston. 1967. Houghton Mifflin. 0435989553. 192 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Ellen Raskiin Shellie is a young boy on the island of Trinidad. This is his story as, growing up, he discovers the tenderness of love and its complexities, the difficulties of the world and its threatening bitterness. As the book opens, Shellie's family has just moved to a new village where his father is ill and cannot work. So the boy makes friends with a neighbor, Mr. Gidharee, and soon starts working for him at his small cocoa plantation beside the nearby river. He also meets Mr. Gidharee's lovely daughter, Rosalie, and experiences for the first time a romantic love. With skilled simplicity and ease, the author traces the half-shy, half-bold teasing and rivalry this love engenders and the fluidity and tenderness of the young people's feelings. Soon, however, Shellie's new emotions take another direction, when he meets the cheerful and more accessible Joan. To the confusion of this double attraction there is soon added the danger of Mr. Gidharee's anger. Facing his problems, Shellie grows up and the reader becomes completely involved in this uncommonly sensitive and honest story Michael Anthony, one of the most distinguished writers from the West Indies, lives in London with his wife and two children where he is an editor for Reuters news agency. He was born in Mayaro, a small village in Trinidad, and had only a little schooling. For some years he made his living in England by working on the railways, for the post office, and, in other haphazard jobs, like any other immigrant with no special training. Then he qualified as a teleprinter operator — it was in that capacity that he was first employed by Reuters. Meanwhile, he was writing. He started before he came to England by having light verse published from time to time in a newspaper in Trinidad, and an occasional story in the magazine BIM. Slowly and patiently he taught himself his craft, though he never had to teach himself the marvelous exactness with which he describes things — that he was born with. He is a deeply impressive example of- self-made writer, a man whose natural sensitivity, judgment and perceptiveness have prevailed in circumstances where encouragement was often meager. Mr. Anthony's previous novels are THE GAMES WERE COMING and THE YEAR IN SAN FERNANDO, both of which received enthusiastic reviews. GREEN DAYS BY THE RIVER is his first book to be published in the United States. |
![]() | ![]() | Anthony, Michael. Green Days By the River. London. 1967. Andre Deutsch. 192 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Jenny Williams THE GAMES WERE COMING and THE YEAR IN SAN FERNANDO have established Michael Anthony as one of the most distinguished novelists to come from the West Indies. Now he tells the story of Shellie, a Trinidadian boy who moves with his parents to a new village and there meets two girls. He is instantly charmed by Rosalie Ghidaree, an Indian girl, and is flattered by the friendship of her father who lets Shellie help him work his land down by the river, but while being tacitly accepted as a potential husband for Rosalie, he is also attracted to the cheerful and more accessible Joan. He discovers, in fact, that it is possible to be drawn to two girls at once - and gets into a serious muddle. Meanwhile his father becomes very ill. The crisis in Shellie’s private life coincides with an abrupt confrontation with adult responsibilities. Michael Anthony never comments. He relates with a lucid simplicity what happens, what is said, and what is felt, and in this he is so sensitively accurate that his novel conveys more about character, relationships and social conditions than the work of many a more pretentious writer. Michael Anthony (born 10 February 1932) is an eminent Caribbean author and historian, who has been named one of the ‘50 most influential people in Trinidad and Tobago‘. Born in Mayaro, Trinidad, on 10 February 1932 to Nathaniel Anthony and Eva Jones Lazarus. Anthony was educated at Mayaro Roman Catholic School and Junior Technical College, San Fernando, Trinidad. He subsequently took a job as a foundry worker in Pointe-à-Pierre for five years but had ambitions to become a journalist, and poems of his were published by the Trinidad Guardian in 1953. Yet it was not enough for him to secure a new job locally and Anthony decided to further his career in the United Kingdom. His voyage there on board the Hildebrandt took place in December 1954. In England he held several jobs including as a sub-editor at Reuters news agency (1964-8), while developing his career as a writer, writing short stories for the BBC radio programme Caribbean Voices. In 1958 he married Yvette Phillip (a poet) and they had four children — Jennifer, Keith, Carlos and Sandra. Four years later, Anthony published his first book, The Games Were Coming, a cycling story inspired by real events. He followed up its success with The Year in San Fernando and Green Days by the River. He eventually returned to Trinidad in 1970 (after spending two years as part of the Trinidadian diplomatic corps in Brazil, where his novel King of the Masquerade is set) and worked variously as an editor, a researcher for the Ministry of Culture, and as a radio broadcaster of historical programmes. In 1992, he spent time at the University of Richmond in Virginia teaching creative writing. In his five-decade career, Anthony has had over 30 titles published, including novels, collections of short fiction, books for younger readers, travelogues and histories. He has also been a contributor to many anthologies and journals, including Caribbean Prose, Island Voices - Stories from the Caribbean, Response, The Sun's Eyes, West Indian Narrative, The Bajan, and BIM magazine. In 1979 he was awarded the Hummingbird Medal (Gold) for his contributions to Literature, and he received an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies (UWI) in 2003. |
![]() | ![]() | Anthony, Michael. Green Days By the River. Portsmouth. 1973. Heinemann. 0435980300. Caribbean Writers Series. 192 pages. paperback. CWS 9. Cover photograph by Bill Heyes. GREEN DAYS BY THE RIVER is a more complex and ambitious book than THE YEAR IN SAN FERNANDO. With equal sensitivity it traces the response of Shell, its fifteen-year-old hero, to the transitional world between childhood and maturity. Like the twelve-year-old Francis in THE YEAR IN SAN FERNANDO, Shell is adjusting to a new and strange environment. When his parents move to a new village he meets new girls. He is charmed by an Indian girl Rosalie Ghidaree, and is flattered by the friendship of her father, who tacitly accepts him as a potential son- in-law. At the same time there is Joan who is more cheerful and accessible. Michael Anthony catches the confusion of a teenager growing to maturity. As the result of his personal crisis Shell grows a little closer to establishing a set of values which will make sense of the adult world. Michael Anthony (born 10 February 1932) is an eminent Caribbean author and historian, who has been named one of the ‘50 most influential people in Trinidad and Tobago‘. Born in Mayaro, Trinidad, on 10 February 1932 to Nathaniel Anthony and Eva Jones Lazarus. Anthony was educated at Mayaro Roman Catholic School and Junior Technical College, San Fernando, Trinidad. He subsequently took a job as a foundry worker in Pointe-à-Pierre for five years but had ambitions to become a journalist, and poems of his were published by the Trinidad Guardian in 1953. Yet it was not enough for him to secure a new job locally and Anthony decided to further his career in the United Kingdom. His voyage there on board the Hildebrandt took place in December 1954. In England he held several jobs including as a sub-editor at Reuters news agency (1964-8), while developing his career as a writer, writing short stories for the BBC radio programme Caribbean Voices. In 1958 he married Yvette Phillip (a poet) and they had four children — Jennifer, Keith, Carlos and Sandra. Four years later, Anthony published his first book, The Games Were Coming, a cycling story inspired by real events. He followed up its success with The Year in San Fernando and Green Days by the River. He eventually returned to Trinidad in 1970 (after spending two years as part of the Trinidadian diplomatic corps in Brazil, where his novel King of the Masquerade is set) and worked variously as an editor, a researcher for the Ministry of Culture, and as a radio broadcaster of historical programmes. In 1992, he spent time at the University of Richmond in Virginia teaching creative writing. In his five-decade career, Anthony has had over 30 titles published, including novels, collections of short fiction, books for younger readers, travelogues and histories. He has also been a contributor to many anthologies and journals, including Caribbean Prose, Island Voices - Stories from the Caribbean, Response, The Sun's Eyes, West Indian Narrative, The Bajan, and BIM magazine. In 1979 he was awarded the Hummingbird Medal (Gold) for his contributions to Literature, and he received an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies (UWI) in 2003. |
![]() | ![]() | Anthony, Michael. In the Heat of the Day. New York. 1996. Heinemann. 0435989448. Caribbean Writers Series. 250 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Jane Human ‘But you know something? We’ll win, you know. We bound to win in the end. But I don’t know when the end is.’ It is 1903 in Trinidad. Eva’s rage at her people’s treatment under colonial rule is growing. With just a few days to go before the government passes oppressive new legislation, the people start to voice their opposition. Eva embarks on a desperate plan. . . Michael Anthony’s story of love, revenge and racial tension brings to life a tragic episode in Trinidad’s history. Michael Anthony is from Trinidad. He is the author of many novels, as well as books about the history of the Caribbean. Michael Anthony (born 10 February 1932) is an eminent Caribbean author and historian, who has been named one of the ‘50 most influential people in Trinidad and Tobago‘. Born in Mayaro, Trinidad, on 10 February 1932 to Nathaniel Anthony and Eva Jones Lazarus. Anthony was educated at Mayaro Roman Catholic School and Junior Technical College, San Fernando, Trinidad. He subsequently took a job as a foundry worker in Pointe-à-Pierre for five years but had ambitions to become a journalist, and poems of his were published by the Trinidad Guardian in 1953. Yet it was not enough for him to secure a new job locally and Anthony decided to further his career in the United Kingdom. His voyage there on board the Hildebrandt took place in December 1954. In England he held several jobs including as a sub-editor at Reuters news agency (1964-8), while developing his career as a writer, writing short stories for the BBC radio programme Caribbean Voices. In 1958 he married Yvette Phillip (a poet) and they had four children — Jennifer, Keith, Carlos and Sandra. Four years later, Anthony published his first book, The Games Were Coming, a cycling story inspired by real events. He followed up its success with The Year in San Fernando and Green Days by the River. He eventually returned to Trinidad in 1970 (after spending two years as part of the Trinidadian diplomatic corps in Brazil, where his novel King of the Masquerade is set) and worked variously as an editor, a researcher for the Ministry of Culture, and as a radio broadcaster of historical programmes. In 1992, he spent time at the University of Richmond in Virginia teaching creative writing. In his five-decade career, Anthony has had over 30 titles published, including novels, collections of short fiction, books for younger readers, travelogues and histories. He has also been a contributor to many anthologies and journals, including Caribbean Prose, Island Voices - Stories from the Caribbean, Response, The Sun's Eyes, West Indian Narrative, The Bajan, and BIM magazine. In 1979 he was awarded the Hummingbird Medal (Gold) for his contributions to Literature, and he received an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies (UWI) in 2003. |
![]() | ![]() | Anthony, Michael. Streets of Conflict. London. 1976. Andre Deutsch. 0233967095. 186 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Royston Edwards Michael Anthony has set his new novel in Rio de Janeiro, at a time when a wave of student riots hit the city. At the centre of the story is Marisa, who teaches at a language school run by a Trinidadian called Mac. Through Marisa two young Trinidadian visitors to Rio are drawn into awareness of the city’s life. Craig, who has come to see his lonely old uncle, falls in love with her at once, but he is too young to handle love, and a new country, successfully. Alvin has a better understanding of life and allows his relationship with Marisa to develop more slowly and naturally. Instead of meeting as ‘interesting foreigners’, they are two people with much in common, and it is as such that they live through the turbulent events which are to come. The city holds a different kind of fate in store for Mac, who espouses the students’ cause. Through their friendship with him, Marisa and Alvin are taken near the centre of the whirlpool; but secure in their own love and hopes they are not carried away. Left with an uneasily poignant memory of a friend who attempted to live on a larger scale, they can be sure that their own quiet adherence to private values represents the saner way. MICHAEL ANTHONY was born in Mayaro, Trinidad, where his mother still lives. The small boy in THE YEAR IN SAN FERNANDO who was sent off to work as a servant was Michael Anthony himse1f, and the descriptions of both village and town are marvels of exactness. His wife Yvette comes from a neighbouring village, though they first met in London. His education at San Fernando’s Junior Technical School ended when he was fifteen. From ’47 to ’54 he worked as a moulder in an iron foundry at Pointe a Pierre. Then he came to England where he worked in several factories, as a parcels clerk at St Pancras Station, and in the GPO telegraph service. He became a journalist after joining Reuters as a teleprinter operator. After two years in Brazil, the Anthony family (they have four children) returned to Trinidad and settled in Chaguanas. Michael Anthony was employed by the National Cultural Council and worked on the production of educational books for children. He began his writing career in 1951, contributing stories and poems to the Trinidad Guardian. Later he had many stories published in BIM, the well-known West Indian literary magazine published in Barbados. We published his first novel, THE GAMES WERE COMING, in 1963; THE YEAR IN SAN FERNANDO in 1965; and GREEN DAYS BY THE RIVER in 1967. |
![]() | ![]() | Anthony, Michael. The Games Were Coming. Boston. 1968. Houghton Mifflin. hardcover. Jacket design by Ellen Raskin. Set in the author’s native Trinidad like his previously published GREEN DAYS BY THE RIVER, this novel has the same appealing freshness. The story unfolds during the weeks preceding the annual Carnival and the Southern Games, a time of mounting excitement for the whole island. Leon has already won some modest bicycle races and is in training for this greatest of all. He is so obsessed by his ambition to be the Champion that he has dismissed everything else from his life, especially his girl friend Sylvia. The life of his whole family revolves around his training. Home from work each night, his father first checks out Leon’s body with an appraising glance, then turns his detailed attention to the Wasp, a cycle light as cork, which must be oiled and cleaned, its handle kept dead straight, its nuts tight. Dolphus, the little brother, can hardly bear the excitement, torn between the preparation for the race and the steel bands already practicing in secret session for the competition at Carnival. Leon’s mother is wise and light-hearted and amused. But Sylvia is not amused! She is Leon’s girl and he thinks she is the kind of girl he can spend his years with. But keeping fit rules out women and now all his surplus energies are wrung out in sweat at the track. Lonely and hurt, Sylvia drifts toward another man and finally is forced into a situation where she must use real feminine guile to save herself. Under its simple surface this story contains many things, the fevers of love and ambition, the excitement of Carnival, the tensions of the games. It is written with beautiful simplicity and exactness and is a lyric evocation of West Indian youth. Michael Anthony, an eminent Caribbean author and historian, was born in Mayaro, Trinidad and Tobago on February 10, 1932. After an unsatisfying job as a young foundry worker in Pointe-à-Pierre for five years, he sought to become a journalist, and then a poet. In 1963, Anthony published his first book, THE GAMES WERE COMING, a cycling story inspired by real events. Some time later, he followed up this success with THE YEAR IN SAN FERNANDO and GREEN DAYS BY THE RIVER. In all, Anthony has written over 20 titles in his four-decade career. |
![]() | ![]() | Anthony, Michael. The Year in San Fernando. New York. 1965. Andre Deutsch. 190 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by William Belcher ‘Sparkling clarity, gentleness and irony’ were the qualities admired by a Sunday Times reviewer in Michael Anthony’s first novel, THE GAMES WERE COMING. They appear again in the present book, combined with an extraordinary immediacy. THE YEAR IN SAN FERNANDO is so deeply experienced and so accurately evoked that we ourselves live it. Twelve-year-old Francis is the son of a widowed mother, very poor, who is struggling to raise her family in Mayaro, a remote Trinidadian village. The boy gets the chance to go to San Fernando to work as servant-companion to old Mrs Chandles who lives with her grand and frightening son. His mother considers it a splendid opportunity for him, but he is scared: he has never seen a town or a house with pictures on the walls, and never been away from the warmth of his family. San Fernando might be Timbuctoo, and Mrs Chandles and her son might be ogres. But Francis has the courage and trust bred of being loved, and (without knowing it) an artist’s perceptions. In the ensuing year he learns the truth about the Chandles and the city, he learns about endurance and hope, love and death. By the end of this beautiful book, when he goes back to his village, the boy is on the way to becoming a wise, strong and compassionate man. Michael Anthony was himself born in Mayaro, in 1932. He went to school there, and later to the Junior Technical School, San Fernando. He worked as a moulder in an iron foundry at Pointe a Pierre, Trinidad, until he came to England in 1955. Since then he has worked in factories, for British Railways, and as a telegraphist. Before the publication of his first novel in 1963 he was already known as a contributor of stories to the West Indian literary magazine, BIM. Michael Anthony (born 10 February 1932) is an eminent Caribbean author and historian, who has been named one of the ‘50 most influential people in Trinidad and Tobago‘. Born in Mayaro, Trinidad, on 10 February 1932 to Nathaniel Anthony and Eva Jones Lazarus. Anthony was educated at Mayaro Roman Catholic School and Junior Technical College, San Fernando, Trinidad. He subsequently took a job as a foundry worker in Pointe-à-Pierre for five years but had ambitions to become a journalist, and poems of his were published by the Trinidad Guardian in 1953. Yet it was not enough for him to secure a new job locally and Anthony decided to further his career in the United Kingdom. His voyage there on board the Hildebrandt took place in December 1954. In England he held several jobs including as a sub-editor at Reuters news agency (1964-8), while developing his career as a writer, writing short stories for the BBC radio programme Caribbean Voices. In 1958 he married Yvette Phillip (a poet) and they had four children — Jennifer, Keith, Carlos and Sandra. Four years later, Anthony published his first book, The Games Were Coming, a cycling story inspired by real events. He followed up its success with The Year in San Fernando and Green Days by the River. He eventually returned to Trinidad in 1970 (after spending two years as part of the Trinidadian diplomatic corps in Brazil, where his novel King of the Masquerade is set) and worked variously as an editor, a researcher for the Ministry of Culture, and as a radio broadcaster of historical programmes. In 1992, he spent time at the University of Richmond in Virginia teaching creative writing. In his five-decade career, Anthony has had over 30 titles published, including novels, collections of short fiction, books for younger readers, travelogues and histories. He has also been a contributor to many anthologies and journals, including Caribbean Prose, Island Voices - Stories from the Caribbean, Response, The Sun's Eyes, West Indian Narrative, The Bajan, and BIM magazine. In 1979 he was awarded the Hummingbird Medal (Gold) for his contributions to Literature, and he received an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies (UWI) in 2003. |
![]() | ![]() | Anthony, Michael. The Year in San Fernando. Portsmouth. 1970. Heinemann. 0435980319. Caribbean Writers Series. 137 pages. paperback. CWS 1. Cover design by Joint Graphics. ‘ ‘Sparkling clarity, gentleness and irony’ were the qualities admired by a Sunday Times reviewer in Michael Anthony’s first novel. They appear again in THE YEAR IN SAN FERNANDO. It is so deeply experienced and so accurately evoked that we ourselves live it. Twelve-year-old Francis is the son of a widowed mother, very poor, who is struggling to raise her family in Mayaro, a Trinidadian village. The boy gets the chance to go for a year to San Fernando to work as servant-companion to old Mrs. Chandles who lives with her grand and frightening son. His mother considers it a splendid opportunity for him, but he is scared: he has never seen a town, or a house with pictures on the walls and never been away from the warmth of his family. MICHAEL ANTHONY has an exceptional talent for evoking childhood. THE YEAR IN SAN FERNANDO (CWS 1) is an outstanding example but the other titles are equally sensitive portrayals of growing up in Trinidad. THE GAMES WERE COMING (CWS 17). GREEN DAYS BY THE RIVER (CWS 9) and CRICKET IN THE ROAD (CWS 16) all appear in the Caribbean Writers Series. He has also published STREETS OF CONFLICT, a novel set in Brazil. Michael Anthony was born in Mayaro in 1932. He worked as a moulder in an iron foundry at Pointe ‘a Pierre, Trinidad, before he went to England in 1955, where he worked in factories, for the railways and as a telegraphist. He then went to Brazil and since returning to Trinidad has written books about the history of Port of Spain and Trinidad. |
![]() | ![]() | Antoni, Robert and Morrow, Bradford (editors). The Archipelago: New Caribbean Writing. Annandale-On-Hudson. 1996. Conjunctions. 0941964434. 360 pages. paperback. In this landmark anthology, writers from three generations who have often been associated with the Caribbean are brought together for the first time. Contributors include Nobel Laureates Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Derek Walcott, along with Julia Alvarez, Kamau Brathwaite, Senel Paz, Cristina Garcia, Fred D'Aguiar, Wilson Harris, Nilo Cruz, Bob Shacochis, Edwidge Danticat, Madison Smartt Bell, Olive Senior, Rosario Ferre, Port-au-Prince mayor Manno Charlemagne, and many others. Robert Antoni (born 1958) is a West Indian writer who was awarded the 1999 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction by The Paris Review for My Grandmother's Tale of How Crab-o Lost His Head. He is a Guggenheim Fellow for 2010 for his work on the historical novel As Flies to Whatless Boys. Robert Antoni was born in the United States of Trinidadian parents and grew up largely in the Bahamas, where his father practised medicine. He says his "fictional world" is "Corpus Christi", the invented island (based on Trinidad) that he introduced in his first novel, Divina Trace (1991). Antoni studied at Duke University and in the creative writing programme at Johns Hopkins University, before joining the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he began working on Divina Trace. He has said that he spent a total of ten years completing the novel, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best first novel in 1992.Antoni lived for a time in Barcelona and taught at the University of Miami from 1992 to 2001. In 2004, he began teaching at Barnard College, Columbia University and The New School. In 2010, he was a Guggenheim Fellow. His novel As Flies to Whatless Boys was the overall winner of the 2014 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. At the award ceremony on 26 April, Antoni pledged to share the US$10,000 prize money with the other finalists, Lorna Goodison (winner of the poetry category for Oracabessa) and Kei Miller (winner of the literary non-fiction category for Writing Down the Vision: Essays and Prophecies). Antoni currently resides in New York City. Bradford Morrow (born April 8, 1951, Baltimore, MD) is an American novelist, editor, essayist, poet, and children's book writer. Professor of literature and Bard Center Fellow at Bard College, he is the founding editor of Conjunctions literary magazine. Wikipedia |
![]() | ![]() | Antoni, Robert. Blessed Is the Fruit. New York. 1997. Henry Holt. 0805049258. 399 pages. hardcover. Lilla is the white mistress of a once grand but now now rotting colonial mansion and Vel, her black servant. The two West Indian women, both 33 years of age, have lived in the same house for 10 years, but it is not until Lilla rescues Vel from a near-fatal abortion attempt, that the two really get to know each other. Young Trinidadian author Robert Antoni weaves a brightly colored tapestry of life in the Caribbean, a remarkable tale of family, myth, religion and language. Robert Antoni (born 1958) is a West Indian writer who was awarded the 1999 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction by The Paris Review for My Grandmother's Tale of How Crab-o Lost His Head. He is a Guggenheim Fellow for 2010 for his work on the historical novel As Flies to Whatless Boys. Robert Antoni was born in the United States of Trinidadian parents and grew up largely in the Bahamas, where his father practised medicine. He says his "fictional world" is "Corpus Christi", the invented island (based on Trinidad) that he introduced in his first novel, Divina Trace (1991). Antoni studied at Duke University and in the creative writing programme at Johns Hopkins University, before joining the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he began working on Divina Trace. He has said that he spent a total of ten years completing the novel, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best first novel in 1992.Antoni lived for a time in Barcelona and taught at the University of Miami from 1992 to 2001. In 2004, he began teaching at Barnard College, Columbia University and The New School. In 2010, he was a Guggenheim Fellow. His novel As Flies to Whatless Boys was the overall winner of the 2014 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. At the award ceremony on 26 April, Antoni pledged to share the US$10,000 prize money with the other finalists, Lorna Goodison (winner of the poetry category for Oracabessa) and Kei Miller (winner of the literary non-fiction category for Writing Down the Vision: Essays and Prophecies). Antoni currently resides in New York City. |
![]() | ![]() | Antoni, Robert. Carnival. New York. 2005. Grove Press. 0802170056. 295 pages. paperback. William Fletcher is an aspiring novelist who has come to New York to escape his affluent West Indian roots. A chance meeting in a Greenwich Village bar reunites him with two of his childhood companions: Laurence, who left the poverty of his village to become an Oxford scholar and poet, and the vivacious Rachel, William’s second cousin and first love. Together the three make a liquor-soaked pledge to return ‘home’ to Trinidad for carnival. As the festival’s ecstasy slides into a fog of ganja, alcohol, and the endless calypso beat, Rachel casts her eyes on Eddoes, a member of the isolated, Rastafarian-like Earth People - and the year’s young and scandalous carnival king. Eddoes has escaped his sequestered life in the mysterious Hell Valley for a few days of excitement, and it is to this remote place that the group goes to cool down after the festival. In the rain forest the group hopes for a secret paradise from which to begin anew. But even here the demons of history, prejudice, and hatred violently intrude, as the novel’s startling conclusion forces all to face the power - and impotence - of human resilience and human love. . Robert Antoni (born 1958) is a West Indian writer who was awarded the 1999 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction by The Paris Review for My Grandmother's Tale of How Crab-o Lost His Head. He is a Guggenheim Fellow for 2010 for his work on the historical novel As Flies to Whatless Boys. |
![]() | ![]() | Antoni, Robert. Divina Trace. Woodstock. 1992. Overlook Press. 0879514450. 436 pages. hardcover. A mysterious child, half-human, half-frog, is born on the island of Corpus Christi in the West Indies. Its mother becomes Magdalena Divina, the black madonna, patron saint of the island, and the frogchild becomes the focus of an evolving legend as Johnny Domingo hears numerous versions of this remarkable story and tries, impossibly, to piece it together into one coherent and true account. Robert Antoni (born 1958) is a West Indian writer who was awarded the 1999 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction by The Paris Review for My Grandmother's Tale of How Crab-o Lost His Head. He is a Guggenheim Fellow for 2010 for his work on the historical novel As Flies to Whatless Boys. Robert Antoni was born in the United States of Trinidadian parents and grew up largely in the Bahamas, where his father practised medicine. He says his "fictional world" is "Corpus Christi", the invented island (based on Trinidad) that he introduced in his first novel, Divina Trace (1991). Antoni studied at Duke University and in the creative writing programme at Johns Hopkins University, before joining the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he began working on Divina Trace. He has said that he spent a total of ten years completing the novel, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best first novel in 1992.Antoni lived for a time in Barcelona and taught at the University of Miami from 1992 to 2001. In 2004, he began teaching at Barnard College, Columbia University and The New School. In 2010, he was a Guggenheim Fellow. His novel As Flies to Whatless Boys was the overall winner of the 2014 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. At the award ceremony on 26 April, Antoni pledged to share the US$10,000 prize money with the other finalists, Lorna Goodison (winner of the poetry category for Oracabessa) and Kei Miller (winner of the literary non-fiction category for Writing Down the Vision: Essays and Prophecies). Antoni currently resides in New York City. |
![]() | ![]() | Arnold, A. James. Modernism & Negritude: The Poetry and Poetics of Aime Cesaire. Cambridge. 1981. Harvard University Press. 0674580575. 318 pages. hardcover. James Arnold here presents in its political and culture context the work of the greatest visionary poet writing in French since the Romantic period. Aime Cesaire's surrealism is seen as subverting, in the name of black experience, the very European high modernism he assimilated and employed. Mr. Arnold considers Cesaire in relation to the Afro-Caribbean movement of the 1920s and 1930s, the Harlem Renaissance poets, and African writers, especially Leopold Senghor. He analyzes the black Martinican’s language, imagery, and meters. His reading of the poet reveals a tragic vision; the hero of Cesairean negritude is shown to be an Overman, suffering for the future of his people. This is the first full-scale critical study of Cesaire in English. It is written with force and style. A. James Arnold is Professor of French and Director of Graduate Studies, New World Studie, at the University of Virginia. His other books include Paul Valery and His Critics; "Les Mots" de Sartre: Genese et critique d'une autobiographie; and Modernism and Negritude: The Poetry and Poetics of Aime Cesaire. |
![]() | ![]() | Baghio'o, Jean-Louis. The Blue Flame-Tree. London. 1984. Carcanet. 0856354708. 142 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Bruce Wilson This is the story of three generations of a family. It begins with the legend of the folk-hero O’O, the black corsair who frees slaves from the slave ships and flays the slavers, making breeches from their skin. From legend we move to history, but a history into which fantasy and poetry flow naturally. Among the corsair’s descendents there are twins in each generation, and they express the paradoxical nature of the changing black experience on the island of Guadeloupe and FRENCH Caribbean generally. The history of the O’O clan is one of marriages, of racial mixture and development. What remains is the island, its contours, its flora and fauna, and the sea that washes it, things which change in meaning but not in character with each generation. The social miracle at the heart of the story, the union of the black corsair’s descendant to the last descendant of the white corsair, is marked by nature when the red flame-tree under which the marriage is solemnized miraculously turns blue. The tree remains throughout an emblem of possibility and of the deep complicity between nature and these people. Many passions are engaged in THE BLUE FLAME-TREE: political, sexual, cultural, religious. It is about race and about language, about possession of things and people, about the subjection of women and the egotism of success. But most of all it is the story of particular people in a particular place, wonderful and terrible, to which we come as strangers but which we leave with a sense of having been changed. Jean-Louis Baghio'o (21 December 1910 – 20 December 1994) is the pseudonym of the French writer who was born as Victor Jean-Louis on 21 December 1910 at Fort-de-France (Martinique) to a family settled at Sainte-Anne (Guadeloupe), and who died in Paris on 20 December 1994. |
![]() | ![]() | Baldeosingh, Kevin. The Autobiography of Paras P. Portsmouth. 1996. Heinemann. 0435988182. Caribbean Writers Series. 180 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Spike Gerrell. ‘I was never one to follow the crowd - unless they were looking at a fatal accident.’ Set in the Caribbean island of Trinidad, Kevin Baldeosingh’s hilarious satire presents the inimitable Paras P. Discover the undiluted truth about the self-declared anti-revolutionary of the order of Jesus Christ and Mahatma Gandhi, the Founder of the Centre for Correctness. With a little help from a tape recorder, Paras P. reveals all we need to know about politics, religion, the media, marriage and sexual norms. This witty commentary on the hypocrisies of modern life demonstrates the truth that ‘Against the assault of laughter, nothing will stand’ (Mark Twain). Born in Trinidad, Kevin Baldeosingh is a journalist working on the Trinidad Guardian. This is his first novel. Kevin Baldeosingh (born 1963) is a Trinidadian newspaper columnist, author and Humanist, who has been involved in many controversial social issues. He now works with the Trinidad and Tobago Express as a writer on a freelance basis. In twenty years as a professional writer he has written over 2,000 newspaper articles, over 30 periodical articles and papers, 20-plus short stories, and three novels. |
![]() | ![]() | Barrett, Lindsay. Song For Mumu. Washington DC. 1974. Howard University Press. 154 pages. hardcover. Jacket design and illustration by Terrence M. Fehr This first novel by a young Jamaican now living in Africa was written seven years ago and was published then in Great Britain. Critics there hailed it as ‘a primitive masterpiece,’ ‘a blood-chilling tragedy’ with ‘a sort of lingering power which will make it difficult to forget.’ Larry Neal, a contemporary American critic, hails SONG FOR MUMU as a classic. The novel tells of the death and loves of Mumu, and of a people, in a lyrical manner. Filled with folklore and legend, it is set in a Caribbean countryside whose life (innocence) has been violated by slavery, and in the city, a place without love. This book is structured as a song; the primary characters can be viewed as soloists while the ancient river women in the novel act as a chorus. Carlton Lindsay Barrett, also known as Eseoghene (born 15 September 1941), is a Jamaican-born poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist and photographer who since 1966 has lived in Nigeria, of which country he became a citizen in the mid-1980s. He initially drew critical attention for his debut novel, Song for Mumu, which on publication in 1967 was favourably noticed by such reviewers as Edward Baugh and Marina Maxwell (who respectively described it as "remarkable" and "significant"); more recently it has been commended for its "pervading passion, intensity, and energy", referred to as a classic, and features on "must-read" lists of Jamaican books. Particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, Barrett was well known as an experimental and progressive essayist, his work being concerned with issues of black identity and dispossession, the African Diaspora, and the survival of descendants of black Africans, now dispersed around the world. One of his sons is the Nigerian writer A. Igoni Barrett, with whom he has also worked professionally |
![]() | ![]() | Barry, Tom / Wood, Beth / Preusch, Deb. The Other Side of Paradise: Foreign Control in the Caribbean. New York. 1984. Grove Press. 0394538528. 405 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Edgar Blakeney. From the earliest colonial slave trade and sugar-molasses-rum triangle, through US Marines occupations, CIA coups, AID, and the IMF, up to the recent Caribbean Basin Initiative and the US invasion of Grenada, this book details a close alliance between foreign investment and politics. Providing a comprehensive overview of international corporate investment in the Caribbean, the authors document its profound impact on the politics and economics of the region. They have assembled a wide variety of information on the top corporations at work - Castle & Cooke, R.J. Reynolds, Tate & Lyle, Grace Kennedy, Geest Industries, Gulf+Western, and scores of others - to show how these corporations and their affiliates have penetrated virtually every sector of the Caribbean economy. In separate chapters on agriculture, tourism, manufacturing, banking, and trade, the authors demonstrate how most of this rich region of abundant resources and exquisite natural beauty has come to experience high unemployment, scarcity of food and basic necessities, low living standards, and ecological endangerment. In addition, chapters are devoted to profiles of each of the Caribbean islands plus Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana. Tom Barry, Beth Wood, and Deb Preusch are the authors of Dollars and Dictators: A Guide to Central America, and the founders and directors of The Resource Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, an independent research organization that produces educational materials on important issues of our time. |
![]() | | Barton, Paule. The Woe Shirt: Caribbean Folk Tales. Port Towns0915308363end. 1982. Graywolf Press. 0915308363. Illustrated by Norman Laliberte. Translated by Howard Norman. 62 pages. paperback. Cover drawing by Norman Laliberte In these original stories, these deft weavings from many islands, there are mysterious yet decisive influences. Often they are first glimpsed on the very periphery of Paulé Bartón’s vision, whittling toward him through air which is thick with chaos and mirage and laughter and market-gab. But suddenly, or slowly, all these seemingly disparate elements come together to form the very center of his life. PAULE BARTON was born in Haiti in 1916. Throughout his life he lived mainly as a goatherd. After surviving a prison term under the repressive Duvalier regime, he moved with his family, over several years, across the Caribbean, finally settling in Costa Rica, where he died in 1974. It was mainly in Jamaica and Trinidad that Bartón collaborated with Howard A. Norman on the translation of these original stories, using his native Creole spiced with Dahomey cadences and bits of English. HOWARD A. NORMAN has done migratory bird studies in the Caribbean, worked for Amnesty International, been a philologist at Harvard University and taught at Princeton and UCLA. His prose, translations from several languages and radio plays have appeared in many publications. His translation of Swampy Cree oral narratives, THE WISHING BONE CYCLE, received the Harold Morton Landon Award for Translation from the Academy of American Poets. He was awarded a fellowship by the Guggenheim Foundation. NORMAN LALIBERTE is internationally recognized for his strongly individual art as represented in paintings, banners and graphic design. Among numerous commissions, he has made banners for the Chicago Lyric Opera and the Vatican Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair. |
![]() | ![]() | Bascom, Harold. Apata: The Story of a Reluctant Criminal. London. 1986. Heinemann. 043598828x. Caribbean Writers Series. 279 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Paul Wearing In 1959, the year Queen Elizabeth visited the country newspapers in British Guiana reported a manhunt taking place deep within the forest. APATA is an imaginative reconstruction of the life of the man at its centre, a charismatic young Guianese whose hopes of a brilliant future are frustrated by the colour of his skin. Despite his obvious abilities, he cannot complete his education, and is forced instead to take up ignominious work for Glenn, a white homosexual trader. Trapped by a system of prejudices, and deeply humiliated, Apata is pushed into a cycle of crime that leads to the life of a fugitive, and a grisly demise. Harold Bascom’s APATA is the story of victims and outcasts everywhere, a gripping adventure that confronts a confusing and hurtful period when different cultures collided. HAROLD A. BASCOM was born in Vergenoegen, Guyana, in 1951, and began writing poetry in his teens. He made his first break as a writer of prose in 1977, when some of his short stories were read on national radio. He also began writing children’s books and finished his first film script, a story based on a manhunt for the desperado Clement Cuffy, which took place in British Guiana in 1959, and which gave rise to a full length novel - APATA. Harold A. Bascom works as a graphic artist and book illustrator and lives in Georgetown, Guyana. |
![]() | ![]() | Beckles, Dr. Hilary and Shepherd, Verene (editors). Caribbean Slave Society and Economy. New York. 1993. New Press. 1565840860. 480 pages. paperback. Because the institution of slavery has exerted such momentous force in shaping the socioeconomic and political history of the Caribbean, much of the region's historical writing has focused on slavery. Caribbean Slave Society and Economy brings together into one volume the main themes of the recent research on slavery, and explores the patterns and forms of socioeconomic life and activity that molded the region's heterogeneous slave societies. Hilary Beckles is Pro-Vice Chancellor and Principal of the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus. He is the author of more than ten books and is on the editorial board of several academic journals, including the Journal of Caribbean History. Verene Albertha Shepherd (née Lazarus; born 1951) is a Jamaican academic who is a professor of social history at the University of the West Indies in Mona. She is the director of the university's Institute for Gender and Development Studies, and specialises in Jamaican social history and diaspora studies. |
![]() | ![]() | Belgrave, Valerie. Ti Marie. New York. 1988. Heinemann. 0435988301. Caribbean Writers Series. An original paperback. 278 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration: a batik picture by Valerie Belgrave. The eighteenth century is drawing to a close. The Caribbean is a pawn in the power games of European empires, and long-neglected Trinidad gains a new importance. Racial and political conflicts intensify, and violence is in the very air. Yet, against the encroaching evil there is love - of family, of friends and, for Elena, of a restless, reckless young English nobleman, seeking his destiny in exile. But their union is threatened by prejudice of colour and of class. Valerie Belgrave has vividly recreated a crucial time in Caribbean and world history - where the old order is changing and the struggle echoes down to the present day. With the epic sweep of GONE WITH THE WIND this enthralling, many-layered novel ranges from a West Indies in turmoil to an England of elegance and depravity and involves us in the fate of settler and slave, republican and aristocrat and the perfection of human love. Valerie Begrave (1949-2016) grew up in Trinidad and studied at Sir George Williams (Concordia) University in Canada, obtaining a BA in Painting and Literature. She lived in Trinidad, where she worked as an artist and fabric designer specializing in batik. Belgrave was also a social activist and was among hundreds of students who staged a sit-in at the computer lab on the ninth floor of the Sir George Williams University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1969 to protest against a professor who was accused of racism. |
![]() | ![]() | Bell, Madison Smartt. Toussaint Louverture: A Biography. New York. 2007. Pantheon Books. 9780375423376. 335 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Ester Pearl Watson In 1791, Saint Domingue was both the richest and cruelest colony in the Western Hemisphere; more than a third of African slaves died within a few years of their arrival there. Thirteen years later, Haitian rebels declared independence from France after the first—and only—successful slave revolution in history. Much of the success of this uprising can be credited to one man, Toussaint Louverture—a figure about whom surprisingly little is known. In this fascinating biography, the first about Toussaint to appear in English in more than fifty years, Madison Smartt Bell combines a novelist’s passion for his subject with a deep knowledge of the historical milieu that produced the man. Toussaint has been known either as a martyr of the revolution or as the instigator of one of history’s most savagely violent events. Bell shatters this binary perception, producing a clear-eyed picture of a complicated figure. Toussaint, born a slave, became a slaveholder himself, with associates among the white planter class. Bell demonstrates how his privileged position served as both an asset and a liability, enabling him to gain the love of blacks and mulattoes as ‘Papa Toussaint’ but also sowing mistrust in their minds. Another of Bell’s brilliant achievements is demonstrating how Toussaint’s often surprising actions, such as his support for the king of France even as the French Revolution promised an end to slavery and his betrayal of a planned slave revolt in Jamaica, can be explained by his desire to achieve liberation for the blacks of Saint Domingue. This masterly biography is a revelation of one of the most fascinating and important figures in New World history. Madison Smartt Bell (born August 1, 1957 Nashville, Tennessee) is an American novelist. He is known for his trilogy of novels about Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, published 1995–2004. Raised in Nashville, Bell lived in New York, and London before settling in Baltimore, Maryland. He is a graduate of Princeton University, where he won the Ward Mathis Prize and the Francis Leymoyne Page award, and Hollins University, where he won the Andrew James Purdy fiction award. Bell has taught in various creative writing programs, including the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, and the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. Bell is married to the poet Elizabeth Spires and is a professor at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland. In addition, he has written essays and reviews for Harper's, The New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, The Village Voice. His papers are held at Princeton. |
![]() | ![]() | Berry, James. A Thief in the Village and Other Stories. New York. 1988. Orchard/Franklin Watts. 0531057453. 160 pages. hardcover. Nenna and Man-Man keep their father's rifle and guard the plantation when he goes to market in Kingston. Big-Walk is out of prison and living in the bush. He says he wasn't there the dark night Man-Man wounded a coconut thief. So whose blood was that on the tracks? Fanso's note said, "I have a father. Yet I have no father. I have to find my father, mam." Granny-Flo knew there would be trouble when Ossie Blackwell got off the city bus after thirteen years and asked to see his son. She'd sent him packing quick, but now Fanso was gone, too. It was just like any other Sunday. Everyone from the village was down at the shore for the Sunday Animal Sea Bath. Then Puppa's new horse, Misschief, started swimming out to sea - with Young Buddy on her back. ‘a magical collection of stories by the Jamaican poet, James Berry. In sensuous prose that captures the cadences of local speech, Berry makes one hear, see, feel, and smell Jamaica. - Times Literary Supplement. James Berry (28 September 1924 – 20 June 2017) was a Jamaican poet who settled in England in the 1940s. His poetry is notable for using a mixture of standard English and Jamaican Patois. Berry's writing often ‘explores the relationship between black and white communities and in particular, the excitement and tensions in the evolving relationship of the Caribbean immigrants with Britain and British society from the 1940s onwards’. As the editor of two seminal anthologies, Bluefoot Traveller (1976) and News for Babylon (1984), he was in the forefront of championing West Indian/British writing. |
![]() | ![]() | Berry, James. Celebration Song (Illustrated by Louise Brierley). New York. 1994. Simon & Schuster. 0671894463. Illustrated by Louise Brierley. 32 pages. hardcover. Set against a Caribbean background, a poem by the award-winning author of Ajeemah and His Son resonates with the cadences of the West Indies as it creates an intimate portrait of Mary and Jesus as Mother and Child. James Berry (28 September 1924 – 20 June 2017) was a Jamaican poet who settled in England in the 1940s. His poetry is notable for using a mixture of standard English and Jamaican Patois. Berry's writing often ‘explores the relationship between black and white communities and in particular, the excitement and tensions in the evolving relationship of the Caribbean immigrants with Britain and British society from the 1940s onwards’. As the editor of two seminal anthologies, Bluefoot Traveller (1976) and News for Babylon (1984), he was in the forefront of championing West Indian/British writing. |
![]() | ![]() | Berry, James. First Palm Trees: An Anancy Spiderman Story. New York. 1997. Simon & Schuster. 0689810601. Illustrated by Greg Couch. 40 pages. hardcover. Rhythmic language and stunning illustrations highlight this original Anancy Spiderman story The wily trickster Anancy Spiderman tries to bribe Sun, Water, Earth, and Air Spirits into creating the world's first palm trees so he can claim the king's reward. He promises to split the prize with the Spirits, offering each fantastic gifts for creating the trees independently. But the Spirits insist they need to work together. Reluctantly Anancy agrees to a partnership with all four Spirits, confident in his ability to trick them and collect the whole reward himself. However, the Spirits' philosophy of cooperation wins out. When the palm trees appear, they are everywhere; the king declares that since the trees are clearly meant for everyone, everyone should share his reward and he hosts a feast for all the villagers. Only later does Anancy get proper credit for helping to bring palm trees to the world. James Berry (28 September 1924 – 20 June 2017) was a Jamaican poet who settled in England in the 1940s. His poetry is notable for using a mixture of standard English and Jamaican Patois. Berry's writing often ‘explores the relationship between black and white communities and in particular, the excitement and tensions in the evolving relationship of the Caribbean immigrants with Britain and British society from the 1940s onwards’. As the editor of two seminal anthologies, Bluefoot Traveller (1976) and News for Babylon (1984), he was in the forefront of championing West Indian/British writing. |
![]() | ![]() | Berry, James. The Future-Telling Lady and Other Stories. New York. 1993. Harper Collins. 0060214341. Ages 10 and up. Willa Perlman Books An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. 144 pages. hardcover. This masterful collection from Coretta Scott King Award Honor-winning author James Berry fully demonstrates his power and versatility as a storyteller. All six stories emerge vividly from their Jamaican settings to bring a textured portrait of life in the West Indies to young readers. In these varied tales, homesick- ness, tenacity, and inhumanity are explored; a young girl meets up with some picnicking ghosts; a sister worries that the magic she's used on her pesky brother has made him invisible; and the future-telling lady reveals the important position of healers in Jamaican society as she uses her gifts to help troubled families. James Berry (28 September 1924 – 20 June 2017) was a Jamaican poet who settled in England in the 1940s. His poetry is notable for using a mixture of standard English and Jamaican Patois. Berry's writing often ‘explores the relationship between black and white communities and in particular, the excitement and tensions in the evolving relationship of the Caribbean immigrants with Britain and British society from the 1940s onwards’. As the editor of two seminal anthologies, Bluefoot Traveller (1976) and News for Babylon (1984), he was in the forefront of championing West Indian/British writing. |
![]() | ![]() | Berry, James. When I Dance: Poems. San Diego. 1991. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 0152955682. Illustrated by Karen Barbour. 128 pages. hardcover. A collection of fifty-nine poems for young adults celebrating life in inner-city Britain and in the rural Caribbean. James Berry (28 September 1924 – 20 June 2017) was a Jamaican poet who settled in England in the 1940s. His poetry is notable for using a mixture of standard English and Jamaican Patois. Berry's writing often ‘explores the relationship between black and white communities and in particular, the excitement and tensions in the evolving relationship of the Caribbean immigrants with Britain and British society from the 1940s onwards’. As the editor of two seminal anthologies, Bluefoot Traveller (1976) and News for Babylon (1984), he was in the forefront of championing West Indian/British writing. |
![]() | ![]() | Bissoondath, Neil. A Casual Brutality. New York. 1989. Potter. 0517572028. 384 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Gael Towey. Jacket illustration by James Stagg. A Casual Brutality is a powerful, dark novel about the failure of a decent man to come to terms with the moral disintegration of the Caribbean island of his birth. Casaquemada is a fragile West Indian republic divided by racial antagonism, lured into a spurious nationalism by impotent rulers, awash in a mindless consumerism fostered by easy money and a lust for an imported version of the good life. Raj Ramsingh is a Toronto doctor who returns to his native island only to leave it again, having paid a tragic price for his unwillingness to recognize the cruel imperatives of the men who will determine Casaquemada's fate. Neil Devindra Bissoondath (born April 19, 1955 in Arima, Trinidad and Tobago) is a Canadian author who lives in Ste-Foy, Quebec. He is a noted writer of fiction, and also an outspoken critic of Canada's system of multiculturalism. He is the nephew of authors V.S. Naipaul and Shiva Naipaul. Bissoondath attended St. Mary's College in Trinidad and Tobago. Although he was from a Hindu tradition, he was able to adapt to a Catholic high school. Bissoondath describes himself as not very religious and distrustful of dogma. In the early Seventies, political upheaval and economic collapse had created a climate of chaos and violence in the island nation. In 1973, at the age of eighteen, Bissoondath left Trinidad and settled in Ontario, where he studied at York University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in French in 1977. He then taught English and French at the Inlingua School of Languages and the Toronto Language Workshop. He won the McClelland and Stewart award and the National Magazine award, both in 1986, for the short story ‘Dancing.’ In 2010 he was made a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Québec. |
![]() | ![]() | Bissoondath, Neil. Digging Up the Mountains. New York. 1986. Viking Press. 067081119x. 247 pages. hardcover. This dazzling collection of short stories, originally published in 1985, marks the brilliant debut of Neil Bissoondath, a major voice in Canadian fiction. Focusing on contemporary themes of cultural dislocation, revolution, and the shifting politics of the Third World, the stories resonate with Bissoondath's compassion for people threatened by circumstances beyond their control. Neil Devindra Bissoondath (born April 19, 1955 in Arima, Trinidad and Tobago) is a Canadian author who lives in Ste-Foy, Quebec. He is a noted writer of fiction, and also an outspoken critic of Canada's system of multiculturalism. He is the nephew of authors V.S. Naipaul and Shiva Naipaul. Bissoondath attended St. Mary's College in Trinidad and Tobago. Although he was from a Hindu tradition, he was able to adapt to a Catholic high school. Bissoondath describes himself as not very religious and distrustful of dogma. In the early Seventies, political upheaval and economic collapse had created a climate of chaos and violence in the island nation. In 1973, at the age of eighteen, Bissoondath left Trinidad and settled in Ontario, where he studied at York University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in French in 1977. He then taught English and French at the Inlingua School of Languages and the Toronto Language Workshop. He won the McClelland and Stewart award and the National Magazine award, both in 1986, for the short story ‘Dancing.’ In 2010 he was made a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Québec. |
![]() | ![]() | Bissoondath, Neil. Digging Up the Mountains. New York. 1987. Penguin Books. 0140089357. A King Penguin book. 247 pages. paperback. Cover: Joanne Ryder This dazzling collection of short stories, originally published in 1985, marks the brilliant debut of Neil Bissoondath, a major voice in Canadian fiction. Focusing on contemporary themes of cultural dislocation, revolution, and the shifting politics of the Third World, the stories resonate with Bissoondath's compassion for people threatened by circumstances beyond their control. Neil Devindra Bissoondath (born April 19, 1955 in Arima, Trinidad and Tobago) is a Canadian author who lives in Ste-Foy, Quebec. He is a noted writer of fiction, and also an outspoken critic of Canada's system of multiculturalism. He is the nephew of authors V.S. Naipaul and Shiva Naipaul. Bissoondath attended St. Mary's College in Trinidad and Tobago. Although he was from a Hindu tradition, he was able to adapt to a Catholic high school. Bissoondath describes himself as not very religious and distrustful of dogma. In the early Seventies, political upheaval and economic collapse had created a climate of chaos and violence in the island nation. In 1973, at the age of eighteen, Bissoondath left Trinidad and settled in Ontario, where he studied at York University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in French in 1977. He then taught English and French at the Inlingua School of Languages and the Toronto Language Workshop. He won the McClelland and Stewart award and the National Magazine award, both in 1986, for the short story ‘Dancing.’ In 2010 he was made a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Québec. |
![]() | ![]() | Bissoondath, Neil. Digging Up the Mountains. Toronto. 1985. Macmillan Of Canada. 077159836x. 247 pages. hardcover. This dazzling collection of short stories, originally published in 1985, marks the brilliant debut of Neil Bissoondath, a major voice in Canadian fiction. Focusing on contemporary themes of cultural dislocation, revolution, and the shifting politics of the Third World, the stories resonate with Bissoondath's compassion for people threatened by circumstances beyond their control. Neil Devindra Bissoondath (born April 19, 1955 in Arima, Trinidad and Tobago) is a Canadian author who lives in Ste-Foy, Quebec. He is a noted writer of fiction, and also an outspoken critic of Canada's system of multiculturalism. He is the nephew of authors V.S. Naipaul and Shiva Naipaul. Bissoondath attended St. Mary's College in Trinidad and Tobago. Although he was from a Hindu tradition, he was able to adapt to a Catholic high school. Bissoondath describes himself as not very religious and distrustful of dogma. In the early Seventies, political upheaval and economic collapse had created a climate of chaos and violence in the island nation. In 1973, at the age of eighteen, Bissoondath left Trinidad and settled in Ontario, where he studied at York University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in French in 1977. He then taught English and French at the Inlingua School of Languages and the Toronto Language Workshop. He won the McClelland and Stewart award and the National Magazine award, both in 1986, for the short story ‘Dancing.’ In 2010 he was made a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Québec. |
![]() | ![]() | Bissoondath, Neil. On the Eve of Uncertain Tomorrows. New York. 1991. Potter. 0517582333. 224 pages. hardcover. A collection of short stories told with comic detail and compassion about people's hopes, fears, dreams, and needs. Neil Devindra Bissoondath (born April 19, 1955 in Arima, Trinidad and Tobago) is a Canadian author who lives in Ste-Foy, Quebec. He is a noted writer of fiction, and also an outspoken critic of Canada's system of multiculturalism. He is the nephew of authors V.S. Naipaul and Shiva Naipaul. Bissoondath attended St. Mary's College in Trinidad and Tobago. Although he was from a Hindu tradition, he was able to adapt to a Catholic high school. Bissoondath describes himself as not very religious and distrustful of dogma. In the early Seventies, political upheaval and economic collapse had created a climate of chaos and violence in the island nation. In 1973, at the age of eighteen, Bissoondath left Trinidad and settled in Ontario, where he studied at York University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in French in 1977. He then taught English and French at the Inlingua School of Languages and the Toronto Language Workshop. He won the McClelland and Stewart award and the National Magazine award, both in 1986, for the short story ‘Dancing.’ In 2010 he was made a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Québec. |
![]() | ![]() | Boisseron, Bénédicte. Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora. Gainesville. 2014. University Press of Florida. 9780813049793. 6 x 9. 256 pages. hardcover. ‘Rich in scope and audacious in its critical vision, Creole Renegades incisively advances debates about fundamental aspects of our postcolonial and globalized experiences such as the enigmas of racial passing, creoleness, and returning and leaving 'home.'‘--Anny Dominique Curtius, author of Symbiosis of a Memory. ‘An important book that tackles the phenomenon of exiled Caribbean authors from a new perspective, underscoring their contentious relationship with the home island. Boisseron continues the work of 'decentering' Caribbean studies, moving the locus of analysis from the Antilles or Europe to North America.’--Richard Watts, author of Packaging Post/Coloniality. ‘This insightful approach illuminates important shifts in Caribbean literature and enables Boisseron to make new, essential contributions into the articulation of subjectivities in twenty-first century literary criticism.’--Frieda Ekotto, author of Race and Sex across the French Atlantic. In Creole Renegades, Bénédicte Boisseron looks at exiled Caribbean authors--Edwidge Danticat, Jamaica Kincaid, V. S. Naipaul, Maryse Condé, Dany Laferriére, and more--whose works have been well received in their adopted North American countries but who are often viewed by their home islands as sell-outs, opportunists, or traitors. These expatriate and second-generation authors refuse to be simple bearers of Caribbean culture, often dramatically distancing themselves from the postcolonial archipelago. Their writing is frequently infused with an enticing sense of cultural, sexual, or racial emancipation, but their deviance is not defiant. Underscoring the typically ignored contentious relationship between modern diaspora authors and the Caribbean, Boisseron ultimately argues that displacement and creative autonomy are often manifest in guilt and betrayal, central themes that emerge again and again in the work of these writers. Bénédicte Boisseron is associate professor of French and Francophone studies at the University of Montana. She is the coeditor of Voix du monde: Nouvelles francophones.. |
![]() | ![]() | Bradner, James. Danny Boy. Harlow. 1981. Longman. 0582785367. Drumbeat series. 138 pages. paperback. Presently, two white blossoms floated down, touching her hair, and childish fantasies seized him. Snow - something he. had seen only in the movies - fell from blue clouds like confetti, touching her head and shoulders, falling at her feet. At that moment, Danny's love was sealed. Danny is black. Lily is Indian. They are young and in love, but the cruel realities of life intervene. This is a tender love story set in a Caribbean country at a time of crucial change. James Bradner is the pseudonym of a Guyanese writer living in London. Widely travelled, he has been writing since the age of 12. |
![]() | ![]() | Braithwaite, E. R. A Kind of Homecoming. Englewood Cliffs. 1962. Prentice Hall. 243 pages. hardcover. A KIND OF HOMECOMING is both an illuminating portrayal of contemporary Africa and an enthralling account of an experience universal in its appeal-the return to one’s roots. The author is a Negro, born in British Guiana in northeastern South America and educated in New York City and England, who had never seen Africa before visiting Ghana, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. The first three are newly-independent nations while the latter is the world’s oldest Negro republic. Braithwaite talked to government leaders, teachers, tribesmen, old-time colonials, Africans of every station and degree of development . . . as he made his way from the coastal cities to the remote hinterland. As a Negro he associated with the Africans as one of themselves, and yet as a non-African, he was able to view the current African scene objectively and report on it in incisive, human terms. Running through the whole narrative are the reactions of a sensitive, perceptive human being as he probes the lives of people who are shouldering new responsibilities. Here is a close-up, intimate view of the African-groping, building, learning and experimenting-as he searches for a better kind of society and a better way of life in the future. To Braithwaite, the new sights and sounds that he heard in the ancient lands of his ancestors seemed strangely familiar to him and his journey proved to be a special KIND OF HOMECOMING. . E. R. Braithwaite was an air crewman with the R.A.F. during World War II, and later taught white teenagers in London’s cockney East Side. His first book, TO SIR, WITH LOVE, based on his experiences as an English schoolteacher, won the Anisfield-Wolf award in 1961 as an important work on racial relations. Mr. Braithwaite now works for the World Veteran’s Organization in Paris. Edward Ricardo Braithwaite (born June 27, 1920; some sources state 1912 or 1922) is a Guyanese novelist, writer, teacher, and diplomat, best known for his stories of social conditions and racial discrimination against black people. He was born in Georgetown, Guyana. Braithwaite had a privileged beginning in life: both of his parents went to Oxford University and he describes growing up with education, achievement, and parental pride surrounding him. He attended Queen's College, Guyana and then the City College of New York (1940). During World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot – he would later describe this experience as one where he had felt no discrimination based on his skin colour or ethnicity. He went on to attend the University of Cambridge (1949), from which he earned a bachelor's degree and a doctorate in physics. After the war, like many other ethnic minorities, despite his extensive training, Braithwaite could not find work in his field and, disillusioned, reluctantly took up a job as a schoolteacher in the East End of London. The book To Sir, With Love (1959) was based on his experiences there. While writing his book about the school, Braithwaite turned to social work and it became his job to find foster homes for non-white children for the London County Council. His experiences resulted in his second novel Paid Servant (1962). Braithwaite's numerous writings have primarily dealt with the difficulties of being an educated black man, a black social worker, a black teacher, and simply a human being in inhumane circumstances. His best known book, To Sir, With Love, was made into a 1967 film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier, and adapted for Radio 4 in 2007 starring Kwame Kwei-Armah. Paid Servant was dramatised on Radio 4 the following year, again with Kwei-Armah in the lead role. His 1965 novel Choice of Straws was dramatised in Radio 4's Saturday Play slot in September 2009. In 1973, the South African ban on Braithwaite's books was lifted and he reluctantly applied to visit the country. He was granted a visa and the status 'Honorary White' which gave him significantly more freedom and privileges than the indigenous black population, but less than the whites. He recorded the experiences and horror he witnessed during the six weeks he spent in South Africa in Honorary White (London: The Bodley Head, 1975). Braithwaite continued to write novels and short stories throughout his long international career as an educational consultant and lecturer for UNESCO, permanent representative to the United Nations for Guyana, Guyana's ambassador to Venezuela, and academic. He taught English studies at New York University; in 2002, was writer-in-residence at Howard University, Washington, D.C.; associated himself with Manchester Community College, Connecticut, during the 2005-06 academic year as visiting professor, also serving as commencement speaker and receiving an honorary degree. |
![]() | ![]() | Braithwaite, E. R. Choice of Straws. Indianapolis. 1966. Bobbs-Merrill. 198 pages. hardcover. In London, racial hatred leads to a mugging, a murder, and a mystery in a powerful novel of intolerance, loss, and self-discovery by the bestselling author ofTo Sir, With Love Identical twins Jack and Dave Bennett enjoy nothing better than a rowdy night out in London—listening to hot jazz, hoisting a few pints, flirting with girls . . . and then finishing off the evening by roughing up a stranger. But one night they ambush the wrong victim, a young black man who fights back. Suddenly bottles break and a knife is drawn, and when it’s over, Jack stumbles home alone—only to awaken the next morning to discover his brother’s bed empty and policemen at the door. The police are investigating a fatal car accident that left two people dead, their bodies burned beyond recognition. One of the dead was apparently the car’s owner, a young black doctor, but the only clue to the second corpse’s identity is a knife engraved with Dave Bennett’s name and address. And no words are spoken of a man found slain in an alley on the other side of town. With his life brutally upended, Jack finds that his search for answers is drawing him closer to the dead doctor’s beautiful sister, Michelle, and causing him to question everything he’s ever believed about race, justice, family, and the violent urban world around him. Edward Ricardo Braithwaite (born June 27, 1920; some sources state 1912 or 1922) is a Guyanese novelist, writer, teacher, and diplomat, best known for his stories of social conditions and racial discrimination against black people. He was born in Georgetown, Guyana. Braithwaite had a privileged beginning in life: both of his parents went to Oxford University and he describes growing up with education, achievement, and parental pride surrounding him. He attended Queen's College, Guyana and then the City College of New York (1940). During World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot – he would later describe this experience as one where he had felt no discrimination based on his skin colour or ethnicity. He went on to attend the University of Cambridge (1949), from which he earned a bachelor's degree and a doctorate in physics. After the war, like many other ethnic minorities, despite his extensive training, Braithwaite could not find work in his field and, disillusioned, reluctantly took up a job as a schoolteacher in the East End of London. The book To Sir, With Love (1959) was based on his experiences there. While writing his book about the school, Braithwaite turned to social work and it became his job to find foster homes for non-white children for the London County Council. His experiences resulted in his second novel Paid Servant (1962). Braithwaite's numerous writings have primarily dealt with the difficulties of being an educated black man, a black social worker, a black teacher, and simply a human being in inhumane circumstances. His best known book, To Sir, With Love, was made into a 1967 film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier, and adapted for Radio 4 in 2007 starring Kwame Kwei-Armah. Paid Servant was dramatised on Radio 4 the following year, again with Kwei-Armah in the lead role. His 1965 novel Choice of Straws was dramatised in Radio 4's Saturday Play slot in September 2009. In 1973, the South African ban on Braithwaite's books was lifted and he reluctantly applied to visit the country. He was granted a visa and the status 'Honorary White' which gave him significantly more freedom and privileges than the indigenous black population, but less than the whites. He recorded the experiences and horror he witnessed during the six weeks he spent in South Africa in Honorary White (London: The Bodley Head, 1975). Braithwaite continued to write novels and short stories throughout his long international career as an educational consultant and lecturer for UNESCO, permanent representative to the United Nations for Guyana, Guyana's ambassador to Venezuela, and academic. He taught English studies at New York University; in 2002, was writer-in-residence at Howard University, Washington, D.C.; associated himself with Manchester Community College, Connecticut, during the 2005-06 academic year as visiting professor, also serving as commencement speaker and receiving an honorary degree. |
![]() | ![]() | Braithwaite, E. R. Honorary White. New York. 1975. McGraw Hill. 0070071187. 190 pages. hardcover. E. R. Braithwaite chronicles the brutality, oppression, and courage he witnessed as a black man granted "Honorary White" status during a six-week visit to apartheid South Africa As a black man living in a white-dominated world, author E. R. Braithwaite was painfully aware of the multitude of injustices suffered by people of color and he wrote powerfully and poignantly about racial discrimination in his acclaimed novels and nonfiction works. So it came as a complete surprise when, in 1973, the longstanding ban on his books was lifted by the South African government, a ruling body of minority whites that brutally oppressed the black majority through apartheid laws. Applying for a visa—and secretly hoping to be refused—he was granted the official status of "Honorary White" for the length of his stay. As such, Braithwaite would be afforded some of the freedoms that South Africa’s black population was denied, yet would nonetheless be considered inferior by the white establishment. With Honorary White, Braithwaite bears witness to a dark and troubling time, relating with grave honesty and power the shocking abuses, inequities, and horrors he observed and experienced firsthand during his six-week stay in a criminal nation. His book is a personal testament to the savagery of apartheid and to the courage of those who refused to be broken by it. Edward Ricardo Braithwaite (born June 27, 1920; some sources state 1912 or 1922) is a Guyanese novelist, writer, teacher, and diplomat, best known for his stories of social conditions and racial discrimination against black people. He was born in Georgetown, Guyana. Braithwaite had a privileged beginning in life: both of his parents went to Oxford University and he describes growing up with education, achievement, and parental pride surrounding him. He attended Queen's College, Guyana and then the City College of New York (1940). During World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot – he would later describe this experience as one where he had felt no discrimination based on his skin colour or ethnicity. He went on to attend the University of Cambridge (1949), from which he earned a bachelor's degree and a doctorate in physics. After the war, like many other ethnic minorities, despite his extensive training, Braithwaite could not find work in his field and, disillusioned, reluctantly took up a job as a schoolteacher in the East End of London. The book To Sir, With Love (1959) was based on his experiences there. While writing his book about the school, Braithwaite turned to social work and it became his job to find foster homes for non-white children for the London County Council. His experiences resulted in his second novel Paid Servant (1962). Braithwaite's numerous writings have primarily dealt with the difficulties of being an educated black man, a black social worker, a black teacher, and simply a human being in inhumane circumstances. His best known book, To Sir, With Love, was made into a 1967 film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier, and adapted for Radio 4 in 2007 starring Kwame Kwei-Armah. Paid Servant was dramatised on Radio 4 the following year, again with Kwei-Armah in the lead role. His 1965 novel Choice of Straws was dramatised in Radio 4's Saturday Play slot in September 2009. In 1973, the South African ban on Braithwaite's books was lifted and he reluctantly applied to visit the country. He was granted a visa and the status 'Honorary White' which gave him significantly more freedom and privileges than the indigenous black population, but less than the whites. He recorded the experiences and horror he witnessed during the six weeks he spent in South Africa in Honorary White (London: The Bodley Head, 1975). Braithwaite continued to write novels and short stories throughout his long international career as an educational consultant and lecturer for UNESCO, permanent representative to the United Nations for Guyana, Guyana's ambassador to Venezuela, and academic. He taught English studies at New York University; in 2002, was writer-in-residence at Howard University, Washington, D.C.; associated himself with Manchester Community College, Connecticut, during the 2005-06 academic year as visiting professor, also serving as commencement speaker and receiving an honorary degree. |
![]() | ![]() | Braithwaite, E. R. Honorary White. London. 1975. Bodley Head. 0370103572. 159 pages. hardcover. E. R. Braithwaite chronicles the brutality, oppression, and courage he witnessed as a black man granted "Honorary White" status during a six-week visit to apartheid South Africa As a black man living in a white-dominated world, author E. R. Braithwaite was painfully aware of the multitude of injustices suffered by people of color and he wrote powerfully and poignantly about racial discrimination in his acclaimed novels and nonfiction works. So it came as a complete surprise when, in 1973, the longstanding ban on his books was lifted by the South African government, a ruling body of minority whites that brutally oppressed the black majority through apartheid laws. Applying for a visa—and secretly hoping to be refused—he was granted the official status of "Honorary White" for the length of his stay. As such, Braithwaite would be afforded some of the freedoms that South Africa’s black population was denied, yet would nonetheless be considered inferior by the white establishment. With Honorary White, Braithwaite bears witness to a dark and troubling time, relating with grave honesty and power the shocking abuses, inequities, and horrors he observed and experienced firsthand during his six-week stay in a criminal nation. His book is a personal testament to the savagery of apartheid and to the courage of those who refused to be broken by it. Edward Ricardo Braithwaite (born June 27, 1920; some sources state 1912 or 1922) is a Guyanese novelist, writer, teacher, and diplomat, best known for his stories of social conditions and racial discrimination against black people. He was born in Georgetown, Guyana. Braithwaite had a privileged beginning in life: both of his parents went to Oxford University and he describes growing up with education, achievement, and parental pride surrounding him. He attended Queen's College, Guyana and then the City College of New York (1940). During World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot – he would later describe this experience as one where he had felt no discrimination based on his skin colour or ethnicity. He went on to attend the University of Cambridge (1949), from which he earned a bachelor's degree and a doctorate in physics. After the war, like many other ethnic minorities, despite his extensive training, Braithwaite could not find work in his field and, disillusioned, reluctantly took up a job as a schoolteacher in the East End of London. The book To Sir, With Love (1959) was based on his experiences there. While writing his book about the school, Braithwaite turned to social work and it became his job to find foster homes for non-white children for the London County Council. His experiences resulted in his second novel Paid Servant (1962). Braithwaite's numerous writings have primarily dealt with the difficulties of being an educated black man, a black social worker, a black teacher, and simply a human being in inhumane circumstances. His best known book, To Sir, With Love, was made into a 1967 film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier, and adapted for Radio 4 in 2007 starring Kwame Kwei-Armah. Paid Servant was dramatised on Radio 4 the following year, again with Kwei-Armah in the lead role. His 1965 novel Choice of Straws was dramatised in Radio 4's Saturday Play slot in September 2009. In 1973, the South African ban on Braithwaite's books was lifted and he reluctantly applied to visit the country. He was granted a visa and the status 'Honorary White' which gave him significantly more freedom and privileges than the indigenous black population, but less than the whites. He recorded the experiences and horror he witnessed during the six weeks he spent in South Africa in Honorary White (London: The Bodley Head, 1975). Braithwaite continued to write novels and short stories throughout his long international career as an educational consultant and lecturer for UNESCO, permanent representative to the United Nations for Guyana, Guyana's ambassador to Venezuela, and academic. He taught English studies at New York University; in 2002, was writer-in-residence at Howard University, Washington, D.C.; associated himself with Manchester Community College, Connecticut, during the 2005-06 academic year as visiting professor, also serving as commencement speaker and receiving an honorary degree. |
![]() | ![]() | Braithwaite, E. R. Paid Servant. New York. 1968. McGraw Hill. 220 pages. hardcover. In Paid Servant, E. R. Braithwaite shares his experiences in London’s Department of Child Welfare, focusing on the case of his four-year-old client Roddy, a bright, handsome mulatto boy who was rejected for adoption by both black and white families because he was not their own kind. Everywhere he turned, Braithwaite encountered racial prejudice. But he was willing to fight for what he believed in, and he believed in Roddy. Writing with great power, warmth, and a deep belief in human dignity and worth, Braithwaite offers a heartbreaking yet hopeful look into a society’s attempt to care for its youngest, most vulnerable citizens. Edward Ricardo Braithwaite (born June 27, 1920; some sources state 1912 or 1922) is a Guyanese novelist, writer, teacher, and diplomat, best known for his stories of social conditions and racial discrimination against black people. He was born in Georgetown, Guyana. Braithwaite had a privileged beginning in life: both of his parents went to Oxford University and he describes growing up with education, achievement, and parental pride surrounding him. He attended Queen's College, Guyana and then the City College of New York (1940). During World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot – he would later describe this experience as one where he had felt no discrimination based on his skin colour or ethnicity. He went on to attend the University of Cambridge (1949), from which he earned a bachelor's degree and a doctorate in physics. After the war, like many other ethnic minorities, despite his extensive training, Braithwaite could not find work in his field and, disillusioned, reluctantly took up a job as a schoolteacher in the East End of London. The book To Sir, With Love (1959) was based on his experiences there. While writing his book about the school, Braithwaite turned to social work and it became his job to find foster homes for non-white children for the London County Council. His experiences resulted in his second novel Paid Servant (1962). Braithwaite's numerous writings have primarily dealt with the difficulties of being an educated black man, a black social worker, a black teacher, and simply a human being in inhumane circumstances. His best known book, To Sir, With Love, was made into a 1967 film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier, and adapted for Radio 4 in 2007 starring Kwame Kwei-Armah. Paid Servant was dramatised on Radio 4 the following year, again with Kwei-Armah in the lead role. His 1965 novel Choice of Straws was dramatised in Radio 4's Saturday Play slot in September 2009. In 1973, the South African ban on Braithwaite's books was lifted and he reluctantly applied to visit the country. He was granted a visa and the status 'Honorary White' which gave him significantly more freedom and privileges than the indigenous black population, but less than the whites. He recorded the experiences and horror he witnessed during the six weeks he spent in South Africa in Honorary White (London: The Bodley Head, 1975). Braithwaite continued to write novels and short stories throughout his long international career as an educational consultant and lecturer for UNESCO, permanent representative to the United Nations for Guyana, Guyana's ambassador to Venezuela, and academic. He taught English studies at New York University; in 2002, was writer-in-residence at Howard University, Washington, D.C.; associated himself with Manchester Community College, Connecticut, during the 2005-06 academic year as visiting professor, also serving as commencement speaker and receiving an honorary degree. |
![]() | ![]() | Braithwaite, E. R. Paid Servant. London. 1963. Bodley Head. 219 pages. hardcover. Jacket by Don Higgins In Paid Servant, E. R. Braithwaite shares his experiences in London’s Department of Child Welfare, focusing on the case of his four-year-old client Roddy, a bright, handsome mulatto boy who was rejected for adoption by both black and white families because he was not their own kind. Everywhere he turned, Braithwaite encountered racial prejudice. But he was willing to fight for what he believed in, and he believed in Roddy. Writing with great power, warmth, and a deep belief in human dignity and worth, Braithwaite offers a heartbreaking yet hopeful look into a society’s attempt to care for its youngest, most vulnerable citizens. Edward Ricardo Braithwaite (born June 27, 1920; some sources state 1912 or 1922) is a Guyanese novelist, writer, teacher, and diplomat, best known for his stories of social conditions and racial discrimination against black people. He was born in Georgetown, Guyana. Braithwaite had a privileged beginning in life: both of his parents went to Oxford University and he describes growing up with education, achievement, and parental pride surrounding him. He attended Queen's College, Guyana and then the City College of New York (1940). During World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot – he would later describe this experience as one where he had felt no discrimination based on his skin colour or ethnicity. He went on to attend the University of Cambridge (1949), from which he earned a bachelor's degree and a doctorate in physics. After the war, like many other ethnic minorities, despite his extensive training, Braithwaite could not find work in his field and, disillusioned, reluctantly took up a job as a schoolteacher in the East End of London. The book To Sir, With Love (1959) was based on his experiences there. While writing his book about the school, Braithwaite turned to social work and it became his job to find foster homes for non-white children for the London County Council. His experiences resulted in his second novel Paid Servant (1962). Braithwaite's numerous writings have primarily dealt with the difficulties of being an educated black man, a black social worker, a black teacher, and simply a human being in inhumane circumstances. His best known book, To Sir, With Love, was made into a 1967 film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier, and adapted for Radio 4 in 2007 starring Kwame Kwei-Armah. Paid Servant was dramatised on Radio 4 the following year, again with Kwei-Armah in the lead role. His 1965 novel Choice of Straws was dramatised in Radio 4's Saturday Play slot in September 2009. In 1973, the South African ban on Braithwaite's books was lifted and he reluctantly applied to visit the country. He was granted a visa and the status 'Honorary White' which gave him significantly more freedom and privileges than the indigenous black population, but less than the whites. He recorded the experiences and horror he witnessed during the six weeks he spent in South Africa in Honorary White (London: The Bodley Head, 1975). Braithwaite continued to write novels and short stories throughout his long international career as an educational consultant and lecturer for UNESCO, permanent representative to the United Nations for Guyana, Guyana's ambassador to Venezuela, and academic. He taught English studies at New York University; in 2002, was writer-in-residence at Howard University, Washington, D.C.; associated himself with Manchester Community College, Connecticut, during the 2005-06 academic year as visiting professor, also serving as commencement speaker and receiving an honorary degree. |
![]() | ![]() | Braithwaite, E. R. To Sir, With Love. London. 1959. Bodley Head. 188 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Cynthia Abbott TO SIR, WITH LOVE is a 1959 autobiographical novel by E. R. Braithwaite set in the East End of London. The novel is based on true events concerned with Braithwaite taking up a teaching post in a school there. The novel was made into a film in 1967. The novel was adapted for radio and broadcast in two parts on BBC Radio 4 in 2007 starring Kwame Kwei-Armah. Ricardo 'Ricky' Braithwaite is a British Guiana-born engineer who has worked in the USA and an oil refinery in Aruba. Coming to Britain on the verge of World War Two, he joines the RAF as aircrew. Demobbed in 1945, he is unable to find work, despite his qualifications and experience, meeting overt anti-black attitudes. But after discussing his situation with a stranger whose name he never learns, he applies for a teaching position and is assigned to a secondary school in London's East End. Most of the pupils in his class are totally unmotivated to learn and largely semi-literate and semi-articulate. But he persists, despite finding that they are unresponsive to his approach. Braithwaite decides to try a new approach, and sets some ground rules. The students will be leaving school soon, and will enter an adult society, so he will treat them as adults, and allow them to decide what topics they wish to study. In return, he demands their respect as their teacher. This novel approach is initially rejected, but within a few weeks, the class is largely won over. He suggests out-of-school activities, including visits to museums, which the kids have never thought about before. A young teacher, Gillian Blanchard, volunteers to assist him on these trips. Some of the girls start to speculate whether a personal relationship is budding between Braithwaite and Gillian. The trip is a success and more are approved by the initially skeptical Head. The teachers and the Student Council openly discuss all matters affecting the school and what is being taught. The general feeling is that Braithwaite's approach is working, although some teachers still advocate a tougher approach to the kids. The mother of one of the girls comes to speak to Braithwaite, feeling that he has more influence than she has with her impressionable daughter, who is staying out late and might be getting into trouble. Even teacher Mr. Weston, who had disapproved of Braithwaite's attitude to his class, now openly admits that the latter is a gifted teacher, and should reconsider leaving for an engineering job. In the meantime, Braithwaite and Gillian are deeply in love and are discussing marriage. Her parents are openly disapproving of a 'mixed-race' marriage, but realize that they're serious and both intelligent people who know what they are doing. Braithwaite is offered an engineering position and rejects it to continue teaching. Edward Ricardo Braithwaite (born June 27, 1920; some sources state 1912 or 1922) is a Guyanese novelist, writer, teacher, and diplomat, best known for his stories of social conditions and racial discrimination against black people. He was born in Georgetown, Guyana. Braithwaite had a privileged beginning in life: both of his parents went to Oxford University and he describes growing up with education, achievement, and parental pride surrounding him. He attended Queen's College, Guyana and then the City College of New York (1940). During World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot – he would later describe this experience as one where he had felt no discrimination based on his skin colour or ethnicity. He went on to attend the University of Cambridge (1949), from which he earned a bachelor's degree and a doctorate in physics. After the war, like many other ethnic minorities, despite his extensive training, Braithwaite could not find work in his field and, disillusioned, reluctantly took up a job as a schoolteacher in the East End of London. The book To Sir, With Love (1959) was based on his experiences there. While writing his book about the school, Braithwaite turned to social work and it became his job to find foster homes for non-white children for the London County Council. His experiences resulted in his second novel Paid Servant (1962). Braithwaite's numerous writings have primarily dealt with the difficulties of being an educated black man, a black social worker, a black teacher, and simply a human being in inhumane circumstances. His best known book, To Sir, With Love, was made into a 1967 film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier, and adapted for Radio 4 in 2007 starring Kwame Kwei-Armah. Paid Servant was dramatised on Radio 4 the following year, again with Kwei-Armah in the lead role. His 1965 novel Choice of Straws was dramatised in Radio 4's Saturday Play slot in September 2009. In 1973, the South African ban on Braithwaite's books was lifted and he reluctantly applied to visit the country. He was granted a visa and the status 'Honorary White' which gave him significantly more freedom and privileges than the indigenous black population, but less than the whites. He recorded the experiences and horror he witnessed during the six weeks he spent in South Africa in Honorary White (London: The Bodley Head, 1975). Braithwaite continued to write novels and short stories throughout his long international career as an educational consultant and lecturer for UNESCO, permanent representative to the United Nations for Guyana, Guyana's ambassador to Venezuela, and academic. He taught English studies at New York University; in 2002, was writer-in-residence at Howard University, Washington, D.C.; associated himself with Manchester Community College, Connecticut, during the 2005-06 academic year as visiting professor, also serving as commencement speaker and receiving an honorary degree. |
![]() | ![]() | Brathwaite, Edward. Islands. New York. 1969. Oxford University Press. 0192112848. 113 pages. hardcover. The veve symbol on the dustjacket is from a drawing by the Haitian artist, Neamy Jean. The third part of Edward Brathwaite’s trilogy of poems about the Negro’s encounter with the New World interweaves the past and present of his Caribbean homeland-its natural beauty, its violent history, the values that sustain its people-into a vigorous and distinctive poetic statement. The theme of Islands is given in the opening poem, with its ‘bridges of sound’ spanning the seas between Nairobi and New York, where the ‘dark men float ‘round and round in the bright bubbled bowl’ of the great city. Against this rootlessness the poet reasserts the faith and wisdom of his islanders, their folk-memory of Africa, which he feels to be the core of their existence. Using their dreams and vibrant images-the presence of their Afro-Caribbean gods Ogun, Lcgba, Ananse; and the streets, harbours, shacks, and tourist havens of their material world-he defines the predicament of the modern black man, torn between old and new. A native of Barbados, Edward Brathwaite spent over a decade in Europe, America, and Africa, returning home in 1962. The earlier books of his trilogy embodied his recognition Of the ex-slaves’ lack of hope in a world dominated by their former masters, and his exploration of his African inheritance. In Islands he mines the spiritual resources of this heritage. The five parts of the poem emphasize closely related aspects of the West Indian social, political, and religious consciousness. ‘New World’ portrays the fertile, waiting, Caribbean. ‘Limbo’ undertakes a simultaneous journey into the Caribbean soil and psyche, and seeks out the possibilities of rebirth or transformation. ‘Rebellion’ centres upon political reactions to the new freedom from ‘that fear, that hope, that protest that was our common ground’. The poem then moves surely towards the poet’s particular insights into the present as nexus of what has been and may be, as the old gods walk side by side with the islanders. Linking these themes and figures are recurrent drum rhythms and an intricate network of metaphor and symbol. ‘ From the reviews - RIGHTS OF PASSAGE . . . . a West Indian poet of great panache and exuberance . . . equally at home with experimental and traditional forms. The particular vitality of Rights of Passage is nearer to the American than to the English tradition, but different from either. It bears out the poet’s belief that the Caribbean literature exists now in its own right.’ Critical Quarterly . . . MASKS - ‘A sophisticated tough intelligence saturates the archetypal material. His technique dazzles, and through the handling of rhythm and image he makes the world his own, and ours.’ The Sunday Times. . Edward Brathwaite has been awarded a Poetry Bursary by the Arts Council of Great Britain and now teaches at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. Rights of Passage was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Masks, paper covers according to Poetry magazine, ‘captures the authenticity of primitive African rituals. The author is totally immersed both in the expressive resources of the English tongue and in the firsthand spiritual dynamics of primitive living-a rare combination of proficiencies. . Edward Kamau Brathwaite (born 11 May 1930, Bridgetown, Barbados) is widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. A professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, Brathwaite is the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses. Brathwaite holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex (1968) and was the co-founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). He received both the Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships in 1983, and is a winner of the 1994 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bussa Award, the Casa de las Américas Prize for poetry, and the 1999 Charity Randall Citation for Performance and Written Poetry from the International Poetry Forum. Brathwaite is noted for his studies of Black cultural life both in Africa and throughout the African diasporas of the world in works such as Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica (1970); The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820 (1971); Contradictory Omens (1974); Afternoon of the Status Crow (1982); and History of the Voice (1984), the publication of which established him as the authority of note on nation language. |
![]() | ![]() | Brathwaite, Kamau. Ancestors. New York. 2001. New Directions. 0811214486. Paperback Original. 473 pages. paperback. Cover photograph from Ann Watson Yates' Bygone Barbados, courtesy of the author; cover design by Sylvia Prezzolini Severance ANCESTORS startlingly reinvents one of the most important long poems of our hemisphere. Here in a single volume is Kamau Brathwaite’s long unavailable, landmark trilogy - Mother Poem, Sun Poem, and X/Self (1977, 1982, and 1987) - now completely revised and expanded by the author. With its ‘Video Sycorax’ typographic inventions and linguistic play, Ancestors liberates both the language and the new-Caliban vision of the poet. In its fresh and more experimental form the trilogy embodies the recapture (what the poet has called the ‘intercovety’) of Brathwaite’s African/Caribbean ancestry as a possession of power and renewal, even as it plumbs the deep tonalities of enslavement, oppression, and colonial dispossession. Born in Barbados in 1930, scholar, poet, and historian Kamau Brathwaite is the author of scores of books. He won the 1994 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and has twice received the Casa de las Americas Prize. Edward Kamau Brathwaite (born 11 May 1930, Bridgetown, Barbados) is widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. A professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, Brathwaite is the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses. Brathwaite holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex (1968) and was the co-founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). He received both the Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships in 1983, and is a winner of the 1994 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bussa Award, the Casa de las Américas Prize for poetry, and the 1999 Charity Randall Citation for Performance and Written Poetry from the International Poetry Forum. Brathwaite is noted for his studies of Black cultural life both in Africa and throughout the African diasporas of the world in works such as Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica (1970); The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820 (1971); Contradictory Omens (1974); Afternoon of the Status Crow (1982); and History of the Voice (1984), the publication of which established him as the authority of note on nation language. |
![]() | ![]() | Brathwaite, Kamau. Black + Blues. New York. 1995. New Directions. 0811213137. 69 pages. paperback. Cover painting: 'The Road Is Hard' by S. Watson. author photograph by Julian Stapleton. design by Sylvia Frezzolini Severance. ‘The printed word doesn’t rise much closer to singing than in the work of Barbadian troubadour Kamau Brathwalte . . . . Brathwaite’s voice is as fierce as it is musical. He charges words with unmistakable voltage, and brands them on our tongues. Perched as we are between an Old World Order and the New, this is just the kind of poetry Williams had in mind when he said that men die for the lack of what Is to be found there.’ - The Village Voice Literary Supplement. Kamau Brathwaite, who won the 1994 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, has revised his celebrated 1979 Casa de las Americas collection, Black + Blues, for its first edition by a U.S. publisher. A rich and beautiful collection, BLACK + BLUES is cast in three parts—‘Fragments,’ ‘Drought,’ and ‘Flowers.’ In Brathwaite’s voice, as The Beloit Poetry Journal noted, ‘the false distinctions between poetry and polemic, between tragic vision and comic insight, between anger and tenderness, here disappear. At last a major poet of our troubled history and troubling time is available to readers in this country.’ ‘His dazzling, inventive language, his tragic yet unquenchable vision,’ as Adrienne Rich declared, ‘make Kamau Brathwaite one of the most compelling of late 20th century poets.’ Edward Kamau Brathwaite (born 11 May 1930, Bridgetown, Barbados) is widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. A professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, Brathwaite is the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses. Brathwaite holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex (1968) and was the co-founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). He received both the Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships in 1983, and is a winner of the 1994 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bussa Award, the Casa de las Américas Prize for poetry, and the 1999 Charity Randall Citation for Performance and Written Poetry from the International Poetry Forum. Brathwaite is noted for his studies of Black cultural life both in Africa and throughout the African diasporas of the world in works such as Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica (1970); The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820 (1971); Contradictory Omens (1974); Afternoon of the Status Crow (1982); and History of the Voice (1984), the publication of which established him as the authority of note on nation language. |
![]() | ![]() | Brathwaite, Kamau. Middle Passages. New York. 1993. New Directions. 0811212327. Paperback Original. 120 pages. paperback. NDP776. Cover: Ras Dizzy Middle Passages is an offshoot of the author's second trilogy, 'a splice of time and space', as he puts it, between his/father's world of Sun Poem and 'the magical irrealism' of X/Self. With his other 'shorter' collections Black + Blues and Third World Poems, Middle Passages creates a kind of chisel which may well lead us into a projected third trilogy. Here is a political angle to Brathwaite's Caribbean and New World quest, with new notes of protest and lament. It marks a Sisyphean stage of Third World history in which things fall apart and everyone's achievements come tumbling back down upon their heads and into their hearts, like the great stone which King Sisyphus was condemned to keep heaving back up the same hill in hell-a postmodernist implosion already signalled by Baldwin, Patterson, Soyinka and Achebe and more negatively by V.S. Naipaul; but given a new dimension here by Brathwaite's rhythmical and 'video' affirmations. And so Middle Passages includes poems for those modern heroes who are the pegs by which the mountain must be climbed again: Maroon resistance, the poets Nicolas Guillen, the Cuban revolutionary, and Mikey Smith, stoned to death on Stony Hill; the great musicians (Ellington, Bessie Smith); and Third World leaders Kwame Nkrumah, Walter Rodney and Nelson Mandela. Edward Kamau Brathwaite (born 11 May 1930, Bridgetown, Barbados) is widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. |
![]() | ![]() | Brathwaite, Kamau. The Zea Mexican Diary: 7 September 1926-7 September 1986. Madison. 1993. University Of Wisconsin Press. 0299136442. Foreword by Sandra Pouchet Paquet. 214 pages. paperback. ‘When EKB came face to face with the unimaginable news on 26 May that his wife Doris Monica was terminally ill he started an ms diary which he kept helplessly & spasmodically until she died on her birthday 7 September after which to the day of her Tree Planting 12 October during what he calls The Time of Salt he wrote a series of Letters to Mary Morgan his sister. . .’ ‘[When Sheila stripped her down to sponge her & xamine her. her naked body stretched there on the bed was as beautiful & as desirable as ever. i cd have made love to her that Sunday morning felt that accustomed leap of love the golden warm & copper colour skin the plump & curves that I have so long known & loved my darling Mexican]’. . . ‘If she should die-go from me now-why why why why-I know I will not only lose my life my love my love-my very very very friend-and there are o too few of these-I may forever lose the light. . .’ - Kamau Brathwaite. . . ‘How important this personal view of the poet, the man, the philosopher, the romantic will be for the Brathwaite scholar! . . . Simply the most riveting, most poetic, most beautifully rendered autobiographical narrative that I’ve read in a long time. . . To read Zea is more than simply to peruse a manuscript-it is to participate in a ritual.’ - Daryl Cumber Dance, author of New World Adams: Conversations with Contemporary West Indian Writers. . . ‘It is a tragic irony that this tragedy that made you write this Diary should become your finest poem.’ - Gordon Rohler, author of Pathfinder: A Study of The Arrivants of Edward Kamau Brathwaite. Edward Kamau Brathwaite (born 11 May 1930, Bridgetown, Barbados) is widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. A professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, Brathwaite is the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses. Brathwaite holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex (1968) and was the co-founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). He received both the Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships in 1983, and is a winner of the 1994 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bussa Award, the Casa de las Américas Prize for poetry, and the 1999 Charity Randall Citation for Performance and Written Poetry from the International Poetry Forum. Brathwaite is noted for his studies of Black cultural life both in Africa and throughout the African diasporas of the world in works such as Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica (1970); The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820 (1971); Contradictory Omens (1974); Afternoon of the Status Crow (1982); and History of the Voice (1984), the publication of which established him as the authority of note on nation language. |
![]() | ![]() | Brathwaite, Kamau. Trench Town Rock. Providence. 1994. Lost Roads Publishers. 0918786452. 79 pages. paperback. Number 40. Cover photograph by Deborah Luster Expanded from the original poem which appeared in Hambone 10 in 1991. "Typeset in Brathwaite's trademark Sycorax video-print style, TRENCH TOWN ROCK is a harrowing account of violence in modern-day Jamaica. TRENCH TOWN ROCK, Kamau Brathwaite's long documentarian song, affords insistent 'nansic spin—a splay of clips, massed facts and faces, rare synaesthetic call and cry rolled into brash typographic distraint."—Nathaniel Mackey. Edward Kamau Brathwaite (born 11 May 1930, Bridgetown, Barbados) is widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. A professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, Brathwaite is the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses. Brathwaite holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex (1968) and was the co-founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). He received both the Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships in 1983, and is a winner of the 1994 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bussa Award, the Casa de las Américas Prize for poetry, and the 1999 Charity Randall Citation for Performance and Written Poetry from the International Poetry Forum. Brathwaite is noted for his studies of Black cultural life both in Africa and throughout the African diasporas of the world in works such as Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica (1970); The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820 (1971); Contradictory Omens (1974); Afternoon of the Status Crow (1982); and History of the Voice (1984), the publication of which established him as the authority of note on nation language. |
![]() | ![]() | Brathwaite, Kamau. Words Need Love Too. Philipsburg, St. Martin. 2000. House of Nehesi Publishing. 0913441473. 70 pages. paperback. Cover design & art by Angelo Rombley In the beginning was the word; and the word was made flesh. But before the word, before sound, there was silence. The silence of dreams; the silence of memory, or ‘that awesome moment of wonder in which communion is made with the spiritual,’’ as Michael Dash would put it. The silence of Xângo before he rolls out his tongue of thunder to announce the rain. The cold silence of the anvil before Ogun pounds his hammer on it to mould iron into sword. No other Caribbean poet, living or dead, understands that silence, makes us participants in, and co-celebrants of the liturgy of the word, than Kamau Brathwaite. ‘What the poet seems to be doing is linking a fundamentally religious notion with the process of artistic creativity,’ writes Dash, in his critical appraisal of Brathwaite’s works. Indeed, Brathwaite in this his latest collection of poems, Words need love too, invites us, not just to witness that process of artistic creativity, but to be co-creators of a new cosmos, a new genesis on these ‘rolling stones of the sea that gather no moss.’ To enter this new world, to claim this new garden, we must return to the time and space before the word. In other words, we must recapture the silence that precedes and announces the word and is later made into the word itself. Here we are in the womb of memory where dreams are born; the darkest moment before dawn, before light is born. Herein lies the ‘secret power’ of the word, ‘the atomic core of language.’ Brathwaite, the poet, becomes a nuclear word-physicist, splitting the atom-words into neutrons, into neutrons of dreams, and from the fission he fashions a fusion that makes the inner power of the word-idea erupt like a volcano. Edward Kamau Brathwaite (born 11 May 1930, Bridgetown, Barbados) is widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. A professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, Brathwaite is the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses. Brathwaite holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex (1968) and was the co-founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). He received both the Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships in 1983, and is a winner of the 1994 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bussa Award, the Casa de las Américas Prize for poetry, and the 1999 Charity Randall Citation for Performance and Written Poetry from the International Poetry Forum. Brathwaite is noted for his studies of Black cultural life both in Africa and throughout the African diasporas of the world in works such as Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica (1970); The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820 (1971); Contradictory Omens (1974); Afternoon of the Status Crow (1982); and History of the Voice (1984), the publication of which established him as the authority of note on nation language. |
![]() | ![]() | Braziel, Jana Evans. Duvalier's Ghosts: Race, Diaspora, and U.S. Imperialism in Haitian Literatures. Gainesville. 2017. University Press of Florida. 9780813054674. 340 pages. paperback. 'Theoretically sound and well researched. Braziel has written a compelling book on the literatures of post-Duvalier Haiti.'--Millery Polyné, New York University. 'A very original study, a tour-de-force that crisscrosses the disciplinary boundaries typically separating the social sciences and the humanities. It is richly researched, beautifully written, and will surely attract much critical attention and praise.'--Valerie Kaussen, University of Missouri. From a position of urgent political engagement, this provocative book offers novel and compelling interpretations of several well-known Haitian-born authors, particularly regarding U.S. intervention in their homeland. Drawing on the diasporic cultural texts of several authors, such as Edwidge Danticat and Dany Laferrière, Jana Evans Braziel examines how writers participate in transnational movements for global social justice. In their fictional works they discuss the U.S.’s many interventionist methods in Haiti, including surveillance, foreign aid, and military assistance. Through their work, they reveal that the majority of Haitians do not welcome these intrusions and actively criticize U.S. treatment of Haitians in both countries. Braziel encourages us to analyze the instability and violence of small nations like Haiti within the larger frame of international financial and military institutions and forms of imperialism. She forcefully argues that by reading these works as anti-imperialist, much can be learned about why Haitians and Haitian exiles often have negative perceptions of the U.S. Jana Evans Braziel is associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Cincinnati. She has authored or edited several books, including Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader and Caribbean Genesis: Jamaica Kincaid and the Writing of New Worlds. |
![]() | ![]() | Britton, Celia M. Edouard Glissant and Postcolonial Theory: Strategies of Language and Resistance. Charlottesville. 1999. University of Virginia Press. 0813918480. New World Studies - A. James Arnold, editor. 224 pages. hardcover. Edouard Glissant has written extensively in French about the colonial experience in the Caribbean. Since he is known primarily as a novelist and poet, his theoretical essays have so far remained largely unread by the English-language theorists in this field. This book situates Glissant within ongoing debates in postcolonial theory, making illuminating connections between his work and that of Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. Focusing on language and subjectivity, Edouard Glissant and Postcolonial Theory moves between an analysis of Glissant's theoretical work and detailed readings of his novels to elucidate a network of related issues. Celia Britton addresses the major themes central to his writing?the reappropriation of history, standard and vernacular language, hybridity, subalternity, the problematizing of identity, and the colonial construction of the Other?and asks provocative questions relating to each. How does the colonized subject relate to a language initially imposed by the colonizer but subsequently, to some extent, subverted and reappropriated? How does this strategic use of language come to function as a crucial mode of cultural resistance? What role can fictional representation play in this process? This book represents the first presentation of Glissant's incisive theoretical work and analysis of his immensely powerful and subtle novels in the context of postcolonial studies. By juxtaposing them, Britton illuminates the significant contribution Glissant has made to this theoretical endeavor. Celia Margaret Britton (born 20 March 1946) is a British scholar of French Caribbean literature and thought. She was Carnegie Professor of French at the University of Aberdeen from 1991 to 2002 and Professor of French at University College London from 2003 to 2011. She had previously lectured at King's College London and the University of Reading. Britton was born on 20 March 1946 to James Nimmo Britton and Jessie Muriel Britton. She studied modern and medieval languages at New Hall, Cambridge, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1969; as per tradition, her BA was later promoted to a Master of Arts (MA Cantab) degree. Remaining at New Hall, she studied for a postgraduate diploma in linguistics which she completed in 1970. She then moved to the University of Essex where she undertook postgraduate research in literary stylistics, and she completed her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in 1973. From 1972 to 1974, while still studying for her doctorate, Britton was a temporary lecturer in French at King's College London. From 1974 to 1991, she was a lecturer in French studies at the University of Reading. Then, from 1991 to 2002, she was Carnegie Professor of French at the University of Aberdeen. Her final position before retirement was a Professor of French at University College London, which she held between 2003 and 2011. In 2011, she retired from full-time academia and was appointed an Emeritus Professor. Britton's research focuses on French Caribbean literature and thought. She has published work on Édouard Glissant, a Martinican writer, Frantz Fanon, a Martinique-born philosopher and writer, and Maryse Condé, a Guadeloupean author. Britton has research interests in postcolonial theory, the Nouveau Roman, and ethnography. In 2000, Britton was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. In 2003, she was appointed a Chevalier of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French government. |
![]() | ![]() | Brown, Stewart (editor). Caribbean New Wave: Contemporary Short Stories. Portsmouth. 1990. Heinemann. 043598814x. Caribbean Writers Series. 181 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Cathy Morley.Cover design by Keith Pointing A taste of the energy, commitment and talent of a whole new wave of Caribbean writing is offered in this anthology. Acting as a forum for both up-and-coming and internationally acclaimed writers, Caribbean New Wave is compiled of stories grounded in the lived experience of the contemporary Caribbean. The authors represented here have built on the achievements of names such as V.S. Naipaul, Sam Selvon and Wilson Harris who all rode the first wave to break on the literary shores of Britain and America in the 1950s and 60s, finding that the medium of the short story provided them with the ideal ‘way of saying’ for their particular concerns and audience. Many of the writers in this collection were not even born when the first ‘wave’ broke, most were unknown ten years ago and even those who have made international reputations — James Berry, Jamaica Kincaid, Earl Lovelace, Olive Senior for example — have essentially done so in the last decade. Delving into aspects of adolescence as well as adulthood domesticity as well as social and cultural change, the authors all express particular concerns with a passion which can only evolve from true life experience and, as a result, each tale is easily accessible to a wide audience throughout modern society. New Wave offers a good ‘way in’ to Caribbean writing for people reading Caribbean literature for the first time, and, for serious students of Caribbean life and letters, it provides a unique insight into ‘life’ in the Caribbean today. DR. STEWART BROWN studied Fine Art and Literature at Falmouth School of Art, Sussex University and the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Between times he worked and travelled in the Caribbean and West Africa, lecturing for three years at Bayero University, Kano, in northern Nigeria. He is presently lecturer in African and Caribbean literature at the Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham. He has published two collections of his own poetry, ZINDER (1986) and LUGARD’S BRIDGE (1989) (both from Seren Books) and edited two poetry anthologies, CARIBBEAN POETRY NOW (Hodder & Stoughton, 1984) and, with Mervyn Morris and Gordon Rohlehr, VOICEPRINT (Longman, 1989). He has also published many essays and reviews of African and Caribbean writing in English in literary and academic journals, and in 1989 produced an introductory guide to African writing: WRITERS FROM AFRICA, published by Book Trust. |
![]() | ![]() | Browne, Randy M. Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean. Philadelphia. 2017. University of Pennsylvania Press. 9780812249408. 320 pages. hardcover. Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean depicts the human drama in which enslaved Africans struggled against their enslavers and environment, and one another. The book reorients Atlantic slavery studies by revealing how social relationships, cultural practices, and political strategies reflected an unrelenting fight to survive. Atlantic slave societies were notorious deathtraps. In Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean, Randy M. Browne looks past the familiar numbers of life and death and into a human drama in which enslaved Africans and their descendants struggled to survive against their enslavers, their environment, and sometimes one another. Grounded in the nineteenth-century British colony of Berbice, one of the Atlantic world's best-documented slave societies and the last frontier of slavery in the British Caribbean, Browne argues that the central problem for most enslaved people was not how to resist or escape slavery but simply how to stay alive. Guided by the voices of hundreds of enslaved people preserved in an extraordinary set of legal records, Browne reveals a world of Caribbean slavery that is both brutal and breathtakingly intimate. Field laborers invoked abolitionist-inspired legal reforms to protest brutal floggings, spiritual healers conducted secretive nighttime rituals, anxious drivers weighed the competing pressures of managers and the condition of their fellow slaves in the fields, and women fought back against abusive masters and husbands. Browne shows that at the core of enslaved people's complicated relationships with their enslavers and one another was the struggle to live in a world of death. Provocative and unflinching, Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean reorients the study of Atlantic slavery by revealing how differently enslaved people's social relationships, cultural practices, and political strategies appear when seen in the light of their unrelenting struggle to survive. Randy M. Browne teaches history at Xavier University. |
![]() | ![]() | Buch, Hans Christoph. Wedding at Port-Au-Prince. San Diego. 1986. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 0151955980. Translated from the German by Ralph Manheim. 304 pages. hardcover. The author fuses world history with family memoir in this fascinating novel about the experiences of the author's grandfather, a German pharmacist and botanist who emigrates to Haiti and marries a black woman. Writer, literary critic, and journalist. Hans Christoph Buch was born on April 13, 1944 in Wetzlar. His grandfather was a diplomat in Haiti, which is how he came to develop a special interest in this country. He lived for some time in West Africa, Latin America, and Haiti and was a visiting professor at universities in Germany, the United States, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, and Cuba. Hans Christoph Buch is a member of the PEN. Hans Christoph Buch first drew attention to himself with his collection of stories Unerhörte Begebenheiten at a conference held by Gruppe 47. Additional important literary stages were the political satires from the years 1971-75, which, under the title Aus der neuen Welt, told stories and news from America. His novel Die Hochzeit von Port-au-Prince was published in 1984 and received a lot of attention. In the same year, he was named Officier de l'Ordre de l'Art et des Lettres by the French minister of education and the arts. In the mid-nineties, Buch traveled to Rwanda and Burundi to report on the war between the Hutus and Tutsis. He has traveled in various conflict areas including Bosnia, Chechnya, Haiti, Algeria, Zaire, Cambodia, East Timor, Pakistan, and Liberia. He regularly works as a correspondent for Die Zeit and the Spiegel. Numerous reportage collections have been published including Tropische Früchte. Afro-amerikanische Impressionen, Die neue Weltunordnung. Bosnien, Burundi, Haiti, Kuba, Liberia, Ruanda, Tschetschenien, and Blut im Schuh. Schlächter und Voyeure an den Fronten des Weltbürgerkrieges. His novel Kain und Abel in Afrika thematizes the massacre in Rwanda. His most recent publication was Wie Karl May Adolf Hitler traf und andere wahre Geschichten. Hans Christoph Buch lives in Berlin. |
![]() | ![]() | Buck-Morss, Susan. Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. Pittsburgh. 2009. University of Pittsburgh Press. 9780822959786. Pitt Illuminations. 164 pages. paperback. Cover art: (top) Ulrick Jean-Pierre, 'Painting entitled Bois CaimanI (Revolution of Saint Dominque, Haiti, August 14, 1791), 1979; (bottom) Jacques-Louis David, 'The Tennis Court Oath at Versailles', n.d. Sketch. Cover design by Chiquita Babb. In this path-breaking work, Susan Buck-Morss draws new connections between history, inequality, social conflict, and human emancipation. Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History offers a fundamental reinterpretation of Hegel's master-slave dialectic and points to a way forward to free critical theoretical practice from the prison-house of its own debates. Historicizing the thought of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the actions taken in the Haitian Revolution, Buck-Morss examines the startling connections between the two and challenges us to widen the boundaries of our historical imagination. She finds that it is in the discontinuities of historical flow, the edges of human experience, and the unexpected linkages between cultures that the possibility to transcend limits is discovered. It is these flashes of clarity that open the potential for understanding in spite of cultural differences. What Buck-Morss proposes amounts to a 'new humanism,' one that goes beyond the usual ideological implications of such a phrase to embrace a radical neutrality that insists on the permeability of the space between opposing sides and as it reaches for a common humanity. Susan Buck-Morss is Jan Rock Zubrow '77 Chair of Social Sciences, and professor of political philosophy and social theory in the department of government at Cornell University. She is the author of Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, and The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute. |
![]() | ![]() | Burnett, Paula (editor). The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse in English. New York. 1986. Penguin Books. 0140585117. 528 pages. paperback. The cover shows a detail from the altarpiece of the Roseau Valley Church, St. Lucia, by Dunstan St. Omer. Reproduced by courtesy of the artist. Over the last few decades Caribbean writers and performance artists have made a poetry revolution. Performance poets, dub and newspaper poets, singer-songwriters - Louise Bennett, Michael Smith or Bob Marley - have created a genuinely popular art form, a poetry heard by audiences all over the world. At the same time, even at its most literary, Caribbean poetry shares the vigour of the oral tradition. Established writers such as Edward Brathwaite and Derek Walcott, and many exciting new voices, are exploring ways of capturing the vitality of the spoken word on the page. The result is a lively communication of the Caribbean experience, as lived on both sides of the Atlantic. The richly interwoven oral and literary traditions of the Caribbean are both represented in this volume, which traces Caribbean verse from its roots to the present and is the first substantial anthology to appear for over a decade. Paula Burnett was born in 1942 in Chelmsford, and was educated at Oxford University. From 1988 she worked as a journalist and since 1990 has been a lecturer in English at the West London Institute. |
![]() | ![]() | Callender, Timothy. It So Happen. Portsmouth. 1991. Heinemann. 043598926x. Caribbean Writers Series. 127 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Pearl Alcock. Saga-boy and Jasper prepare for a grand stick-fight, Big Joe will do anything to marry the girl he loves, all the men are determined to defeat Marie in the rum drinking competition, and PaJohn the Obeah Man is foiled by his own wicked spell. Timothy Callender's close-knit community is full of zany characters. Their dialect, the troubles they face, and the celebrations they share, are realistic and overflowing with great humor. TIMOTHY CALLENDER (1946-1989) was born in Barbados where he became well known for his short stories during his student years at Combermere School. After graduating with special honours in English at thc University of the West Indies, he took a three year teaching post in St. Kitts during which time he continued research on ‘The Woman in the West Indian Novel’. In 1981, Callender was granted a Commonwealth Scholarship Award which enabled him to study for an MA in Art Design and Education at the University of London Institute of Education. He returned to Barbados in 1983, where he taught for many years at the University of the West Indies as well as at the St George Secondary School. In his later years, he taught Use of English, Creative Writing and Drama at the Barbados Community College. Callender cxpcrimented with many art forms and won awards for Short Stories, Playwriting and Art. He was an avid researcher of many diverse topics and themes, wrote numerous documentaries on art and art forms and held frequent art exhibitions. He also had a passion for music, studied the guitar and guitar music and was the author of many songs and poems. Like most West Indian authors, Callender’s first stories were published in the Barbados Literary Journal (BIM). IT SO HAPPEN (1975) was his first book of stories, and was followed by the books THE ELEMENTS OF ART (1977) and HOW MUSIC CAME TO THE AINCHAN PEOPLE (1979). Just before his untimely death, Callender was developing epic story poems, one of which was serialised over the local radio station and ran for about six months. |
![]() | ![]() | Carew, Jan. A Touch of Midas. New York. 1958. Coward-McCann. 288 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Ben Feder. A vivid novel of the treacherous South American jungles where men risk their lives for the prize of diamonds and gold. This is the story of Shark, born in a native village, who acquires great wealth in the jungle, only to lose it all in a city which he can neither understand not conquer. Young Aaron Smart, an orphan, is nicknamed Shark because he has small white teeth and a shark grin. He grows up in a native village on the coast of British Guiana, dividing his time between work in a road-gang and wandering through the savannahs and swamps dreaming of the wonderful life his father led as a diamond prospector. Then one day a mysterious white man appears and decrees that he shall be educated. Education frees Shark from the village. Apprenticed to a doctor, he is seduced by his master’s daughter and learns the secret of his father’s death. This prompts him to run away and join the ‘pork-knockers,’ the men who work the diamond mines deep in the up-country jungles. Thereafter incident follows exciting incident. Shark has hardly entered the strange, violent world of the pork knockers before it becomes apparent that he has inherited his father’s lucky touch. He makes a fortune in diamonds, becomes a fabled figure among the miners, until his name is even woven into the Blues they sing around the campfires. He has staunch friends in Bullah, the ex-boxer storekeeper, and Belle, the beautiful Georgetown prostitute who follows him into the jungle. Suddenly grown rich and full of good intentions, Shark takes his friends back to Georgetown. But the city has seen successful pork knockers arrive before, and knows how to corrupt them. Shark’s life becomes one of pathetic profligacy. He tries to buy his way into a white man’s world, spending his money wantonly on women, a huge house, an equipage drawn by white horses in which he drives to the races. At the climax of his career he is overtaken by ruin. Born 24 September 1920 in Guyana, Jan Carew is a novelist, playwright, poet and educator. His poetry and first two novels, Black Midas and The Wild Coast, were significant landmarks of the West Indian literature. |
![]() | ![]() | Carew, Jan. Black Midas. London. 1969. Longman. 0582767059. Adapted for Schools by Sylvia Wynter. Illustrated by Aubrey Williams. 184 pages. paperback. Jan Carew’s main achievement in his first published novel, BLACK MIDAS is to illuminate the inner workings, relationships and structure of Guyanese society, in all its colonial and multicultural variety, diversity and complexity. As such, it is one of the earliest novels (1958) to provide reliable insight into that milieu. The hero and narrator of the novel, Aron Smart, is known as ‘Shark’ because he ‘had small white teeth and a shark grin’. This process of naming through raw, physical detail illustrates the unusual importance of physical attributes in the society to which Aron belongs. Aron is black. He is also poor, because poverty is historically linked to the experience of black people as former slaves in his society. Moreover, with such a variety of races and inevitable racial mixing among them, shades of colour come to assume great importance. What BLACK MIDAS offers is a fictional portrait of Guyanese colonial society in which class or rank is assigned to individuals or groups according to factors of race, ethnicity or colour. Jan Rynveld Carew (born 24 September 1920 in Agricola, Guyana) is a novelist, playwright, poet and educator. Born 24 September, 1920 at Agricola, a village in Guyana also called Rome, Carew was educated at the Berbice High School. At age 17, he left Guyana for the United States where he studied at Howard University and Western Reserve University (1944-8). He also went to Charles University in Prague (1948-50) and the Sorbonne in Paris. He has taught at London University, Princeton, Rutgers, Illinois Wesleyan, Hampshire College, Northwestern and Lincoln Universities. Jan Carew has lived in Holland, Mexico, England, France, Spain, Ghana, Canada and the United States. In England, he acted with Sir Laurence Olivier and edited the Kensington Post. Some of the noted figures he has been connected to are W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Shirley Graham DuBois, Maurice Bishop, Cheikh Anta Diop, Edward Scobie, John Henrik Clarke, Tsegaye Medhin Gabre, Sterling D. Plumpp and Ivan Van Sertima. He is the author of GREEN WINTER, GRENADA: THE HOUR WILL STRIKE AGAIN, BLACK MIDAS, THE WILD COAST, FULCRUMS OF CHANGE, GHOSTS IN OUR BLOOD: WITH MALCOLM X IN AFRICA, ENGLAND AND THE CARIBBEAN, THE LAST BARBARIAN, and THE GUYANESE WANDERER. His essays include: ‘The Caribbean writer in exile’, ‘Columbus and the origin of racism in the Americas’, ‘The fusion of African and Amerindian folk myths’, ‘United we stand’,’Culture and Rebellion’,’Black America: the street and the campus’, ‘Jonestown revisited’,’The Ivory trade: The cruelest trade of all, white gold’,’The Synergen project’,’The Amarnth project’, ‘Estevanico: The African Explorer,’ ‘Rape of Paradise: Columbus and the Origin of Racism in the Americas,’ and ‘Moorish Culture-Bringers: Bearers of Englightment’. |
![]() | ![]() | Carew, Jan. Fulcrums of Change: Origins of Racism in the Americas and Other Essays. Trenton. 1988. Africa World Press. 0865430330. Issued Simultaneously In Hardcover. 240 pages. paperback. "Jan first novel Black Midas was a landmark in Caribbean literature. His best works are vivid and powerful social documents informed with his pristine magic and vitality. It is not just in the novel that he has made his mark He is the author of several plays, short stories, poems and essays published throughout the world.... His political insights and wide range of expertise have made him a confidant and advisor to several Prime Ministers in the Third World. He was the moving force behind the organization of African and African American programs at both Rutgers and Princeton.... Jan Carew has provided the stimulus for new departures and directions for thousands of students. I owe him much." - Ivan Van Sertima, author, They Came Before Columbus. "In this brilliant and original collection of essays, Jan Carew combines the lyricism of the poet with the breadth of the scholar. He writes with a clarity of vision that not only makes the past present, but draws our present from that past" —A. Sivanandan, editor, Race & Class. "Fulcrums of Change represents Jan Carew, the polyglot griot of Africa, oppressed minorities, and pain—at his very best—fusing a path from ruins in a universe where those pressed the farthest down have always forced themselves to freedom. It is a collection of essays on racism, exile, Third Worldism and visions of future promise. For griot-Carew the truth simply is: therefore these wonder prose efforts read like scenes from a novel with bits and pieces of proverbs, songs, and poems interspersed among them. It is a rare testimony from a man who has been a part of so many of the changes shaping this century." —Sterling D. Plumpp, University of Illinois at Chicago. "This is an important and pioneering work in a neglected area of study." Dennis Brutus, University of Pittsburgh. Jan Rynveld Carew (born 24 September 1920 in Agricola, Guyana) is a novelist, playwright, poet and educator. Born 24 September, 1920 at Agricola, a village in Guyana also called Rome, Carew was educated at the Berbice High School. At age 17, he left Guyana for the United States where he studied at Howard University and Western Reserve University (1944-8). He also went to Charles University in Prague (1948-50) and the Sorbonne in Paris. He has taught at London University, Princeton, Rutgers, Illinois Wesleyan, Hampshire College, Northwestern and Lincoln Universities. Jan Carew has lived in Holland, Mexico, England, France, Spain, Ghana, Canada and the United States. In England, he acted with Sir Laurence Olivier and edited the Kensington Post. Some of the noted figures he has been connected to are W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Shirley Graham DuBois, Maurice Bishop, Cheikh Anta Diop, Edward Scobie, John Henrik Clarke, Tsegaye Medhin Gabre, Sterling D. Plumpp and Ivan Van Sertima. He is the author of GREEN WINTER, GRENADA: THE HOUR WILL STRIKE AGAIN, BLACK MIDAS, THE WILD COAST, FULCRUMS OF CHANGE, GHOSTS IN OUR BLOOD: WITH MALCOLM X IN AFRICA, ENGLAND AND THE CARIBBEAN, THE LAST BARBARIAN, and THE GUYANESE WANDERER. His essays include: ‘The Caribbean writer in exile’, ‘Columbus and the origin of racism in the Americas’, ‘The fusion of African and Amerindian folk myths’, ‘United we stand’,’Culture and Rebellion’,’Black America: the street and the campus’, ‘Jonestown revisited’,’The Ivory trade: The cruelest trade of all, white gold’,’The Synergen project’,’The Amarnth project’, ‘Estevanico: The African Explorer,’ ‘Rape of Paradise: Columbus and the Origin of Racism in the Americas,’ and ‘Moorish Culture-Bringers: Bearers of Englightment’. |
![]() | ![]() | Carew, Jan. Green Winter. New York. 1965. Stein & Day. Published In England As Moscow Is Not My Mecca. 192 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Peretz Kaminsky. " 'You are now over Soviet territory and from now on you will be subject to Soviet Laws.' " So begins Green Winter, a novel by the first student from British Guiana to get a scholarship behind the Iron Curtain. In this book, Jan Carew tells the story of Joseph, who, being from a colonial nation and colored, looks at Russia with insights as startling as those of Marco Polo when he went to Cathay. Foreign students are given an opportunity to learn Russian quickly before they go on to the Patrice Lumumba University, the Moscow State University, or to colleges in Odessa, Leningrad, or Kiev. Thus, with the gift of the Russian language, thousands of students like Joseph have become the first foreigners in any significant numbers whom the Russians have had in their midst since the revolution. Colored students in Russia become involved in situations both complex and fantastic. Joseph, like the others, visits Russian homes, picks up Russian girls. He falls in love with one, who is banished to the Virgin Lands. He hears colored students called "black monkey' in the streets, fights back against the Kafkaesque bureaucracy, and learns about the phantoms of the terror that survive in Russia. This story is part of the cry of the black man whose hopes are dashed against the day-to-day realities of life behind the Iron Curtain. Elizabeth Bowen wrote of Black Midas, Jan Carew's first book "This reckless novel is picaresque in the great Defoe and Fielding tradition." Green Winter goes far beyond that. It is brutally real. Jan Rynveld Carew (born 24 September 1920 in Agricola, Guyana) is a novelist, playwright, poet and educator. Born 24 September, 1920 at Agricola, a village in Guyana also called Rome, Carew was educated at the Berbice High School. At age 17, he left Guyana for the United States where he studied at Howard University and Western Reserve University (1944-8). He also went to Charles University in Prague (1948-50) and the Sorbonne in Paris. He has taught at London University, Princeton, Rutgers, Illinois Wesleyan, Hampshire College, Northwestern and Lincoln Universities. Jan Carew has lived in Holland, Mexico, England, France, Spain, Ghana, Canada and the United States. In England, he acted with Sir Laurence Olivier and edited the Kensington Post. Some of the noted figures he has been connected to are W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Shirley Graham DuBois, Maurice Bishop, Cheikh Anta Diop, Edward Scobie, John Henrik Clarke, Tsegaye Medhin Gabre, Sterling D. Plumpp and Ivan Van Sertima. He is the author of GREEN WINTER, GRENADA: THE HOUR WILL STRIKE AGAIN, BLACK MIDAS, THE WILD COAST, FULCRUMS OF CHANGE, GHOSTS IN OUR BLOOD: WITH MALCOLM X IN AFRICA, ENGLAND AND THE CARIBBEAN, THE LAST BARBARIAN, and THE GUYANESE WANDERER. His essays include: ‘The Caribbean writer in exile’, ‘Columbus and the origin of racism in the Americas’, ‘The fusion of African and Amerindian folk myths’, ‘United we stand’,’Culture and Rebellion’,’Black America: the street and the campus’, ‘Jonestown revisited’,’The Ivory trade: The cruelest trade of all, white gold’,’The Synergen project’,’The Amarnth project’, ‘Estevanico: The African Explorer,’ ‘Rape of Paradise: Columbus and the Origin of Racism in the Americas,’ and ‘Moorish Culture-Bringers: Bearers of Englightment’. |
![]() | ![]() | Carew, Jan. Moscow Is Not My Mecca. London. 1964. Secker & Warburg. 198 pages. hardcover. " 'You are now over Soviet territory and from now on you will be subject to Soviet Laws.' " So begins Green Winter, a novel by the first student from British Guiana to get a scholarship behind the Iron Curtain. In this book, Jan Carew tells the story of Joseph, who, being from a colonial nation and colored, looks at Russia with insights as startling as those of Marco Polo when he went to Cathay. Foreign students are given an opportunity to learn Russian quickly before they go on to the Patrice Lumumba University, the Moscow State University, or to colleges in Odessa, Leningrad, or Kiev. Thus, with the gift of the Russian language, thousands of students like Joseph have become the first foreigners in any significant numbers whom the Russians have had in their midst since the revolution. Colored students in Russia become involved in situations both complex and fantastic. Joseph, like the others, visits Russian homes, picks up Russian girls. He falls in love with one, who is banished to the Virgin Lands. He hears colored students called "black monkey' in the streets, fights back against the Kafkaesque bureaucracy, and learns about the phantoms of the terror that survive in Russia. This story is part of the cry of the black man whose hopes are dashed against the day-to-day realities of life behind the Iron Curtain. Elizabeth Bowen wrote of Black Midas, Jan Carew's first book "This reckless novel is picaresque in the great Defoe and Fielding tradition." Green Winter goes far beyond that. It is brutally real. Jan Rynveld Carew (born 24 September 1920 in Agricola, Guyana) is a novelist, playwright, poet and educator. Born 24 September, 1920 at Agricola, a village in Guyana also called Rome, Carew was educated at the Berbice High School. At age 17, he left Guyana for the United States where he studied at Howard University and Western Reserve University (1944-8). He also went to Charles University in Prague (1948-50) and the Sorbonne in Paris. He has taught at London University, Princeton, Rutgers, Illinois Wesleyan, Hampshire College, Northwestern and Lincoln Universities. Jan Carew has lived in Holland, Mexico, England, France, Spain, Ghana, Canada and the United States. In England, he acted with Sir Laurence Olivier and edited the Kensington Post. Some of the noted figures he has been connected to are W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Shirley Graham DuBois, Maurice Bishop, Cheikh Anta Diop, Edward Scobie, John Henrik Clarke, Tsegaye Medhin Gabre, Sterling D. Plumpp and Ivan Van Sertima. He is the author of GREEN WINTER, GRENADA: THE HOUR WILL STRIKE AGAIN, BLACK MIDAS, THE WILD COAST, FULCRUMS OF CHANGE, GHOSTS IN OUR BLOOD: WITH MALCOLM X IN AFRICA, ENGLAND AND THE CARIBBEAN, THE LAST BARBARIAN, and THE GUYANESE WANDERER. His essays include: ‘The Caribbean writer in exile’, ‘Columbus and the origin of racism in the Americas’, ‘The fusion of African and Amerindian folk myths’, ‘United we stand’,’Culture and Rebellion’,’Black America: the street and the campus’, ‘Jonestown revisited’,’The Ivory trade: The cruelest trade of all, white gold’,’The Synergen project’,’The Amarnth project’, ‘Estevanico: The African Explorer,’ ‘Rape of Paradise: Columbus and the Origin of Racism in the Americas,’ and ‘Moorish Culture-Bringers: Bearers of Englightment’. |
![]() | ![]() | Carew, Jan. The Guyanese Wanderer. Louisville. 2007. Sarabande Books. 9781932511505. 107 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Jan Carew. Cover & text design by Charles Casey Martin In The Guyanese Wanderer, Jan Carew sets a fabulist eye and elegant hand to both old world and new. Combining Caribbean folklore, ghost story, adventure tale, and the literature of European exile, these narratives contain a spirited dialect and colloquial voice that startles and delights. The journey begins in Carew’s homeland, among the gaudy parrots, jaguars, and six o’clock bees of Guyana, and then shifts to the boulevards of London and Paris. Carew’s characters—hunters and seers, buffoons and book-people—defy convention, especially the strong-willed women. Betina puts her husband in his place with a prospecting knife. Belfon comes of age with the help, and seduction, of Couvade, a preacher-woman. A tagalong hunter named Tonic gets in over his head in a stampede of hogs. And in London, a black man called Caesar, prefers a landlord who puts his racism up front. Carew has lived a long life, in countries all over the world. He’s comfortable taking on just about anything, whether racial prejudice or whimsical fable, the fierce natural world or city slum. These are the brilliant songs of a learned man. Born 24 September 1920 in Guyana, Jan Carew is a novelist, playwright, poet and educator. His poetry and first two novels, Black Midas and The Wild Coast, were significant landmarks of the West Indian literature. |
![]() | ![]() | Carew, Jan. The Wild Coast. London. 1958. Secker & Warburg. 256 pages. hardcover. On the Courentyne coast of British Guiana – ‘the wild coast’ where Raleigh first heard about the city of El Dorado – the boy Hector Bradshaw of Dutch-Creole origin, lives with his guardian, a negro matriarch, heir to the estate of his absent father at the village of Tarlogie. It is a savage world which surrounds him, whose inhabitants pay lip-service to the Christianity which has been brought to them but where the pagan superstitions of their slave ancestors still rule their hearts. There are murder and madness, the blood orgy of a herd of wild hogs attacking a jaguar, the frenzy and ecstasy of the dance of the winds. There is Doorne, the old hunter, a man existing in his own evilness, and Tengar, his son, a giant of a man invincible in his innocence, who brings a courtesan from the city back to be his woman. In such an environment Hector must grow up, part of it because there is slave blood in his veins too, yet apart from it because he is the boy from ‘the big house.’ How through sexual adventure, violence and death he comes to manhood is the theme of a novel which is in essence a portrait of a whole community, vividly, sharply, compulsively alive. Of Carew’s first novel, BLACK MIDAS, Elizabeth Bowen wrote: ‘This reckless novel is picaresque in the great Defoe and Fielding tradition.’ Less reckless in construction than its predecessor, THE WILD COAST is filled throughout with the stuff from which great fiction is made. Jan Rynveld Carew (born 24 September 1920 in Agricola, Guyana) is a novelist, playwright, poet and educator. Born 24 September, 1920 at Agricola, a village in Guyana also called Rome, Carew was educated at the Berbice High School. At age 17, he left Guyana for the United States where he studied at Howard University and Western Reserve University (1944-8). He also went to Charles University in Prague (1948-50) and the Sorbonne in Paris. He has taught at London University, Princeton, Rutgers, Illinois Wesleyan, Hampshire College, Northwestern and Lincoln Universities. Jan Carew has lived in Holland, Mexico, England, France, Spain, Ghana, Canada and the United States. In England, he acted with Sir Laurence Olivier and edited the Kensington Post. Some of the noted figures he has been connected to are W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Shirley Graham DuBois, Maurice Bishop, Cheikh Anta Diop, Edward Scobie, John Henrik Clarke, Tsegaye Medhin Gabre, Sterling D. Plumpp and Ivan Van Sertima. He is the author of GREEN WINTER, GRENADA: THE HOUR WILL STRIKE AGAIN, BLACK MIDAS, THE WILD COAST, FULCRUMS OF CHANGE, GHOSTS IN OUR BLOOD: WITH MALCOLM X IN AFRICA, ENGLAND AND THE CARIBBEAN, THE LAST BARBARIAN, and THE GUYANESE WANDERER. His essays include: ‘The Caribbean writer in exile’, ‘Columbus and the origin of racism in the Americas’, ‘The fusion of African and Amerindian folk myths’, ‘United we stand’,’Culture and Rebellion’,’Black America: the street and the campus’, ‘Jonestown revisited’,’The Ivory trade: The cruelest trade of all, white gold’,’The Synergen project’,’The Amarnth project’, ‘Estevanico: The African Explorer,’ ‘Rape of Paradise: Columbus and the Origin of Racism in the Americas,’ and ‘Moorish Culture-Bringers: Bearers of Englightment’. |
![]() | ![]() | Carrington, Roslyn. A Thirst For Rain. New York. 1999. Kensington Publishing. 1575664461. 208 pages. paperback. Set in the bone-dry northern foothills of Trinidad, this debut evokes the vibrant rhythms of the Caribbean and captures the island unseen by tourists, as men and women struggle side by side in a cramped hillside neighborhood, thirsting for love, wholeness, and a better future. Roslyn Carrington (born January 31, 1966, Santa Cruz, Trinidad and Tobago) is a Trinidadian who has traveled extensively, but chooses to live and work on her native island. For three years, she wrote a popular weekly opinion column in Trinidad and Tobago's most established newspaper, "The Guardian. In addition to "A Thirst for Rain, Every Bitter Thing Sweet, and "Candy Don't Come in Gray, she has written a collection of short stories titled "Sex and Obeah. |
![]() | ![]() | Cashmore, Ernest. Rastaman: The Rastafarian Movement in England. London. 1979. Allen & Unwin. 004301108x. 272 pages. hardcover. In the mid-1970s the Rastafarian movement first appeared on the streets of England and provoked suspicion and anxiety. Ernest Ellis Cashmore penetrates the mystique of a movement, whose policy of total non-contact with whites is often an obstacle to understanding. Cashmore analyzes the genesis and development of the movement, reactions to it and what it means to its members. Cashmore delineates a history that begins in sixteenth-century Jamaica tracing it to the streets of Handsworth and Brixton; from the Rastas' puzzling relationship with their reluctant prophet Marcus Garvey to their intriguing liaison with the punk rock movement. Ernest Cashmore was born and spent his first eighteen years in Birmingham, mostly in the dense immigrant area of Handsworth. His doctoral research at the London School of Economics was on the Rastafarian movement in England, and he is presently a visiting Lecturer at the Department of Sociology at the University of Aston. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Aime. A Season in the Congo. New York. 1969. Grove Press. Evergreen Original. Translated from the French by Ralph Manheim. 104 pages. paperback. E-533. Aime Cesaire, the renowned African poet, has written this passionate play about the African leader Patrice Lumumba, who was murdered in the Congo in 1961. The play is marked by Cesaire's sensitivity to African experience and character, his care in preserving the outline of those facts that are a matter of historical record, and his ability to imagine the substance of life that must have occurred between the lines of historical evidence. Cesaire himself says of the play: '[Lumumba is] a man of imagination, always on top of the present situation, and because of this also a man of faith; thus he is the African, the 'muntu,' at once the man who shares the vital force (the 'ngolo' ) and the man of words (the 'nommo'). ‘Struggling with the difficulties of the modern world, the cold world of logic and of private interests, he achieves, quite lucidly, his destiny as both victim and hero. Conquered, but also conqueror. Breaking himself against the bars of the cage, but also making a breach in them. Through this man (a man whose very stature seems to designate him asa legend) the whole history of a continent and of a people is played out in an exemplary and symbolic manner.’ AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Aime. A Tempest. New York. 1988. Ubu Repertory Theater Publications. 0913745154. Based On Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST-An Adaptation For A Black Theater. Translated from the French by Richard Miller. 75 pages. paperback. A troupe of black actors perform their own Tempest. Cesaire's rich and insightful adaptation draws on contemporary Carribean society, the African-American experience and African mythology to raise questions about colonialism, racism and their lasting effects. AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Aime. Cadastre. New York. 1973. The Third Press. 089388085x. Translated from the French by Emile Snyder & Sanford Upson. Introduction by Emile Snyder. 141 pages. paperback. Jacket design by Bennie Arrington A ‘cadastre’ is an official register of the quantity, value, and ownership of real estate used in apportioning taxes. But where does a Black man, born in the New World, find his name, genealogy and estate in the cadastre of history? Only in the plundered continent of Africa. In all his poetry Césaire seeks to recover the roots from which he and his Black brothers in the West Indies and the Americas have been torn. Each poem is a safari into the past, each word an evocation, in some way, of Africa often through her flora and fauna which are named with precision, anguish, and love. This is a world reconstructed even beyond genesis: a marriage of birds, fishes, insects with the saps of trees and the furrows of the earth, consummated under ‘the erect majesty of the original eye’ — the sun, overseeing history. But history is made by men and in these poems Césaire vents his anger at those who had presumed they could expropriate for themselves both the natural and the human order. As early as ‘Return To My Native Land’ (1939) the poet had written: ‘my memory is circled with blood.’ In CADASTRE, which represents the poet’s work from 1945 to 1959, the blood coagulates into specific images of torture, of burnt flesh, of vitiated dreams — and also, of an insatiable love waiting for the propitious moment to express itself among men of all races freed from stupidity, greed, and hatred. Aime Césaire was born in Basse Pointe, Martinique in 1913. He studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he met Leopold Sédar Senghor. Together with Leon Damas, they later founded the Negritude Movement in Literature. Césaire was Mayor of Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique and a member of the French National Assembly. His long list of distinguished poetry and drama includes RETURN TO MY NATIVE LAND, FERREMENTS, and A SEASON IN THE CONGO based on the Lumumba tragedy. Emile Snyder is professor of Comparative, French, and African Literatures at Indiana University. Sanford Upson, on extended leave from teaching, studied French Literature at Wesleyan University and at the Universities of Paris and Indiana. . AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Aime. Cadastre. New York. 1973. Third Press. 0893880701. Translated from the French by Emile Snyder & Sanford Upson. Introduction by Emile Snyder. 141 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Bennie Arrington A ‘cadastre’ is an official register of the quantity, value, and ownership of real estate used in apportioning taxes. But where does a Black man, born in the New World, find his name, genealogy and estate in the cadastre of history? Only in the plundered continent of Africa. In all his poetry Césaire seeks to recover the roots from which he and his Black brothers in the West Indies and the Americas have been torn. Each poem is a safari into the past, each word an evocation, in some way, of Africa often through her flora and fauna which are named with precision, anguish, and love. This is a world reconstructed even beyond genesis: a marriage of birds, fishes, insects with the saps of trees and the furrows of the earth, consummated under ‘the erect majesty of the original eye’ — the sun, overseeing history. But history is made by men and in these poems Césaire vents his anger at those who had presumed they could expropriate for themselves both the natural and the human order. As early as ‘Return To My Native Land’ (1939) the poet had written: ‘my memory is circled with blood.’ In CADASTRE, which represents the poet’s work from 1945 to 1959, the blood coagulates into specific images of torture, of burnt flesh, of vitiated dreams — and also, of an insatiable love waiting for the propitious moment to express itself among men of all races freed from stupidity, greed, and hatred. Aime Césaire was born in Basse Pointe, Martinique in 1913. He studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he met Leopold Sédar Senghor. Together with Leon Damas, they later founded the Negritude Movement in Literature. Césaire was Mayor of Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique and a member of the French National Assembly. His long list of distinguished poetry and drama includes RETURN TO MY NATIVE LAND, FERREMENTS, and A SEASON IN THE CONGO based on the Lumumba tragedy. Emile Snyder is professor of Comparative, French, and African Literatures at Indiana University. Sanford Upson, on extended leave from teaching, studied French Literature at Wesleyan University and at the Universities of Paris and Indiana. . AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Aime. Cahier d'un retour au pays natal. Columbus. 2000. Ohio State University Press. 0814250203. Edited with introduction, commentary, and notes by Abiola Irele. paperback. AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Césaire, Aimé. Cahier d'un retour au pays natal; précéde par 'Un grand poète noir,' par and ré Breton. New York. 1947. Brentano's. Translated by Lionel Abel and Ivan Goll [sic]. unpaginated. Bilingual edition. Title in English: Memorandum on my Martinique. AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Césaire, Aimé. Cahier d'un retour au pays natal. Return to my native land. Paris. 1971. Presence Africaine. Translated by Emile Snyder. Preface by André Breton. 155 pages. The trans. is based on the 1947 translation (see No. 576), incorporating changes in the edition definitive (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1956). A bilingual edition. Césaire's famous poem, first published in periodical form (1939), then as a book, is now considered a document which is prophetic of the négritude movement. AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Aime. Discourse on Colonialism. New York. 1972. Monthly Review Press. 0853452059. Translated from the French by Joan Pinkham. 79 pages. hardcover. Cover photo by Henri Mellin This volume makes available for the first time in English the most important political essay by the father of ‘Negritude’ as concept and as movement. Césaire’s Discourse on Colonial• ism was first published in 1955, and did much to shape the emergent Third World view of Europe and the United States. Included as well is an interview with Césaire about his ideas and work, conducted by the Haitian poet René Depestre in Havana in 1967. Césaire is already well known to the English-reading public through his plays and poetry, especially RETURN TO MY NATIVE LAND, which André Breton called ‘nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of all time.’ These political essays make available his pathbreaking contributions to the revolt of the Third World. The main subject of these writings is the barbarism of the colonizer and the unhappiness of the colonized, the destruction of civilizations that were dignified and fraternal by the colonizer’s machine for exploitation. Césaire praises as healthy contact between the peoples of the world. But between the colonizer and the colonized there is no contact; there is only intimidation, police, taxes, thievery, rape, contempt, mistrust, and the morgue. it is not human contact, but the contact between dehumanized elites and degraded masses. Far from seeing the end of the era of formal colonization as the end of the problem, Césaire singles out the American form of imperialism as the only variety of oppression that surpasses that of Europe. Barbarism’s hour, he says, has arrived — modern barbarism, the American hour. Like Fanon, who was also born in Martinique and educated in France, Césaire turned to Africa for values he could counterpose to the Europe he came to despise. The ‘humanism’ of Europe he denounced as a pseudo-humanism, with a sordidly racist conception of the rights of man. European and United States civilization he saw as sick; morally weakened by its use of force against the subjugated, and by its justifications of imperialism, it calls down upon itself its own punishment. . AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Aime. Lost Body. New York. 1986. George Braziller. 0807611476. Illustrated by Pablo PicassoIntroduction & Translated by Clayton Eshleman & Annette Smith. 132 pages. hardcover. Corps perdu (LOST BODY), Césaire’s shortest collection, is a group of ten poems, published in 1950 and illus¬trated with thirty-two engravings by Picasso. In 1986 George Braziller published a facsimile edition of the book. In LOST BODY Césaire addresses themes of ‘blackness’, exile, and negritude. AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Aime. Lyric and Dramatic Poetry, 1946-82. Charlottesville. 1990. University Press Of Virginia. 0813912563. Translated from the French by Clayton Eshleman & Annette Smith. 235 pages. hardcover. Aime Cesaire was born in 1913 in Martinique in the French Caribbean. He left for Paris in 1931 at the age of 18 with a scholarship for school. During his time at the Lycee Louis-le Grand, he helped found a student publication, Etudiant Noir. In 1936 Cesaire started working on his famed piece ‘Cahier’ which was not published until 1939. He married fellow student Suzanne Roussi in 1937, and the couple moved back to Martinique with their son in 1939. Both Aime and Suzanne got jobs at the Lycee Schoelcher. In 1945 Cesaire began his political career when he was elected mayor of Fort-de-France and deputy in the Constituent Assembly on the French Communist Party ticket. During the 1940s, Cesaire was busy writing and publishing many collections of his work. He seemed to be influenced by art because he wrote a tribute to a painter named Wilfredo Lam and one of his collections has illustrations by Pablo Picasso (Cesaire xxxviii). In 1956 Aime Cesaire resigned from the French Communist Party and two years later he began the ‘Parti Progressiste Martiniquais.’ During these years Cesaire attended two conferences for ‘Negro Writers and Artists’ in Paris. In 1968 he published the first version of Une Tempete, ‘a radical adaptation of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest’ (Davis xvi). He continued on with his writings of poetry and plays and retired from politics in 1993. All of Cesaire’s writings are in French with a limited number having English translations. AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Aime. Non-Vicious Circle: 20 Poems of Aime Cesaire. Stanford. 1984. Stanford University Press. 0804712077. Translated from the French by Gregson Davis. 152 pages. hardcover. Cover art - Picasso The black Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, whose first major work was hailed by André Breton as ‘the greatest lyric monument of our time,’ has long been regarded in France as one of the great poets of the twentieth century. Moreover, the philosophy of negritude evolved by Césaire and his friend Leopold Senghor is an important bridge between modernism and contemporary Third World nationalistic movements. The twenty poems in this book, presented in French with facing English translations, have been chosen to illustrate fundamental aspects of Césaire’s thought, imagery, and style as these crystallized into a single, coherent system in the late 1940’s and the 1950’s. The work aims to assist both nonspecialist reader and scholar to a deeper comprehension of the poems and their formidable linguistic difficulties. The translator’s skillful commentary steers a reader around the pitfalls in Césaire’s complex and idiosyncratic use of language (notably the absence of conventional punctuation, deformations of syntax, and verbal inventiveness), and he emphasizes the larger themes and patterns of imagery that link these poems both among themselves and to the rest of Césaire’s work. A substantial introduction discusses Césaire, his intellectual context, and the major critical issues in his work. The book is illustrated with a selection from the etchings done by Picasso for Cesaire’s collection Corps perdu. AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. Gregson Davis is Associate Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Aime. Notebook of a Return To the Native Land. Middletown. 2001. Wesleyan University Press. 0819564524. Translated & Edited by Clayton Eshleman & Annette Smith. Introduction by Andre Breton. 68 pages. paperback. COVER ILLUSTRATION: Wifredo Lam, Cuban, 1902-1982, 'Mother and Child,' 1957, pastel and charcoal on white paper. Aimé Césaire is most well known as the co-creator (with Leopold Senghor) of the concept of negritude. His long poem Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, written at the end of World War II, is a masterpiece of immense cultural significance and beauty and became an anthem of Blacks around the world. Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith achieve a laudable adaptation of Césaire’s work to English by clarifying double meanings, stretching syntax, and finding equivalent English puns, all while remaining remarkably true to the French text. Andre Breton’s introduction, ‘A Great Black Poet,’ situates the text and provides a moving tribute to Césaire. ‘You hold in your hands one of the 20th century’s greatest works of art by one of the world’s greatest poets.’ - Robin D. G. Kelley, author of YO’MAMA’S DISFUNKTIONAL!: FIGHTING THE CULTURE WARS IN URBAN AMERICA. ‘Aimé Césaire is one of the most significant and influential poets of the twentieth century. Notebook is a social, philosophical, political, aesthetic lighthouse . . . We are lucky to have this fine translation at the beginning of the new millennium.’ - Jayne Cortez, author of SOMEWHERE IN ADVANCE OF NOWHERE. . Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith translated AIMÉ CÉSAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY (1983), which won the Witter Bynner Award from the Poetry Society of America. . Originally published in 1947 as Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Aime. Return To My Native Land. Middlesex. 1969. Penguin Books. 0140421173. Introduction by Mazisi Kunene. Translated from the French by John Berger & Anna Bostock. 95 pages. paperback. Cover shows a detail from 'Tete de Negre' by Picasso RETURN TO MY NATIVE LAND – Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (translated in this volume by John Berger and Anna Bostock) was written years ago but seems to belong very much to our own time. Its theme is the future of the Negro race, expressed in the spirit of Frantz Fanon or Malcolm X or the Olympic athletes who raised black-gloved hands in Mexico. Nevertheless this is no political tract, but a poem of remarkable lyricism and probably the most sustained to have been inspired by the French Surrealist movement. Cesaire’s life and work is discussed at length in an introduction which has been written for this edition by the South African poet Mazisi Kunene. AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Aime. Return To My Native Land. Brooklyn. 2014. Archipelago Books. 9781935744948. Translated from the French by John Berger and Anna Bostock. Drawings by Peter de Francia. 80 pages. paperback. Cover art: William Kentridge. A work of immense cultural significance and beauty, this long poem became an anthem for the African diaspora and the birth of the Negritude movement. With unusual juxtapositions of object and metaphor, a bouquet of language-play, and deeply resonant rhythms, Césaire considered this work a break into the forbidden, at once a cry of rebellion and a celebration of black identity. ‘It was in April 1941, while passing through Martinique on his wartime journey to New York, that André Breton chanced on a long poem, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, freshly printed in the magazine Tropiques. He at once declared it a masterpiece and the work of a great black poet. Its author was a young Caribbean writer, Aimé Césaire, and the native land of its title was Martinique, to which the author had returned after a long stay as a student in Paris. Composed in 1939, his poem would circulate in various forms until a definitive edition was issued by Présence Africaine in Paris in 1956. An explosive critique of French colonialism, it had become a central text of the Negritude movement. In 1939, the island of Martinique was still an open wound, left septic after French rule. The poem pulls no punches. Now tremulous, now grating, the improvised text drums and jabs in spasmodic phrases and slogans. Each encounter, each twist of idiom, thrusts itself into the reader’s mind as a fierce challenge to understand and to empathize. Breton saw in Césaire’s writing a quality of mastery in his tone and was thrilled to discover that Surrealism could erupt in the tropics, the expression of a fresh poetics that shattered the even hum of French colonial discourse. Césaire’s poetry makes for difficult reading. Its headlong progression is accretive and associative, full of repeated phrases and unsettling detours. Its ruling device is the surrealist image, in which words clash and flare, to create tantalizing moments of revelation, paradoxically offering meaning while undermining coherence. The text spills forth in searing details and tableaux, ranging from the whispered evocation of a little line of sand to the description of a poverty-stricken black man on a bus, whose decrepit state inspires in the poet disgust and shame, which swiftly modulate into anger. Martinique is an island lost but now found, as the young writer hammers out his portrait of a debased homeland crying out for recognition and redemption. The poem’s uncompromising delivery was thoroughly absorbed and emulated by the translators John Berger and Anna Bostock, who wrestled its outbursts into a forceful yet faithful English equivalent. Their version dates from 1969. To this reissue are added six charcoal drawings by the late Peter de Francia, showing African bodies in poses suggestive of sheer torpor: yet we may take it that tropical languor is but a prelude to decisive rebellion.’ - Roger Cardinal. ‘Return to My Native Land is a monumental tome to our times, and this new translation by John Berger and Anya Bostock possesses the tropical heat of the poet’s sonority. Though, in his refrain, Aimé Césaire intones the small hours, there isn’t anything small about the raw lyricism articulated into this incantation of fiery wit. The translators convey the spirit of improvisation, yet, with a deftness of image and music, they deliver this book-length poem as a seamless work of art—an existential cry against a man-made void. What translates is the speaker’s revolutionary psyche on to the page—his fierce affirmation of existence through an eloquent clarity of the real and surreal. Nowhere is Césaire’s passion sacrificed; this translation is a tribute to the poet.’ - Yusef Komunyakaa. AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Aime. Solar Throat Slashed: The Unexpurgated 1948 Edition. Middletown. 2011. Wesleyan University Press. 9780819570703. Introduction by A. James Arnold and notes by Clayton Eshleman. 189 pages. hardcover. Cover illustration by Wilfredo Lam, ‘Personage,’ 1973 Soleil cou coupé (SOLAR THROAT SLASHED) is Aimé Césaire’s most explosive collection of poetry. Animistically dense, charged with eroticism and blasphemy, and imbued with an African and Vodun spirituality, this book takes the French surrealist adventure to new heights and depths. A Césaire poem is an intersection at which metaphoric traceries create historically aware nexuses of thought and experience, jagged solidarity, apocalyptic surgery and solar dynamite. The original 1948 French edition of Soleil cou coupé has a dense magico-religious frame of reference. In the late 1950s, Césaire was increasingly politically focused and seeking a wider audience, when he, in effect, gelded the 1948 text – eliminating 31 of the 72 poems, and editing another 29. Until now, only the revised 1961 edition, called CADASTRE, has been translated. The revised text lacks the radical originality of Soleil cou coupe. This Wesleyan edition presents all the original poems en face with the new English translations and includes an introduction by A. James Arnold and notes by Clayton Eshleman. AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. CLAYTON ESHLEMAN is a poet, translator, essayist, and editor. He is the author of collections of poetry, and the primary American translator of Cesar Vallejo, Aime Cesaire, and Antonin Artaud. Eshleman is the first poet to realize a huge, researched, and imaginative project, in prose and poetry, on Ice Age cave art: JUNIPER FUSE: UPPER PALEOLITHIC IMAGINATION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE UNDERWORLD. He was also the founder and editor of Caterpillar magazine(1967-1973)and Sulfur magazine (1981-2000). In 2011, Black Widow Press will publish his cotranslation with Lucas Klein of BEi Dao’s ENDURE. A. JAMES ARNOLD is an emeritus professor French at the University of Virginia. He is the lead editor of Cesaire’s complete literary works in French (in Pregress), editor of Cesaire’s LYRIC AND DRAMATIC POETRY (1946-82), and author of MODERNISM AND NEGRITUDE THE POETRY AND POETICS OF AIME CESAIRE. |
![]() | ![]() | Césaire, Aimé. State of the union. Cleveland. 1966. Caterpillar. Edited and translated Clayton Eshleman and Denis Kelly. 42 pages. 102 Poems selected from Les Armes miraculeuses (1947), Cadastre (1961), and Ferrements (1960). AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Aime. The Collected Poetry. Berkeley. 1983. University Of California Press. 0520043472. Translated from the French & With Introduction & Notes by Clayton Eshleman & Annette Smith. 408 pages. hardcover. Jacket art - 'Le vent chaud (1946) by Wifredo Lam ‘In Aimé Césaire the great surrealist tradition draws to a close, achieves its definitive meaning and is destroyed: surrealism, a European movement in poetry, is snatched from the Europeans by a black man who turns it against them and assigns a rigorously defined function to it . . . a Césaire poem explodes and whirls about itself like a rocket, suns burst forth whirling and exploding like new suns - it perpetually surpasses itself - Jean-Paul Sartre . . . Born in 1913 on the French-speaking Caribbean island of Martinique, Aimé Césaire went to Paris as a scholarship student at the age of eighteen. There, with Leopold Senghoi later to become famous as a poet and an African statesman, Césaire, as he put it, ‘discovered Africa.’ The first fruit of the discovery came on the eve of World War II when, awaiting his return to Martinique, Césaire wrote a long and brilliant poem, entitled Notebook of a Return to the Native Land. The effect of that work - ‘the national anthem of blacks the world ovel’ as one critic described it - has been extraordinary. Portions of it have simply entered the language of French-speaking Africa. The Notebook inaugurated Césaire’s long search for negritude, the black cultural archetype that would negate the political and geographical categories of colonialism. The same search continued in a surprising new way when in 1945 he was elected mayor of Martinique and deputy to the French National Assembly, positions he has held to the present day, as a Communist until 1956 and thereafter as the head of his own party. He has remained intensely active in literature, writing, roughly, poetry in the 1950s, drama in the 1960s, and essays throughout. Cësaire was early recognized as a major poet in the surrealist tradition. In 1943, André Bréton wrote of him: ‘It is a black man today who wields the French language as today no white man can. It is a black man who is our guide to the unexplored, making connections as he goes, and almost playfully, that pave our path with electricity. It is a black who is not only a black but all mankind, expressing all its queries, all its anxieties, all its hopes, and all its ecstasies.’ For Smith and Eshleman, Césaire ‘symbolizes and sums up what is probably the twentieth century’s most important phenomenon: the powerful surge next to the old and the new world, of a third world both very new and very old.’ Their edition, containing introduction, notes, the French original, and a new translation of Césaire’s poetry - the complex and challenging later work as well as the famous Notebook - will remain the definitive Césaire in English, a monument to a poet who is, to quote from one of his own works, ‘that very ancient yet new being, at once very complex and very simple who at the limit of dream and reality, of day and night, between absence and presence, searches for and receives in the sudden triggering of inner cataclysms the password of connivance and power.’ . Clayton Eshleman has published many books of poetry, essays, and translations. He won the National Book Award in 1979 for his translation with José Rubia Barcia of César Vallejo: The Complete Posthumous Poetry (University of California Press, 1978), and is the editor of Sulfur, a poetry journal. Annette Smith is French, and was born in Algeria in a milieu much involved with the emergence of African nations. She is Associate Professor of French at the California Institute of Technology, and the author of a book and several articles on the relationship between the natural sciences and French literature in the nineteenth century. AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Césaire, Aimé. The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire: Bilingual Edition. Middletown. 2017. Wesleyan University Press. 9780819574831. Wesleyan Poetry Series. Translated by Clayton Eshleman and A. James Arnold. 952 pages. hardcover. The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire gathers all of Cesaire's celebrated verse into one bilingual edition. The French portion is comprised of newly established first editions of Césaire's poetic œuvre made available in French in 2014 under the title Poésie, Théâtre, Essais et Discours, edited by A. J. Arnold and an international team of specialists. To prepare the English translations, the translators started afresh from this French edition. Included here are translations of first editions of the poet's early work, prior to political interventions in the texts after 1955, revealing a new understanding of Cesaire's aesthetic and political trajectory. A truly comprehensive picture of Cesaire's poetry and poetics is made possible thanks to a thorough set of notes covering variants, historical and cultural references, and recurring figures and structures, a scholarly introduction and a glossary. This book provides a new cornerstone for readers and scholars in 20th century poetry, African diasporic literature, and postcolonial studies. Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) was best known as the co-creator (with Léopold Senghor) of the concept of négritude. Clayton Eshleman is emeritus professor of English at Eastern Michigan University and the foremost American translator of César Vallejo and Aimé Césaire. A. James Arnold is emeritus professor of French at the University of Virginia. He edited A History of Literature in the Caribbean and authored Modernism and Negritude: The Poetry and Poetics of Aimé Césaire. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Aime. The Tragedy of King Christophe. New York. 1970. Grove Press. Translated from the French by Ralph Manheim. Paperback Original. 96 pages. paperback. E-547. Aime Cesaire, the celebrated black poet from Martinique, tells a double story in this psychologically and politically acute play: the epic of the independence of a colony and a new version of the ancient theme of hubris. Henri Christophe, the black ex-slave and cook who, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, became first a general and then King of Haiti, is in this play a man driven by ambition. His terrible need to imprint the glory of free Haiti on the historical consciousness of the world fires his imagination to deeds which at first seem glorious but finally take a devastating toll of the people and of himself. The greatest symbol of Christophe’s reign, the citadel with the ironic name of Sans Souci, proves to be the symbol of his downfall. For the building of this citadel is the task which breaks the hearts and will of his people and convinces them that Christophe is no longer a benevolent ruler but a despot who must die. But Césaire submits that even in his final mad- ness Christophe did not altogether lose his humanity, and that his original dedication to his people and his native land, and his vision of the freedom of black people throughout the world, made his lonely death less ignoble. . AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM. |
![]() | ![]() | Cesaire, Suzanne. The Great Camouflage: Writings of Dissent (1941-1945). Middletown. 2012. Wesleyan University Press. 9780819572752. Edited by Daniel Maximin. Translated by Keith L. Walker. 67 pages. paperback. Cover illustration: Suzanne Cesaire The Great Camouflage translates and assembles in one volume the seven articles Suzanne Césaire wrote for the cultural journal Tropiques. Césaire engages anthropology, esthetics, surrealism, history, and poetry as she grapples with questions of power and deception, self-deception, the economic slipknot of a post-slavery debt system, identity and inauthenticity, bad faith, psychological and affective aberration, and cultural zombification. All are caught in the web of "the great camouflage." The collection provides a multifaceted portrait of Césaire, and includes short writings from others who wrote passionately about her, including André Breton, André Masson, René Ménil, Daniel Maximin, and her husband Aimé Césaire and daughter, Ina Césaire. Suzanne Césaire [née Roussi] (11 August 1915 – 16 May 1966), born in Martinique, an overseas department of France, was a French writer, teacher, scholar, anti-colonial and feminist activist, and Surrealist. Her husband was the poet and politician Aimé Césaire. Césaire (née Roussi) was born on 11 August 1915 in Poterie, Martinique, to Flore Roussi (née William), a school teacher, and Benoït Roussi, a sugar factory worker. She began her education at her local primary school in Rivière-Salée in Martinique (which still had the status of a French colonial territory at that time), before attending a girls' boarding-school in the capital, Fort-de-France. Having completed her secondary education, she went to study literature in Toulouse and then in Paris at the prestigious École normale supérieure from 1936-1938. During her first year as a student in Paris, Suzanne (then still named Roussi) meet Léopold Sédar Senghor, who introduced her to Aimé Césaire, a fellow student at the École normale supérieure. The following year, on 10 July 1937, the couple married at the town hall of the 14th arrondissement in Paris. During their studies, the Césaires were both part of the editorial team of the militant journal L'Étudiant noir. In 1938 the couple had their first child. The following year they returned to Martinique where they both took up teaching jobs at the Lycée Schoelcher. They went on to have six children together, divorcing in April 1963 after 25 years of marriage. Césaire wrote in French and published seven essays during her career as a writer. All seven of these essays were published between 1941 and 1945 in the Martinique cultural journal Tropiques, of which she was a co-founder and editor along with her husband, Aimé Césaire, and René Ménil, both of whom were notable French poets from Martinique. Her writing explored themes such as Caribbean identity, civilisation, and surrealism. While her writing remains largely unknown to Anglophone readers, excerpts from her essays "Leo Frobenius and the Problem of Civilisations", "A Civilisation’s Discontent", "1943: Surrealism and Us", and "The Great Camouflage" can be found translated into English in the anthology The Refusal of the Shadow: Surrealism and the Caribbean (Verso, 1996), edited by Michael Richardson. Césaire had a particular affinity with surrealism, which she described as "the tightrope of our hope". In her essay "1943: Surrealism and Us", she called for a Martinican surrealism: Our surrealism will then deliver it the bread of its depths. Finally those sordid contemporary antinomies of black/white, European/African, civilised/savage will be transcended. The magical power of the mahoulis will be recovered, drawn forth from living sources. Colonial stupidity will be purified in the blue welding flame. Our value as metal, our cutting edge of steel, our amazing communions will be recovered." Césaire also developed a close relationship with André Breton following his visit to Martinique in 1941. She dedicated an essay to him ("André Breton, poet", 1941) and received a poem dedicated to her in return ("For madame Suzanne Césaire", 1941). This encounter with André Breton opened the way for her development of Afro-Surrealism. Her writing is often overshadowed by that of her husband, who is the better known of the two. However, in addition to her important literary essays, her role as editor of Tropiques can be regarded as an equally significant (if often overlooked) contribution to Caribbean literature. Tropiques was the most influential francophone Caribbean journal of its time and is widely acknowledged for the foundational role it played in the development of Martiniquan literature. Césaire played both an intellectual and administrative role in the journal's success. She managed the journal's relations with the censor — a particularly difficult role given the oppositional stance of Tropiques towards the war-time Vichy government — as well as taking responsibility for the printing. The intellectual impact she had on the journal is underlined by her essay "The Great Camouflage", which was the closing article of the final issue. Despite her substantial written and editorial contribution to the journal, the collected works of Tropiques, published by Jean-Michel Place in 1978, credits Aimé Césaire and René Ménil as the journal's catalysts. Tropiques published its last issue in September 1945, at the end of World War Two. With the closing of the journal, Suzanne Césaire stopped writing. The reasons for this are unknown. However, journalist Natalie Levisalles suggests that Suzanne Césaire would have perhaps made different choices if she had not had the responsibilities of mothering six children, teaching, and being the wife of an important politician and poet, Aimé Césaire. Indeed, her first daughter, Ina Césaire, remembers her saying regularly: "Yours will be the first generation of women who choose." Having stopped writing she pursued her career as a teacher, working in Martinique and Haiti. She was also an active feminist and participated in the Union des Femmes Françaises. Césaire was a pioneer in the search for a distinct Martiniquan literary voice. Though she was attacked by some Caribbean writers, following an early edition of Tropiques, for aping traditional French styles of poetry as well as supposedly promoting "The Happy Antilles" view of the island advanced by French colonialism, her essay of 1941, "Misère d'une poésie", condemned what she termed "Littérature de hamac. Littérature de sucre et de vanille. Tourisme littéeraire" [Literaure of the hammock, of sugar and vanilla. Literary tourism]. Her encounter with André Breton opened the way for her development of Afro-Surrealism, which followed in the footsteps of her use of surrealist concepts to illuminate the colonial dilemma. Her dictum - "La poésie martinique sera cannibale ou ne sera pas" [Cannibal poetry or nothing] - was an anti-colonial appropriation of a surrealist trope. Suzanne Césaire's repudiation of simple idealised answers - whether assimilationist, Africanist, or creole - to the situation of colonialism in the Caribbean has proved increasingly influential in later postcolonial studies. |
![]() | ![]() | Cezair-Thompson, Margaret. The Pirate’s Daughter. Denver. 2007. Unbridled Books. 9781932961409. 394 pages. hardcover. Jacket design and imaging by Honi Werner In 1946, a storm-tossed boat carrying Hollywood’s most famous swashbuckler arrived dramatically if accidentally in Jamaica, and the glamorous world of 1940s Hollywood converged on a small West Indian society. After a long and storied career on the silver screen, Errol Flynn spent much of the last years of his life on a small island off Jamaica, throwing parties and sleeping with increasingly younger teenaged girls. THE PIRATE’S DAUGHTER features an exotic, romantic setting filled with gorgeous landscapes, old pirates’ tales and hunting for lost treasure, all with an extravagant Hollywood connection. But most of all, this extraordinary novel is the compelling mother/daughter story of two women of color whose well-being and place in life are very much at risk. THE PIRATE’S DAUGHTER brings to life their story of star-crossed loves - great and tentative, doomed and promising - set within a larger clash of cultures and social upheaval at a time when Jamaica is throwing off its colonial bonds. Margaret Cezair-Thompson has written a smart and engaging novel with rich, intriguing characters and a story to capture the imagination. Margaret Cezair-Thompson is the author of a widely acclaimed previous novel, THE TRUE HISTORY OF PARADISE. Born in Jamaica, West Indies, she teaches literature and creative writing at Wellesley College. |
![]() | ![]() | Cezair-Thompson, Margaret. The True History of Paradise. New York. 1999. Dutton. 0525944907. 334 pages. hardcover. Easter, 1981, and Jamaica's in a state of emergency. With violence in the streets and a government about to collapse, the Landing family gathers to bury one of its own. For Monica Landing, the proud, imperious matriarch who had not spoken to her daughter in fifteen years, the death of Lana Landing is the cruelest kind of loss. For Lana's younger sister, Jean, it is a tragedy she cannot comprehend. All she knows is that her beloved homeland, with its blue mountains and exuberant flora, its rich African rhythms and crashing ocean waves, holds no future for her.. 'But flight means crossing a landscape where soldiers turned executioners and armed gangs rule, where fires rage and unburied bodies lie in the roads. Flight means making her way through the memories that engulf her, with a good and silent man, perhaps the only man she has ever loved, traveling by her side, caught up in his own tormented memories of Jean's beautiful, flamboyant sister.. 'Told from a multiplicity of perspectives, The True History of Paradise captures the grace, beauty, and brutality that are indelible parts of the Jamaican experience. The story of three women born into a divided, troubled paradise becomes the history of a country, of generations of wanderers coming together in a place that can neither sustain nor be sustained by them, but that will shape them forever. Margaret Cezair-Thompson (born August 19, 1956) is the author of a widely acclaimed previous novel, THE TRUE HISTORY OF PARADISE. Born in Jamaica, West Indies, she teaches literature and creative writing at Wellesley College. |
![]() | ![]() | Chamoiseau, Patrick. Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows. Lincoln. 1999. University Of Nebraska Press. 0803214952. Foreword by Edouard Glissant. Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale. 226 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration: detail from F?te Patronale (Feast of the Patron Saint) by Franklyn Gile Latortue. n.d. Oil on canvas, 381/2 X 50 inches. Collection of Davenport Museum of Att. Gift of Dr. Walter F. Neiswanger, M.D. Published in France in 1986, CHRONICLE OF THE SEVEN SORROWS is Patrick Chamoiseau’s first novel. It traces the rise and fall of Pipi Soleil, ‘king of the wheelbarrow’ at the vegetable market of Fort-de-France, in a tale as lively and magical as the marketplace itself. In a Martinique where creatures from folklore walk the land and cultural traditions cling tenuously to life, Chamoiseau’s characters confront the crippling heritage of colonialism and the overwhelming advance of modernization with touching dignity, hilarious resourcefulness, and truly courageous joie de vivre. When the poor have nothing else, they have their language. CHRONICLE OF THE SEVEN SORROWS has superb language, of a pith and juiciness that bring splendor to the most humble incident in Chamoiseau’s moving homage to the vanishing art of the Creole storyteller. ‘A bewitching writer . . . Chamoiseau’s particular gift is to be both buoyant in spirit and trenchant in observation.’ - New York Times Book Review. ‘Imaginative and moving’ -Washington Post. ‘Sardonic and lyrical.’ - Publishers Weekly. ‘Lovers of language, rejoice! . . . Chamoiseau’s portraits of his native Martinique have exploded into the English language in a fascinating mixture of classical oils and Creole colors . . . What is glorious, as always, is Chamoiseau’s poetry’ - Los Angeles Times. ‘A joy to read’ - Chicago Tribune. . Patrick Chamoiseau’s novel TEXACO won the Prix Goncourt in 1992. Linda Coverdale’s many translations include Chamoiseau’s School Days (Nebraska 1997) and Jorge Semprun’s Literature or Life, winner of the 1997 French-American Foundation Translation Prize. Patrick Chamoiseau is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the créolité movement. Chamoiseau was born on December 3, 1953 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, where he currently resides. After he studied law in Paris he returned to Martinique inspired by Édouard Glissant to take a close interest in Creole culture. Chamoiseau is the author of a historical work on the Antilles under the reign of Napoléon Bonaparte and several non-fiction books which include Éloge de la créolité (In Praise of Creoleness), co-authored with Jean Bernabé and Raphaël Confiant. Awarded the Prix Carbet (1990) for Chemins d’enfance. His novel Texaco was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1992, and was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It has been described as ‘a masterpiece, the work of a genius, a novel that deserves to be known as much as Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Cesaire’s Return to My Native Land’. Chamoiseau may also safely be considered as one of the most innovative writers to hit the French literary scene since Louis-Ferdinand Céline. His freeform use of French language — a highly complex yet fluid mixture of constant invention and ‘creolism’ — fuels a poignant and sensuous depiction of Martinique people in particular and humanity at large. |
![]() | ![]() | Chamoiseau, Patrick. Creole Folktales. New York. 1994. New Press. 1565841859. Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale. 113 pages. hardcover. In this unusual collection of stories and fables, 1992 Goncourt prize-winner Patrick Chamoiseau re-creates in truly magical language the stories he heard as a child in Martinique in his first book to be published in the U.S. Included are delightfully coarse and lively folktales incorporating European and African motifs and stories apparently handed down from the time of slavery. In one, ‘Ti-Jean Horizon,’ the eponymous hero repeatedly outwits his Beke (white) master, as does Conquering John in African American tales. Others warn of the danger of foolish behavior, as in ‘Nanie-Rosette the Belly-Slave,’ of whom the storyteller remarks ‘Quite a pretty name for a disaster with an abyss for a stomach, a riverbed for a throat. In short, Nanie-Rosette loved to eat, oh yes.’ Her gluttony leads to her downfall at the hands of a devil. The lyric language here is often bawdy, even in a uniquely Martinique variant of the Cinderella tale. Witty asides enrich these fables and allegories, though their protagonists are poor, enslaved people striving to survive in a politically hostile world. The stories have a contemporary edge that transcends their colonial roots. Patrick Chamoiseau is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the créolité movement. Chamoiseau was born on December 3, 1953 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, where he currently resides. After he studied law in Paris he returned to Martinique inspired by Édouard Glissant to take a close interest in Creole culture. Chamoiseau is the author of a historical work on the Antilles under the reign of Napoléon Bonaparte and several non-fiction books which include Éloge de la créolité (In Praise of Creoleness), co-authored with Jean Bernabé and Raphaël Confiant. Awarded the Prix Carbet (1990) for Chemins d’enfance. His novel Texaco was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1992, and was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It has been described as ‘a masterpiece, the work of a genius, a novel that deserves to be known as much as Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Cesaire’s Return to My Native Land’. Chamoiseau may also safely be considered as one of the most innovative writers to hit the French literary scene since Louis-Ferdinand Céline. His freeform use of French language — a highly complex yet fluid mixture of constant invention and ‘creolism’ — fuels a poignant and sensuous depiction of Martinique people in particular and humanity at large. |
![]() | ![]() | Chamoiseau, Patrick. School Days. Lincoln. 1997. University Of Nebraska Press. 0803214774. Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale. 146 pages. hardcover. One of the liveliest and most creative voices in French literature today is that of Patrick Chamoiseau. Born in 1953 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, where he still lives, he has published several autobiographical narratives (Antan d’enfance, Chemin-d’école) in addition to his novels: Chronique des sept misères, Solibo magnifique, and Texaco, which won France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1992. He collaborated with Raphael Confiant and Jean Bernabé on the critical essay Eloge de La créolité and is the coauthor, with Confiant, of Lettres créoles: Tracées antillaises et continentales de La littérature, 1635-1975. His other essays include Martinique and Guyane, Traces-me-moires du bagne. Creole Folktales (Au temps de l’an tan) was the first of his works to be translated into English. Chamoiseau has explored the traditional themes of Caribbean fiction - slavery, colonialism, the development of class and caste distinctions, the collapse of the plantation economy-with an imaginative brio both daring and magisterial. In texts of striking poetic density, he evokes the terrifying destitution at the heart of this lush, tropical world: the loss of ancestral ties to an Africa itself now long gone; the decline of village life and a growing estrangement from the land; the suppression and devaluation of Creole, the everyday language of slavery, in favor of French, the language of the white colonial plantocracy. In the French Antilles, the language, literature, and culture of France were transmitted to all sectors of society through a strictly metropolitan education, but this increased identification with France came at the cost of further alienation from indigenous folk values. The 1930s, however, saw the birth of the French ‘black pride’ literary movement of Negritude, one of whose leaders was the great Martinican poet and politician Aimé Césaire. The postwar decades have been characterized by a search for an original, authentic Caribbean culture, a movement that has led in the French West Indies to a revaluation of Creolite. As a writer, Chamoiseau has found resonant themes in the tension between the French and Creole cultures and in the complexities of class, race, and language this tension reveals. The writer’s relationship with the written word-indeed, with the very ability to write-is of paramount interest to Chamoiseau, who embodies the central paradox of Martinican literature: writing necessarily represents a profound break with the essential orality of Creole language and culture, like Edouard Glissant, the influential literary theoretician of Antillanité, Chamoiseau proclaims the need to respect the continuity between the Creole storyteller and the writer as ‘word maker,’ He writes in a French that is both highly polished and extravagantly unconventional: antic, lyrical, sarcastic, at times oneiric, even opaque, and above all, vocal. The African griot has been called the repository of the cultural memory of a people. The fabulous narrator of School Days recalls to life the cultural memory of a writer-to-be, in the diminutive person of a little black boy of courage and cunning who goes off to school one day with a blithe heart, only to find that he has ventured into a foreign country from which he can never return. When he looks around him, he realizes that in the eyes of his teachers his own world barely exists, Caught betwixt and between, stunned by this otherness that has been imposed on him (and on all colonial children everywhere), he nevertheless manages to find his voice, discovering-in both Creole tongue and French text-the awesome healing and subversive powers of language. ABOUT THE TRANSLATION: Chamoiseau does not believe in glossaries, preferring that his readers open themselves to the ‘subterranean magic’ of strange words, but a short glossary has been appended to this translation to explain a few basic (or irresistibly choice) terms, The author’s Creole expressions have been retained, sometimes with English translations provided in footnotes, Perhaps the most important word in Chemin-d’ecole is negrillon-a word that is impossible to translate exactly ‘Pickaninny’ is too pejorative, as is ‘little nigger boy.’ ‘Pickney’ is used in the English-speaking Caribbean but for this same reason is closely associated with the literature of that region and would seem jarring in Martinique. ‘The little black boy,’ although quite a mouthful, seems closest to the sense of negrillon here. Precisely because it is a mouthful, and serene in the knowledge that no reader will forget for a moment that our tiny hero is black, I usually refer to him-with the author’s consent-as ‘the little boy.’ Patrick Chamoiseau is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the créolité movement. Chamoiseau was born on December 3, 1953 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, where he currently resides. After he studied law in Paris he returned to Martinique inspired by Édouard Glissant to take a close interest in Creole culture. Chamoiseau is the author of a historical work on the Antilles under the reign of Napoléon Bonaparte and several non-fiction books which include Éloge de la créolité (In Praise of Creoleness), co-authored with Jean Bernabé and Raphaël Confiant. Awarded the Prix Carbet (1990) for Chemins d’enfance. His novel Texaco was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1992, and was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It has been described as ‘a masterpiece, the work of a genius, a novel that deserves to be known as much as Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Cesaire’s Return to My Native Land’. Chamoiseau may also safely be considered as one of the most innovative writers to hit the French literary scene since Louis-Ferdinand Céline. His freeform use of French language — a highly complex yet fluid mixture of constant invention and ‘creolism’ — fuels a poignant and sensuous depiction of Martinique people in particular and humanity at large. |
![]() | ![]() | Chamoiseau, Patrick. Seven Dreams of Elmira: A Tale of Martinique. Cambridge. 1999. Zoland Books. 1581950020. Being The Confessions Of An Old Worker At The Saint-Etienne Distillery. Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti. 49 pages. hardcover. Intoxicating in its language, lush in its evocation of Creole island culture, SEVEN DREAMS OF ELMIRA: A TALE OF MARTINIQUE is a vivid and hallucinatory fable, written by widely acclaimed author Patrick Chamoiseau and illustrated with stunning photographic portraits by Jean-Luc Laguardigue. Based on interviews, observation, and invention, this story takes as its canvas the everyday lives of the workers at the old Saint-Etienne rum distillery in the hills of Martinique, and the strange vision of the beautiful Elmira who appears to a select few. This magical tale explores themes that are specific to the West Indies, but universally resonant. Patrick Chamoiseau is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the créolité movement. Chamoiseau was born on December 3, 1953 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, where he currently resides. After he studied law in Paris he returned to Martinique inspired by Édouard Glissant to take a close interest in Creole culture. Chamoiseau is the author of a historical work on the Antilles under the reign of Napoléon Bonaparte and several non-fiction books which include Éloge de la créolité (In Praise of Creoleness), co-authored with Jean Bernabé and Raphaël Confiant. Awarded the Prix Carbet (1990) for Chemins d’enfance. His novel Texaco was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1992, and was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It has been described as ‘a masterpiece, the work of a genius, a novel that deserves to be known as much as Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Cesaire’s Return to My Native Land’. Chamoiseau may also safely be considered as one of the most innovative writers to hit the French literary scene since Louis-Ferdinand Céline. His freeform use of French language — a highly complex yet fluid mixture of constant invention and ‘creolism’ — fuels a poignant and sensuous depiction of Martinique people in particular and humanity at large. |
![]() | ![]() | Chamoiseau, Patrick. Slave Old Man. New York. 2018. New Press. 9781620972953. Translated from the French and Creole by Linda Coverdale. 155 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Ann Weinstock. From a Prix Goncourt writer hailed by Milan Kundera as the heir of Joyce and Kafka, a gripping story of an escaped slave in Martinique and the killer hound that pursues him. From one of the most innovative and subversive novelists writing in French, a writer of exceptional and original gifts (The New York Times), whose Texaco won the Prix Goncourt and has been translated into fourteen languages, Patrick Chamoiseau’s Slave Old Man is a gripping, profoundly unsettling story of an elderly slave’s daring escape into the wild from a plantation in Martinique, with his master and a fearsome hound on his heels. We follow them into a lush rain forest where nature is beyond all human control: sinister, yet entrancing and even exhilarating, because the old man’s flight to freedom will transform them all in truly astonishing—even otherworldly—ways, as the overwhelming physical presence of the forest reshapes reality and time itself. Chamoiseau’s exquisitely rendered new novel is an adventure for all time, one that fearlessly portrays the demonic cruelties of the slave trade and its human costs in vivid, sometimes hallucinatory prose. Offering a loving and mischievous tribute to the Creole culture of Martinique and brilliantly translated by Linda Coverdale, this novel takes us on a unique and moving journey into the heart of Caribbean history. Patrick Chamoiseau is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the créolité movement. Chamoiseau was born on December 3, 1953 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, where he currently resides. After he studied law in Paris he returned to Martinique inspired by Édouard Glissant to take a close interest in Creole culture. Chamoiseau is the author of a historical work on the Antilles under the reign of Napoléon Bonaparte and several non-fiction books which include Éloge de la créolité (In Praise of Creoleness), co-authored with Jean Bernabé and Raphaël Confiant. Awarded the Prix Carbet (1990) for Chemins d’enfance. His novel Texaco was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1992, and was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It has been described as ‘a masterpiece, the work of a genius, a novel that deserves to be known as much as Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Cesaire’s Return to My Native Land’. Chamoiseau may also safely be considered as one of the most innovative writers to hit the French literary scene since Louis-Ferdinand Céline. His freeform use of French language — a highly complex yet fluid mixture of constant invention and ‘creolism’ — fuels a poignant and sensuous depiction of Martinique people in particular and humanity at large. |
![]() | ![]() | Chamoiseau, Patrick. Solibo Magnificent. New York. 1998. Pantheon Books. 0679432361. Translated from the French & Creole by Rose-Myriam Rejouis & Val Vinokurov. 192 pages. hardcover. Jacket design and illustration by Royce M. Becker. It’s Carnival time in Fort-de-France, Martinique. Before an uninterrupted public, Solibo Magnificent, the great teller of tales, is felled, seemingly choked by his own words. Is it auto strangulation or murder? Two police officers lead the investigation, but what they discover is a transitory universe at the threshold of oblivion-the universe of the Masters of the Word who, like Solibo, possess the gift of language: perfect for rich and boundless discourse, but not very helpful for unraveling a crime. Patrick Chamoiseau’s grand and intriguing riff on the police procedural is a stunning confirmation of the ‘exceptional and original gifts’ (New York Times) that have placed him among the world’s foremost contemporary writers. Patrick Chamoiseau’s other books include TEXACO, which won France’s Prix Goncourt, and CREOLE FOLKTALES. He lives in Martinique. Patrick Chamoiseau is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the créolité movement. Chamoiseau was born on December 3, 1953 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, where he currently resides. After he studied law in Paris he returned to Martinique inspired by Édouard Glissant to take a close interest in Creole culture. Chamoiseau is the author of a historical work on the Antilles under the reign of Napoléon Bonaparte and several non-fiction books which include Éloge de la créolité (In Praise of Creoleness), co-authored with Jean Bernabé and Raphaël Confiant. Awarded the Prix Carbet (1990) for Chemins d’enfance. His novel Texaco was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1992, and was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It has been described as ‘a masterpiece, the work of a genius, a novel that deserves to be known as much as Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Cesaire’s Return to My Native Land’. Chamoiseau may also safely be considered as one of the most innovative writers to hit the French literary scene since Louis-Ferdinand Céline. His freeform use of French language — a highly complex yet fluid mixture of constant invention and ‘creolism’ — fuels a poignant and sensuous depiction of Martinique people in particular and humanity at large. |
![]() | ![]() | Chamoiseau, Patrick. Texaco. London. 1997. Granta Books. 1862070075. Translated from the French & Creole by Rose-Myriam Rejouis & Val Vinokurov. 403 pages. hardcover. Jacket photo by Tina Modotti, 'Resesrvoir Tank #1' Patrick Chamoiseau produces a mythic history of the Creole nation that arose from the forced marriage of French and African peoples in his native Martinique. The chief spokeswoman for that nation is the indomitable and profanely wise Marie-Sophie Laborieux, the founder of Texaco, a teeming shantytown poised on the edge of a city that constantly threatens to engulf it. Now Marie-Sophie is Texaco’s protectress as well. For only she can dissuade an urban planner from ordering her anarchic quarter razed to the ground. Like Scheherazade before her, she relies on stories - stories of slaves and sorcerers, thugs and courtesans, uprisings and eruptions. Patrick Chamoiseau is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the créolité movement. Chamoiseau was born on December 3, 1953 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, where he currently resides. After he studied law in Paris he returned to Martinique inspired by Édouard Glissant to take a close interest in Creole culture. |
![]() | ![]() | Chamoiseau, Patrick. Texaco. New York. 1997. Pantheon Books. 0679432353. Translated from the French & Creole by Rose- Myriam Rejouis & Val Vinokurov. 416 pages. hardcover. Patrick Chamoiseau produces a mythic history of the Creole nation that arose from the forced marriage of French and African peoples in his native Martinique. The chief spokeswoman for that nation is the indomitable and profanely wise Marie-Sophie Laborieux, the founder of Texaco, a teeming shantytown poised on the edge of a city that constantly threatens to engulf it. Now Marie-Sophie is Texaco’s protectress as well. For only she can dissuade an urban planner from ordering her anarchic quarter razed to the ground. Like Scheherazade before her, she relies on stories - stories of slaves and sorcerers, thugs and courtesans, uprisings and eruptions. Patrick Chamoiseau is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the créolité movement. Chamoiseau was born on December 3, 1953 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, where he currently resides. After he studied law in Paris he returned to Martinique inspired by Édouard Glissant to take a close interest in Creole culture. Chamoiseau is the author of a historical work on the Antilles under the reign of Napoléon Bonaparte and several non-fiction books which include Éloge de la créolité (In Praise of Creoleness), co-authored with Jean Bernabé and Raphaël Confiant. Awarded the Prix Carbet (1990) for Chemins d’enfance. His novel Texaco was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1992, and was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It has been described as ‘a masterpiece, the work of a genius, a novel that deserves to be known as much as Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Cesaire’s Return to My Native Land’. Chamoiseau may also safely be considered as one of the most innovative writers to hit the French literary scene since Louis-Ferdinand Céline. His freeform use of French language — a highly complex yet fluid mixture of constant invention and ‘creolism’ — fuels a poignant and sensuous depiction of Martinique people in particular and humanity at large. |
![]() | ![]() | Charles, Faustin (editor). Under the Storyteller's Spell: Folk-Tales From the Caribbean. New York. 1989. Viking Press/ Kestrel. 0670822760. Illustrated by Rossetta Woolf. 186 pages. hardcover. An outstanding collection of folk-tales from such writers as James Berry, Grace Nichols, Petronella Breinburg. All four main language traditions of the Caribbean-French, English, Spanish, and Dutch-are represented by these stories. Inspired by the art of the storytellers to be found in towns and villages throughout the countries of the region, they spin the tales about Maskalili, Anancy, Tata Dohende, Greasyman, La Diabless, the Panja Jar and many more. Faustin Charles (born in 1944 in Trinidad) is an acclaimed and highly popular poet and writer for children. The Selfish Crocodile was his first picture book for Bloomsbury and he also has two poetry books published: Once Upon an Animal and Teacher Alligator. Faustin is mesmeric in performance and in demand for his events in schools libraries and festivals. Faustin was born and grew up in the rural countryside of Trinidad, by the sea. He lives in London. |
![]() | ![]() | Chauvet, Marie. Dance On the Volcano. New York. 1959. William Sloane Associates. Translated from the French by Salvator Attanasio. 376 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Charles Walker 18th-century Haiti: gaiety hid smouldering violence, the 'dance on the volcano.' Lovely young Minette sang her way to fame - to tragedy and great love. . . If you read for history, here are the political and emotional tides, the passionate men and women who brought about the Slave Rebellions of Haiti which were sparked by the French Revolution. If you read for drama, it is in every mood and movement of the story, Minette was the first colored person to entertain a white audience in Port-au-Prince, She became a great star. She also became passionately involved in the fight for freedom. The Comedie du Port-au-Prince was desperate for new talent when Minette made her appearance. The daughter of a freed slave and a white planter, she had a voice in a thousand. And she was lovely, with her creamy skin and great, slanted eyes. Excited crowds applauded her to fame. But she met the pain and humiliation of prejudice, too; met them with pride. She reached out for love - and thought she had found it in Jean Baptiste Papointe, a man of color who had risen to the status of a rich planter with slaves of his own. Warped by his struggle against bitter prejudice, he could be hard and cruel. But he needed Minette's love. These two and the people around them give the rich texture of living history to this exceptionally fine story. It is based on contemporary records, Through them Mme. Chauvet, Haitian herself, recaptures the vivid life of the island - the white creoles, the people of color, the French military - along with the tragedy and hopes and heroism of the time. Marie Chauvet lived with her husband and children in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where she was born. She was interested in writing all her life and was firmly launched on a literary career long before it was considered suitable for a girl. Her first love was the theatre, and as a child she wrote a number of plays performed in private by her young friends, with the author acting as director and stage manager. Mme. Chauvet's professional start came, however, with a prize-winning short story. Marie Vieux Chauvet (1916–1973) was a Haitian novelist. Born and educated in Port-au-Prince, her most famous works were the novels Fille d'Haïti (1954), La Danse sur le Volcan (1957), Fonds des Nègres (1961), and Amour, Colère, Folie (1969). The trilogy Amour, Colère, Folie was published by Gallimard press in Paris with the support of Simone de Beauvoir. The trilogy was perceived as an attack on the Haitian despot François Duvalier. Fearing the dictator's legions of Tonton Macoutes, her husband bought all the copies of the book he could find in Haiti, and Chauvet's daughters bought the remaining copies from Gallimard in Paris a few years later. She died in the United States of America. |
![]() | ![]() | Chauvet, Marie. Dance On the Volcano. Brooklyn. 2016. Archipelago Books. 9780914671572. Translated from the French by Kaiama L. Glover. 493 pages. paperback. Set in late-18th century Haiti, Dance on the Volcano follows the extraordinary career of Minette, who uses her prodigious voice to cross racial barriers. Her talent brings her an opportunity to perform at the Theater of Port-au-Prince, an honor previously reserved only for whites. However, once the curtain falls she finds herself back to life as normal. Praised but unpaid, applauded but shut out, Minette develops a political and racial conscience that that will not rest as long as slavery still exists on the island. Her involvement soon leads her to butt heads with the man she loves, a free black man as cruel to his slaves as many white landholders, and to cross paths with the future heroes of the revolution. Born in Port-au-Prince in 1916, Marie Vieux-Chauvet is widely considered one of the greatest writers of the francophone Caribbean. Marie Vieux Chauvet (1916–1973) was a Haitian novelist. Born and educated in Port-au-Prince, her most famous works were the novels Fille d'Haïti (1954), La Danse sur le Volcan (1957), Fonds des Nègres (1961), and Amour, Colère, Folie (1969). The trilogy Amour, Colère, Folie was published by Gallimard press in Paris with the support of Simone de Beauvoir. The trilogy was perceived as an attack on the Haitian despot François Duvalier. Fearing the dictator's legions of Tonton Macoutes, her husband bought all the copies of the book he could find in Haiti, and Chauvet's daughters bought the remaining copies from Gallimard in Paris a few years later. She died in the United States of America. Kaiama L. Glover received a B.A. in French History and Literature and Afro-American Studies from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in French and Romance Philology from Columbia University. She is now an associate professor of French at Barnard College. Her book, Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon, explores the Haitian Spiralist movement. She has taught English at Stanford University and French at Barnard College and Columbia University, sits on the editorial boards of the Romanic Review and Small Axe, and regularly contributes to The New York Times Book Review. |
![]() | ![]() | Chauvet, Marie. Dance On the Volcano. London. 1959. Heinemann. Translated from the French by Salvator Attanasio. 329 pages. hardcover. Wrapper design by Peter Edwards Racial taboos were rampant in Haiti at the end of the eighteenth century: European colonists, rich and powerful, bought and sold slaves in the market-place. Between the colonists and the slaves were the ‘mixed-bloods’, to which class belonged the sisters Minette and Lise, daughters of a slave and her white master, and gifted with extraordinary voices. A creole neighbour who heard Minette singing determined to get her an engagement with the theatrical troupe of the town. It is the first time ever that a person of negro blood appears on the stage at the theatre of Port-au-Prince and the outcry from the ‘Whites’ is loud and scathing. But in spite of the prejudices and prohibitions, Minette rises steadily to glory, regarding each triumph as one way of avenging the suffering of her people. She rises against the dark and troubled scene like a bright songbird. Refusing to become the mistress of any white man, she falls in love with a young and rich freedman who, however, treats his own slaves with the same cruelty as a white master. So Minette is forced to continue her fight alone. All the picturesque life of a colony at the end of the ancient regime appears here in this warm and colourful novel. Through the roar of applause in the theatre and the rattle of gunshot in the sugar-cane fields, we follow the passionate adventure of Minette. The author, Marie Chauvet, herself a Haitian, is inspired by authentic historical fact: Minette really did live, did sing at the theatre of Port-au-Prince, did dedicate herself and her glorious voice to the cause of freedom against hatred. The author, MARIE CHAUVET, was a member of a prominent family in Haiti. Her uncle was ex-President Magloire; her father-in-law a representative of Haiti at the United Nations. Marie Chauvet held the rank of Officer of the ‘Ordre Universel du Mérite Humain’ (Geneva), and was awarded a major French Literary prize - Prix de l’Alliance Francaise - for her first novel Fille D’Haiti. Marie Vieux Chauvet (1916–1973) was a Haitian novelist. Born and educated in Port-au-Prince, her most famous works were the novels Fille d'Haïti (1954), La Danse sur le Volcan (1957), Fonds des Nègres (1961), and Amour, Colère, Folie (1969). The trilogy Amour, Colère, Folie was published by Gallimard press in Paris with the support of Simone de Beauvoir. The trilogy was perceived as an attack on the Haitian despot François Duvalier. Fearing the dictator's legions of Tonton Macoutes, her husband bought all the copies of the book he could find in Haiti, and Chauvet's daughters bought the remaining copies from Gallimard in Paris a few years later. She died in the United States of America. |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin C. Amongst Thistles and Thorns. London. 1965. Heinemann. 183 pages. hardcover. Set in Barbados in the early 1950s, this uncompromising novel depicts the pain of childhood in a world where poverty and blackness are despised, and kids are treated as objects on which adults can take out their self-contempt and frustration. Milton Sobers is a nine-year-old on the run from a series of sadistic beatings from both his schoolmaster and his washer-woman mother. Dreaming of a life in Harlem, which is predominately black, open, and free, Milton encounters many comic and sad adventures that inevitably return him to the situation he was trying to escape. Originally published in 1965, this pertinent portrayal of the destruction of innocence explores the commonality of physical violence in the lives of Caribbean youth while offering hope for the intelligent child protagonist. Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke, CM OOnt (born July 26, 1934), is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called ‘Canada's first multicultural writer’. Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University (Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971-72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973). In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977). Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977) and at University of Western Ontario (1978). From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize ‘on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers’. Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington, Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: ‘‘I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin C. Proud Empires. Markham. 1988. Viking Press. 0670817562. 224 pages. hardcover. In sight of green sugar-cane fields and the sea, the Rum Shop and the Tailor Shop are awash with buckshee rum and male talk. W hile Sarge (known to have broken an innocent man's legs with his truncheon) holds forth about blasted 'properganda', Seabert the Tailor has ambitions for a seat in Parliament and his eye on a big car. As a young man, Michael William Wilberforce Thorne - 'Boy' to the villagers - learns about life from these vibrant characters. Coming of age in the Barbados of the 1950s, he is both horrified and fascinated by the political scheming that surrounds him. After spending several years at a Canadian university on a scholarship, Boy returns to his country with a sharper awareness of its people and possibilities. When an election is called and this tiny, colonial island hovers on the brink of a new political dawn, he is treated a s a political saviour, the first of a new breed. This rich novel, at once serious and hilariously funny, gives a wonderfully exuberant picture of life in Barbados in the early 1950s, painted with unflagging humour and zest." Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke, CM OOnt (born July 26, 1934), is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called ‘Canada's first multicultural writer’. Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University (Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971-72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973). In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977). Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977) and at University of Western Ontario (1978). From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize ‘on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers’. Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington, Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: ‘‘I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin C. The Meeting Point. Boston. 1967. Little Brown. 250 pages. hardcover. The related themes of loneliness, self-hatred, and cultural exclusion are the main concerns of Clarke's Canadian trilogy, THE MEETING POINT, STORM OF FORTUNE, and THE BIGGER LIGHT. The three works center on the lives of a group of West Indians in Toronto—especially Bernice Leach, her sister Estelle, Boysie Cumberbatch, his wife Dots, and Henry White. THE MEETING POINT concentrates on Bernice's experiences as a maid in the home of the wealthy Burrmann family, and emphasizes the usual themes of sexual loneliness, cultural isolation, and the sense of economic exploitation. THE MEETING POINT is a harsh and poignant account of the lives of Barbadian immigrants in the white-dominated and socially ossified Toronto of the 1960s. Austin Clarke was born in Barbados and came to Canada to study at Trinity College in the University of Toronto. He has enjoyed a varied and distinguished career as a broadcaster, civil rights leader, and professor. His award-winning work, which includes eight novels and five collections of short fiction, is widely studied in residence at the University of Guelph, and is the 1998 inaugural winner of The Rogers Communications Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. He lives in Toronto. |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin C. The Meeting Point. London. 1967. Heinemann. 249 pages. hardcover. THE MEETING POINT is the story of a group of West Indians in Toronto, and is the third novel by this highly talented young writer whose previous book, AMONGST THISTLES AND THORNS, was hailed by the press and described by the Times Literary Supplement as 'funny, and bursting at the seams with vitality'. Bernice Leach is a West Indian, working as a maid for the Burrmanns, a rich, Canadian-Jewish couple whose marriage gives Bernice and her friend Dots plenty of scope for surprised and original comment. When Bernice's sister, Estelle, comes over apparently on holiday from Barbados, her stay has first comic, then tragic results. THE MEETING POINT is a brilliant study of the clashes, tensions and sheer comedy resulting from the confrontation of totally different ways of life ; and Austin Clarke's great gift for character and dialogue is apparent in both the Canadians and the West Indian in the novel. Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke (born July 26, 1934), is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called ‘Canada's first multicultural writer’. Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University (Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971-72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973). In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977). Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977) and at University of Western Ontario (1978). From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize ‘on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers’. Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington, Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: ‘‘I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin. Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack. Havana. 1980. Ediciones Casa De La Americas. 188 pages. paperback. Growing up stupid under the Union Jack, by the noted Barbadian author Austin Clark, is a meaningful contribution to anticolonial nationalist literature in the Caribbean. A realist novel without a greatly sophisticated formal elaboration, it nevertheless shows a brilliant use of language and integrates local elements with a controlled and effective idiom at the service of a marked socio-politic intention and an accurate message which never become simplistic. The novel is a criticism to colonial policies in the field of education, a topic that has been dealt with by Caribbean essayists and has emerged in the works of many English-speaking writers in the area. It presents the failures of the system and the lack of opportunities for higher education within the colonial context. It is a novel of stirring tension which gives way to serious human reflections. It enriches the thematic stream of childhood reminiscences in Anglo-Caribbean novels, which has George Lamming, Michael Anthony, Geoffrey Drayton, Peter Kempadoo and Jan Carew among its more outstanding representatives. This novel by Austin Clarke deserves a meaningful place in the literature for the liberation of the Caribbean peoples. Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke (born July 26, 1934), is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called ‘Canada's first multicultural writer’. Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University (Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971-72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973). In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977). Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977) and at University of Western Ontario (1978). From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize ‘on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers’. Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington, Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: ‘‘I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin. More. New York. 2009. Amistad. 9780061772405. 301 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Mary Schuck. Jacket photography by Accra Shepp. At the news of her son BJ's involvement in gang crime, Idora Morrison, a maid at the local university, collapses in her basement apartment. For four days and nights she retreats into a vortex of memory, pain, and disappointment that becomes a riveting expose of her life as a Caribbean immigrant living abroad. While she struggled to make ends meet, her deadbeat husband, Bertram, abandoned her for a better life in New York. Left alone to raise her son, Idora has done her best to survive against immense odds. But now that BJ has disappeared into a life of crime, she recoils from his loss and is unable to get out of bed, burdened by feelings of invisibility. As she summons the strength to investigate her son's troubles - and her own weaknesses - the book quietly builds to its crescendo. Eventually Idora finds her way back into the light with a courage that is both remarkable and unforgettable. MORE zeroes in, with laserlike intensity, on the interior life of an extraordinary ‘ordinary woman.’ showcasing Clarke's skill as a writer of inimitable force. AUSTIN CLARKE is a professor of literature and has taught at Yale, Brandeis, Williams, Duke, and the Universities of Texas and Indiana. He assisted in setting up a Black Studies program at Yale in 1968, after which he became the cultural attache of the Embassy of Barbados in Washington, D.C. Culminating with the international success of THE POLISHED HOE, which won the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and the Trillium Prize, Austin Clarke's work since 1964 includes eleven novels, six short-story collections, and four memoirs. He lives in Toronto. |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin. Nine Men Who Laughed. New York. 1986. Penguin Books. 0140085602. 225 pages. paperback. Cover design: Keith Abraham. Cover illustration: Grace Channer. Author photograph: George Lum Austin Clarke has been capturing Toronto’s West Indian community in vibrant prose for over twenty years. His writing is irresistibly appealing - his ear for dialect, the ironic blend of humour and anger, the marvelous mixture of political statement and sexual energy are all combined in the wonderful strut and swagger of his language. The stories introduce us to unforgettable characters: the West Indian green hornet who overzealously tickets the automobiles of politicians in the hope of being promoted to the ‘real’ police force; the wealthy West Indian who deceives his wife for years as, under the guise of being a bachelor lawyer, he keeps a fastidious daily routine of visiting five different lovers. These nine stories are a compelling portrait of the guilts and nostalgic dreams of outsiders caught between their homeland and their new land. ‘Clarke’s stories, with their calypso idiom, are as near to poetry as prose can be.’ - Toronto Star. Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke (born July 26, 1934), is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called ‘Canada's first multicultural writer’. Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University (Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971-72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973). In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977). Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977) and at University of Western Ontario (1978). From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize ‘on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers’. Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington, Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: ‘‘I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin. Pig Tails 'N Breadfruit: A Culinary Memoir. New York. 2000. New Press. 1565845803. 248 pages. hardcover. Part memoir - part cookbook, part family history - by 'one of the more talented novelists at work in theEnglish language today' (Norman Mailer). Reminiscent of Like Water for Chocolate, Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit blends lyrical, evocative writing with engaging descriptions of how to cook the dishes of Austin Clarke's native Barbados. Winner of the 1999 Martin Luther King, Jr., Achievement Award and author of eight highly praised novels and five short-story collections, Clarke is considered one of the preeminent Caribbean writers of our time. Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit describes the way he learned traditional Bajan recipes - food that has its origins in the days of slavery, hardship, and economic grief - by listening to his mother, aunts, and cousins talk about food while they cooked it. From Oxtails with Mushrooms, Smoked Ham Hocks with Lima Beans, and Breadfruit Cou-Cou with Braising Beef, to Clarke's renowned Chicken Austintacious, each dish evokes the vibrant, sun-drenched island of his childhood and is accompanied by stories about the rituals of food and family. The result is not only succulent food, but a unique portrait of growing up in Barbados in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke (born July 26, 1934), is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called ‘Canada's first multicultural writer’. Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University (Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971-72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973). In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977). Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977) and at University of Western Ontario (1978). From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize ‘on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers’. Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington, Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: ‘‘I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin. Proud Empires. London. 1986. Gollancz. 0575039000. 224 pages. hardcover. In sight of green sugar-cane fields and the sea, the Rum Shop and the Tailor Shop are awash with buckshee rum and male talk. W hile Sarge (known to have broken an innocent man's legs with his truncheon) holds forth about blasted 'properganda', Seabert the Tailor has ambitions for a seat in Parliament and his eye on a big car. As a young man, Michael William Wilberforce Thorne - 'Boy' to the villagers - learns about life from these vibrant characters. Coming of age in the Barbados of the 1950s, he is both horrified and fascinated by the political scheming that surrounds him. After spending several years at a Canadian university on a scholarship, Boy returns to his country with a sharper awareness of its people and possibilities. When an election is called and this tiny, colonial island hovers on the brink of a new political dawn, he is treated a s a political saviour, the first of a new breed. This rich novel, at once serious and hilariously funny, gives a wonderfully exuberant picture of life in Barbados in the early 1950s, painted with unflagging humour and zest." Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke (born July 26, 1934), is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called ‘Canada's first multicultural writer’. Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University (Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971-72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973). In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977). Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977) and at University of Western Ontario (1978). From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize ‘on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers’. Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington, Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: ‘‘I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin. Storm of Fortune. Boston. 1973. Little Brown. 0316147001. 312 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by John Renfer. Photograph by Graeme Gibson Published in 1972, The Meeting Point was the first book in Austin Clarke's trilogy of novels portraying the fortunes of a group of West Indian domestics, their friends, lovers, spouses and employers, living in Toronto. Storm of Fortune is the second - and even finer - volume in that trilogy. In rich, joyous language, Clarke creates a world bursting with exuberance, a world inhabited by earthy, loquacious, but terribly isolated people, all West Indians living, working, and struggling with the alien culture they find in Toronto. Storm of Fortune is both a continuation of The Meeting Point and a wholly complete, beautiful novel in itself. Continuing the stories of Bernice Leach and her good-looking sister Estelle, Bernice's fellow domestic Dots and her genial husband Boysie Cumberbatch, and Boysie's luckless friend Henry, it weaves four narratives together: Bernice's increasing difficulties in her job as she is forced to deal with the consequences of Estelle's pregnancy - a pregnancy courtesy of Bernice's employer; Estelle's desperate attempt to escape her shame, first by fleeing to northern Ontario at the invitation of a strange Scottish woman who has befriended her, and then by losing herself in anonymous poverty in Toronto; Dots's carefully planned and executed social climb, which is matched by Boysie's gradual awakening to the power of ambition and learning; and Henry's erratic decline and eventual destruction, precipitated by marriage to his rich white girlfriend, Agatha. As Clarke tightly and gracefully mingles these stories, he expands his vision to explore the whole social fabric that binds his West Indians together: their attitudes toward themselves, their own community, and toward the surrounding sea of white Canadian culture; their sense of status and social mobility; their relationship to the physical reality of a cold, northern city. In doing so, he reveals both a tremendous compassion and understanding and a brilliant gift for dialogue and character. Broader, richer, even more vibrant than The Meeting Point, Storm of Fortune demonstrates that Austin Clarke is an exciting literary discovery whose skill and stature grow with each effort. Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke (born July 26, 1934), is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called ‘Canada's first multicultural writer’. Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University (Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971-72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973). In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977). Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977) and at University of Western Ontario (1978). From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize ‘on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers’. Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington, Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: ‘‘I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin. The Bigger Light. Boston. 1975. Little Brown. 0316146935. 288 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by John Renfer THE BIGGER LIGHT is the final novel in Austin Clarke’s critically acclaimed trilogy about a group of West Indian domestics, their friends, lovers, spouses, and employers living in Toronto. In rich, exuberant language, Clarke again animates a world inhabited by earthy, loquacious, but terribly isolated people, all living, working, and struggling with the alien, white, Canadian culture. The author focuses on Boysie Cumberbatch, owner of a prospering office-cleaning business, and his wife, Dots. Once easy-going and genial, Boysie now feels himself slowly suffocating in the imitation haut bourgeois life that financial success has brought. Money has begun to separate him from Dots; it has all but estranged both of them from their genuine West Indian identities. Instead, when Boysie isn’t out cleaning, he spends his time daydreaming, writing letters to the editors of Toronto newspapers, and listening endlessly to Judy Collins sing ‘Both Sides Now’ (he’s thrown away all his calypso records). He also wears three-piece suits, avoids the raucous West Indian eating and dancing joints he once loved, and worries constantly about the proprieties of a ‘man in his position.’ Then one morning, while staring out of his apartment’s picture window, Boysie becomes fixated on a young woman walking down the street from the subway exit. Bit by bit, the routinized, artificial life he has built begins to crumble. Different in tone from the previous two novels, THE MEETING POINT and STORM OF FORTUNE, THE BIGGER LIGHT is a sequel to them and at the same time a wholly complete, powerful novel in itself. Austin Clarke brilliantly articulates the themes of his trilogy through the dilemma of Boysie Cumberbatch: his unsettled attitudes toward himself, his community, and his fellow immigrants; his questions about his status and his delusions of social mobility; his uncomfortable relationship with the physical reality of a cold, northern city. And in Boysie’s stumbling search for ‘the bigger light’ in which he can truthfully see who and what he is, the author unites these themes into a devastating commentary on the quest for success in North America. Dominated by its warm, superbly drawn main character, capped by its vibrant, unerring dialogue, The Bigger Light concludes the trio of novels that establishes Austin Clarke as a writer of major importance. . Born in Barbados, Austin Clarke graduated from Harrison College and left the island in 1955 for Canada, where he attended Trinity College at the University of Toronto. He has taught at Yale, Brandeis, Smith, Williams, and at Duke University. In addition to his novels, he has written a widely praised collection of short stories, When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks. He is at present cultural attaché to the embassy of Barbados in Washington. . Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke (born July 26, 1934), is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called ‘Canada's first multicultural writer’. Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University (Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971-72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973). In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977). Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977) and at University of Western Ontario (1978). From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize ‘on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers’. Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington, Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: ‘‘I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin. The Polished Hoe. New York. 2003. Amistad Press. 0060555653. 463 pages. hardcover. When Mary-Mathilda, one of the most respected women on the colonized island of Bimshire (also known as Barbados), calls the police to confess to a crime, the result is a shattering all-night vigil. She claims the crime is against Mr. Belfeels, the powerful manager of the sugar plantation that dominates the villagers' lives and for whom she has worked for more than thirty years as a field laborer, kitchen help, and maid. She was also Mr. Belfeel's mistress, kept in good financial status in the Great House of the plantation, and the mother of his only son, Wilberforce, a successful doctor, who after living abroad returns to the island.' Set in the period following World War II, The Polished Hoe unravels over the course of twenty-four hours but spans the lifetime of one woman and the collective experience of a society characterized by slavery. Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke (born July 26, 1934), is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called ‘Canada's first multicultural writer’. Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University (Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971-72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973). In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977). Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977) and at University of Western Ontario (1978). From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize ‘on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers’. Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington, Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: ‘‘I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin. The Prime Minister. Don Mills. 1977. General Publishing Company. 0773600604. 191 pages. hardcover. The tourists call it paradise; this tiny island in the sun. And John Moore, returning to his native land after over twenty years in the North to assume a government post, is proud to be "going home." But he finds that the nation's new independent status has not changed the hypocrisy and ignorance of the people, and his optimism soon gives way to frustration and paranoia. Men and women are ruthlessly power-hungry here, and unfamiliarity with power is John Moore's undoing. He is innocently drawn into a plot to overthrow the government, then singled out as the scapegoat of the conspiracy and framed publicly as a dangerous radical. And although it becomes clear that his life is in danger, he is powerless to retaliate. He can only watch and wait, protected by the beautiful and influential native woman who has befriended him – while the political intrigue builds to a surprising climax. "The Prime Minister" is a bold departure from Austin Clarke's earlier novels, and he proves himself to be a master storyteller. Among the descriptions of the natural beauty of the land, and the colorful reminiscences of a childhood spent there, he deftly weaves a plot that is all the more sinister in contrast with its enchanted setting. This is a rich, evocative picture of a developing nation, and the reader will not soon forget the raw violence behind the lush scenery, the entrancing smells, the soft accents and languid way of life of the tropics. Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke (born July 26, 1934), is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called ‘Canada's first multicultural writer’. Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University (Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971-72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973). In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977). Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977) and at University of Western Ontario (1978). From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize ‘on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers’. Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington, Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: ‘‘I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin. There Are No Elders. Toronto. 1993. Exile Editions. 1550960741. 167 pages. paperback. A compelling collection that explores the lives of Afro-Caribbean immigrants living in Canada, these eight short stories delve into the experiences of displaced persons living in contemporary society - all with a richness of language and rhythm that is authentically urban. Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke (born July 26, 1934), is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called ‘Canada's first multicultural writer’. Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University (Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971-72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973). In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977). Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977) and at University of Western Ontario (1978). From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize ‘on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers’. Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington, Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: ‘‘I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin. When He Was Free & Young & He Used To Wear Silks. Boston. 1973. Little Brown. 0316146943. 243 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by John Renfer The work of Austin Clarke is ‘beautiful, comic, innovative, spellbinding and tragic,’ a prominent critic recently wrote. ‘Clarke has a matchless ear for dialogue; he is a master of several idioms.’ And nowhere is that talent better displayed than in these eleven stories. WHEN HE WAS FREE AND YOUNG AND HE USED TO WEAR SILKS moves effortlessly from stinging irony to lyric romanticism to pure comedy, exploding throughout with earthy, exuberant characters and the rich joy of language. Clarke carries the reader from Barbados to Canada to the United States in such stories as: ‘One Among Them,’ in which a mild, conservative West Indian studying meteorology at Duke University discovers that admiring black militants have mistaken his weather maps for revolutionary bombing plots; ‘‘The Motor Car,’ a comic reversal of LeRoi Jones’s DUTCHMAN, in which a Barbadian working in a Toronto car wash finds himself behind the wheel of a big car with a fast and easy Canadian white woman by his side; and ‘An Easter Carol,’ a beautiful, poignant story set in Barbados about what happens to a young boy who is forced by his mother into a new Easter suit with painfully ill-fitting shoes, told not to swear, and sent to the Easter service at the pristine Anglican church. In all of these stories, Clarke comically, tragically explores the repercussions when different cultures meet, and at the same time transcends the question of color by making the reader see his characters and situations in true human dimensions. His stories are brilliantly, lovingly crafted and a delight to read. Born in Barbados, Austin Clarke graduated from Harrison College and left the island in 1955 for Canada, where he attended Trinity College at the University of Toronto. While in Canada, he worked for the CBC as a stagehand, an actor, and a broadcaster, and conducted radio documentaries on Malcolm X, LeRoi Jones, black music and culture in Harlem, and the civil rights movement. In the United States, he has taught literature at Yale, Brandeis, Smith, Williams, and at Duke University. He is the author of two novels published in the United States, THE MEETING POINT and STORM OF FORTUNE, and his work has appeared in several anthologies and in Evergreen Review, New American Review and Works in Progress. Austin Clarke has also recently been appointed Cultural Attache to the Embassy of Barbados in Washington. . Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke (born July 26, 1934), is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called ‘Canada's first multicultural writer’. Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University (Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971-72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973). In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977). Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977) and at University of Western Ontario (1978). From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize ‘on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers’. Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington, Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: ‘‘I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Clarke, Austin. When Women Rule. Toronto. 1985. McClelland & Stewart. 0771021291. 174 pages. paperback. Cover illustration: Brian Boyd. Cover design: Tad Aronowicz They come from the "Wessindies" to Canada, these labourers in search of a better life. Most find only hostility and frustration. For the few who attain the elusive dream of success in a system as fickle as their woman's embrace, there comes a more troubling dilemma: they become strangers in their own flesh. In eight powerful stories, Austin Clarke captures the repressed passions of the West Indian immigrant in Canada. In scenes as alive with the possibility of violence as a cocked pistol, Clarke takes the reader from tumultuous poker games to explosions of joy and rage. WHEN WOMEN RULE deals brilliantly with the universal theme of lofty hopes and cancelled dreams. Austin Clarke's interest in Barbados, where he was born, provided the inspiration for his first two widely praised novels, THE SURVIVORS OF THE CROSSING and AMONGST THISTLES AND THORNS. He has also published the trilogy, THE MEETING POINT, STORM OF FORTUNE and THE BIGGER LIGHT, which distinguished him as a leading Canadian novelist. Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke (born July 26, 1934), is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called ‘Canada's first multicultural writer’. Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University (Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971-72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973). In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977). Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977) and at University of Western Ontario (1978). From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize ‘on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers’. Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington, Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: ‘‘I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Cliff, Michelle. Free Enterprise. New York. 1994. Plume/New American Library. 0452271223. 213 pages. paperback. Cover design by Daniel Rembert This message was found on John Brown's body following his ill-fated raid on Harpers Ferry. History books do not record the contribution of his mysterious collaborator, 'M.E.P.,' but in Free Enterprise, acclaimed novelist Michelle Cliff tells the remarkable story of frontier legend Mary Ellen Pleasant. In 1858, two black women meet at a restaurant and begin to plot a revolution. Mary Ellen Pleasant owns a string of hotels in San Francisco that cater to wealthy whites and secretly double as havens for runaway slaves. Her comrade, Annie, is a young Jamaican who has given up her life of privilege to fight for the abolitionist cause. Together they join John Brown's doomed enterprise, and barely escape with their lives. In 1858, two black women meet and later join John Brown's doomed raid on Harper's Ferry, barely escaping with their lives. Acclaimed author Michelle Cliff places an actual historical figure at the center of her powerful new novel, which brings to life the passionate struggle for liberation that began not long after the first slavers landed in Virginia. Michelle Cliff (born 2 November 1946) is a Jamaican-American author whose notable works include No Telephone to Heaven, Abeng and Free Enterprise. Cliff also has written short stories, prose poems and works of literary criticism. Her works explore the various, complex identity problems that stem from post-colonialism, as well as the difficulty of establishing an authentic, individual identity despite race and gender constructs. Cliff is a lesbian who grew up in Jamaica. |
![]() | ![]() | Cliff, Michelle. If I Could Write This in Fire. Minneapolis. 2008. University Of Minnesota Press. 9780816654741. 91 pages. paperback. ‘Michelle Cliff has always been a fierce and fearless writer. In this incendiary collection Cliff examines place and race and legacy, the things we carry with us in our memory and blood. ‘Revolutionaries are made, not born.’ This book could make them. Be prepared.’ - Rebecca Brown. A deeply personal meditation on history and memory, place and displacement by a major writer Born in a Jamaica still under British rule, the acclaimed and influential writer Michelle Cliff embraced her many identities, shaped by her experiences with the forces of colonialism and oppression: a light-skinned Creole, a lesbian, an immigrant in both England and the United States. In her celebrated novels and short stories, she has probed the intersection of prejudice and oppression with a rare and striking lyricism. In her first collection of nonfiction, Cliff displays the same poetic intensity, interweaving reflections on her life in Jamaica, England, and the United States with a powerful and sustained critique of racism, homophobia, and social injustice. IF I COULD WRITE THIS IN FIRE begins by tracing her transatlantic journey from Jamaica to England, coalescing around a graceful, elliptical account of her childhood friendship with Zoe, who is dark-skinned and from an impoverished, rural background; the divergent life courses that each is forced to take; and the class and color tensions that shape their lives as adults. In other essays and poems, Cliff writes about the discovery of her distinctive, diasporic literary voice, recalls her wild colonial girlhood and sexual awakening, and recounts traveling through an American landscape of racism, colonialism, and genocide - a history of violence embodied in seemingly innocuous souvenirs and tourist sites. IF I COULD WRITE THIS IN FIRE explores the complexities of identity as they meet with race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and the legacies of the Middle Passage and European imperialism. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Michelle Cliff has lectured at several universities and was Allan K. Smith Professor of English Language and Literature at Trinity College in Hartford. She is the author of the acclaimed novels ABENG, NO TELEPHONE TO HEAVEN, and FREE ENTERPRISE, as well as two collections of short fiction, BODIES OF WATER and THE STORE OF A MILLION ITEMS. . Michelle Cliff (born 2 November 1946) is a Jamaican-American author whose notable works include No Telephone to Heaven, Abeng and Free Enterprise. Cliff also has written short stories, prose poems and works of literary criticism. Her works explore the various, complex identity problems that stem from post-colonialism, as well as the difficulty of establishing an authentic, individual identity despite race and gender constructs. Cliff is a lesbian who grew up in Jamaica. |
![]() | ![]() | Clitandre, Pierre. Cathedral of the August Heat. Columbia. 1987. Readers International. 093052330x. Translated from the Haitian French by Bridget Jones. 161 pages. hardcover. Cover art: Haitian mural.Design by Jan Brychta Haitian writer Clitandre blends traditional narrative, fragments of conversation, dreams and visions to bring to life the shantytown surrounding Port-au-Prince, where John, a bus driver, his son Raphael and their fellow denizens experience a hideous poverty that is outside the ken of most Americans. Time is fluid and is marked more by children growing up or dying than by dates, since the community is too poor to buy new calendars every year. Progress comes only in the form of electricity, and ominous factory sheds, where workers are locked in all day, push many of the poor into the swamp. Brutal police curtail the shanty dwellers’ few freedoms. But in this novel, the poor have had enough. After Raphael is murdered by the police, John leads the people in concert with farmers from the countryside in an uprising on the anniversary of Haiti’s independence. Jones masterfully translates Haitian patois into West Indian English. - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. Journalist, painter and novelist, Pierre Clitandre was born on 20 March 1954 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He studied painting at the Académie de Beaux-Arts from 1974 to 1977 and continued his studies at the Faculty of Ethnology until 1979. He is a cultural journalist and collaborator in the main Haitian newspapers: Le Nouvelliste , Le Matin and Le Petit Saturday Evening . He is also a columnist for Radio Haiti Inter, and for two years he collaborates with Radio Plus for programs in culture and archeology, ethnology and town planning. |
![]() | ![]() | Collins, Marie (editor). Black Poets in French. New York. 1972. Scribner's. 0684125978. 165 pages. A bilingual edition of Caribbean and African poets. Those from the Caribbean are: Leon Damas (French Guiana), Aimé Césaire (Martinique), Jacques Roumain (Haiti), Jean Brierre (Haiti), René Depestre (Haiti), Anthony Phelps (Haiti), Paul Niger (Guadeloupe), Guy Tirolien (Guadeloupe). Most of the selections are by Damas and Césaire. Photos. |
![]() | ![]() | Collins, Merle. Angel. Seattle. 1988. Seal Press. 0931188644. 295 pages. paperback. Cover: Barbara Thomas-'A Lover's Tutorial', 1986 This vibrant novel from the Caribbean introduces the passionate voice of Black writer Merle Collins. Set on the island of Grenada, the story centers on several generations of women and traces the struggle of the Grenadian people to achieve political autonomy. Angel, daughter of Doodsie, is a young child when the houses of the white landowners in Grenada are burned to the ground, an event that ushers in thirty years of change on the island. Angel grows up headstrong and rebellious, eventually leaving the community to attend university, where her radical ideas deepen. As political unrest in Grenada mounts, Angel returns home and plunges into activity - work that is cut short by the sudden invasion of U.S. troops. An outstanding fiction debut by a gifted writer, ANGEL is a richly evocative and memorable novel. ‘My joy - a first reaction to Merle Collins’ novel, ANGEL - stemmed from the nostalgia created by the use of its language, so familiar to me, so dear - captured in all of the lustiness, its great splashes of humor in my native patois. Then came its telling. She draws a portrait so profound of the former British colonial Caribbean family - forever living on this side of happiness. Ms. Collins has emerged as a major writer and storyteller. Bravo, bravo!’ - Rosa Guy. ‘Merle Collins has written a richly textured and moving story of the West Indies that exists behind the tourist hype of happy islands in the sun. In Angel McAllister, whose coming of age parallels recent events in Grenada’s history, including the U.S. invasion, Collins has created a truly contemporary West Indian heroine. Her mother, Doodsie, is both a triumph of characterization and a testament to the resiliency and strength of Black women the world over. ANGEL ‘sings’ with her vivid and authentic voice.’ — Paule Marshall. Merle Collins (born 29 September 1950 in Aruba) is a distinguished Grenadian poet and short story writer. Collins' parents are from Grenada, where they returned from Aruba shortly after her birth. Her primary education was in St George's, Grenada. She later studied at the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, earning degrees in English and Spanish in 1972. She then taught history and Spanish in Grenada for two years and subsequently in St Lucia. In 1980, she graduated from Georgetown University, Washington, DC, with a master's degree in Latin American Studies. She graduated from the London School of Economics with a Ph.D. in Government. Collins was deeply involved in the Grenadian Revolution and served as a government coordinator for research on Latin America and the Caribbean. She left Grenada for England in 1983. From 1984 to 1995, Collins taught at the University of North London. She is currently a Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of Maryland. Her critical works include "Themes and Trends in Caribbean Writing Today" in From My Guy to Sci-Fi: Genre and Women's Writing in the Postmodern World (ed. Helen Carr, Pandora Press, 1989), and "To be Free is Very Sweet" in Slavery and Abolition (Vol. 15, issue 3, 1994, pp. 96–103). Her first collection of poetry, Because the Dawn Breaks, was published in 1985, at which time she was a member of African Dawn, a performance group combining poetry, mime, and African music. In England, she began her first novel, Angel. In 1987, she published Angel, which follows the lives of Grenadians as they struggled for independence. Specifically, Angel is about a young woman going through the political turbulence in Grenada. Her collection of short stories, Rain Darling, was produced in 1990, and a second collection of poetry, Rotten Pomerack, in 1992. Her second novel, The Colour of Forgetting, was published in 1995. A review of her 2003 poetry collection, Lady in a Boat, states, "Ranging from poems reveling in the nation language of her island to poems that capture the beauty of its flora, Collins presents her island and people going about the business of living. They attempt to come to terms with the past and construct a future emerging out of the crucible of violence. Lady in a Boat is a poignant retelling of a period in history when, for a brief moment, Caribbean ascendancy seemed possible. Merle Collins shows how the death of this moment continues to haunt the Caribbean imagination." Her most recent collection of stories, The Ladies Are Upstairs, was published in 2011. |
![]() | ![]() | Collymore, Frank A. Selected Poems. Bridgetown, Barbados. 1971. Coles Printery Ltd. 67 pages. paperback. All of these poems, with two exceptions, were written in the 1940s. Frank Appleton Collymore was born on January 7, 1893 at Woodville Cottage, Chelsea Road, where he lived all his life. He entered Combermere School for boys in 1903 and remained there as a student until 1910 when he was invited to join the staff . He retired from Combermere officially in 1958, having risen to the position of Deputy Headmaster. After retirement he often returned to teach until 1963. Frank Collymore was married twice and was the father of four daughters. He died at the age of eighty-seven on July 17, 1980. It is for his work as a poet and an editor that Frank Collymore is best known and especially for his significant contribution to the development of West Indian Literature as the editor of BIM Magazine. BIM was first published in 1942 with E.L. Jimmy Cozier as editor. Frank Collymore became joint editor with W. Therold Barnes from Issue no. 3 when Jimmy Cozier left for Trinidad. He remained editor until 1975, producing the magazine twice a year often single-handly even in difficult times. With BIM he provided an outlet for aspiring Caribbean writers. Contributions for this magazine were received from across the region and some material from the magazine was used by the BBC Overseas Services in a programme entitled ‘Caribbean Voices’. Collymore became known as a friend and inspiration to writers both at home and abroad. ‘ . . . Frank Collymore’s influence on West Indian literature was not only felt through BIM, but as a teacher, his pupils included George Lamming, Austin (Tom) Clarke and the late Timothy Callendar. He is remembered by some students for allowing free expression in drawing, free flow of thought, for encouraging them to write on topics drawn from their surroundings, and for inviting special speakers for sixth formers, whom he did not teach. Among these speakers were Bruce Hamilton and Edgar Mittleholzer . . . ‘. Frank Appleton Collymore (7 January 1893 - 17 July 1980) was a famous Barbadian literary editor, author, poet, stage performer and painter. His nickname was ‘Barbadian Man of the Arts’. He also taught for 50 years at Combermere School, where he sought out and encouraged prospective writers in his classes, notably George Lamming. Collymore was born at Woodville Cottage, Chelsea Road, Saint Michael, Barbados (where he lived all his life). Aside from being a student at Combermere School (from 1903 until 1910), he was also one of its staff members until his retirement in 1958, up to which point he was its Deputy Headmaster. After this, he often returned to teach until 1963. On the stage, he became a member of the ‘Bridgetown Players’, which began in 1942. As an artist, he made many drawings and paintings to illustrate his own writings. He called them ‘Collybeasts’ or ‘Collycreatures’. In 1942, he began the famous Caribbean literary magazine BIM (originally published four times a year), for which he is most well-known, and was also its editor until 1975. John T. Gilmore has written of Collymore: ‘As a lover of literature, he was also a dedicated and selfless encourager of the work of others, lending books to aspiring writers from their schooldays onwards, publishing their early work in Bim, the literary magazine he edited for more than fifty issues from the 1940s to the 1970s, and helping them to find other markets, especially through the relationship he established with Henry Swanzy, producer of the influential BBC radio programme Caribbean Voices.’ Three literary awards have been named after him. |
![]() | ![]() | Collymore, Frank. The Man Who Loved Attending Funerals and Other Stories. Portsmouth. 1993. Heinemann. 0435989316. Caribbean Writers Series. 179 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Jamel Akib Frank Collymore was at the centre of the West Indian literary renaissance of the forties and fifties. He was a master of the short story, bringing together a mordant wit and a sympathetic understanding of human failings to tackle subjects ranging from the eccentric to the psychotic. This collection includes ‘Shadows’, a sombre depiction of alienation, a satirical dissection of social climbing in ‘RSVP to Mrs Bush-Hall’, and in ‘The Snag’ a young boy’s growing pains are written about with gentle irony. Frank Appleton Collymore MBE (7 January 1893 - 17 July 1980) was a famous Barbadian literary editor, author, poet, stage performer and painter. His nickname was ‘Barbadian Man of the Arts’. He also taught for 50 years at Combermere School, where he sought out and encouraged prospective writers in his classes, notably George Lamming. Collymore was born at Woodville Cottage, Chelsea Road, Saint Michael, Barbados (where he lived all his life). Aside from being a student at Combermere School (from 1903 until 1910), he was also one of its staff members until his retirement in 1958, up to which point he was its Deputy Headmaster. After this, he often returned to teach until 1963. On the stage, he became a member of the ‘Bridgetown Players’, which began in 1942. As an artist, he made many drawings and paintings to illustrate his own writings. He called them ‘Collybeasts’ or ‘Collycreatures’. In 1942, he began the famous Caribbean literary magazine BIM (originally published four times a year), for which he is most well-known, and was also its editor until 1975. John T. Gilmore has written of Collymore: ‘As a lover of literature, he was also a dedicated and selfless encourager of the work of others, lending books to aspiring writers from their schooldays onwards, publishing their early work in Bim, the literary magazine he edited for more than fifty issues from the 1940s to the 1970s, and helping them to find other markets, especially through the relationship he established with Henry Swanzy, producer of the influential BBC radio programme Caribbean Voices.’ Three literary awards have been named after him. |
![]() | ![]() | Conde, Maryse and Pfaff, Francoise. Conversations With Maryse Conde. Lincoln. 1996. University Of Nebraska Press. 0803237138. 179 pages. hardcover. This book is an exploration of the life and art of Maryse Condé, who first won international acclaim for Segu, a novel about West African experience and the slave trade. Born in Guadeloupe in 1937, Condé lived in Guinea after it won its independence from France. Later she lived in Ghana and Senegal during turbulent, decisive moments in the histories of these countries. Her writings-novels, plays, essays, stories, and children’s books-have led her to an increasingly important role within Africa and throughout the world. Françoise Pfaff met Maryse Condé in 1981, when she first interviewed her. Their friendship grew quickly. In 1991 the two women continued recording conversations about Condé’s geographical sojourns and literary paths, her personality, and her thoughts. Their conversations reveal connections between Condé’s vivid art and her eventful, passionate life. In her encounters with historical and literary figures, and in her opinions on politics and culture, Condé appears as an engaging witness to her time. The conversations frequently sparkle with humor; at other moments they are infused with profound seriousness. Maryse Condé is the recipient of the French literary awards Le Grand Prix Littéraire de la Femme and Le Prix de l’Académie Française. She currently teaches at Columbia University and her most recent works include Tree of Life and Crossing the Mangrove. Born and educated in Paris, Françoise Pfaff is a professor of French at Howard University. The translator of this book, she is also the author of Twenty-five Black African Filmmakers: A Critical Study, with Filmography and Bio-Bibliography and The Cinema of Ousmane Sembene, A Pioneer of African Cinema. Entretiens avec Maryse Condé was first published in France in 1993. |
![]() | ![]() | Conde, Maryse. A Season in Rihata. New York. 1988. Heinemann. 0435988328. Translated from the French by Richard Philcox. Caribbean Writers Series. 192 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover photography by H. Elleing. Cover illustration by Rachel Ross. In Rihata, a small, sleepy, backwater town in a fictitious African state, a couple and their family struggle to come to terms with each other against a background of political maneuvering and upheaval. Marie-Helene, far from her native home in Guadeloupe, lives unhappily with her African husband, Zek, who is riddled with material problems and weighted down by his own burden of inferiority towards his younger and more successful brother, Madou. Their uneasy existence is further disturbed by the arrival of Madou, now Minister for Rural Development, on an official visit to Rihata. Murky events from the past resurface and send ripples through their lives. The portrait of an African community torn between progress and tradition and subject to the whims of a dictatorship unfolds through this subtle web of personal relationships. A SEASON IN RIHATA is a novel of political power, exile, grief and loneliness. Maryse Condé (born February 11, 1937) is a Guadeloupean, French-language author of historical fiction, best known for her novel Segu (1984–1985). Born as Maryse Boucolon at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, she was the youngest of eight children. After having graduated from high school, she was sent to Lycée Fénelon and Sorbonne in Paris, where she majored in English. In 1959, she married Mamadou Condé, a Guinean actor. After graduating, she taught in Guinea, Ghana and Senegal. In 1981, she divorced, but the following year married Richard Philcox, English language translator of most of her novels. In addition to her writings, Condé had a distinguished academic career. In 2004 she retired from Columbia University as Professor Emerita of French. She had previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, the Sorbonne, The University of Virginia, and the University of Nanterre. Condé's novels explore racial, gender and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and locales, including the Salem witch trials in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1992) and the 19th-century Bambara Empire of Mali in Segu (1987). Her novels trace the relationships between African peoples and the diaspora, especially the Caribbean. She has taken considerable distance from most Caribbean literary movements, such as Negritude and Creolité, and has often focused on topics with strong feminist concerns. A radical activist in her work as well as in her personal life, Condé has admitted: ‘I could not write anything... unless it has a certain political significance. I have nothing else to offer that remains important.’ Her recent writings have become increasingly autobiographical, such as Memories of My Childhood and Victoire, a biography of her grandmother. Who Slashed Celanire's Throat also shows traces of Condé's paternal great-grandmother. |
![]() | ![]() | Conde, Maryse. Crossing the Mangrove. New York. 1995. Anchor/Doubleday. 0385476337. Paperback Original. Translated from the French by Richard Philcox. 208 pages. paperback. In this beautifully crafted, Rashomon-like novel, Maryse Conde has written a gripping story imbued with all the nuances and traditions of Caribbean culture. Francis Sancher--a handsome outsider, loved by some and reviled by others--is found dead, face down in the mud on a path outside Riviere au Sel, a small village in Guadeloupe. None of the villagers are particularly surprised, since Sancher, a secretive and melancholy man, had often predicted an unnatural death for himself. As the villagers come to pay their respects they each--either in a speech to the mourners, or in an internal monologue--reveal another piece of the mystery behind Sancher's life and death. Like pieces of an elaborate puzzle, their memories interlock to create a rich and intriguing portrait of a man and a community. In the lush and vivid prose for which she has become famous, Conde has constructed a Guadeloupean wake for Francis Sancher. Retaining the full color and vibrance of Conde's homeland, Crossing the Mangrove pays homage to Guadeloupe in both subject and structure. Maryse Condé (born February 11, 1937) is a Guadeloupean, French-language author of historical fiction, best known for her novel Segu (1984–1985). Born as Maryse Boucolon at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, she was the youngest of eight children. After having graduated from high school, she was sent to Lycée Fénelon and Sorbonne in Paris, where she majored in English. In 1959, she married Mamadou Condé, a Guinean actor. After graduating, she taught in Guinea, Ghana and Senegal. In 1981, she divorced, but the following year married Richard Philcox, English language translator of most of her novels. In addition to her writings, Condé had a distinguished academic career. In 2004 she retired from Columbia University as Professor Emerita of French. She had previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, the Sorbonne, The University of Virginia, and the University of Nanterre. Condé's novels explore racial, gender and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and locales, including the Salem witch trials in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1992) and the 19th-century Bambara Empire of Mali in Segu (1987). Her novels trace the relationships between African peoples and the diaspora, especially the Caribbean. She has taken considerable distance from most Caribbean literary movements, such as Negritude and Creolité, and has often focused on topics with strong feminist concerns. A radical activist in her work as well as in her personal life, Condé has admitted: ‘I could not write anything... unless it has a certain political significance. I have nothing else to offer that remains important.’ Her recent writings have become increasingly autobiographical, such as Memories of My Childhood and Victoire, a biography of her grandmother. Who Slashed Celanire's Throat also shows traces of Condé's paternal great-grandmother. |
![]() | ![]() | Conde, Maryse. Desirada. New York. 2000. Soho Press. 1569472157. Translated from the French by Richard Philcox. 260 pages. hardcover. Ranelise is a cook in the small village of La Pointe in Guadeloupe where she rescues a teenage girl from suicide by drowning. The girl, Reynalda Titane, lives at the local jeweler's grand house where her mother, Nina, is a maid. Reynalda is pregnant and in a state of despair. Ranelise cares for her and the child, christened Marie-Noelle, but Reynalda soon flees to France, intent upon getting the education to allow her to rise above her mother's fate. Desirada is the story of Marie-Noelle and her quest to understand the mother who abandoned her, and discover the identity of her father, despite the opposing stories from her mother and her grandmother. It is also the story of generations of island women and the pursuit of a meaningful life despite a tainted personal history. Desirada was awarded the prestigious Prix Carbet de la Caraibe in 1998 given for the best book by a Caribbean author. It is Ms. Conde's twelfth novel. Maryse Condé (born February 11, 1937) is a Guadeloupean, French-language author of historical fiction, best known for her novel Segu (1984–1985). Born as Maryse Boucolon at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, she was the youngest of eight children. After having graduated from high school, she was sent to Lycée Fénelon and Sorbonne in Paris, where she majored in English. In 1959, she married Mamadou Condé, a Guinean actor. After graduating, she taught in Guinea, Ghana and Senegal. In 1981, she divorced, but the following year married Richard Philcox, English language translator of most of her novels. In addition to her writings, Condé had a distinguished academic career. In 2004 she retired from Columbia University as Professor Emerita of French. She had previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, the Sorbonne, The University of Virginia, and the University of Nanterre. Condé's novels explore racial, gender and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and locales, including the Salem witch trials in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1992) and the 19th-century Bambara Empire of Mali in Segu (1987). Her novels trace the relationships between African peoples and the diaspora, especially the Caribbean. She has taken considerable distance from most Caribbean literary movements, such as Negritude and Creolité, and has often focused on topics with strong feminist concerns. A radical activist in her work as well as in her personal life, Condé has admitted: ‘I could not write anything... unless it has a certain political significance. I have nothing else to offer that remains important.’ Her recent writings have become increasingly autobiographical, such as Memories of My Childhood and Victoire, a biography of her grandmother. Who Slashed Celanire's Throat also shows traces of Condé's paternal great-grandmother. |
![]() | ![]() | Conde, Maryse. Segu. New York. 1987. Viking Press. 0670807281. Translated from the French by Barbara Bray. 480 pages. hardcover. A powerful novel of Africa's history and the men and women who determined its fate. From the East came Islam. From the West, the slave trade. The battle for Africa's soul had begun... ‘A wondrous novel about a period of African history few other writers have addressed... Much of the novel's radiance comes from the lush descriptions of a traditional life that is both exotic and violent.’ -THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW. ‘Segu is an overwhelming accomplishment. It injects into the density of history characters who are as alive as you and I. Passionate, lusty, greedy, they are in conflict with themselves as well as with God and Mammon. Maryse Conde has done us all a tremendous service by rendering history so compelling and exciting. Segu is a literary masterpiece I could not put down.’ -LOUISE MERIWETHER. Maryse Condé (born February 11, 1937) is a Guadeloupean, French-language author of historical fiction, best known for her novel Segu (1984–1985). Born as Maryse Boucolon at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, she was the youngest of eight children. After having graduated from high school, she was sent to Lycée Fénelon and Sorbonne in Paris, where she majored in English. In 1959, she married Mamadou Condé, a Guinean actor. After graduating, she taught in Guinea, Ghana and Senegal. In 1981, she divorced, but the following year married Richard Philcox, English language translator of most of her novels. In addition to her writings, Condé had a distinguished academic career. In 2004 she retired from Columbia University as Professor Emerita of French. She had previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, the Sorbonne, The University of Virginia, and the University of Nanterre. Condé's novels explore racial, gender and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and locales, including the Salem witch trials in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1992) and the 19th-century Bambara Empire of Mali in Segu (1987). Her novels trace the relationships between African peoples and the diaspora, especially the Caribbean. She has taken considerable distance from most Caribbean literary movements, such as Negritude and Creolité, and has often focused on topics with strong feminist concerns. A radical activist in her work as well as in her personal life, Condé has admitted: ‘I could not write anything... unless it has a certain political significance. I have nothing else to offer that remains important.’ Her recent writings have become increasingly autobiographical, such as Memories of My Childhood and Victoire, a biography of her grandmother. Who Slashed Celanire's Throat also shows traces of Condé's paternal great-grandmother. |
![]() | ![]() | Conde, Maryse. Tales From the Heart: True Stories From My Childhood. New York. 2001. Soho Press. 1569472645. Translated from the French by Richard Philcox. 147 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by James Reyman Studio.Author phot by Henry Roy Maryse was the eighth child in her family, an unexpected one. Her father, a civil servant, had been awarded the Legion d’honneur; her elegant mother had been a schoolteacher. She arrived after a difficult pregnancy while the town of La Pointe, Guadeloupe was in the midst of celebrating Mardi Gras. She was raised to appreciate culture, the opera, the great French paintings and was sent to a privately-run school. Hers was a proud family in which appearances, skin tone, language, and class was important, her parents ever mindful of being a part of a world which for centuries had been reserved for Whites only.In this collection of autobiographical essays, Maryse Condé vividly evokes the relationships and events which gave her childhood meaning: discovering her parents feelings of alienation; her first crush and short-lived romance; a falling out with her best friend over a frank assessment of her beauty; the death of her beloved grandmother when she was nine; an incident at a playground that was her first encounter with racism. Maryse began to invent a universe of her own at an early age, and these gem-like vignettes capture the spirit of her fiction: haunting, powerful, poignant, and leavened with a streak of humor. They paint a wonderful picture of a little girl trying to find her place in the world, one that is redolent of the music and colors of the Caribbean, as well as of the harsher climate of Paris.Tales from the Heart was awarded the Prix Yourcenar in 1999 for excellence in French writing by an author who resides in the United States. Maryse Condé (born February 11, 1937) is a Guadeloupean, French-language author of historical fiction, best known for her novel Segu (1984–1985). Born as Maryse Boucolon at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, she was the youngest of eight children. After having graduated from high school, she was sent to Lycée Fénelon and Sorbonne in Paris, where she majored in English. In 1959, she married Mamadou Condé, a Guinean actor. After graduating, she taught in Guinea, Ghana and Senegal. In 1981, she divorced, but the following year married Richard Philcox, English language translator of most of her novels. In addition to her writings, Condé had a distinguished academic career. In 2004 she retired from Columbia University as Professor Emerita of French. She had previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, the Sorbonne, The University of Virginia, and the University of Nanterre. Condé's novels explore racial, gender and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and locales, including the Salem witch trials in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1992) and the 19th-century Bambara Empire of Mali in Segu (1987). Her novels trace the relationships between African peoples and the diaspora, especially the Caribbean. She has taken considerable distance from most Caribbean literary movements, such as Negritude and Creolité, and has often focused on topics with strong feminist concerns. A radical activist in her work as well as in her personal life, Condé has admitted: ‘I could not write anything... unless it has a certain political significance. I have nothing else to offer that remains important.’ Her recent writings have become increasingly autobiographical, such as Memories of My Childhood and Victoire, a biography of her grandmother. Who Slashed Celanire's Throat also shows traces of Condé's paternal great-grandmother. |
![]() | ![]() | Conde, Maryse. The Last of the African Kings. Lincoln. 1997. University Of Nebraska Press. 0803263848. Afterword by Leah D. Hewitt. Translated from the French Richard Philcox. 232 pages. paperback. When he opposes French colonialism in his native Africa, regal Behanzin is exiled to the far-off island of Martinique. In the course of her novel, renowned author Maryse Conde tells the story of Behanzin's scattered offspring and their lives in the Caribbean and the United States. She skillfully intertwines themes of exile, lost origins, and hope--with Africa hovering in the background. Maryse Condé (born February 11, 1937) is a Guadeloupean, French-language author of historical fiction, best known for her novel Segu (1984–1985). Born as Maryse Boucolon at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, she was the youngest of eight children. After having graduated from high school, she was sent to Lycée Fénelon and Sorbonne in Paris, where she majored in English. In 1959, she married Mamadou Condé, a Guinean actor. After graduating, she taught in Guinea, Ghana and Senegal. In 1981, she divorced, but the following year married Richard Philcox, English language translator of most of her novels. In addition to her writings, Condé had a distinguished academic career. In 2004 she retired from Columbia University as Professor Emerita of French. She had previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, the Sorbonne, The University of Virginia, and the University of Nanterre. Condé's novels explore racial, gender and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and locales, including the Salem witch trials in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1992) and the 19th-century Bambara Empire of Mali in Segu (1987). Her novels trace the relationships between African peoples and the diaspora, especially the Caribbean. She has taken considerable distance from most Caribbean literary movements, such as Negritude and Creolité, and has often focused on topics with strong feminist concerns. A radical activist in her work as well as in her personal life, Condé has admitted: ‘I could not write anything... unless it has a certain political significance. I have nothing else to offer that remains important.’ Her recent writings have become increasingly autobiographical, such as Memories of My Childhood and Victoire, a biography of her grandmother. Who Slashed Celanire's Throat also shows traces of Condé's paternal great-grandmother. |
![]() | ![]() | Conde, Maryse. The Story of the Cannibal Woman. New York. 2007. Atria/Simon & Schuster. 0743271289. Translated from the French by Richard Philcox. 311 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Yoouri Kim One dark night in Cape Town, Rosélie’s husband goes out for a pack of cigarettes and never comes back. Not only is she left with unanswered questions about his violent death but she is also left without any means of support. At the urging of her housekeeper and best friend, the new widow decides to take advantage of the strange gifts she has always possessed and embarks on a career as a clairvoyant. As Rosélie builds a new life for herself and seeks the truth about her husband’s murder, acclaimed Caribbean author Maryse Condé crafts a deft exploration of post-apartheid South Africa and a smart, gripping thriller. THE STORY OF THE CANNIBAL WOMAN is both contemporary and international, following the lives of an interracial, intercultural couple in New York City, Tokyo, and Capetown. Maryse Condé is known for vibrantly lyrical language and fearless, inventive storytelling—she uses both to stunning effect in this magnificently original novel. Maryse Condé (born February 11, 1937) is a Guadeloupean, French-language author of historical fiction, best known for her novel Segu (1984–1985). Born as Maryse Boucolon at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, she was the youngest of eight children. After having graduated from high school, she was sent to Lycée Fénelon and Sorbonne in Paris, where she majored in English. In 1959, she married Mamadou Condé, a Guinean actor. After graduating, she taught in Guinea, Ghana and Senegal. In 1981, she divorced, but the following year married Richard Philcox, English language translator of most of her novels. In addition to her writings, Condé had a distinguished academic career. In 2004 she retired from Columbia University as Professor Emerita of French. She had previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, the Sorbonne, The University of Virginia, and the University of Nanterre. Condé's novels explore racial, gender and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and locales, including the Salem witch trials in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1992) and the 19th-century Bambara Empire of Mali in Segu (1987). Her novels trace the relationships between African peoples and the diaspora, especially the Caribbean. She has taken considerable distance from most Caribbean literary movements, such as Negritude and Creolité, and has often focused on topics with strong feminist concerns. A radical activist in her work as well as in her personal life, Condé has admitted: ‘I could not write anything... unless it has a certain political significance. I have nothing else to offer that remains important.’ Her recent writings have become increasingly autobiographical, such as Memories of My Childhood and Victoire, a biography of her grandmother. Who Slashed Celanire's Throat also shows traces of Condé's paternal great-grandmother. |
![]() | ![]() | Conde, Maryse. Tree of Life: A Novel of the Caribbean. New York. 1992. Ballantine/One World. 0345360745. Translated from the French by Victoria Reiter. 371 pages. hardcover. The New York Times Book Review hailed Segu, Maryse Conde's unforgettable saga of nineteenth-century Africa as 'the most significant historical novel about black Africa published in many a year.' Children of Segu, the gripping sequel, was greeted with the acclaim due to a master storyteller at the height of her gifts. Now, with Tree of Life, Conde turns her impassioned, epic eye to the chaos and upheaval of the twentieth century. Rapidly shifting back and forth between Guadeloupe and Harlem, moving from Haiti's desperate slums to the exclusive enclaves of the Parisian upper class, this deeply personal story traces one Guadeloupe family's rise from poverty to riches through several generations. The story begins with Albert, the forebear, who leaves an island plantation to work on the Panama Canal and out of the horror of prejudice and oppression, fierily recreates himself as a man of immense wealth. We learn about his sons: Jacob, doomed to carry on his father's business but yearning for a life of his own, and Jean, who rejects the privilege and riches that are his birthright and becomes a martyr to the struggling people of his tragic land; about his granddaughter, Thecla, who tries to find happiness through politics and men; and about Albert II, who meets his puzzling and heartbreaking end an ocean away from his family and his roots. The extraordinary tale is recounted by Coco, a contemporary female descendant, who finally reconciles herself to a past that has haunted her all her life. Like Segu and Children of Segu, Tree of Life is a grand historical pageant, overflowing with the interlocking tales of many lives, teeming with social, cultural, and political details. 'Rich and colorful and glorious' was how Maya Angelou described Segu. Tree of Life expands Maryse Conde's unique vision into our time. Maryse Condé (born February 11, 1937) is a Guadeloupean, French-language author of historical fiction, best known for her novel Segu (1984–1985). Born as Maryse Boucolon at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, she was the youngest of eight children. After having graduated from high school, she was sent to Lycée Fénelon and Sorbonne in Paris, where she majored in English. In 1959, she married Mamadou Condé, a Guinean actor. After graduating, she taught in Guinea, Ghana and Senegal. In 1981, she divorced, but the following year married Richard Philcox, English language translator of most of her novels. In addition to her writings, Condé had a distinguished academic career. In 2004 she retired from Columbia University as Professor Emerita of French. She had previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, the Sorbonne, The University of Virginia, and the University of Nanterre. Condé's novels explore racial, gender and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and locales, including the Salem witch trials in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1992) and the 19th-century Bambara Empire of Mali in Segu (1987). Her novels trace the relationships between African peoples and the diaspora, especially the Caribbean. She has taken considerable distance from most Caribbean literary movements, such as Negritude and Creolité, and has often focused on topics with strong feminist concerns. A radical activist in her work as well as in her personal life, Condé has admitted: ‘I could not write anything... unless it has a certain political significance. I have nothing else to offer that remains important.’ Her recent writings have become increasingly autobiographical, such as Memories of My Childhood and Victoire, a biography of her grandmother. Who Slashed Celanire's Throat also shows traces of Condé's paternal great-grandmother. |
![]() | ![]() | Conde, Maryse. Who Slashed Celanire's Throat?. New York. 2004. Atria Books. 0743482603. Translated from the French by Richard Philcox. 232 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Alan Witschonke The deeply prolific and widely celebrated author of such books as Segu and Tales from the Heart, Maryse Condé returns with an unforgettable new novel, Who Slashed Celanire’s Throat? Inspired by a tragedy in the late twentieth century, Condé sets this fiction in the late nineteenth century with her characteristic blend of magical realism and fantasy. Condé lyrically, hauntingly imagines Celanire: a woman who was mutilated at birth and left for dead. Mysterious, seductive, and disarming, she is driven to uncover the truth of her past at any cost. On one hand, Celanire appears to be a saint; she is a tireless worker who has turned numerous neglected institutions into vibrant schools for motherless children. But she is also a woman apprehended by demons, as death and misfortune seem to follow in her wake. Who Slashed Celanire’s Throat? follows both her triumphs and her trials as this survivor becomes a beautiful and powerful woman who travels from Guadeloupe to West Africa to Peru in order to solve the mysteries of her past and avenge the crimes committed against her. This beautifully rendered story, translated by Richard Philcox from the French edition, is sure to be considered the most dazzling addition to Condé’s brilliant body of work. Maryse Condé (born February 11, 1937) is a Guadeloupean, French-language author of historical fiction, best known for her novel Segu (1984–1985). Born as Maryse Boucolon at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, she was the youngest of eight children. After having graduated from high school, she was sent to Lycée Fénelon and Sorbonne in Paris, where she majored in English. In 1959, she married Mamadou Condé, a Guinean actor. After graduating, she taught in Guinea, Ghana and Senegal. In 1981, she divorced, but the following year married Richard Philcox, English language translator of most of her novels. In addition to her writings, Condé had a distinguished academic career. In 2004 she retired from Columbia University as Professor Emerita of French. She had previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, the Sorbonne, The University of Virginia, and the University of Nanterre. Condé's novels explore racial, gender and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and locales, including the Salem witch trials in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1992) and the 19th-century Bambara Empire of Mali in Segu (1987). Her novels trace the relationships between African peoples and the diaspora, especially the Caribbean. She has taken considerable distance from most Caribbean literary movements, such as Negritude and Creolité, and has often focused on topics with strong feminist concerns. A radical activist in her work as well as in her personal life, Condé has admitted: ‘I could not write anything... unless it has a certain political significance. I have nothing else to offer that remains important.’ Her recent writings have become increasingly autobiographical, such as Memories of My Childhood and Victoire, a biography of her grandmother. Who Slashed Celanire's Throat also shows traces of Condé's paternal great-grandmother. |
![]() | ![]() | Conde, Maryse. Windward Heights. New York. 1999. Soho Press. 1569471614. 364 pages. hardcover. A retelling of Bronte's Wuthering Heights set in nineteenth-century Guadeloupe and Cuba. Prize-winning Caribbean novelist Maryse Cond reimagines Emily Bronte's passionate novel as a tale of obsessive love between the ‘African’ Rayze and Cathy, the mulatto daughter of the man who takes Rayze in and raises him, but whose treatment goads Rayze into rebellious flight. In Cuba, Rayze makes his fortune, but upon his return he discovers Cathy has wed the weak scion of a socially prominent Creole family. Rayze determines to be avenged for the loss of his love. His vengeance continues into the next generation, haunting both Cathy's daughter and his son. In characteristic lush prose, Cond transposes Wuthering Heights to her native island of Guadeloupe, retaining the emotional power of the original while showing us Caribbean society in the wake of emancipation. First published in 1998 by Faber U.K. in Caryl Phillips's prestigious Caribbean series, Windward Heights is making its first appearance in the United States. Maryse Condé (born February 11, 1937) is a Guadeloupean, French-language author of historical fiction, best known for her novel Segu (1984–1985). Born as Maryse Boucolon at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, she was the youngest of eight children. After having graduated from high school, she was sent to Lycée Fénelon and Sorbonne in Paris, where she majored in English. In 1959, she married Mamadou Condé, a Guinean actor. After graduating, she taught in Guinea, Ghana and Senegal. In 1981, she divorced, but the following year married Richard Philcox, English language translator of most of her novels. In addition to her writings, Condé had a distinguished academic career. In 2004 she retired from Columbia University as Professor Emerita of French. She had previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, the Sorbonne, The University of Virginia, and the University of Nanterre. Condé's novels explore racial, gender and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and locales, including the Salem witch trials in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1992) and the 19th-century Bambara Empire of Mali in Segu (1987). Her novels trace the relationships between African peoples and the diaspora, especially the Caribbean. She has taken considerable distance from most Caribbean literary movements, such as Negritude and Creolité, and has often focused on topics with strong feminist concerns. A radical activist in her work as well as in her personal life, Condé has admitted: ‘I could not write anything... unless it has a certain political significance. I have nothing else to offer that remains important.’ Her recent writings have become increasingly autobiographical, such as Memories of My Childhood and Victoire, a biography of her grandmother. Who Slashed Celanire's Throat also shows traces of Condé's paternal great-grandmother. |
![]() | ![]() | Confiant, Raphael. Mamzelle Dragonfly. New York. 2000. Farrar Straus Giroux. 0374199329. Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale. 169 pages. hardcover. Jacket art - 'Laetitia' by Catherine Theodose Adelise is a girl trapped working in the cane fields of Martinique. Yearning for communication, she confides in the mysterious flowering tree in her backyard; her mother calls her a dragonfly, for she refuses to settle down and learn that life is not a game. When Adelise is forced to move from her village to Fort-de-France, the island’s politically restive capital, her aunt introduces her to the unsavory business of nightlife among the mulatto elite, and she comes to rely even more on an elaborate system of detachment from her body. ‘Raphael Confiant has incontestably become a principal character in French literary history,’ a reviewer for Le Monde observed. ‘One is struck by the luminous intelligence of his insights, by the wit of his dialogue, by his soaring lyricism.’ MAMZELLE DRAGONFLY, the first of Confiant’s books to be published in English, is a vivid and intimately affecting novel; its spare style is reminiscent of Cristina Garcia’s, while its fiercely independent heroine brings to mind those in Edwidge Danticat’s fiction, it is a nostalgic and erotic story, and also a sophisticated look at modern Martinique. Raphaël Confiant (born January 25, 1951) is a Martinican writer known for his literary commitment towards Creole literature. Raphaël Confiant was born in Le Lorrain, Martinique. He studied English and Political Science at the Sciences Po Aix and Law at Paul Cézanne University in Aix-en-Provence, France. During the 1970s, Confiant became a militant proponent of use of the Creole language and later worked with Jean Bernabé and Patrick Chamoiseau to create the créolité movement. |
![]() | ![]() | Cottle, Thomas J. Black Testimony: Voices of Britain's West Indians. Philadelphia. 1980. Temple University Press. 0877221863. 184 pages. hardcover. A study of more than 20 men women and children talking about their daily experiences as black people in Britain. THOMAS J. COTTLE (born January 22, 1937, Chicago, IL) is Professor of Education at Boston University. He has written over 25 books, including Private Lives and Public Accounts, A Family Album, Children in Jail, Children's Secrets, Hidden Survivors, Time's Children, Like Fathers, Like Sons, Barred from School, Perceiving Time, Black Children-White Dreams, and Black Testimony. His work has appeared in many scholarly journals as well as mainstream media. |
![]() | ![]() | Coulthard, G. R. (editor and translator). Caribbean literature: A n anthology. London. 1966. University of London Press. 128 pages. A collection of prose, poetry and drama. Includes selections by Aimé Césaire (Martinique) and Jacques Roumain (Haiti). |
![]() | ![]() | Courlander, Harold. The Drum and the Hoe: Life and Lore of the Haitian People. Berkeley and Los Angeles. 1960. University of California Press. 371 pages. hardcover. Haiti, brought vividly to life in this book, is a rugged, mountainous land, thickly populated by farmers who live close to the edge of hunger. Descended from Africans brought as slaves to the New World in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, they have developed a culture blended of African, American, and French influences - rich in folklore, music, art, dance, religion, and language. Now, as social change begins to sweep the Caribbean, Haiti must face its problems of feudal land tenure and overpopulation. However, the future of Haiti will be shaped also by novel influences from its past, and Mr. Courlander’s intriguing book will provide a thorough understanding of this background. One such influence is vodoun, the religious system of Haiti - a survival of West African beliefs with an infiltration of Roman Catholic doctrine. In contrast to sensationalized accounts of vodoun, Mr. Courlander provides a detailed story of vodoun rituals, with a guide to the thousands of loa, or spirits. Vodoun, he writes, ‘is an integrated system of concepts concerning human behavior, the relation of mankind to those who have lived before, and to the natural and supernatural forces of the universe. . . . In short, it is a true religion which attempts to tie the unknown to the known and thus create order where chaos existed before.’ He goes on to tell of the day-by-day role of spirits and rituals in the life of the Haitian people, describing certain extraordinary ceremonies dealing with supplication of the dead and invocation of deities. He gives the text, in Creole and in English translation, of numerous incantations, tales, proverbs, and songs. Many of these he traces to their West African precursors. He also traces many dances to the same source, noting that Haitian dances are usually participative rather than exhibitionistic. Mr. Courlander also discusses the Creole language - a blend of archaic French vocabulary and West African speech patterns and rhythms. The Haitians do not separate play and work (‘the drum and the hoe’) in the conventional Western manner. Mr. Courlander has attempted to convey in this book a unified picture of the resulting way of life — an unusually rich one, and one in which Americans are finding an increasing fascination. During his twelve trips to Haiti, totaling some four years’ stay, Mr. Courlander recorded hundreds of songs and took hundreds of remarkable photographs of dances, rites, art objects, and people at work and play. These are reproduced in the book in 48 pages of plates and 109 pages of music for songs and drum rhythms. A discography lists recordings of Haitian music. Harold Courlander, who is a specialist in African and Afro-American folklore, folk music, and related fields, has written HAITI SINGING and a novel set in the West Indies, THE CABALLERO. He has done much anthropological research and writing, some of it for the United Nations. |
![]() | ![]() | Craig, Christine. Mint Tea and Other Stories. Portsmouth. 1993. Heinemann. 0435989324. Caribbean Writers Series. 144 pages. paperback. Cover design by Touchpaper. Cover illustration by Chloe Cheese. These stories of love, injustice and the innermost feelings of women are tender and poignant as they weave between generations, past and present. They give a powerful and vivid view of Jamaican life shot through with pride and struggle, contempt and pain. In MINT TEA, her first collection of short stories, Craig displays a flair for language and imagery and a subtle sense of irony. Christine Craig is a Jamaican author, now living in the United States. Christine Craig (born 24 June 1943) is a Jamaican writer living in Florida, US. She has published collections of poetry and short stories, as well as children's fiction and several non-fiction works. Christine Craig was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and grew up in rural Saint Elizabeth. She received a BA from the University of the West Indies. In 1970, she published her first work, Emanuel and His Parrot, a children's book. She began publishing poetry in the late 1970s and published her first poetry collection, Quadrille for Tigers, in 1984. In 1993, Craig published a collection of short stories entitled Mint Tea. She also researched, wrote and presented a series of stories on Jamaican history for children's television. Craig tutored English literature at the University of the West Indies and was adjunct professor at Barry University in Florida. In 1989, she took part in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She was editor in Miami for the The Jamaica Gleaner from 1990 to 1998. She later moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. |
![]() | ![]() | Cudjoe, Selwyn R. and Cain, William E. (editors). C. L. R. James: His Intellectual Legacy. Amherst. 1995. University Of Massachusetts Press. 0870239066. 476 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Margaret Glover C.L.R. James (1901-1989) made important contributions in a host of fields - literature, criticism, cultural studies, political theory, history, and philosophy. One of the most astute minds of this century, he served as mentor for two generations of international intellectuals. He contributed enormously to their understanding of the colonial question, the Negro question, the Russian question, the role of dialectics in proletarian struggle, and the theory and practice of Marxism in the Americas. In addition to THE BLACK JACOBINS, his incisive account of the Haitian revolution of the 1790s, and NOTES ON DIALECTICS, James published a range of other books, including a classic work on the game of cricket and a study of Herman Melville. This collection of essays offers a variety of fresh perspectives on James’s life and writings. Included are reminiscences of those who knew James well and critical essays by eminent scholars. The book is the first to offer a full treatment of James’s many contributions to twentieth-century intellectual life. Selwyn R. Cudjoe is professor of Africana studies at Wellesley College. He is author of V. S. Naipaul: A Materialist Reading and editor of Caribbean Women Writers and Eric E. Williams Speaks. Professor of English at Wellesley College, William E. Cain is author of The Crisis in Criticism and F. O. Matthiessen and the Politics of Criticism. |
![]() | ![]() | Cudjoe, Selwyn R. Resistance and Caribbean Literature. Athens. 1980. Ohio University Press. 0821403532. 319 pages. hardcover. ‘Analysis, literary or otherwise, not only involves the quantification of data and description of events but also seeks to discover what Engles described as ‘the inner causal connection in the course of a development’ of these events. The search should be for the essence that yields a more critical study and helps predict further development of the phenomenon. Thus, when we examine Caribbean literature, we look for a continuous thread giving this literature its particular resonance, tonality and, most important of all, content. I have dispensed with a strict chronology of the works because the uneven economic development of the Caribbean islands has created varying social development. For example, Barbados in the seventeenth century was more developed than, say, Jamaica, and the consciousness of writers reflected this. In Cuba today, the social consciousness of writers is more advanced than that of writers in Haiti. In dispensing with chronology, I have correlated similar socio-political experiences with their concomitant artistic forms. Thus AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A RUNAWAY SLAVE (1963) is treated as arising necessarily and logically out of Slave Narrative of Juan Manzano (1840); KINGDOM OF THIS WORLD (1949) is dealt with in the same context as THE WHOLE ARMOUR (1962). This is valid because it reflects a given level of social consciousness even though different countries achieved that level at different times. This is not merely the aesthetic imposition of judgment but the real reflection of social development and illustrates the belief that the ‘imaginative content of a work of art should correspond to the objective image of reality.’ My major concern is to reflect a literary theory which emanates from the ‘objective reality’ rather than vice versa and to present a cohesive and gnostical view of the literature which, developing out of the Caribbean experience, has been fashioned by resistance at various levels. The approach, which is holistic and organic, proceeds from the premise that ‘every serious work of literature is a live human document reflecting the epoch’s actual historical processes and phenomena.’ To yield a richer understanding of literary works, criticism should show an understanding of the ‘historical processes and phenomena’ out of which a literature grows and should examine artistic form as a vehicle for carrying forward ideological content. For this reason I examine the artistic forms used to carry the ideological content of Caribbean literature forward: This work is meant to consolidate what we now know, to open possibilities for further study and to see literary scholarship in a ‘holistic’ manner.’ - from the Introduction by the author. Selwyn R. Cudjoe (born December 1, 1943, Tacarigua, Trinidad and Tobago) is Professor of Africana Studies, Margaret E. Deffenbaugh and LeRoy T. Carlson Professor in Comparative Literature, and, from 1995 to 1999, was the fourth Marion Butler McLean Chair in the History of Ideas at Wellesley College. He teaches courses on the African American literary tradition, African literature, black women writers, and Caribbean literature. A graduate of Fordham University where he received both a B.A. in English (1969) and an M.A. in American Literature (1972), Professor Cudjoe earned a Ph.D. in American Literature from Cornell University (1976). Prior to joining the Wellesley faculty in 1986, he taught at Ithaca College and Cornell, Harvard, Brandeis, Fordham, and Ohio universities. He has been a lecturer at Auburn (N.Y.) State Prison and taught at Bedford-Stuyvesant (N.Y.) Youth-In-Action. Professor Cudjoe is the author and editor of several books, and has produced several documentaries. He has written for the New York Times; The Washington Post; Boston Globe; Harvard Educational Review; International Herald Tribune; New Left Review; Baltimore Sun; the Amsterdam News; Trinidad Guardian; and Trinidad Express. |
![]() | ![]() | D'adesky, Anne-Christine. Under the Bone. New York. 1994. Farrar Straus Giroux. 0374280665. 371 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Maggie Steeber. Jacket design by James Conrad UNDER THE BONE is a harrowing, evocative tale of political intrigue and violence in post-Duvalier Haiti. Against the backdrop of electoral tensions, the novel opens with the discovery of a corpse, outside Port-au-Prince, by Elysse Voltaire, a young Haitian woman who is later framed for murder. Her plight, and that of Ti Cedric, a missing peasant activist, become the focus of an investigation by Leslie Doyle, an American human-rights worker, aided by a circle of Haitian advocates. Leslie's journey leads her from the houses ransacked by the Tontons Macoutes - Haiti's death squads - to killing fields, hospitals, prisons, and, finally to the truth. At once a mystery and a chronicle of hope and despair in the world's first black republic, UNDER THE BONE weaves a range of narrative to present a vivid, compelling picture of life in contemporary Haiti. Lyrical, haunting, and streaked with black humor, under the Bone marks the debut of a gifted young novelist and an astute observer of the human condition. Anne-Christine d'Adesky is an American journalist and activist of French and Haitian descent. Her father was born in Haiti, where the family's roots go back far; spending her childhood summers and still has extended family living there |
![]() | ![]() | D'Aguiar, Fred. Bloodlines. Woodstock. 2001. Overlook Press. 1585671568. 160 pages. hardcover. Using the intimate rhyme scheme of Byron's great picaresque Don Juan and the narrative devices of Pushkin's enduring Eugene Onegin, D'Aguiar creates poetry dazzling in its inventiveness and wonder. Moving from the Civil War to the present day, Bloodlines follows the lives of five characters, each trying to escape the bonds of slavery. Among them is the narrator, who knows neither of his parents because, by the time he is born, his black mother has been sold back into slavery and dies in childbirth, and his white father has been indentured as a boxer in a traveling fair. Cursed by the thwarted love of his parents, the narrator is condemned to bear witness until the races become equal. He speaks to us of his quest for freedom. Fred D'Aguiar (born 2 February 1960) is a British-Guyanese poet, novelist and playwright. He is currently Professor of English at Virginia Tech. Fred D'Aguiar was born in London in 1960 to Guyanese parents, Malcolm Frederick D'Aguiar and Kathleen Agatha Messiah. In 1962 he was taken to Guyana where he lived with his grandmother until 1972 when he returned, at the age of twelve, to England. D'Aguiar trained as a psychiatric nurse before reading African and Caribbean Studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury, graduating in 1985. On graduating he applied for a PhD on the Guyanese author Wilson Harris at the University of Warwick, but - after winning two writers-in-residency positions, at Birmingham University and the University of Cambridge (where he was the Judith E. Wilson Fellow from 1989 to 1990) - his PhD studies ‘recededed from [his] mind’ and he began to focus all of his energies on creative writing. In 1994, D'Aguiar moved to the United States to take up a Visiting Writer position at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts (1992–94). Since then, he has taught at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine (Assistant Professor, 1994–95) and the University of Miami where he held the position of Professor of English and Creative Writing. In 2003 he took up the position of Professor of English and Co-Director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Virginia Tech. D'Aguiar's first collection of poetry, Mama Dot (1985), was published to much acclaim. It centres upon an ‘archetypal‘ grandmother figure, Mama Dot, and was notable for its fusion of standard English and Nation language. Along with his 1989 collection Airy Hall (which is named after the village in Guyana where D'Aguiar spent his childhood), Mama Dot won the Guyana Poetry Prize. Where D'Aguiar's first two poetry collections were set in Guyana, his third - British Subjects (1989) - explores the experiences of peoples of the West Indian diaspora in London. London was also the focus of another long poem, Sweet Thames, which was broadcast as part of the BBC ‘Worlds on Film’ series on 3 July 1992 and won the Commission for Racial Equality Race in the Media Award. After turning to writing novels rather than poetry for a period of time, D'Aguiar returned to the poetic mode in 1998, publishing Bill of Rights (1998): a long narrative poem about the Jonestown massacre in Guyana in 1979, which is told in Guyanese versions of English, fusing patois, Creole and nation language with the standard vernacular. It was shortlisted for the 1998 T. S. Eliot Prize. Bill of Rights was followed by another narrative poem, Bloodlines (2000), which tells the story of a black slave and her white lover. His 2009 collection of poetry, Continental Shelf, centres on a response to the Virginia Tech Massacre in which 32 people were killed by a student in 2007. It was a finalist for the 2009 T. S. Eliot Prize. D'Aguiar's first novel, The Longest Memory (1994), tells the story of Whitechapel, a slave on an eighteenth-century Virginia plantation. The book won both the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread First Novel Award. It was adapted for television and televised by Channel 4 in the UK. Returning to themes he had earlier developed in British Subjects, D'Aguiar's 1996 novel, Dear Future, explores the history of the West Indian diaspora through a fictional account of the lives of one extended family. D'Aguiar's third novel, Feeding the Ghosts (1997), was inspired by a visit D'Aguiar made to the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool and is based on the true story of the Zong massacre in which 132 slaves were thrown from a slave ship into the Atlantic for insurance purposes. According to historical accounts, one slave survived and climbed back onto the ship; and in D'Aguiar's narrative this slave - about whom there is next to no historical information - is developed as the fictional character Mintah. His fourth novel, Bethany Bettany (2003), is centred on a five-year-old Guyanese girl, Bethany, whose suffering has been read by some as symbolising that of a nation (Guyana) seeking to make itself whole again. D'Aguiar's plays include High Life, which was first produced at the Albany Empire in London in 1987, and A Jamaican Airman Foresees His Death, performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1991. |
![]() | ![]() | D'Aguiar, Fred. British Subjects. Newcastle Upon Tyne. 1993. Bloodaxe Books. 1852242485. 64 pages. paperback. Cover illustration: UK School Report by Tam Joseph. The author’s third book of poems. Home is 'always elsewhere' for Fred D'Aguiar: born in Britain, brought up in Guyana, and now living in London and America. In his previous two books, Mama Dot and Airy Hall, he caught up with his past by writing about his upbringing in Guyana. Now his focus is Britain: being and feeling British, feeling at home but not being made to feel at home. Confronted by the Customs men at Heathrow, his passport stamp 'British Citizen not bold enough for my liking and too much for theirs'. Fred D'Aguiar maps out new poetic territory in British Subjects, re-discovering a sense of belonging in poems charting landmarks in his life: the return to Guyana with exiled writer Wilson Harris; finding the grave of an unknown African slave in Bristol; an unsettling visit to Germany; living by the Thames at Greenwich, and then by the sea at Whitley Bay. Always searching, always on edge, D'Aguiar can only lose himself when all the barriers come down, as in poems celebrating love, the body, and the fusing spirit of Notting Hill Carnival. Behind all these poems is his personal talisman, the River Thames, the Sweet Thames of his recent film, a great watery snake entering his dreams like a fertility god, transplanted from Britain to the rainforest of Guyana. 'He filters a village childhood through an English education. A literary style rubs up against a Caribbean pulse.. .Fred D'Aguiar is not going to settle for charming us with dreams of Caribbean innocence. He has more difficult goals in mind, and is willing to lead us off the beaten track to find them' — PHILIP GROSS, Poetry Review 'D'Aguiar writes with Biblical sensuality' — PETER PORTER, The Observer. Fred D'Aguiar (born 2 February 1960) is a British-Guyanese poet, novelist and playwright. He is currently Professor of English at Virginia Tech. Fred D'Aguiar was born in London in 1960 to Guyanese parents, Malcolm Frederick D'Aguiar and Kathleen Agatha Messiah. In 1962 he was taken to Guyana where he lived with his grandmother until 1972 when he returned, at the age of twelve, to England. D'Aguiar trained as a psychiatric nurse before reading African and Caribbean Studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury, graduating in 1985. On graduating he applied for a PhD on the Guyanese author Wilson Harris at the University of Warwick, but - after winning two writers-in-residency positions, at Birmingham University and the University of Cambridge (where he was the Judith E. Wilson Fellow from 1989 to 1990) - his PhD studies ‘recededed from [his] mind’ and he began to focus all of his energies on creative writing. In 1994, D'Aguiar moved to the United States to take up a Visiting Writer position at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts (1992–94). Since then, he has taught at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine (Assistant Professor, 1994–95) and the University of Miami where he held the position of Professor of English and Creative Writing. In 2003 he took up the position of Professor of English and Co-Director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Virginia Tech. D'Aguiar's first collection of poetry, Mama Dot (1985), was published to much acclaim. It centres upon an ‘archetypal‘ grandmother figure, Mama Dot, and was notable for its fusion of standard English and Nation language. Along with his 1989 collection Airy Hall (which is named after the village in Guyana where D'Aguiar spent his childhood), Mama Dot won the Guyana Poetry Prize. Where D'Aguiar's first two poetry collections were set in Guyana, his third - British Subjects (1989) - explores the experiences of peoples of the West Indian diaspora in London. London was also the focus of another long poem, Sweet Thames, which was broadcast as part of the BBC ‘Worlds on Film’ series on 3 July 1992 and won the Commission for Racial Equality Race in the Media Award. After turning to writing novels rather than poetry for a period of time, D'Aguiar returned to the poetic mode in 1998, publishing Bill of Rights (1998): a long narrative poem about the Jonestown massacre in Guyana in 1979, which is told in Guyanese versions of English, fusing patois, Creole and nation language with the standard vernacular. It was shortlisted for the 1998 T. S. Eliot Prize. Bill of Rights was followed by another narrative poem, Bloodlines (2000), which tells the story of a black slave and her white lover. His 2009 collection of poetry, Continental Shelf, centres on a response to the Virginia Tech Massacre in which 32 people were killed by a student in 2007. It was a finalist for the 2009 T. S. Eliot Prize. D'Aguiar's first novel, The Longest Memory (1994), tells the story of Whitechapel, a slave on an eighteenth-century Virginia plantation. The book won both the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread First Novel Award. It was adapted for television and televised by Channel 4 in the UK. Returning to themes he had earlier developed in British Subjects, D'Aguiar's 1996 novel, Dear Future, explores the history of the West Indian diaspora through a fictional account of the lives of one extended family. D'Aguiar's third novel, Feeding the Ghosts (1997), was inspired by a visit D'Aguiar made to the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool and is based on the true story of the Zong massacre in which 132 slaves were thrown from a slave ship into the Atlantic for insurance purposes. According to historical accounts, one slave survived and climbed back onto the ship; and in D'Aguiar's narrative this slave - about whom there is next to no historical information - is developed as the fictional character Mintah. His fourth novel, Bethany Bettany (2003), is centred on a five-year-old Guyanese girl, Bethany, whose suffering has been read by some as symbolising that of a nation (Guyana) seeking to make itself whole again. D'Aguiar's plays include High Life, which was first produced at the Albany Empire in London in 1987, and A Jamaican Airman Foresees His Death, performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1991. |
![]() | ![]() | D'Aguiar, Fred. Dear Future. New York. 1996. Pantheon Books. 0679442480. 207 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Maggie Steber DEAR FUTURE tells the story of a Caribbean family, centering on the youngest child, Redhead. Accidentally hit on the head with an axe by his uncle, he thereafter sees the world from a strange, visionary, twisted perspective. And as his family experiences its own vicissitudes, an election is brewing in the capital: an election that leads to an unexpected and terrible act of violence that destroys the family’s home - indeed, its world. Fred D'Aguiar (born 2 February 1960) is a British-Guyanese poet, novelist and playwright. He is currently Professor of English at Virginia Tech. |
![]() | ![]() | D'Aguiar, Fred. Feeding the Ghosts. New York. 1999. Ecco Press. 088001623x. 230 pages. hardcover. Returning from Africa, the slave ship The Zong falls prey to disease. Its Captain orders his crew to throw the sick slaves overboard. But one slave survives drowning and climbs back on-board the ship, hiding in the food store. For the remainder of the voyage she tries to rouse the slaves to rebel against the killings, stirring up unease among the crew, a voice of conscience they are unable to stifle. On reaching London the Captain confidently lodges his insurance claim for his loses, but his claim is challenged and the voice of the slave who returned from the dead is heard again. Fred D'Aguiar was born in London and raised in Guyana. His previous novel Dear Future was nominated for the 1998 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and won the David Higham Prize. Fred D'Aguiar (born 2 February 1960) is a British-Guyanese poet, novelist and playwright. He is currently Professor of English at Virginia Tech. Fred D'Aguiar was born in London in 1960 to Guyanese parents, Malcolm Frederick D'Aguiar and Kathleen Agatha Messiah. In 1962 he was taken to Guyana where he lived with his grandmother until 1972 when he returned, at the age of twelve, to England. D'Aguiar trained as a psychiatric nurse before reading African and Caribbean Studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury, graduating in 1985. On graduating he applied for a PhD on the Guyanese author Wilson Harris at the University of Warwick, but - after winning two writers-in-residency positions, at Birmingham University and the University of Cambridge (where he was the Judith E. Wilson Fellow from 1989 to 1990) - his PhD studies ‘recededed from [his] mind’ and he began to focus all of his energies on creative writing. In 1994, D'Aguiar moved to the United States to take up a Visiting Writer position at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts (1992–94). Since then, he has taught at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine (Assistant Professor, 1994–95) and the University of Miami where he held the position of Professor of English and Creative Writing. In 2003 he took up the position of Professor of English and Co-Director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Virginia Tech. D'Aguiar's first collection of poetry, Mama Dot (1985), was published to much acclaim. It centres upon an ‘archetypal‘ grandmother figure, Mama Dot, and was notable for its fusion of standard English and Nation language. Along with his 1989 collection Airy Hall (which is named after the village in Guyana where D'Aguiar spent his childhood), Mama Dot won the Guyana Poetry Prize. Where D'Aguiar's first two poetry collections were set in Guyana, his third - British Subjects (1989) - explores the experiences of peoples of the West Indian diaspora in London. London was also the focus of another long poem, Sweet Thames, which was broadcast as part of the BBC ‘Worlds on Film’ series on 3 July 1992 and won the Commission for Racial Equality Race in the Media Award. After turning to writing novels rather than poetry for a period of time, D'Aguiar returned to the poetic mode in 1998, publishing Bill of Rights (1998): a long narrative poem about the Jonestown massacre in Guyana in 1979, which is told in Guyanese versions of English, fusing patois, Creole and nation language with the standard vernacular. It was shortlisted for the 1998 T. S. Eliot Prize. Bill of Rights was followed by another narrative poem, Bloodlines (2000), which tells the story of a black slave and her white lover. His 2009 collection of poetry, Continental Shelf, centres on a response to the Virginia Tech Massacre in which 32 people were killed by a student in 2007. It was a finalist for the 2009 T. S. Eliot Prize. D'Aguiar's first novel, The Longest Memory (1994), tells the story of Whitechapel, a slave on an eighteenth-century Virginia plantation. The book won both the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread First Novel Award. It was adapted for television and televised by Channel 4 in the UK. Returning to themes he had earlier developed in British Subjects, D'Aguiar's 1996 novel, Dear Future, explores the history of the West Indian diaspora through a fictional account of the lives of one extended family. D'Aguiar's third novel, Feeding the Ghosts (1997), was inspired by a visit D'Aguiar made to the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool and is based on the true story of the Zong massacre in which 132 slaves were thrown from a slave ship into the Atlantic for insurance purposes. According to historical accounts, one slave survived and climbed back onto the ship; and in D'Aguiar's narrative this slave - about whom there is next to no historical information - is developed as the fictional character Mintah. His fourth novel, Bethany Bettany (2003), is centred on a five-year-old Guyanese girl, Bethany, whose suffering has been read by some as symbolising that of a nation (Guyana) seeking to make itself whole again. D'Aguiar's plays include High Life, which was first produced at the Albany Empire in London in 1987, and A Jamaican Airman Foresees His Death, performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1991. |
![]() | ![]() | D'Aguiar, Fred. The Longest Memory. New York. 1995. Pantheon Books. 0679439625. 137 pages. hardcover. From William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner to Toni Morrison's Beloved, modern American fiction engaged with slavery has provoked fiery controversy. So will The Longest Memory, the powerful, beautifully crafted, internationally acclaimed fictional debut of prizewinning Guyanese poet Fred D'Aguiar. In language extraordinary for its tautness and resonance, The Longest Memory tells the story of a rebellious, fiercely intelligent young slave, who in 1810 attempts to flee a Virginia plantation - and of his father who inadvertently betrays him. The young slave's love for a white girl who slakes his forbidden thirst for learning and his painful relationship with his father are hauntingly evoked in this novel of astonishing lyrical simplicity. It is a measure of D'Aguiar's achievement and bravery that The Longest Memory is informed not only by the complicities between black slave and white master but also by the tensions among slaves themselves - between stoic survivalists and passionate rebels. Remarkable for its keenness of observation, subtlety, and restraint, The Longest Memory heralds the arrival of a major new voice in the contemporary literature of the African diaspora. In language unique for its tautness and resonance, this powerful debut novel, set in 1810 Virginia, tells the story of a rebellious, fiercely intelligent young slave and his father, who inadvertently betrays him. The young slave's love for a white girl who quenches his forbidden thirst for learning and his painful relationship with his father are unforgettably drawn in this astonishingly lyrical work. Fred D'Aguiar (born 2 February 1960) is a British-Guyanese poet, novelist and playwright. He is currently Professor of English at Virginia Tech. Fred D'Aguiar was born in London in 1960 to Guyanese parents, Malcolm Frederick D'Aguiar and Kathleen Agatha Messiah. In 1962 he was taken to Guyana where he lived with his grandmother until 1972 when he returned, at the age of twelve, to England. D'Aguiar trained as a psychiatric nurse before reading African and Caribbean Studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury, graduating in 1985. On graduating he applied for a PhD on the Guyanese author Wilson Harris at the University of Warwick, but - after winning two writers-in-residency positions, at Birmingham University and the University of Cambridge (where he was the Judith E. Wilson Fellow from 1989 to 1990) - his PhD studies ‘recededed from [his] mind’ and he began to focus all of his energies on creative writing. In 1994, D'Aguiar moved to the United States to take up a Visiting Writer position at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts (1992–94). Since then, he has taught at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine (Assistant Professor, 1994–95) and the University of Miami where he held the position of Professor of English and Creative Writing. In 2003 he took up the position of Professor of English and Co-Director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Virginia Tech. D'Aguiar's first collection of poetry, Mama Dot (1985), was published to much acclaim. It centres upon an ‘archetypal‘ grandmother figure, Mama Dot, and was notable for its fusion of standard English and Nation language. Along with his 1989 collection Airy Hall (which is named after the village in Guyana where D'Aguiar spent his childhood), Mama Dot won the Guyana Poetry Prize. Where D'Aguiar's first two poetry collections were set in Guyana, his third - British Subjects (1989) - explores the experiences of peoples of the West Indian diaspora in London. London was also the focus of another long poem, Sweet Thames, which was broadcast as part of the BBC ‘Worlds on Film’ series on 3 July 1992 and won the Commission for Racial Equality Race in the Media Award. After turning to writing novels rather than poetry for a period of time, D'Aguiar returned to the poetic mode in 1998, publishing Bill of Rights (1998): a long narrative poem about the Jonestown massacre in Guyana in 1979, which is told in Guyanese versions of English, fusing patois, Creole and nation language with the standard vernacular. It was shortlisted for the 1998 T. S. Eliot Prize. Bill of Rights was followed by another narrative poem, Bloodlines (2000), which tells the story of a black slave and her white lover. His 2009 collection of poetry, Continental Shelf, centres on a response to the Virginia Tech Massacre in which 32 people were killed by a student in 2007. It was a finalist for the 2009 T. S. Eliot Prize. D'Aguiar's first novel, The Longest Memory (1994), tells the story of Whitechapel, a slave on an eighteenth-century Virginia plantation. The book won both the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread First Novel Award. It was adapted for television and televised by Channel 4 in the UK. Returning to themes he had earlier developed in British Subjects, D'Aguiar's 1996 novel, Dear Future, explores the history of the West Indian diaspora through a fictional account of the lives of one extended family. D'Aguiar's third novel, Feeding the Ghosts (1997), was inspired by a visit D'Aguiar made to the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool and is based on the true story of the Zong massacre in which 132 slaves were thrown from a slave ship into the Atlantic for insurance purposes. According to historical accounts, one slave survived and climbed back onto the ship; and in D'Aguiar's narrative this slave - about whom there is next to no historical information - is developed as the fictional character Mintah. His fourth novel, Bethany Bettany (2003), is centred on a five-year-old Guyanese girl, Bethany, whose suffering has been read by some as symbolising that of a nation (Guyana) seeking to make itself whole again. D'Aguiar's plays include High Life, which was first produced at the Albany Empire in London in 1987, and A Jamaican Airman Foresees His Death, performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1991. |
![]() | ![]() | Da Costa, Emilia Viotti. Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood: The Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823. New York. 1994. Oxford University Press. 0195082982. 378 pages. hardcover. Cover: David Tran On the night of August 17, 1823, the distinctly African sounds of blaring shell-horns and beating drums signalled the start of one of the most massive slave rebellions in the history of the Western Hemisphere, the uprising in the British colony of Demerara (now Guyana). That evening, nine to twelve thousand slaves surrounded the main houses of about sixty plantations, armed with cutlasses, knives fastened on poles, and guns. They broke down doors, smashed windows, commandeered arms and ammunition, and put their masters and overseers in the stocks. Intent on avoiding a blood bath (over three days of fighting, colonial forces took the lives of more than 255 slaves, while only two or three white men were killed), the rebels spoke of 'rights,' and planned to present their grievances to the governor. For a few days, the slaves succeeded in turning the world upside down, treating masters the way masters had always treated slaves. Retaliation from colonial officials would be swift, bloody, and brutal. In Crowns of Glory, Emilia Viotti da Costa tells the riveting story of a pivotal moment in the history of slavery. Studying the complaints brought by slaves to the office of the Protector of Slaves, she reconstructs the experience of slavery through the eyes of the Demerara slaves themselves. Da Costa also draws on eyewitness accounts, official records, and private journals (most notably the diary of John Smith, one of four ministers sent by the London Missionary Society to convert Demerara's 'heathen'), to paint a vivid portrait of a society in transition, shaken to its foundations by the recent revolutions in America, France, and Haiti. Smith and his wife, Jane, the planters and colonial politicians, and the leaders of the rebellion emerge as flesh-and-blood individuals, players trapped in a complex political game none of them could fully understand. Unravelling the complex web of events leading up to the climactic rebellion, Da Costa explains how Smith, a dedicated but inexperienced minister who arrived at the Le Resouvenir plantation confident that all faithful missionaries would win 'a crown of glory that fadeth not away,' could seven years later find himself convicted by court martial of fostering rebellion amongst the slaves, and sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead. She details the colonials' orgy of repression following the rebellion-scores of slaves were sentenced more or less at random to grisly public executions and ritualistic floggings, and Smith died in his cell before news arrived that the Crown had granted him mercy-and shows how it fueled the anti-slavery movement in Britain, leading to the abolishment of slavery in the colonies ten years later. Casting new light on the nuances of racial relations in the colonies, the inevitable clash between the missionaries' message of Christian brotherhood and a social order based on masters and slaves, and the larger historical forces that were profoundly eroding the institution of slavery itself, Crowns of Glory is an original and unforgettable book. Emilia Viotti da Costa has written extensively on Brazilian history and on slavery and emancipation. Her books include Da Senzala a Colonia and Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood: The Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823. She is also professor of history at Yale University |
![]() | ![]() | Dabydeen, David. Coolie Odyssey. Hertford. 1988. Hansib/Dangaroo Publications. 1870518012. 49 pages. paperback. Front cover photograph: Prodeepta Das. Cover design: Michelle Wilson/Deborah George David Dabydeen’s first book of poems, SLAVE SONG, was awarded the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Cambridge University Quiller-Couch Prize. COOLIE ODYSSEY, his second collection, probes the experience of diaspora, the journeying of peasant labourers from India to the Caribbean then to Britain, dwelling on the dream of romance, the impotence of racial encounter, the metamorphosis of language. FROM THE PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR - The first poem started on a train journey from Edinburgh to Birmingham, with further pieces written in trains from Coventry to London and in planes from London over the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Lines came slowly, in fragments. The poems offer glimpses into an odyssey, not a chronicle of threaded events. The journey is from India to Guyana to England, and it is as much a journey of words as deeds. The encounter with whites, sketched in the early pieces, becomes more intense in the journey to England where the experiences are described in a series of poems about the ‘White Woman’ (Miranda/Britannia), taking up the central theme of my first book, SLAVE SONG. ‘Whether lament over colonial brutality in the canefields of Guyana, or a celebration of life in its villages, Dabydeen’s poetry vibrates with passion, energy and splendid rhythm.’ - ANITA DESAI. ‘There are sudden, startling images in this collection of poems and these tend, I find, to thread their way into an abrupt, ruptured odyssey that repudiates — even as it subsists upon — a nightmare romance of being that is central to the writer’s vision. That vision indicts crude fantasy and even cruder manifestations of physical and mental injustice ingrained in the soil and the legacies of colonialism. The unpalatable dream symbolism in the writing may have a moral purpose in hinting at a pornography of empire that still rules the heart of coloniser and colonised.’ - WILSON HARRIS. ‘A poetic flight from the canefields of Guyana to the basements of London, rich with the imagery and the misery of the East Indian experience.’ - SAMUEL SELVON. ‘Throughout these poems we find a confluence of past and present, the personal and the historical which are seemingly effortlessly intertwined in memories of ‘back-home’. His voice is the cool, reflective one of distance and detachment, the voice of the exile whose return is a journey back in time.’ - LINTON KWESI JOHNSON. David Dabydeen (born 9 December 1955) is a Guyanese-born critic, writer, novelist and academic. Since 2010 he has been Guyana's ambassador to China. Dabydeen was born in Berbice, Guyana, his birth registered at New Amsterdam Registrar of Births as David Horace Clarence Harilal Sookram. His parents divorced while he was young and he grew up with his mother, Veronica Dabydeen, and his maternal grandparents. At the age of 10 he won a scholarship to Queen's College in Georgetown. When he was 13 years old, he moved to London, England, to rejoin his father, attorney David Harilal Sookram, who had migrated to Britain. At the age of 18 he took up a place at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, to read English, and he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with honours. He then gained a Ph.D. in 18th-century literature and art at University College London in 1982, and was awarded a research fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford. Between 1982 and 1984 Dabydeen worked as a community education officer in Wolverhampton. He subsequently went to the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick in Coventry, where he progressed over the years from lecturer to director. He was president of the Association for the Teaching of Caribbean, African, and Asian Literature between 1985 and 1987. He is a Professor at the Centre for British Comparative Cultural Studies at Warwick University. In 1993 he was made Guyana's ambassador at UNESCO and is a member of their Executive Board. In 2010 Dabydeen was appointed as Guyana’s Ambassador to China. Dabydeen is the author of novels, collections of poetry and works of non-fiction and criticism, as editor as well as writer. His first book, Slave Song (1984), a collection of poetry, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Quiller-Couch Prize. A further collection, Turner: New and Selected Poems, was published in 1994, and reissued in 2002; the title-poem, Turner is an extended sequence or verse novel responding to a painting by J. M. W. Turner, ‘Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying — Typhoon coming on‘ (1840). His first novel, The Intended (1991), the story of a young Asian student abandoned in London by his father, won the Guyana Prize for Literature. Disappearance (1993) tells the story of a young Guyanese engineer working on the south coast of England who lodges with an elderly woman. The Counting House (1996) is set at the end of the nineteenth century and narrates the experiences of an Indian couple whose hopes of a new life in colonial Guyana end in tragedy. The story explores historical tensions between indentured Indian workers and Guyanese of African descent. His 1999 novel, A Harlot's Progress, is based on a series of pictures painted in 1732 by William Hogarth (who was the subject of Dabydeen's PhD) and develops the story of Hogarth's black slave boy. Through the character of Mungo, Dabydeen challenges traditional cultural representations of the slave. His latest novel, Our Lady of Demerara, was published in 2004. Dabydeen has been awarded the title of fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the second West Indian writer (V.S. Naipaul was the first) and the only Guyanese writer to receive the title. In 2001 Dabydeen wrote and presented The Forgotten Colony, a BBC Radio 4 programme exploring the history of Guyana. His one-hour documentary Painting the People was broadcast by BBC television in 2004. The Oxford Companion to Black British History, co-edited by Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, appeared in 2007. In 2007, Dabydeen was awarded the Hind Rattan (Jewel of India) Award for his outstanding contribution to literature and the intellectual life of the Indian diaspora. |
![]() | ![]() | Dabydeen, David. Disappearance. London. 1993. Secker & Warburg. 0436201259. 224 pages. paperback. Novel in which a young West Indian engineer is appointed to help save a village that sits on the crumbling edge of Dunsmere Cliff on the Kent coast, and is initiated into the underworld of village life by his elderly, eccentric landlady. David Dabydeen’s second novel. David Dabydeen (born 9 December 1955) is a Guyanese-born critic, writer, novelist and academic. Since 2010 he has been Guyana's ambassador to China. Dabydeen was born in Berbice, Guyana, his birth registered at New Amsterdam Registrar of Births as David Horace Clarence Harilal Sookram. His parents divorced while he was young and he grew up with his mother, Veronica Dabydeen, and his maternal grandparents. At the age of 10 he won a scholarship to Queen's College in Georgetown. When he was 13 years old, he moved to London, England, to rejoin his father, attorney David Harilal Sookram, who had migrated to Britain. At the age of 18 he took up a place at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, to read English, and he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with honours. He then gained a Ph.D. in 18th-century literature and art at University College London in 1982, and was awarded a research fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford. Between 1982 and 1984 Dabydeen worked as a community education officer in Wolverhampton. He subsequently went to the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick in Coventry, where he progressed over the years from lecturer to director. He was president of the Association for the Teaching of Caribbean, African, and Asian Literature between 1985 and 1987. He is a Professor at the Centre for British Comparative Cultural Studies at Warwick University. In 1993 he was made Guyana's ambassador at UNESCO and is a member of their Executive Board. In 2010 Dabydeen was appointed as Guyana’s Ambassador to China. Dabydeen is the author of novels, collections of poetry and works of non-fiction and criticism, as editor as well as writer. His first book, Slave Song (1984), a collection of poetry, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Quiller-Couch Prize. A further collection, Turner: New and Selected Poems, was published in 1994, and reissued in 2002; the title-poem, Turner is an extended sequence or verse novel responding to a painting by J. M. W. Turner, ‘Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying — Typhoon coming on‘ (1840). His first novel, The Intended (1991), the story of a young Asian student abandoned in London by his father, won the Guyana Prize for Literature. Disappearance (1993) tells the story of a young Guyanese engineer working on the south coast of England who lodges with an elderly woman. The Counting House (1996) is set at the end of the nineteenth century and narrates the experiences of an Indian couple whose hopes of a new life in colonial Guyana end in tragedy. The story explores historical tensions between indentured Indian workers and Guyanese of African descent. His 1999 novel, A Harlot's Progress, is based on a series of pictures painted in 1732 by William Hogarth (who was the subject of Dabydeen's PhD) and develops the story of Hogarth's black slave boy. Through the character of Mungo, Dabydeen challenges traditional cultural representations of the slave. His latest novel, Our Lady of Demerara, was published in 2004. Dabydeen has been awarded the title of fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the second West Indian writer (V.S. Naipaul was the first) and the only Guyanese writer to receive the title. In 2001 Dabydeen wrote and presented The Forgotten Colony, a BBC Radio 4 programme exploring the history of Guyana. His one-hour documentary Painting the People was broadcast by BBC television in 2004. The Oxford Companion to Black British History, co-edited by Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, appeared in 2007. In 2007, Dabydeen was awarded the Hind Rattan (Jewel of India) Award for his outstanding contribution to literature and the intellectual life of the Indian diaspora. |
![]() | ![]() | Dabydeen, David. The Intended. London. 1991. Secker & Warburg. 0436200074. 256 pages. hardcover. The narrator of The Intended is twelve when he leaves his village in rural Guyana to come to England. There he is abandoned into social care, but with determination seizes every opportunity to follow his aunt's farewell advice: '...but you must tek education...pass plenty exam'. With a scholarship to Oxford, and an upper-class white fiancee, he has unquestionably arrived, but at the cost of ignoring the other part of his aunt's farewell: 'you is we, remember you is we.' First published almost fifteen years ago, The Intended's portrayal of the instability of identity and relations between whites, African-Caribbeans and Asians in South London is as contemporary and pertinent as ever. As an Indian from Guyana, the narrator is seen as a 'Paki' by the English, and as some mongrel hybrid by 'real' Asians from India and Pakistan; as sharing a common British 'Blackness' whilst acuately conscious of the real cultural divisions between Africans and Indians back in Guyana. David Dabydeen (born 9 December 1955) is a Guyanese-born critic, writer, novelist and academic. Since 2010 he has been Guyana's ambassador to China. Dabydeen was born in Berbice, Guyana, his birth registered at New Amsterdam Registrar of Births as David Horace Clarence Harilal Sookram. His parents divorced while he was young and he grew up with his mother, Veronica Dabydeen, and his maternal grandparents. At the age of 10 he won a scholarship to Queen's College in Georgetown. When he was 13 years old, he moved to London, England, to rejoin his father, attorney David Harilal Sookram, who had migrated to Britain. At the age of 18 he took up a place at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, to read English, and he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with honours. He then gained a Ph.D. in 18th-century literature and art at University College London in 1982, and was awarded a research fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford. Between 1982 and 1984 Dabydeen worked as a community education officer in Wolverhampton. He subsequently went to the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick in Coventry, where he progressed over the years from lecturer to director. He was president of the Association for the Teaching of Caribbean, African, and Asian Literature between 1985 and 1987. He is a Professor at the Centre for British Comparative Cultural Studies at Warwick University. In 1993 he was made Guyana's ambassador at UNESCO and is a member of their Executive Board. In 2010 Dabydeen was appointed as Guyana’s Ambassador to China. Dabydeen is the author of novels, collections of poetry and works of non-fiction and criticism, as editor as well as writer. His first book, Slave Song (1984), a collection of poetry, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Quiller-Couch Prize. A further collection, Turner: New and Selected Poems, was published in 1994, and reissued in 2002; the title-poem, Turner is an extended sequence or verse novel responding to a painting by J. M. W. Turner, ‘Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying — Typhoon coming on‘ (1840). His first novel, The Intended (1991), the story of a young Asian student abandoned in London by his father, won the Guyana Prize for Literature. Disappearance (1993) tells the story of a young Guyanese engineer working on the south coast of England who lodges with an elderly woman. The Counting House (1996) is set at the end of the nineteenth century and narrates the experiences of an Indian couple whose hopes of a new life in colonial Guyana end in tragedy. The story explores historical tensions between indentured Indian workers and Guyanese of African descent. His 1999 novel, A Harlot's Progress, is based on a series of pictures painted in 1732 by William Hogarth (who was the subject of Dabydeen's PhD) and develops the story of Hogarth's black slave boy. Through the character of Mungo, Dabydeen challenges traditional cultural representations of the slave. His latest novel, Our Lady of Demerara, was published in 2004. Dabydeen has been awarded the title of fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the second West Indian writer (V.S. Naipaul was the first) and the only Guyanese writer to receive the title. In 2001 Dabydeen wrote and presented The Forgotten Colony, a BBC Radio 4 programme exploring the history of Guyana. His one-hour documentary Painting the People was broadcast by BBC television in 2004. The Oxford Companion to Black British History, co-edited by Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, appeared in 2007. In 2007, Dabydeen was awarded the Hind Rattan (Jewel of India) Award for his outstanding contribution to literature and the intellectual life of the Indian diaspora. |
![]() | ![]() | Dabydeen, David. Turner: New & Selected Poems. London. 1994. Jonathan Cape. 0224038958. Paperback Original. 74 pages. paperback. David Dabydeen's Turner is a long narrative poem written in response to J. M. W. Turner's celebrated poem 'Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying.' Dabydeen's poem focuses on what is hidden in Turner's painting, the submerged head of the drowning African. In inventing a biography and the drowned man's unspoken desires, the poem brings into confrontation the wish for renewal and the inescapable stains of history, including the meaning of Turner's painting. Author Biography: David Dabydeen heads the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick. He was born in Guyana, but has lived in the United Kingdom from his early youth. He is the author of the novels The Intended, Disappearance, The Counting House, A Harlot's Progress, and two earlier books of poetry, Slave Song, which won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, and Coolie Odyssey. He is recognized among the United Kingdom's finest writers. He is also the author of The Counting House, A Harlot's Progress, and Hogarth's Blacks: Images of Blacks in 18th Century English Art. David Dabydeen (born 9 December 1955) is a Guyanese-born critic, writer, novelist and academic. Since 2010 he has been Guyana's ambassador to China. Dabydeen was born in Berbice, Guyana, his birth registered at New Amsterdam Registrar of Births as David Horace Clarence Harilal Sookram. His parents divorced while he was young and he grew up with his mother, Veronica Dabydeen, and his maternal grandparents. At the age of 10 he won a scholarship to Queen's College in Georgetown. When he was 13 years old, he moved to London, England, to rejoin his father, attorney David Harilal Sookram, who had migrated to Britain. At the age of 18 he took up a place at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, to read English, and he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with honours. He then gained a Ph.D. in 18th-century literature and art at University College London in 1982, and was awarded a research fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford. Between 1982 and 1984 Dabydeen worked as a community education officer in Wolverhampton. He subsequently went to the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick in Coventry, where he progressed over the years from lecturer to director. He was president of the Association for the Teaching of Caribbean, African, and Asian Literature between 1985 and 1987. He is a Professor at the Centre for British Comparative Cultural Studies at Warwick University. In 1993 he was made Guyana's ambassador at UNESCO and is a member of their Executive Board. In 2010 Dabydeen was appointed as Guyana’s Ambassador to China. Dabydeen is the author of novels, collections of poetry and works of non-fiction and criticism, as editor as well as writer. His first book, Slave Song (1984), a collection of poetry, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Quiller-Couch Prize. A further collection, Turner: New and Selected Poems, was published in 1994, and reissued in 2002; the title-poem, Turner is an extended sequence or verse novel responding to a painting by J. M. W. Turner, ‘Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying — Typhoon coming on‘ (1840). His first novel, The Intended (1991), the story of a young Asian student abandoned in London by his father, won the Guyana Prize for Literature. Disappearance (1993) tells the story of a young Guyanese engineer working on the south coast of England who lodges with an elderly woman. The Counting House (1996) is set at the end of the nineteenth century and narrates the experiences of an Indian couple whose hopes of a new life in colonial Guyana end in tragedy. The story explores historical tensions between indentured Indian workers and Guyanese of African descent. His 1999 novel, A Harlot's Progress, is based on a series of pictures painted in 1732 by William Hogarth (who was the subject of Dabydeen's PhD) and develops the story of Hogarth's black slave boy. Through the character of Mungo, Dabydeen challenges traditional cultural representations of the slave. His latest novel, Our Lady of Demerara, was published in 2004. Dabydeen has been awarded the title of fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the second West Indian writer (V.S. Naipaul was the first) and the only Guyanese writer to receive the title. In 2001 Dabydeen wrote and presented The Forgotten Colony, a BBC Radio 4 programme exploring the history of Guyana. His one-hour documentary Painting the People was broadcast by BBC television in 2004. The Oxford Companion to Black British History, co-edited by Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, appeared in 2007. In 2007, Dabydeen was awarded the Hind Rattan (Jewel of India) Award for his outstanding contribution to literature and the intellectual life of the Indian diaspora. |
![]() | ![]() | Damas, Leon [Gontranj. African Songs of Love, War, Grief, and Abuse. Evanston, Illinois. 1963. Northwestern University Press. Translated by Ulli Beier and Miriam Koshland. 40 pages. paperback. African Songs of Love, War, Grief, and Abuse (1961) contains brief verses sympathetically portraying Guyanan village life. Léon-Gontran Damas (March 28, 1912 – January 22, 1978) was a French poet and politician. He was one of the founders of the Négritude movement. He also used the pseudonym Lionel Georges André Cabassou. Léon Damas was born in Cayenne, French Guiana, to Ernest Damas, a mulatto of European and African descent, and Bathilde Damas, a Métisse of Native American and African ancestry. In 1924, Damas was sent to Martinique to attend the Lycée Victor Schoelcher (a secondary school), where he would meet his lifelong friend and collaborator Aimé Césaire. In 1929, Damas moved to Paris to continue his studies. There, he reunited with Césaire and was introduced to Leopold Senghor. In 1935, the three young men published the first issue of the literary review L'Étudiant Noir (The Black Student), which provided the foundation for what is now known as the Négritude Movement, a literary and ideological movement of French-speaking black intellectuals that rejects the political, social and moral domination of the West. In 1937, Damas published his first volume of poetry, Pigments. He enlisted in the French Army during World War II, and later was elected to the French National Assembly (1948–51) as a deputy from Guiana. In the following years, Damas traveled and lectured widely in Africa, the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean. He also served as the contributing editor of Présence Africaine, one of the most respected journals of Black studies, and as senior adviser and UNESCO delegate for the Society of African Culture. In 1970 Damas and his Brazilian-born wife Marietta, moved to Washington, D.C., to take a summer teaching job at Georgetown University. During the last years of his life, he taught at Howard University in Washington and served as acting director of the school’s African Studies program. He died on January 22, 1978, in Washington and was buried in Guyana. Although the political aspect of his poetry held less appeal in the later years of the twentieth century, Damas’s reputation was on the rise. His poems, which sometimes experimented with typography and with the sheer sound of words, were astonishingly modern for their time, and they seemed to foresee the black poetry, both English and French, of a much later timeframe. |
![]() | ![]() | Danticat, Edwidge (editor). Behind the Mountains: First Person Fiction. New York. 2002. Scholastic. 0439372992. 176 pages. hardcover. Cover by Marc Tauss/Elizabeth B. Parisi A new line of novels about today’s immigrant experience. Written by authors who are immigrants themselves, these compelling stories are united by the characters’ journeys to find their place as Americans. . . It is election time in Haiti, and bombs are going off in the capital city of Port-Au-Prince. During a visit from her home in rural Haiti, Celiane Espérance and her Mother are nearly killed. Looking at her country with new eyes, Celiane Gains a fresh resolve to be reunited with her Father in Brooklyn, New York. The harsh winter and concrete landscape of her new home are a shock to Celiane, who witnesses her parents' struggle to earn a living, her brother's uneasy adjustment to American society, and her own encounters with learning difficulties and school violence. Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including BREATH, EYES, MEMORY, KRIK? KRAK!, a National Book Award finalist, THE FARMING OF BONES, an American Book Award winner, and THE DEW BREAKER, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the first Story Prize. She lives in Miami with her husband and daughter. |
![]() | ![]() | Danticat, Edwidge (editor). Haiti Noir 2: The Classics. 2014. Akashic Books. 9781617751936. Akashic Noir. 320 pages. paperback. Edwidge Danticat's short story from Haiti Noir 2: The Classics, "The Port-au-Prince Marriage Special," was included in Ms. Magazine's Fall 2013 issue. "A worthy sequel that skillfully uses a popular genre to help us better understand an often frustratingly complex and indecipherable society." --Miami Herald. "There is danger and regret and fear in these stories, as characters try to negotiate a complex and often confounding land." --Miami Herald, Feature on Haiti Noir 2 Miami launch. "Presents an excellent array of writers, primarily Haitian, --The Caribbean Writer. "Just when you thought you have read it all and have experienced the best of literary brilliance, there comes along an unrivaled work of narrative intensity, penned with a spellbinding authenticity. Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti and moved to the United States when she was twelve. She is the editor of Haiti Noir and author of several books, including Claire of the Sea Light,, Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; and the novel-in-stories The Dew Breaker. She lives in Miami, Florida. |
![]() | ![]() | Danticat, Edwidge (editor). The Butterfly's Way: Voices From the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States. New York. 2001. Soho Press. 1569472181. Paperback Original. 251 pages. paperback. Cover art - Pierre-AntoineCantave, 'Flowers and Fish'. Cover design by Pauline Neuwirth. In four sections-Childhood, Migration, First Generation, and Return-the contributors to this anthology write powerfully, often hauntingly, of their lives in Haiti and the United States. Jean-Robert Cadet's description of his Haitian childhood as a restavec-a child slave-in Port-au-Prince contrasts with Dany Laferriere's account of a ten-year-old boy and his beloved grandmother in Petit-Gove. We read of Marie Helene Laforest's realization that while she was white in Haiti, in the United States she is black. Patricia Benoit tells us of a Haitian woman refugee in a detention center who has a simple need for a red dress-dignity. The reaction of a man who has married the woman he loves is the theme of Gary Pierre-Pierre's ‘The White Wife’; the feeling of alienation is explored in ‘Made Outside’ by Francie Latour. The frustration of trying to help those who have remained in Haiti and of the do-gooders who do more for themselves than the Haitians is described in Babette Wainwright's ‘Do Something for Your Soul, Go to Haiti.’ The variations and permutations of the divided self of the Haitian emigrant are poignantly conveyed in this unique anthology. Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including BREATH, EYES, MEMORY, KRIK? KRAK!, a National Book Award finalist, THE FARMING OF BONES, an American Book Award winner, and THE DEW BREAKER, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the first Story Prize. She lives in Miami with her husband and daughter. |
![]() | ![]() | Danticat, Edwidge. After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti. New York. 2002. Crown. 0609609084. 160 pages. hardcover. Cover: Leah Gordon/Mary Schuck In AFTER THE DANCE, one of Haiti’s most renowned daughters returns to her homeland, taking readers on a stunning, exquisitely rendered journey beyond the hedonistic surface of Carnival and into its deep heart. Edwidge Danticat had long been scared off from Carnival by a loved one, who spun tales of people dislocating hips from gyrating with too much abandon, losing their voices from singing too loudly, going deaf from the clamor of immense speakers, and being punched, stabbed, pummeled, or fondled by other lustful revelers. Now an adult, she resolves to return and exorcise her Carnival demons. She spends the week before Carnival in the area around Jacmel, exploring the rolling hills and lush forests and meeting the people who live and die in them. During her journeys she traces the heroic and tragic history of the island, from French colonists and Haitian revolutionaries to American invaders and home-grown dictators. Danticat also introduces us to many of the performers, artists, and organizers who re-create the myths and legends that bring the Carnival festivities to life. When Carnival arrives, we watch as she goes from observer to participant and finally loses herself in the overwhelming embrace of the crowd. Part travelogue, part memoir, this is a lyrical narrative of a writer rediscovering her country along with a part of herself. It’s also a wonderful introduction to Haiti’s southern coast and to the true beauty of Carnival. Edwidge Danticat is the author of Breath, Eyes, Memory; Krik? Krak!; The Farming of Bones; and Behind the Mountains, a young adult novel. She is also the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Diaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Women and Men of All Colors and Cultures. |
![]() | ![]() | Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory. New York. 1994. Soho Press. 1569470057. 234 pages. hardcover. Jacket design - RMB. Jacket art - 'Little Madonna of the Tropics' by Joseph Stella At an astonishingly young age, Edwidge Danticat has become one of our most celebrated new novelists, a writer who evokes the wonder, terror, and heartache of her native Haiti--and the enduring strength of Haiti's women--with a vibrant imagery and narrative grace that bear witness to her people's suffering and courage. At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti--to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence, in a novel that bears witness to the traditions, suffering, and wisdom of an entire people. Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including BREATH, EYES, MEMORY, KRIK? KRAK!, a National Book Award finalist, THE FARMING OF BONES, an American Book Award winner, and THE DEW BREAKER, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the first Story Prize. She lives in Miami with her husband and daughter. |
![]() | ![]() | Danticat, Edwidge. Brother, I’m Dying. New York. 2007. Knopf. 9781400041152. 273 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson From the best-selling author of THE DEW BREAKER, a major work of nonfiction: a powerfully moving family story that centers around the men closest to her heart - her father, Mira, and his older brother Joseph. From the age of four, Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph, a charismatic pastor, as her second father,’ when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for a better life in America. Listening to his sermons, sharing coconut-flavored ices on their walks through town, roaming through the house that held together many members of a colorful extended family, Edwidge grew profoundly attached to Joseph. He was the man who ‘knew all the verses for love.’ And so she experiences a jumble of emotions when, at twelve, she joins her parents in New York City. She is at last reunited with her two youngest brothers, and with her mother and father, whom she has struggled to remember. But she must also leave behind Joseph and the only home she’s ever known. Edwidge tells of making a new life in a new country while fearing for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorates. But Brother I’m Dying soon becomes a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Late in 2004, his life threatened by a violent gang, forced to flee his church, the frail, eighty-one-year-old Joseph makes his way to Miami, where he thinks he will be safe. Instead, he is detained by U.S. Customs, held by the Department of Homeland Security, brutally imprisoned and dead within days. It was a story that made headlines around the world. His brother, Mira, will soon join him in death, but not before he holds hope in his arms: Edwidge’s firstborn, who will bear his name - and the family’s stories, both joyous and tragic - into the next generation. Told with tremendous feeling; this is a true-life epic on an intimate scale: a deeply affecting story of home and family - of two men’s lives and deaths, and of a daughter’s great love for them both. Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including BREATH, EYES, MEMORY, KRIK? KRAK!, a National Book Award finalist, THE FARMING OF BONES, an American Book Award winner, and THE DEW BREAKER, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the first Story Prize. She lives in Miami with her husband and daughter. |
![]() | ![]() | Danticat, Edwidge. Everything Inside; Stories. New York. 2019. Knopf. 9780525521273. 223 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of Brother, I’m Dying, a collection of vividly imagined stories about community, family, and love. Rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity, set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, Everything Inside is at once wide in scope and intimate, as it explores the forces that pull us together, or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant. In these eight powerful, emotionally absorbing stories, a romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends; a marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences; a young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival; two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives; a baby’s christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new; a man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose. This is the indelible work of a keen observer of the human heart–a master at her best. Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including BREATH, EYES, MEMORY, KRIK? KRAK!, a National Book Award finalist, THE FARMING OF BONES, an American Book Award winner, and THE DEW BREAKER, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the first Story Prize. She lives in Miami with her husband and daughter. |
![]() | ![]() | Danticat, Edwidge. Krik? Krak!. New York. 1995. Soho Press. 1569470251. 226 pages. hardcover. Cover by Konbit Kreyol When Haitians tell a story, they say ‘Krik?’ and the eager listeners answer ‘Krak!’ In Krik? Krak! In her second novel, Edwidge Danticat establishes herself as the latest heir to that narrative tradition with nine stories that encompass both the cruelties and the high ideals of Haitian life. They tell of women who continue loving behind prison walls and in the face of unfathomable loss; of a people who resist the brutality of their rulers through the powers of imagination. The result is a collection that outrages, saddens, and transports the reader with its sheer beauty. Since the publication of her debut work Breath, Eyes, Memory in 1994, Edwidge Danticat has won praise as one of America’s brightest, most graceful and vibrant young writers. In this novel, and in her National Book Award-nominated collection of stories, Krik? Krak!, Danticat evokes the powerful imagination and rich narrative tradition of her native Haiti, and in the process records the suffering, triumphs, and wisdom of its people. Author Paule Marshall has said of Danticat, ‘A silenced Haiti has once again found its literary voice.’. Born in Haiti in 1969, Danticat, like the protagonist of her novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, at the age of twelve left her birthplace for New York to reunite with her parents. She earned a degree in French Literature from Barnard College, where she won the 1995 Woman of Achievement Award, and later an MFA from Brown University. More recently, she has received an ongoing grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation. Critical acclaim and awards for her first novel included a Granta Regional Award for the Best Young American Novelists, a Pushcart Prize and fiction awards from Essence and Seventeen magazines. She was chosen by Harper’s Bazaar as one of 20 people in their twenties who will make a difference, and was featured in a New York Times Magazine article that named ‘30 Under 30’ creative people to watch. This winter, Jane magazine named her one of the ‘15 Gutsiest Women of the Year.’ Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including BREATH, EYES, MEMORY, KRIK? KRAK!, a National Book Award finalist, THE FARMING OF BONES, an American Book Award winner, and THE DEW BREAKER, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the first Story Prize. She lives in Miami with her husband and daughter. |
![]() | ![]() | Danticat, Edwidge. The Dew Breaker. New York. 2004. Knopf. 1400041147. 245 pages. hardcover. Front-of-jacket photographs (top) Abbas/Magnum Photos, (bottom) Jason Fulford Spine-of-jacket photograph by Jane Yeomans. Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson From the universally acclaimed author of BREATH, EYES, MEMORY and KRIK? KRAK!, a brilliant, deeply moving work of fiction that explores the world of a ‘dew breaker’-a torturer-a man whose brutal crimes in the country of his birth lie hidden beneath his new American reality. We meet him late in his life. He is a quiet man, a husband and father, a hardworking barber, a kindly landlord to the men who live in a basement apartment in his home. He is a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, recognizable by the terrifying scar on his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him: his devoted wife and rebellious daughter, his sometimes unsuspecting, sometimes apprehensive neighbors, tenants, and clients. And we meet some of his victims. In the book’s powerful denouement, we return to the Haiti of the dew breaker’s past, to his last, desperate act of violence, and to his first encounter with the woman who will offer him a form of redemption-albeit imperfect-that will change him forever. THE DEW BREAKER is a book of interconnected lives-a book of love, remorse, and hope; of rebellions both personal and political, of the compromises we often make in order to move beyond the most intimate brushes with history. Unforgettable, deeply resonant, THE DEW BREAKER proves once more that in Edwidge Danticat we have a major American writer. Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti and moved to the United States when she was twelve. She is the author of several books, including BREATH, EYES, MEMORY, KRIK? KRAK! (a National Book Award finalist), and THE FARMING OF BONES (an American Book Award winner). She is also the editor of THE BUTTERFLY’S WAY: VOICES FROM THE HAITIAN DYASPORA IN THE UNITED STATES And THE BEACON BEST OF 2000: GREAT WRITING BY MEN AND WOMEN OF ALL COLORS AND CULTURES. . |
![]() | ![]() | Danticat, Edwidge. The Farming of Bones. New York. 1998. Soho Press. 1569471266. 312 pages. hardcover. Jacket art: Gerard Valcin, Lasiren et Met Dlo (detail). Jacket Design by Laura Shaw. Author photo by Arturo Patten. It is 1937, the Dominican side of the Haitian border Amabelle, orphaned at the age of eight when her parents drowned, is a maid to the young wife of an army colonel. She has grown up in this household, a faithful servant. Sebastien is a field hand, an itinerant sugarcane cutter They are Haitians, useful to the Dominicans but not really welcome. There are rumors that in other towns Haitians are being persecuted, even killed. But there are always rumors. Amabelle loves Sebastien. He is handsome despite the sugarcane scars on his face, his calloused hands, She longs to become his wife and walk into their future, Instead, terror enfolds them, But the story does not end here: it begins. THE FARMING OF BONES is about love, fragility barbarity dignity remembrance, and the only triumph possible for the persecuted: to endure. Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti in 1969 and came to the United States when she was twelve years old. She graduated from Barnard College and received an M.FA. from Brown University Her first novel, BREATH, EYES, MEMORY, was published to acclaim when she was twenty-five. The following year she was nominated for the National Book Award for her story collection KRIK?KRAK! Her stories have been widely anthologized. She is the recipient of a Lila Wallace-Read Digest Foundation grant and was named as of the 20 ‘Best Young American Novelists’ by Granta in 1996. She lives in New York. |
![]() | ![]() | Danticat, Edwidge. The Royal Diaries - Anacaona: Golden Flower, Haiti, 1490. New York. 2005. Scholastic. 0439499062. 192 pages. hardcover. With her signature narrative grace, Edwidge Danticat brings Haiti's beautiful queen Anacaona to life. Queen Anacaona was the wife of one of her island's rulers, and a composer of songs and poems, making her popular among her people. Haiti was relatively quiet until the Spanish conquistadors discovered the island and began to settle there in 1492. The Spaniards treated the natives very cruelly, and when the natives revolted, the Spanish governor of Haiti ordered the arrests of several native nobles, including Anacaona, who was eventually captured and executed, to the horror of her people. Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including BREATH, EYES, MEMORY, KRIK? KRAK!, a National Book Award finalist, THE FARMING OF BONES, an American Book Award winner, and THE DEW BREAKER, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the first Story Prize. She lives in Miami with her husband and daughter. |
![]() | ![]() | Dathorne, O. R. (editor). Caribbean Narrative. London. 1966. Heinemann. 246 pages. paperback. This is an anthology of prose by writers from the West Indies, specially chosen for younger readers in their later school and pre-university years. There are extracts from the novels of George Lamming, Samuel Selvon, Wilson Harris, Roger Mais, Jan Carew, Edgar Mittelholzer, and other leading writers. The selection has been made by O. R. Dathorne, the novelist from Guyana, now a lecturer in English at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He has provided a comprehensive introduction to Caribbean writing and notes on individual authors. Oscar Ronald Dathorne (November 19, 1934 – December 18, 2007) was a Guyanese educator, novelist, poet and critic and the eldest brother of the Canadian writer Lynette Dathorne. Born in Georgetown, Guyana he attended Queen’s College prior to his parents moving the family to England in 1953. He attended the University of Sheffield obtaining his BA, English in 1958 later completing his MA in 1960 and PhD, English, in 1966. However, having completed his studies he found that few English universities were willing to offer him anything other than junior positions. He therefore sought job opportunities abroad and successfully applied for a teaching post at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. He remained in West Africa for six years completing his stay whilst holding a full professorship at the University of Sierra Leone as head of the English department. With his use of African literature as a basis for many English classes and the increased recognition that African literature be defined as written by Africans rather than about Africans; in 1969 he was invited to the United States as a guest lecturer at Yale University. With the continuing changes in the black American psyche, African culture and heritage were viewed as a past in which to take great pride. As a result, universities throughout the US were becoming interested in forming African and African-American study departments. Having specialist knowledge within this area, Dathorne became professor of African studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He was a pioneer of Black Studies in the United States teaching African American studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and then spent 15 years working at Ohio State and the University of Miami, establishing and directing African, Caribbean, and African-American study programs. In 1987 he left the University of Miami to take up a post as a professor in the English department at the University of Kentucky. |
![]() | ![]() | Dathorne, O. R. Dark Ancestor: The Literature of the Black Man in the Caribbean. Baton Rouge. 1981. Louisiana State University Press. 0807107573. 288 pages. hardcover. The southern rim of the United States, eastern Mexico, and the Caribbean regions of Central America, Brazil, Venezuela, and the Guyanas demarcate the borders of that area of the Black man’s New World terrain that is significant in this discussion. The inner zone of this area, especially the Caribbean Islands, provides the focus of this study, although consider Canada, the United States, and Central and South America are also considered when relevant. In large measure, to allude to the Caribbean, or indeed to the New World, is to confirm the presence of the Black man in its evolution. The Indian presence, when it was not virtually extinguished, was rendered culturally neutral; but the black presence afforded these areas an air of new cultural autonomy and bestowed a pattern different from that of the old worlds of Europe and Africa. Within the Caribbean the Black man has manifested his culture in a number of diverse ways. Some generalizations obviously apply, but there is much divergence within these common manifestations. More precisely, the New World Black who lives in the United States is culturally, economically, and socially different from his New World counterparts in Nicaragua and Panama. A study of Caribbean literature can only expect to chart currents through which Black writers have chosen to move, and emphasize their similarities and differences. When discussing the New World, one comes up against the intriguing point that not only is the New World a Black invention, but the writer at the same time is engaged in threading a synthesis into literature. Because of the texture and variety of this synthesis, Afro-New World man is in many ways unique, and his literature reflects this. . Oscar Ronald Dathorne is a Guyanese born and bred author who has taught in England, Africa, and the United States. Among others, he has taught at he University of Ibadan and the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria, Yale, Howard University, the University of Wisconsin, S.U.N.Y.#NAME?. Dathorne was born in Guyana, South America and earned his Ph.D. degree from the University of Sheffield in England. He has taught throughout the world, including England, Africa and the United States. Between 1977 and 1987, Dr. Dathorne directed the program of Caribbean, African and African-American Studies at the University of Miami. He is director of the Association of Caribbean Studies and has been editor of the Journal of Caribbean Studies for the past 10 years. Dr. Dathorne has been professor of English at the University of Kentucky since 1987. He has published more than 100 learned articles, short stories, poems, plays and scholarly works. Dr. Dathorne has written and published three novels, the latest titled Dele’s Child (1986). His most recent volume of poetry, Songs from a New World, appeared in 1988. Dr. Dathorne’s publications include a seminal study of Black life and culture, The Black Mind; a study of African literature and politics, African Literature in the Twentieth Century; and, most importantly, Dark Ancestor, which deals with the ramifications and impact of the African past and presence on the Caribbean and the Americas. Oscar Ronald Dathorne (November 19, 1934 – December 18, 2007) was a Guyanese educator, novelist, poet and critic and the eldest brother of the Canadian writer Lynette Dathorne. Born in Georgetown, Guyana he attended Queen’s College prior to his parents moving the family to England in 1953. He attended the University of Sheffield obtaining his BA, English in 1958 later completing his MA in 1960 and PhD, English, in 1966. However, having completed his studies he found that few English universities were willing to offer him anything other than junior positions. He therefore sought job opportunities abroad and successfully applied for a teaching post at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. He remained in West Africa for six years completing his stay whilst holding a full professorship at the University of Sierra Leone as head of the English department. With his use of African literature as a basis for many English classes and the increased recognition that African literature be defined as written by Africans rather than about Africans; in 1969 he was invited to the United States as a guest lecturer at Yale University. With the continuing changes in the black American psyche, African culture and heritage were viewed as a past in which to take great pride. As a result, universities throughout the US were becoming interested in forming African and African-American study departments. Having specialist knowledge within this area, Dathorne became professor of African studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He was a pioneer of Black Studies in the United States teaching African American studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and then spent 15 years working at Ohio State and the University of Miami, establishing and directing African, Caribbean, and African-American study programs. In 1987 he left the University of Miami to take up a post as a professor in the English department at the University of Kentucky. |
![]() | ![]() | Dathorne, O. R. The Scholar-Man. London. 1964. Cassell & Company. 181 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Tom Simmonds Adam Questus, a West Indian living unhappily in London, decided to emigrate. He had secured a post on the English faculty of a West African university, and set off with high hopes. But Adam was to find life very different from what he had envisaged. His arrival, without baggage or dignity after an arduous ride on the back of a mammy-wagon, heralded an amazing and hilarious train of events which culminated on Independence Day. For a while he lived with Mr. Farrar, an Englishman and head of the Department of English. Farrar introduced him to his class, all slightly more puzzled than he had anticipated, and to Talkfada, its loquacious spokesman. Adam was surprised to find the syllabus consisted almost exclusively of teaching nursery- rhymes, and amazed to find the students analysing the symbolic meaning of 'Baa, Baa, Black Sheep' in terms of political propaganda. He was even more dumb- founded to meet the 'Chancellor-of-Vice' who was constantly promulgating Stand- ing Orders, through one of which he was himself eventually sacked. Strongly attracted by Helen, Farrar's nubile and provocative daughter, Adam tried to forget his troubles at the university in active social integration. But his virility was not enough. He soon learned that because he was neither 'expatriate' nor 'native' he was mistrusted by both com- munities, and his only real friend remained a sophisticated car-driving witch-doctor. He longed for Helen and was totally non- plussed by the extremes of behaviour around him. Till eventually the boisterous, uninhibited celebrations on Independence Day caused an equally violent eruption of his emotions. Mr. Dathorne is himself a West Indian and is now teaching English at Ibadan University, Nigeria. His own experiences and observations there combine with the buoyant sense of humour so evident in his earlier Dumplings in the Soup, to give the reader an unusual novel. The serious story of a personal quest among an alien society and the satirical picture of university life in West Africa unite to give a fresh and exciting vision of the 'new Africa', a view that is bound to be controversial. Oscar Ronald Dathorne (November 19, 1934 – December 18, 2007) was a Guyanese educator, novelist, poet and critic and the eldest brother of the Canadian writer Lynette Dathorne. Born in Georgetown, Guyana he attended Queen’s College prior to his parents moving the family to England in 1953. He attended the University of Sheffield obtaining his BA, English in 1958 later completing his MA in 1960 and PhD, English, in 1966. However, having completed his studies he found that few English universities were willing to offer him anything other than junior positions. He therefore sought job opportunities abroad and successfully applied for a teaching post at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. He remained in West Africa for six years completing his stay whilst holding a full professorship at the University of Sierra Leone as head of the English department. With his use of African literature as a basis for many English classes and the increased recognition that African literature be defined as written by Africans rather than about Africans; in 1969 he was invited to the United States as a guest lecturer at Yale University. With the continuing changes in the black American psyche, African culture and heritage were viewed as a past in which to take great pride. As a result, universities throughout the US were becoming interested in forming African and African-American study departments. Having specialist knowledge within this area, Dathorne became professor of African studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He was a pioneer of Black Studies in the United States teaching African American studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and then spent 15 years working at Ohio State and the University of Miami, establishing and directing African, Caribbean, and African-American study programs. In 1987 he left the University of Miami to take up a post as a professor in the English department at the University of Kentucky. |
![]() | ![]() | De Boissiere, Ralph. Crown Jewel. London. 1981. Allison & Busby. 0850312922. 361 pages. hardcover. Crown Jewel is the story of the economic struggle of Trinidad workers in the 1930s. It is set at the time of the Butler riots in the oilfields of south Trinidad - part of the general disturbances of the British Caribbean during the 1930s. Ralph Anthony Charles de Boissière (16 October 1907 – 16 February 2008) was an Trinidad-born Australian social realist novelist. Ralph de Boissière was born in Port of Spain, the son of Armand de Boissière, a solicitor, and Maude Harper, an English woman who died three weeks later. He attended Queen's Royal College and during this time discovered the Russian authors, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Gorky, Chekhov, Pushkin and Gogol, who were to remain a lasting influence. Initially he wished to become a concert pianist but on leaving school took a job as a salesman, which enlightened him to the living and working conditions of ordinary Trinidadians. He then became involved in left-wing and trade union politics and also wrote for Trinidad's first literary magazine, The Beacon which he helped establish and where he met among others the writer C. L. R. James. In 1935 he married Ivy Alcantara (died 1984) and they had two daughters. But in 1947, having lost his job and unable to find another one because of his political activities, he and his family left the country for Chicago, afterwards moving to the Australian city of Melbourne in 1948. He found work in Australia as salesman and a factory-hand. Aged 42, de Boissière settled into a clerical job from which he retired in 1980. In Australia he joined the Communist Party and had his first novel, Crown Jewel published in 1952 by the leftist Australasian Book Society. Like all his work this depicts the struggles of the working class with realistic sympathy, culminating with a portrayal of a 1937 strike in Trinidad brutally put down by police shooting. Since then he has written four more novels and been translated into Polish, German, Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Czech and Chinese. His work has been described by one critic as ‘combin[ing] social realism and political commitment with a concern for the culture of the feeling within the individual in a way that is unique not only among West Indian writers but among writers with a social conscience anywhere in the world.’ In 2007, his centenary year, Ralph de Boissière married his longtime companion, Dr. Annie Greet, his fourth novel, Call of the Rainbow, was published in Melbourne, and in November, he received an honorary Doctor of Literature from the University of Trinidad and Tobago. His autobiography, Life on the Edge, was posthumously published (edited by Kenneth Ramchand) in 2010. De Boissière died in Melbourne on 16 February 2008. |
![]() | ![]() | De Boissiere, Ralph. No Saddles For Kangaroos. Sydney. 1964. Australasian Book Society. 316 pages. hardcover. Set in an American owned car factory in Australia. A book packed with incident in which ordinary Australians achieve greatness. This deeply moving story is set in the early fifties in an American-owned motor car factory, though the action also reaches out to embrace many other important aspects of Australian life. In it we meet Molly Bromley, warm, vibrant, stimulating, who believes in people, not ideologies; Jack her husband, timid, yet with a strength of his own, who meets tragedy at work; Mick, her young son, a dreamer, always reaching . Ralph Anthony Charles de Boissière (16 October 1907 – 16 February 2008) was an Trinidad-born Australian social realist novelist. Ralph de Boissière was born in Port of Spain, the son of Armand de Boissière, a solicitor, and Maude Harper, an English woman who died three weeks later. He attended Queen's Royal College and during this time discovered the Russian authors, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Gorky, Chekhov, Pushkin and Gogol, who were to remain a lasting influence. Initially he wished to become a concert pianist but on leaving school took a job as a salesman, which enlightened him to the living and working conditions of ordinary Trinidadians. He then became involved in left-wing and trade union politics and also wrote for Trinidad's first literary magazine, The Beacon which he helped establish and where he met among others the writer C. L. R. James. In 1935 he married Ivy Alcantara (died 1984) and they had two daughters. But in 1947, having lost his job and unable to find another one because of his political activities, he and his family left the country for Chicago, afterwards moving to the Australian city of Melbourne in 1948. He found work in Australia as salesman and a factory-hand. Aged 42, de Boissière settled into a clerical job from which he retired in 1980. In Australia he joined the Communist Party and had his first novel, Crown Jewel published in 1952 by the leftist Australasian Book Society. Like all his work this depicts the struggles of the working class with realistic sympathy, culminating with a portrayal of a 1937 strike in Trinidad brutally put down by police shooting. Since then he has written four more novels and been translated into Polish, German, Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Czech and Chinese. His work has been described by one critic as ‘combin[ing] social realism and political commitment with a concern for the culture of the feeling within the individual in a way that is unique not only among West Indian writers but among writers with a social conscience anywhere in the world.’ In 2007, his centenary year, Ralph de Boissière married his longtime companion, Dr. Annie Greet, his fourth novel, Call of the Rainbow, was published in Melbourne, and in November, he received an honorary Doctor of Literature from the University of Trinidad and Tobago. His autobiography, Life on the Edge, was posthumously published (edited by Kenneth Ramchand) in 2010. De Boissière died in Melbourne on 16 February 2008. |
![]() | ![]() | De Boissiere, Ralph. Rum and Coca-Cola. London. 1984. Allison & Busby. 0850315662. 332 pages. hardcover. A sequel to Crown Jewel that concerns the struggles by Trinidadians to achieve social justice that culminates in the 1937 riots. The setting for De Boissiere's second novel "Rum and Coca Cola" (republished in 2006) is the Second World War when thousands of American soldiers came to Trinidad to build and man military bases. The novel is, in a Caribbean context, a rare and largely successful attempt to create fictional models which give a panoramic view of their society. The American military had in effect become the rulers. "Rum and Coca-Cola" is set at a time when the dollars from the American military presence changed Trinidad from a neglected and quasi-feudal British colony into a competitive market economy in which "we is all sharks, the stronger feedin' on the weaker." Both forces remain alive in Trinidadian society, the unfinished revolts of 1937 and 1970, and the individualistic consumer materialism which was fueled by the oil boom. Now that the boom has gone and social tensions rise, de Boissiere's second novel seem more relevant than ever.There is not the same tension as in his first book "Crown Jewel", because everyone had a job and many had two. The conflicts were of a more subtle sort - the breaking down of British prestige, the mockery of former British might, under American occupation. The novel is, in a Caribbean context, a rare and largely successful attempt to create fictional models which give a panoramic view of their society. It gives not merely a static or descriptive background against which characters perform, but a dynamic image of society created by the actions and social relationships of the characters. "Rum and Coca-Cola" was published first published without much remark four decades ago in Australia, has rightly reissued by Lux-Verbi and with justified acclaim. It remains relevant because it give an unrivaled portrayal of a period in Trinidad's recent past which is still very much alive in shaping its present. The book reveals de Boissiere's dedication to promoting anti-oppression politics and feminist activism. For ambitious Mopsy, Fred, a union activist, and Indra, an educated Indian woman, the arrival of American soldiers means Trinidad will never be the same. Fred Collingwood, a principled black working-class socialist is doomed because of his "moral strength in all its beauty" and he destroys the relationship with Marie, the woman he most loves, because he displaces his desire to change society onto her and in the process destroys her sense of worth.Indra, the part-Indian girl from a lower-middle-class family, struggles against a "terrible division of spirit" which affects her social and racial sensibilities. Even though she makes a commitment to the working-class movement she still feels cut off, "doomed at this time to a lonely pursuit of the dust they raised in their forward marching." But it is the character of Marie, trapped by the lightness of her color into believing that she can escape into whiteness, which provides the novel's tragic focus. Of the three main characters, she is the one to benefit most materially from the war-time boom, but her unremitting efforts to escape from her past of poverty and casual prostitution are made at the expense of her inner self. Her fate is tragic because she sees herself engaged in a battle for individual self-hood, but in the process becomes separated from what she most truly is and disintegrates as a personality. Yet "Rum and Coca-Cola" does not succumb to pessimism. Indra's cry, "O my God! But what am I capable of" is agonized, but the possibilities of moral choice and the issues of human capacity remain central to de Boissiere's vision. He sees Trinidad moving in a direction which he detests, but when he has Fred reflect on what has occurred, he shows him capable of taking something positive from it. He sees a society which is not yet free, but one in which old colonial illusions have been destroyed. The title "Rum and Coca Cola" became the name of probably the best known Calypso of all times, made famous by the Andrews Sisters in the 1940's. It was even the subject of a famous court case against Leo Feist, Inc. Ralph Anthony Charles de Boissière (16 October 1907 – 16 February 2008) was an Trinidad-born Australian social realist novelist. Ralph de Boissière was born in Port of Spain, the son of Armand de Boissière, a solicitor, and Maude Harper, an English woman who died three weeks later. He attended Queen's Royal College and during this time discovered the Russian authors, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Gorky, Chekhov, Pushkin and Gogol, who were to remain a lasting influence. Initially he wished to become a concert pianist but on leaving school took a job as a salesman, which enlightened him to the living and working conditions of ordinary Trinidadians. He then became involved in left-wing and trade union politics and also wrote for Trinidad's first literary magazine, The Beacon which he helped establish and where he met among others the writer C. L. R. James. In 1935 he married Ivy Alcantara (died 1984) and they had two daughters. But in 1947, having lost his job and unable to find another one because of his political activities, he and his family left the country for Chicago, afterwards moving to the Australian city of Melbourne in 1948. He found work in Australia as salesman and a factory-hand. Aged 42, de Boissière settled into a clerical job from which he retired in 1980. In Australia he joined the Communist Party and had his first novel, Crown Jewel published in 1952 by the leftist Australasian Book Society. Like all his work this depicts the struggles of the working class with realistic sympathy, culminating with a portrayal of a 1937 strike in Trinidad brutally put down by police shooting. Since then he has written four more novels and been translated into Polish, German, Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Czech and Chinese. His work has been described by one critic as ‘combin[ing] social realism and political commitment with a concern for the culture of the feeling within the individual in a way that is unique not only among West Indian writers but among writers with a social conscience anywhere in the world.’ In 2007, his centenary year, Ralph de Boissière married his longtime companion, Dr. Annie Greet, his fourth novel, Call of the Rainbow, was published in Melbourne, and in November, he received an honorary Doctor of Literature from the University of Trinidad and Tobago. His autobiography, Life on the Edge, was posthumously published (edited by Kenneth Ramchand) in 2010. De Boissière died in Melbourne on 16 February 2008. |
![]() | ![]() | Dennis, Ferdinand. Duppy Conqueror. London. 1998. Flamingo/Harper Collins. 0006497845. 346 pages. hardcover. A magical novel of one man's odyssey from the Caribbean to Britain and Africa. In praise of 1998's Duppy Conqueror, World Literature Today said: "Ferdinand Dennis is faultless in his depiction of artifacts, customs, speech, and behavior in the three continents of Marshall's adventures; his descriptions of the externals and his analyses of the internal motivations of his characters–both minor and principal–are quite arresting, whether he is writing about 'the unintended arrogance of the shy person' or commenting on 'love that came without duty and expired without money, leaving a rancid odour of guilt.' Duppy Conqueror is neither a bildungsroman nor a political treatise, though it shares some of the elements of both subgenres; it is almost a fictional biography of a sixty-year-old thinking proletarian searching for racial and ideological roots. Some readers will read Dennis's novel as a roman a clef, others as a contemporary version of Claude McKay's Banana Bottom and Home to Harlem extended to Africa; but few will read it without admiration and considerable satisfaction." Other favourable coverage came from The Times Higher Education: "This very ambitious novel is nothing less than a history of the twentieth century, seen though Afro-Caribbean spectacles... Framed as a postcolonial picaresque, it has a hurtling energy which raises it above Dennis's previous work. Finally, and most importantly, Duppy Conqueror brims with humour and low comedy. It is a pleasing change from the wilfully ponderous treatment of historical memory and diasporic identity in much contemporary postcolonial fiction." According to The Independent’s Rachel Halliburton: "Duppy Conqueror presents a giant's eye view of the exiled African psyche. An ambitious and compelling novel.... This is a novel packed to the brim with layers of symbolism, individual and cultural memories, and fascinating historical stories. Reading it once just won't be enough." Ferdinand Dennis (born 1956) is a writer, broadcaster, journalist and lecturer, who is Jamaican by birth but at the age of eight moved to England, where his parents had migrated in the late 1950s. Dr James Procter notes: "Perhaps as a result of his Caribbean background (a region probably marked more than any other by movements and migration), Dennis is a writer ultimately more concerned with routes than roots. This is foregrounded in much of his fictional work, notably his most recent and ambitious novel to date, Duppy Conqueror (1998), a novel which moves from 1930s Jamaica to postwar London and Liverpool, to Africa. Similarly, Dennis’ non-fiction centres on journeying rather than arrival, from Behind the Frontlines: Journey into Afro-Britain (1988) to Voices of the Crossing: The Impact of Britain on Writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa (2000)." Ferdinand Dennis was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and grew up in north Paddington, London, where he and his siblings – two brothers and a sister – relocated in 1964 to join their parents. Dennis read sociology at Leicester University, after which he was employed as an educational researcher in Handsworth, Birmingham. He studied for a Master's degree at Birkbeck College, London University. He received a Wingate Scholarship in 1995. He has lectured in Nigeria, and from 2003 to 2011 taught Creative and Media Writing courses at Middlesex University. As a broadcaster, he has written and presented numerous talks and documentaries for BBC Radio 4 – such as the series After Dread and Anger (1989), Journey Round My People, for which he travelled in West Africa, Back To Africa (1990) and Work Talk (1991–92, produced by Marina Salandy-Brown) – as well as a television programme about Africa for Channel 4. Dennis has also worked as a journalist for publications including Frontline and City Limits magazines. His writing has been published in a range of magazines, newspapers and anthologies, among them The Guardian, Granta, Critical Quarterly Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader (ed. Kwesi Owusu, 2000), Hurricane Hits England: An Anthology of Writing About Black Britain (ed. Onyekachi Wambu, 2000), and IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain (2000). He is the author of three novels – The Sleepless Summer (1989), The Last Blues Dance (1996); and Duppy Conqueror (1998) – and two travelogues: Behind the Frontlines: Journey into Afro-Britain (1988) – his first book, which won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize – and Back to Africa: A Journey (1992), in which he visited Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal. With Naseem Khan, he co-edited Voices of the Crossing: The Impact of Britain on Writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa (2000). He also was a co-researcher (with Kole Omotoso and Alfred Zack-Williams) of the 1992 compilation West Africa Over 75 Years: selections from the raw material of history, edited by Kaye Whiteman. |
![]() | ![]() | Depestre, Rene. A Rainbow For the Christian West. Amherst. 1977. University Of Massachusetts Press. 0870232290. Translated from the French by Joan Dayan. 258 pages. hardcover. Rene Depestre is a black Haitian poet and a Marxist, who has lived in Cuba since 1959. This volume includes the first major translation of his most important collection of poetry, with a critical introduction. ‘Rise up my poems, your place is in the streets’ - Depestre is a poet of negritude, inspired as much by the Haitian popular religious tradition as by politics and Marxism. He views the clash between the black and the white worlds as a source of new synthesis, a truly human society. A Rainbow for the Christian West presents this view in a sequence of poems and prose poems in which the poet, strengthened by the concept of negritude and drawing on the wealth of Voodoo symbolism, intrudes into the white man's world—conflict and transformation ensue. Joan Dayan's introduction traces the evolution of Depestre's poetry, incorporating translations of pertinent poems and explaining the Voodoo background. Her commentary is based on rare documents as well as on field work in Haiti, where she was able to talk with Voodoo priests and observe their secret rites. The text includes a complete bibliography of Depestre's works, plus a selection on negritude, Haitian culture, Voodoo, and African philosophy. ‘In my opinion this effort constitutes a remarkable analysis which places Ms. Dayan among the best critics of Caribbean literature’—Rene Belance, Brown University. René Depestre (born 29 August 1926 Jacmel, Haiti) is a Haitian poet and former communist activist. He lived in Cuba as an exile from the Duvalier regime for many years and was a founder of the Casa de las Americas publishing house. He is best known for his poetry. He did his primary studies with the Breton Brothers of Christian Instruction. His father died in 1936, and René Depestre left his mother, his two brothers and his two sisters to go live with his maternal grandmother. From 1940 to 1944, he completed his secondary studies at the Pétion college in Port-au-Prince. His birthplace is often evoked in his poetry and his novels, in particular Hadriana in All My Dreams (1988). Étincelles (Sparks), his first collection of poetry, appeared in 1945, prefaced by Edris Saint-Amand. He was only nineteen years old when the work was published. The poems were influenced by the marvelous realism of Alejo Carpentier, who planned a conference on this subject in Haiti in 1942. Depestre created a weekly magazine with three friends: Baker, Alexis, and Gerald Bloncourt: The Hive (1945–46). ‘One wanted to help the Haitians to become aware of their capacity to renew the historical foundations of their identity’ (quote from Le métier à métisser). The Haitian government at the time seized the 1945 edition which was published in honor of André Breton, which led to the insurrection of 1946. Depestre met with all his Haitian intellectual contemporaries, including Jean Price-Mars, Léon Laleau, and René Bélance, who wrote the preface to his second collection, Gerbe de sang, in 1946. He also met with foreign intellectuals. He took part in and directed the revolutionary student movements of January 1946, which led to the overthrow of President Élie Lescot. The Army very quickly seized power, and Depestre was arrested and imprisoned before being exiled. He pursued his studies in letters and political science at the Sorbonne from 1946 - 1950. In Paris, he met French surrealist poets as well as foreign artists, and intellectuals of the négritude (Black) movement who coalesced around Alioune Diop and Présence Africaine. Depestre took an active part in the decolonization movements in France, and he was expelled from French territory. He left for Prague, from where he was driven out in 1952. He went to Cuba, invited by the writer Nicolás Guillén, where again he was stopped and expelled by the government of Fulgencio Batista. He was denied entry by France and Italy. He left for Austria, then Chile, Argentina and Brazil. He remained in Chile long enough to organize, with Pablo Neruda and Jorge Amado, the Continental Congress of Culture. After Brazil, Depestre returned to Paris in 1956 where he met other Haitians, including Jacques-Stephen Alexis. He took part in the first Pan-African congress organized by Présence Africaine in September 1956. He wrote in Présence Africaine and other journals of the time such as Esprit, and Lettres Francaises. He returned to Haiti in (1956–57). Refusing to collaborate with the Duvalierist regime, he called on Haitians to resist, and was placed under house arrest. Depestre left for Cuba in 1959, at the invitation of Che Guevara. Convinced of the aims of the Cuban Revolution, he helped with managing the country (Ministry for Foreign Relations, National Publishing, National Council of Culture, Radio Havana-Cuba, Las Casas de las Américas, The Committee for the Preparation of the Cultural Congress of Havana in 1967). Depestre travelled, taking part in official activities (the USSR, China, Vietnam, etc.) and took part in the first Pan-African Cultural Festival (Algiers, 1969), where he met the Congolese writer Henri Lopes, with whom he would work later, at UNESCO. During his various travels and his stay in Cuba, Rene Depestre continued working on a major piece of poetry. His most famous collection of poetry is undoubtedly Un arc-en-ciel pour l'Occident chrétien (Rainbow for the Christian Occident) (1967), a mix of politics, eroticism, and Voudoo, topics that are found in all of his works. Poet in Cuba (1973) is a reflection on the evolution of the Cuban revolution. Pushed aside by the Castrist régime in 1971, Depestre broke with the Cuban experiment in 1978 and went back to Paris where he worked at the UNESCO Secretariat. In 1979, in Paris, he published Le Mat de Cocagne, his first novel. In 1980, he published Alléluia pour une femme-jardin, for which he was awarded the Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle in 1982. Depestre left UNESCO in 1986 and retired in the Aude region of France. In 1988, he published Hadriana in All My Dreams, which received many literary awards, including the Prix Théophraste Renaudot, the Prix de la Société des Gens de Lettres, the Prix Antigone of the town of Montpellier, and the Belgian Prix du Roman de l'Académie royale de la langue et de la littérature françaises. He obtained French citizenship in 1991. He continued to receive awards and honors, in particular the Prix Apollinaire de poésie for his personal Anthology (1993) and the Italian Grisane Award for the theatrical adaptation of Mat de Cocagne in 1995, as well as bursaries (Bourse du Centre National du Livre, in 1994, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1995). He was the subject of a documentary film by Jean-Daniel Lafond, Haiti in All Our Dreams, filmed in Montreal (1996). Depestre also published major essays. Bonjour et adieu à la négritude (Hello and Good-bye to Négritude) presents a reflexion on his ambivalent position regarding the négritude movement started by Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire and Leon-Gontran Damas. Impressed by Aime Césaire, who came to Haiti to speak about surrealism and négritude, he was fascinated by créole life, or the créolo-francophonie, which did not stop him from questioning the concept of négritude. Rebellious of the concept since his youth, which he associated with ethnic essentialism, he measured the historical range and situated the movement in the world history of ideas. He revisited this topic (critical re-situation of the movement) in his two collections, Ainsi parle le fleuve noir (1998) and Le Métier à métisser (1998). He paid homage to Césaire and his visionary work within the context of the créole movement in Martinique: ‘Césaire with only one word ended this empty debate: at the start of historical decolonization, In Haiti and around the world, there is the genius of Toussaint Louverture’ (Le Métier à métisser 25). His experience in Cuba - his fascination and his falling out with the ‘castrofidelism’ ideology and its constraints - is also examined in these two texts, as well as marvelous realism, the role of the erotic, Haitian history and the very contemporary topic of globalization. Far from seeing himself as an exile, Depestre prefers being described as a nomad with multiple roots, a ‘banyan‘ man - in reference to the tree which he so often evokes right down to its rhizomic roots - even described as a ‘géo-libertin’. Rene Depestre lives today in a small village in the Aude, Lézignan-Corbières, with his second wife, who is Cuban. He writes every morning, looking at the vineyards, just as he used to devour the view of Jacmel Bay from his grandmother's veranda. His work has been published in the United States, the former Soviet Union, France, Germany, Italy, Cuba, Peru, Brazil, Vietnam, the former German Democratic Republic (East-Germany), Argentina, and Mexico. His first volume of poetry, Sparks (Etincelles) was published in Port-au-Prince in 1945. Other publications include Gerbe de sang (Port-au-Prince, 1946), Végétation de clartés, preface by Aimé Césaire, (Paris, 1951), Traduit du grand large, poème de ma patrie enchainée, (Paris, 1952), Minerai noir, (Paris, 1957), Journal d'un animal marin (Paris, 1964), Un arc-en-ciel pour l'occident chrétien poeme mystère vaudou, (Paris, 1966). His poetry has appeared in many French, Spanish and German anthologies and collections. More current works include Anthologie personnelle (1993) and Actes sud, for which he received the Prix Apollinaire. He has spent many years in France, and was awarded the French literary prize, the prix Renaudot, in 1988 for his work Hadriana dans Tous mes Rêves. He lives in Lézignan-Corbières. He is a special envoy of UNESCO for Haiti. He is the uncle of Michaëlle Jean, the Governor General of Canada from 2005 to 2010. Joan Dayan is a doctoral candidate in comparative literature at CUNY. Her work on Depestre received the Land Prize at Smith College. |
![]() | ![]() | Depestre, Rene. A Rainbow For the Christian West. Fairfax. 1972. Red Hill Press. Translated from the original Haitian French and with an introduction by Jack Hirschman. 64 pages. paperback. René Depestre, who is perhaps the most important voice poemically emanating from contemporary Haiti, was born in Jacmel on August 29, 1926. He first came to international attention in January, 1946, on the eve of the fall of the Haitian government, when the literary-political magazine offices of ‘The Beehive’, which he had started with other revolutionary voices of the island, was closed by the police. He went into exile thereafter, living in Paris and Africa and returning to Haiti in 1958. Revolutionary activity in Cuba in the Sixties gave his most recent work its strongest impetus, judging by the fact that the Rainbow was composed in Habana; and since its Paris publication in 1967, he has published other important works. The Rainbow is intended as an exorcism through voodoo, the induction of the water-based grandeur of Blackness into the Southern-white dynastic decay. Its five parts include: (1) The Prelude, bearing the title of the work; (2) The Epiphanies of the Voodoo Gods, made of ikonic poems; (3) The Cantata for Seven Voices, where female loas take up the exorcistic cause and spell it out more fully in the second or response part of this section, with the Odes to martyred Black political and lyrical heroes; (4) The Aphorisms and Parables, which is Depestre’s summa on Blackness; and (5) The Completion of the Rainbow, where the voodoo spirit inside the Alabama mansion rises to Omaha, as a sort of vortex centering and prophetic credential. René Depestre (born 29 August 1926 Jacmel, Haiti) is a Haitian poet and former communist activist. He lived in Cuba as an exile from the Duvalier regime for many years and was a founder of the Casa de las Americas publishing house. He is best known for his poetry. He did his primary studies with the Breton Brothers of Christian Instruction. His father died in 1936, and René Depestre left his mother, his two brothers and his two sisters to go live with his maternal grandmother. From 1940 to 1944, he completed his secondary studies at the Pétion college in Port-au-Prince. His birthplace is often evoked in his poetry and his novels, in particular Hadriana in All My Dreams (1988). Étincelles (Sparks), his first collection of poetry, appeared in 1945, prefaced by Edris Saint-Amand. He was only nineteen years old when the work was published. The poems were influenced by the marvelous realism of Alejo Carpentier, who planned a conference on this subject in Haiti in 1942. Depestre created a weekly magazine with three friends: Baker, Alexis, and Gerald Bloncourt: The Hive (1945–46). ‘One wanted to help the Haitians to become aware of their capacity to renew the historical foundations of their identity’ (quote from Le métier à métisser). The Haitian government at the time seized the 1945 edition which was published in honor of André Breton, which led to the insurrection of 1946. Depestre met with all his Haitian intellectual contemporaries, including Jean Price-Mars, Léon Laleau, and René Bélance, who wrote the preface to his second collection, Gerbe de sang, in 1946. He also met with foreign intellectuals. He took part in and directed the revolutionary student movements of January 1946, which led to the overthrow of President Élie Lescot. The Army very quickly seized power, and Depestre was arrested and imprisoned before being exiled. He pursued his studies in letters and political science at the Sorbonne from 1946 - 1950. In Paris, he met French surrealist poets as well as foreign artists, and intellectuals of the négritude (Black) movement who coalesced around Alioune Diop and Présence Africaine. Depestre took an active part in the decolonization movements in France, and he was expelled from French territory. He left for Prague, from where he was driven out in 1952. He went to Cuba, invited by the writer Nicolás Guillén, where again he was stopped and expelled by the government of Fulgencio Batista. He was denied entry by France and Italy. He left for Austria, then Chile, Argentina and Brazil. He remained in Chile long enough to organize, with Pablo Neruda and Jorge Amado, the Continental Congress of Culture. After Brazil, Depestre returned to Paris in 1956 where he met other Haitians, including Jacques-Stephen Alexis. He took part in the first Pan-African congress organized by Présence Africaine in September 1956. He wrote in Présence Africaine and other journals of the time such as Esprit, and Lettres Francaises. He returned to Haiti in (1956–57). Refusing to collaborate with the Duvalierist regime, he called on Haitians to resist, and was placed under house arrest. Depestre left for Cuba in 1959, at the invitation of Che Guevara. Convinced of the aims of the Cuban Revolution, he helped with managing the country (Ministry for Foreign Relations, National Publishing, National Council of Culture, Radio Havana-Cuba, Las Casas de las Américas, The Committee for the Preparation of the Cultural Congress of Havana in 1967). Depestre travelled, taking part in official activities (the USSR, China, Vietnam, etc.) and took part in the first Pan-African Cultural Festival (Algiers, 1969), where he met the Congolese writer Henri Lopes, with whom he would work later, at UNESCO. During his various travels and his stay in Cuba, Rene Depestre continued working on a major piece of poetry. His most famous collection of poetry is undoubtedly Un arc-en-ciel pour l'Occident chrétien (Rainbow for the Christian Occident) (1967), a mix of politics, eroticism, and Voudoo, topics that are found in all of his works. Poet in Cuba (1973) is a reflection on the evolution of the Cuban revolution. Pushed aside by the Castrist régime in 1971, Depestre broke with the Cuban experiment in 1978 and went back to Paris where he worked at the UNESCO Secretariat. In 1979, in Paris, he published Le Mat de Cocagne, his first novel. In 1980, he published Alléluia pour une femme-jardin, for which he was awarded the Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle in 1982. Depestre left UNESCO in 1986 and retired in the Aude region of France. In 1988, he published Hadriana in All My Dreams, which received many literary awards, including the Prix Théophraste Renaudot, the Prix de la Société des Gens de Lettres, the Prix Antigone of the town of Montpellier, and the Belgian Prix du Roman de l'Académie royale de la langue et de la littérature françaises. He obtained French citizenship in 1991. He continued to receive awards and honors, in particular the Prix Apollinaire de poésie for his personal Anthology (1993) and the Italian Grisane Award for the theatrical adaptation of Mat de Cocagne in 1995, as well as bursaries (Bourse du Centre National du Livre, in 1994, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1995). He was the subject of a documentary film by Jean-Daniel Lafond, Haiti in All Our Dreams, filmed in Montreal (1996). Depestre also published major essays. Bonjour et adieu à la négritude (Hello and Good-bye to Négritude) presents a reflexion on his ambivalent position regarding the négritude movement started by Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire and Leon-Gontran Damas. Impressed by Aime Césaire, who came to Haiti to speak about surrealism and négritude, he was fascinated by créole life, or the créolo-francophonie, which did not stop him from questioning the concept of négritude. Rebellious of the concept since his youth, which he associated with ethnic essentialism, he measured the historical range and situated the movement in the world history of ideas. He revisited this topic (critical re-situation of the movement) in his two collections, Ainsi parle le fleuve noir (1998) and Le Métier à métisser (1998). He paid homage to Césaire and his visionary work within the context of the créole movement in Martinique: ‘Césaire with only one word ended this empty debate: at the start of historical decolonization, In Haiti and around the world, there is the genius of Toussaint Louverture’ (Le Métier à métisser 25). His experience in Cuba - his fascination and his falling out with the ‘castrofidelism’ ideology and its constraints - is also examined in these two texts, as well as marvelous realism, the role of the erotic, Haitian history and the very contemporary topic of globalization. Far from seeing himself as an exile, Depestre prefers being described as a nomad with multiple roots, a ‘banyan‘ man - in reference to the tree which he so often evokes right down to its rhizomic roots - even described as a ‘géo-libertin’. Rene Depestre lives today in a small village in the Aude, Lézignan-Corbières, with his second wife, who is Cuban. He writes every morning, looking at the vineyards, just as he used to devour the view of Jacmel Bay from his grandmother's veranda. His work has been published in the United States, the former Soviet Union, France, Germany, Italy, Cuba, Peru, Brazil, Vietnam, the former German Democratic Republic (East-Germany), Argentina, and Mexico. His first volume of poetry, Sparks (Etincelles) was published in Port-au-Prince in 1945. Other publications include Gerbe de sang (Port-au-Prince, 1946), Végétation de clartés, preface by Aimé Césaire, (Paris, 1951), Traduit du grand large, poème de ma patrie enchainée, (Paris, 1952), Minerai noir, (Paris, 1957), Journal d'un animal marin (Paris, 1964), Un arc-en-ciel pour l'occident chrétien poeme mystère vaudou, (Paris, 1966). His poetry has appeared in many French, Spanish and German anthologies and collections. More current works include Anthologie personnelle (1993) and Actes sud, for which he received the Prix Apollinaire. He has spent many years in France, and was awarded the French literary prize, the prix Renaudot, in 1988 for his work Hadriana dans Tous mes Rêves. He lives in Lézignan-Corbières. He is a special envoy of UNESCO for Haiti. He is the uncle of Michaëlle Jean, the Governor General of Canada from 2005 to 2010. |
![]() | ![]() | Depestre, Rene. Vegetations of Slendor. Chicago. 1980. Vanguard Books. 0917702107. Translated from the French by Jack Hirschman. Introductory note by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Foreword by Aime Cesaire. Preface by Nelson Peery. 25 pages. paperback. Revolutionary Haitian Poetry. On the poems: "What appears to me to belong most valuably to René Depestre is that almost constant and nearly infallible goodness with which he effects the integration of the most actual and immediate event into the most genuine poetic world; that faculty of stirring up the human adventure in a speech of full, clear and abundant voice; that faculty of making images flow in a fusion with song." Aimé Cesaire. On the translation: "I. . . must admire extravagantly these extra- ordinary translations — I should say trans- formations, mutations, transmutations — by Jack Hirschman who is these days in an absolute pyromantic state as a polyglot linguist — his word-virtuosity is an alchemy turning the 'hidden difficult metal of the originals into a new liquid quicksilver which quivers, pours and runs like a river of light." Lawrence Ferlinghetti. René Depestre (born 29 August 1926 Jacmel, Haiti) is a Haitian poet and former communist activist. He lived in Cuba as an exile from the Duvalier regime for many years and was a founder of the Casa de las Americas publishing house. He is best known for his poetry. He did his primary studies with the Breton Brothers of Christian Instruction. His father died in 1936, and René Depestre left his mother, his two brothers and his two sisters to go live with his maternal grandmother. From 1940 to 1944, he completed his secondary studies at the Pétion college in Port-au-Prince. His birthplace is often evoked in his poetry and his novels, in particular Hadriana in All My Dreams (1988). Étincelles (Sparks), his first collection of poetry, appeared in 1945, prefaced by Edris Saint-Amand. He was only nineteen years old when the work was published. The poems were influenced by the marvelous realism of Alejo Carpentier, who planned a conference on this subject in Haiti in 1942. Depestre created a weekly magazine with three friends: Baker, Alexis, and Gerald Bloncourt: The Hive (1945–46). ‘One wanted to help the Haitians to become aware of their capacity to renew the historical foundations of their identity’ (quote from Le métier à métisser). The Haitian government at the time seized the 1945 edition which was published in honor of André Breton, which led to the insurrection of 1946. Depestre met with all his Haitian intellectual contemporaries, including Jean Price-Mars, Léon Laleau, and René Bélance, who wrote the preface to his second collection, Gerbe de sang, in 1946. He also met with foreign intellectuals. He took part in and directed the revolutionary student movements of January 1946, which led to the overthrow of President Élie Lescot. The Army very quickly seized power, and Depestre was arrested and imprisoned before being exiled. He pursued his studies in letters and political science at the Sorbonne from 1946 - 1950. In Paris, he met French surrealist poets as well as foreign artists, and intellectuals of the négritude (Black) movement who coalesced around Alioune Diop and Présence Africaine. Depestre took an active part in the decolonization movements in France, and he was expelled from French territory. He left for Prague, from where he was driven out in 1952. He went to Cuba, invited by the writer Nicolás Guillén, where again he was stopped and expelled by the government of Fulgencio Batista. He was denied entry by France and Italy. He left for Austria, then Chile, Argentina and Brazil. He remained in Chile long enough to organize, with Pablo Neruda and Jorge Amado, the Continental Congress of Culture. After Brazil, Depestre returned to Paris in 1956 where he met other Haitians, including Jacques-Stephen Alexis. He took part in the first Pan-African congress organized by Présence Africaine in September 1956. He wrote in Présence Africaine and other journals of the time such as Esprit, and Lettres Francaises. He returned to Haiti in (1956–57). Refusing to collaborate with the Duvalierist regime, he called on Haitians to resist, and was placed under house arrest. Depestre left for Cuba in 1959, at the invitation of Che Guevara. Convinced of the aims of the Cuban Revolution, he helped with managing the country (Ministry for Foreign Relations, National Publishing, National Council of Culture, Radio Havana-Cuba, Las Casas de las Américas, The Committee for the Preparation of the Cultural Congress of Havana in 1967). Depestre travelled, taking part in official activities (the USSR, China, Vietnam, etc.) and took part in the first Pan-African Cultural Festival (Algiers, 1969), where he met the Congolese writer Henri Lopes, with whom he would work later, at UNESCO. During his various travels and his stay in Cuba, Rene Depestre continued working on a major piece of poetry. His most famous collection of poetry is undoubtedly Un arc-en-ciel pour l'Occident chrétien (Rainbow for the Christian Occident) (1967), a mix of politics, eroticism, and Voudoo, topics that are found in all of his works. Poet in Cuba (1973) is a reflection on the evolution of the Cuban revolution. Pushed aside by the Castrist régime in 1971, Depestre broke with the Cuban experiment in 1978 and went back to Paris where he worked at the UNESCO Secretariat. In 1979, in Paris, he published Le Mat de Cocagne, his first novel. In 1980, he published Alléluia pour une femme-jardin, for which he was awarded the Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle in 1982. Depestre left UNESCO in 1986 and retired in the Aude region of France. In 1988, he published Hadriana in All My Dreams, which received many literary awards, including the Prix Théophraste Renaudot, the Prix de la Société des Gens de Lettres, the Prix Antigone of the town of Montpellier, and the Belgian Prix du Roman de l'Académie royale de la langue et de la littérature françaises. He obtained French citizenship in 1991. He continued to receive awards and honors, in particular the Prix Apollinaire de poésie for his personal Anthology (1993) and the Italian Grisane Award for the theatrical adaptation of Mat de Cocagne in 1995, as well as bursaries (Bourse du Centre National du Livre, in 1994, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1995). He was the subject of a documentary film by Jean-Daniel Lafond, Haiti in All Our Dreams, filmed in Montreal (1996). Depestre also published major essays. Bonjour et adieu à la négritude (Hello and Good-bye to Négritude) presents a reflexion on his ambivalent position regarding the négritude movement started by Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire and Leon-Gontran Damas. Impressed by Aime Césaire, who came to Haiti to speak about surrealism and négritude, he was fascinated by créole life, or the créolo-francophonie, which did not stop him from questioning the concept of négritude. Rebellious of the concept since his youth, which he associated with ethnic essentialism, he measured the historical range and situated the movement in the world history of ideas. He revisited this topic (critical re-situation of the movement) in his two collections, Ainsi parle le fleuve noir (1998) and Le Métier à métisser (1998). He paid homage to Césaire and his visionary work within the context of the créole movement in Martinique: ‘Césaire with only one word ended this empty debate: at the start of historical decolonization, In Haiti and around the world, there is the genius of Toussaint Louverture’ (Le Métier à métisser 25). His experience in Cuba - his fascination and his falling out with the ‘castrofidelism’ ideology and its constraints - is also examined in these two texts, as well as marvelous realism, the role of the erotic, Haitian history and the very contemporary topic of globalization. Far from seeing himself as an exile, Depestre prefers being described as a nomad with multiple roots, a ‘banyan‘ man - in reference to the tree which he so often evokes right down to its rhizomic roots - even described as a ‘géo-libertin’. Rene Depestre lives today in a small village in the Aude, Lézignan-Corbières, with his second wife, who is Cuban. He writes every morning, looking at the vineyards, just as he used to devour the view of Jacmel Bay from his grandmother's veranda. His work has been published in the United States, the former Soviet Union, France, Germany, Italy, Cuba, Peru, Brazil, Vietnam, the former German Democratic Republic (East-Germany), Argentina, and Mexico. His first volume of poetry, Sparks (Etincelles) was published in Port-au-Prince in 1945. Other publications include Gerbe de sang (Port-au-Prince, 1946), Végétation de clartés, preface by Aimé Césaire, (Paris, 1951), Traduit du grand large, poème de ma patrie enchainée, (Paris, 1952), Minerai noir, (Paris, 1957), Journal d'un animal marin (Paris, 1964), Un arc-en-ciel pour l'occident chrétien poeme mystère vaudou, (Paris, 1966). His poetry has appeared in many French, Spanish and German anthologies and collections. More current works include Anthologie personnelle (1993) and Actes sud, for which he received the Prix Apollinaire. He has spent many years in France, and was awarded the French literary prize, the prix Renaudot, in 1988 for his work Hadriana dans Tous mes Rêves. He lives in Lézignan-Corbières. He is a special envoy of UNESCO for Haiti. He is the uncle of Michaëlle Jean, the Governor General of Canada from 2005 to 2010. |
![]() | ![]() | Deren, Maya. Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. London. 1953. Thames & Hudson. 350 pages. hardcover. This book examines in an exciting and authoritative form the folk beliefs and rituals of the people of Haiti. Maya Deren writes from inside knowledge of her subject, having lived for more than three years as an accepted member of a small Haitian community, during which time she took part herself in many of the native ceremonies. The Haitians are a people without a written tradition. Their gods, brought with them from their original home in West Africa, appear in living form by Taking possession of the devotees and behaving as teachers, doctors and whimsically imperious friends. One of the most fascinating parts of the book is the study of how Haitians have borrowed certain features from Christianity, modified and then incorporated them into their own native religion. The publishers believe this to he a very unusual book; here for almost the first time the much-publicized ‘voodoo’ religion of the Haitians is both fully understood and vitally described by a profoundly perceptive writer. It is illustrated with a number of attractive line reproductions of vever drawings and a selection of remarkable photos. graphs of Haitian ritual taken by the author, who is a well-known maker of films; she was aided in her work by a Guggenheim Fellowship. Maya Deren (April 29, 1917 – October 13, 1961), born Eleanora Derenkowskaia, was one of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer and photographer. The function of film, Deren believed, like most art forms, was to create an experience; each one of her films would evoke new conclusions, lending her focus to be dynamic and always-evolving. She combined her interests in dance, voodoo and subjective psychology in a series of surreal, perceptual, black and white short films. Using editing, multiple exposures, jump cutting, superimposition, slow-motion and other camera techniques to her fullest advantage, Deren creates continued motion through discontinued space, while abandoning the established notions of physical space and time, with the ability to turn her vision into a stream of consciousness. Perhaps one of the most influential experimental films in American cinema was her collaboration with Alexander Hammid on Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). She continued to make several more films of her own, including At Land (1944), A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), and Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946) – writing, producing, directing, editing, and photographing them with help from only one other person, Hella Heyman, as camerawoman. She also appeared in a few of her films but never credited herself as an actress, downplaying her roles as anonymous figures rather than iconic deities. |
![]() | ![]() | Deren, Maya. Divine Horsemen: The Voodoo Gods of Haiti. New York. 1972. Delta. Foreword by Joseph Campbell. 350 pages. paperback. Maya Deyen was a pioneer in developing the non-fiction film beyond the traditional limits of the documentary. DIVINE HORSEMEN is the outgrowth of her trip to Haiti in 1947 to shoot a film on Haitian dance, but Voodoo – the religion, the reality of it – overwhelmed her artistic intentions. The film was never finished. Instead she spent a total of eighteen months over a three-year period living as an accepted member of a Haitian village and writing this book. Maya Deren (April 29, 1917 – October 13, 1961), born Eleanora Derenkowskaia, was one of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer and photographer. The function of film, Deren believed, like most art forms, was to create an experience; each one of her films would evoke new conclusions, lending her focus to be dynamic and always-evolving. She combined her interests in dance, voodoo and subjective psychology in a series of surreal, perceptual, black and white short films. Using editing, multiple exposures, jump cutting, superimposition, slow-motion and other camera techniques to her fullest advantage, Deren creates continued motion through discontinued space, while abandoning the established notions of physical space and time, with the ability to turn her vision into a stream of consciousness. Perhaps one of the most influential experimental films in American cinema was her collaboration with Alexander Hammid on Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). She continued to make several more films of her own, including At Land (1944), A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), and Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946) – writing, producing, directing, editing, and photographing them with help from only one other person, Hella Heyman, as camerawoman. She also appeared in a few of her films but never credited herself as an actress, downplaying her roles as anonymous figures rather than iconic deities. |
![]() | ![]() | Dhondy, Farrukh. C. L. R. James: A Life. New York. 2002. Pantheon Books. 0375421009. 224 pages. hardcover. Cover: Evan Gaffney Design/Steve Pyke A long-overdue critical appreciation of the West Indian historian and political activist who played a towering role in the cause of Pan-Africanism in the twentieth century. Born In Trinidad in 1901, Cyril Lionel Robert James was a precocious polymath all his life. By the time he was a teenager and already a certified teacher, he had embarked on a lifelong advocacy for the Trinidadian oppressed. He embraced Marxism while living in England during the 1930s, during which time he published, among other works, The Case for West Indian Self Government and his masterpiece, THE BLACK JACOBINS. James lived in the United States from 1939 until he was expelled during the McCarthy terror for his political activities, Thereafter he divided his time between London and Trinidad (where he served as Secretary of the West Indies Federal Labor Party) and, until his death in 1989, wrote works of both fiction and nonfiction that would profoundly influence the Black Power movement in the United States and independence movements in Africa and the West Indies. Farrukh Dhondy knew James personally and was given access to his papers. The result is a biography that is a revelation of the life and work of this legendary intellect and revolutionary. Farrukh Dhondy (born Poona, India, in 1944) is an Indian-born British writer, playwright, screenwriter and left-wing activist of Parsi descent, who resides in the United Kingdom. He is well known not only for his writing, but also for his film and TV work. Dhondy did his schooling at The Bishop's School, Pune, and obtained a BSc degree from the University of Pune in India. He won a scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge where he read Natural Sciences before switching to English. After graduating he studied for a master's degree at Leicester University and was later a lecturer at Leicester College of Further Education and Archbishop Temples school in Lambeth in London. In Leicester, Dhondy became involved with the Indian Workers' Association and later, in London, with the British Black Panther movement, joining the publication Race Today in 1970, along with his close friend Darcus Howe, and former, later deceased, partner Mala Sen, and discovering his calling as a writer. In his role as a race activist and academic, he came to be associated with black and left-wing intellectuals and activists such as Stuart Hall and Trevor Phillips. Uncharacteristically, it is also from this period that his close friendship with the conservative author Sir V. S. Naipaul dates. Dhondy's literary output is vast, including books for children, textbooks and biographies, as well as plays for theatre and scripts film and television. He is also a columnist, a biographer (of C. L. R. James; 2001), and media executive (Channel Four Commissioning Editor 1984–97). During his time with Channel Four, he wrote the comedy series Tandoori Nights (1985–87) for the channel, which concerned the rivalry of two curry house owners. His children's stories include KBW (Keep Britain White), a study of a young white boy's response to anti-Bengali racism. In 2011 Dhondy published his translation of selections from the Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi, Rumi: a New Translation. He also wrote the screenplay for the Bollywood historical blockbuster Mangal Pandey, starring Aamir Khan and Toby Stephens. In 2012, he scripted a short film called The K File. This film dealt with a fictional take on the judgement of Ajmal Kasab and was directed by Oorvazi Irani. In 2013 his critically acclaimed play Devdas was premiered in London and was subsequently replayed globally. 2013 also saw the publication of the novel, Prophet Of Love (HarperCollins). Dhondy was lauded in the respected political magazine The New Internationalist, in its prestigious 'final page' which led to the resurgence of his lifelong campaign to recruit more BME talent at the BBC, with an article subsequently printed in the New Statesman (covered in The Voice newspaper), which was later taken over by actor and comedian Lenny Henry. In 2015 Dhondy interviewed Nobel Laureate Sir V. S. Naipaul in India and in London as part of the Jaipur Literature Festival and his publishers produced a collection of his greatest works in an anthology. |
![]() | ![]() | Diederich, Bernard and Burt, Al. Papa Doc: The Truth About Haiti Today. New York. 1969. McGraw Hill. Foreword by Graham Greene. 393 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Lawrence Ratzkin. Haiti is only three hours from New York by air, but it is a moot point whether Haiti is five hundred years behind any one of the West's democracies, or one thousand. And this once-richest of all the New World colonies is drifting ever backward under the megalomaniac misguidance of Francois Duvalier, a tyrant known as "Papa Doc." A physician by profession, Duvalier did work hand-in-glove with a team of American medical experts to rid his island of the crippling disease of yaws. Before he assumed the Presidency, he did seem the very man his country had been needing for all too long a time. But Duvalier established dominion over Haiti as a very different sort of doctor - a witch doctor. Trading on the credulity of his people, Papa Doc - Father and Healer of his country's ills - has made himself President for Life and virtually inviolable. His reign is a terrifying mixture of voudou legend and gangster-style brutality. The Golden Rule of his administration: A good Duvalierist stands ready to kill his children, or children to kill their parents. Here for the first time is the extraordinary factual account of Papa Doc, the Haitian people and Haitian politics since that day in 1957 when Duvalier came into power. The story this book puts forth is not a pretty one, but it is the truth as only insiders can know it and political exiles dare tell it. Bernard Diederich (born 1926), is a New Zealand-born author, journalist, and historian, who currently resides in Miami. Diederich studied in England in the early postwar years after having participated in World War II in the Pacific. In 1949, Diederich started a sailing trip with two friends that brought him to Haiti, a country that since stayed close to his heart. He stayed and settled down, while his partners continued their trip. In Port-au-Prince, he founded and edited the Haiti Sun, a weekly English newspaper about Haitian events. As a journalist he also became a non-staff correspondent for a number of news media including the Associated Press, the New York Times, and the Daily Telegraph. In 1961 he covered the assassination of Rafael Trujillo in the neighboring Dominican Republic. Two years later, after having displeased Haiti’s dictator Papa Doc Duvalier, he was imprisoned and expelled. In the Dominican Republic he established himself as a foreign staff correspondent for Time-Life News. In 1966 Diederich moved to Mexico working for Time Magazine covering Caribbean affairs. In 1981 the office was moved to Miami, and he worked there until his retirement in 1989. The author continued to publish after retirement with the focus on the political and historical developments in the Caribbean, notably in Haiti. In 1954 Diederich met Graham Greene and the two became friends; later, as a result of their travel along the Haitian border Diederich wrote The Seeds of Fiction: Graham Greene's Adventures in Haiti and Central America 1954–1983, while Greene published The Comedians. Diederich published a detailed account of Trujillo’s assassination in Trujillo: Death of the Goat in 1978. After Mario Vargas Llosa published The Feast of the Goat, a fictionalized novel about Trujillo’s death, in 2000, Diederich accused Vargas Llosa of plagiarism. Al Burt or, more fully, Alvin Victor Burt (September 11, 1927 – November 29, 2008) was a Florida author and longtime journalist with The Miami Herald. He served as a sports writer, news reporter, editor, editorial writer and columnist. Burt reported from Washington to Latin America and the Caribbean and throughout Florida. Before working with the Miami Herald he had positions with the Atlanta Journal and the Jacksonville Journal. He was seriously wounded by "friendly fire" while covering the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965. For many years he wrote a back-page column for The Miami Herald Sunday magazine on interesting people and places around Florida that drew him quite a following. Florida author David Nolan said he used to buy the Herald just so he could read Al Burt's column. Many of those columns were collected in book form in Becalmed in the Mullet Latitudes (1984), Al Burt's Florida (1997), and Tropic of Cracker (1999). A scholar and advocate of the Florida Cracker, Burt was a longtime trustee of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society—an organization that celebrated the life and work of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist who gave the Crackers dignity in American literature. He lived for many years in the picturesque historic town of Melrose, Florida, until declining health dictated a move to the larger city of Jacksonville not long before his death. |
![]() | ![]() | Diederich, Bernard. Trujillo: The Death of the Goat. New York. 1969. Little Brown. 0316184403. 265 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Appelbaum & Curtis. "A fascinating enquiry in depth into the background of Trujillo's murder - a natural for the biographer of that other monster of the Caribbean, Papa Doc." - Graham Greene. Trujillo: The Death of the Goat is a riveting, minute- by-minute account of the plot to assassinate the Western Hemisphere's most ruthless dictator, the violent killing itself, and the ferocious wave of revenge that ensued before Trujillo's regime finally collapsed. Bernard Diederich also reveals, for the first time, the vacillating role of the United States - and the CIA - initially in propping up the dictator, then in supplying weapons to slay him. On May 30, 1961, a hail of bullets ended the life of Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, known to his countrymen as "The Goat" for his many revolting excesses, after thirty-one years of brutal rule over the Dominican Republic - an absolute dictatorship enforced by Trujillo's secret police, the dreaded SIM. Before The Goat's bloody slaughter on a deserted coastal highway, the tentacles of the SIM had crept over the Western Hemisphere, employing kidnapping, torture, murder - even a flagrant assassination attempt on another head of state - with a viciousness to rival the Gestapo's. It was the abduction from Manhattan, in 1956, of Jesus Galindez, a lecturer at Columbia University who had written a study criticizing Trujillo's dictatorship, that doomed The Goat. For Trujillo's agents had hired two pilots to deliver Galindez to Trujillo, and both pilots would be murdered within months to keep the professor's monstrous fate a secret. One was a young American, the other a member of a close-knit, affluent old Dominican family, the de la Mazas, renowned for their volatile behavior. It was Antonio de la Maza who, incensed by Trujillo's butchery, gathered the band of patriots and disaffected Dominicans to avenge his slain brother and redeem their country from The Goat. With the pace and detail of a superlative thriller, Bernard Diederich recreates a true story of almost over-whelming suspense and danger, of heroism and tragic coincidence: how the conspirators moved from hollow threats and patio planning to methodical deliberations of murder; how they stalked their target and amassed their own weapons in a country where civilian firearms were forbidden; how contact was made with the CIA and, after long, frustrating negotiations, a promise of help from the U.S.A. was secured. That "help " - in the end only two M-1 rifles - became just one part of an ominous pattern that saw the assassins carry out their plot without any contingency plan to cover unexpected events, miscalculate the resistance of the dead dictator's family and supporters, and have their coup betrayed by a weak general who failed to lead the armed forces against the surviving Trujillistas. For these and other incredible omissions and blunders, the conspirators, their families, and friends paid. a hideous price in the torture chambers of the SIM. (International revulsion at the reprisals, and nationwide unrest, toppled the Trujillo government several years later.) Bernard Diederich was the first journalist outside the Dominican Republic to report the rumor from the Dominican Republic that Trujillo had been assassinated. In the years since, he has tracked down and interviewed scores of Dominicans about their involvement in the assassination. He also has talked with former CIA agents and contract men, as well as with former SIM agents who spoke for the first time about the manhunt for the killers. The result, Trujillo: The Death of the Goat, is at once masterful reportage and chilling, cautionary history. The first comprehensive account, it is a gripping book that reads like a novel ... and lingers like a nightmare. Bernard Diederich (born 1926), is a New Zealand-born author, journalist, and historian, who currently resides in Miami. Diederich studied in England in the early postwar years after having participated in World War II in the Pacific. In 1949, Diederich started a sailing trip with two friends that brought him to Haiti, a country that since stayed close to his heart. He stayed and settled down, while his partners continued their trip. In Port-au-Prince, he founded and edited the Haiti Sun, a weekly English newspaper about Haitian events. As a journalist he also became a non-staff correspondent for a number of news media including the Associated Press, the New York Times, and the Daily Telegraph. In 1961 he covered the assassination of Rafael Trujillo in the neighboring Dominican Republic. Two years later, after having displeased Haiti’s dictator Papa Doc Duvalier, he was imprisoned and expelled. In the Dominican Republic he established himself as a foreign staff correspondent for Time-Life News. In 1966 Diederich moved to Mexico working for Time Magazine covering Caribbean affairs. In 1981 the office was moved to Miami, and he worked there until his retirement in 1989. The author continued to publish after retirement with the focus on the political and historical developments in the Caribbean, notably in Haiti. In 1954 Diederich met Graham Greene and the two became friends; later, as a result of their travel along the Haitian border Diederich wrote The Seeds of Fiction: Graham Greene's Adventures in Haiti and Central America 1954–1983, while Greene published The Comedians. Diederich published a detailed account of Trujillo’s assassination in Trujillo: Death of the Goat in 1978. After Mario Vargas Llosa published The Feast of the Goat, a fictionalized novel about Trujillo’s death, in 2000, Diederich accused Vargas Llosa of plagiarism. |
![]() | ![]() | Drayton, Geoffrey. Christopher. Portsmouth. 1986. Heinemann. 0435982354. Caribbean Writers Series. Introduction by Louis James, University of Kent at Canterbury. paperback. CWS 6. Cover photograph by Armet Francis. An imaginative small boy leaves his childhood behind in the course of a school holiday. People puzzle Christopher. His father, an unsuccessful sugar planter, resents his own dependence on his wife’s family and includes Christopher in his resentment. His mother, though she loves her husband, is also frightened of him and of losing the baby she is carrying - which is what happens. However, the central character in Christopher’s life is his black nanny Gip, through whom he comes to know the villagers with their colourful customs and superstitions. Because of a succession of experiences, only partially understood and therefore arousing unreasonable fears and ecstatic hopes, he begins to grow up and to realise that even pain and sadness are necessary stages on the road to maturity. Geoffrey Drayton (born 13 February 1924) is a Barbadian novelist, poet and journalist. Geoffrey Drayton was born in Barbados, and received his early education there. In 1945 he went to Cambridge University, where he read economics, after which he spent some years teaching in Ottawa, Canada, returning to England in 1953. He worked as a freelance journalist in London and Madrid. From 1954 to 1965 he worked for Petroleum Times, becoming its editor. In 1966 he became a petroleum consultant for the Economist Intelligence Unit. Drayton is the author of one volume of poetry, Three Meridians (1950), and two novels: Christopher (1959), which was first published in part in Bim magazine, and Zohara (1961). He has also written short stories, such as 'Mr Dombie the Zombie', which was broadcast on the BBC programme Caribbean Voices. |
![]() | ![]() | Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Cambridge. 2004. Belknap Press Of Harvard University Press. 0674013042. 357 pages. hardcover. Jacket painting: 'Dessalines Rippingthe White from the Flag' by Madsen Mompremier The first and only successful slave revolution in the Americas began in 1791 when thousands of brutally exploited slaves rose up against their masters on Saint-Domingue, the most profitable colony in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Within a few years, the slave insurgents forced the French administrators of the colony to emancipate them, a decision ratified by revolutionary Paris in 1794. This victory was a stunning challenge to the order of master/slave relations throughout the Americas, including the southern United States, reinforcing the most fervent hopes of slaves and the worst fears of masters. But, peace eluded Saint-Domingue as British and Spanish forces attacked the colony. A charismatic ex-slave named Toussaint Louverture came to France’s aid, raising armies of others like himself and defeating the invaders. Ultimately Napoleon, fearing the enormous political power of Toussaint, sent a massive mission to crush him and subjugate the ex-slaves. After many battles, a decisive victory over the French secured the birth of Haiti and the permanent abolition of slavery from the land. The independence of Haiti reshaped the Atlantic world by leading to the French sale of Louisiana to the United States and the expansion of the Cuban sugar economy. Laurent Dubois weaves the stories of slaves, free people of African descent, wealthy whites, and French administrators into an unforgettable tale of insurrection, war, heroism, and victory. He establishes the Haitian Revolution as a foundational moment in the history of democracy and human rights. Laurent Dubois (PhD. University of Michigan) is associate professor of history at Michigan State University. His book "A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804" (2004) won the American Historical Association Prize in Atlantic History and the John Edwin Fagg Award. He is also the author of "Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution" (2004), which was a "Christian Science Monitor" Noteworthy Book of 2004 and a "Los Angeles Times" Best Book of 2004, and "Les esclaves de la Republique: l'histoire oubliee de la premiere emancipation, 1787-1794" (1998). |
![]() | ![]() | Dun, James Alexander. Dangerous Neighbors: Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America. Philadelphia. 2016. University of Pennsylvania Press. 9780812248319. Early American Studies. 384 pages. hardcover. Jacket design: John Hubbard Dangerous Neighbors shows how the Haitian Revolution permeated early American print culture and had a profound impact on the young nation's domestic politics. Focusing on Philadelphia as both a representative and an influential vantage point, it follows contemporary American reactions to the events through which the French colony of Saint Domingue was destroyed and the independent nation of Haiti emerged. Philadelphians made sense of the news from Saint Domingue with local and national political developments in mind and with the French Revolution and British abolition debates ringing in their ears. In witnessing a French colony experience a revolution of African slaves, they made the colony serve as powerful and persuasive evidence in domestic discussions over the meaning of citizenship, equality of rights, and the fate of slavery. Through extensive use of manuscript sources, newspapers, and printed literature, Dun uncovers the wide range of opinion and debate about events in Saint Domingue in the early republic. By focusing on both the meanings Americans gave to those events and the uses they put them to, he reveals a fluid understanding of the American Revolution and the polity it had produced, one in which various groups were making sense of their new nation in relation to both its own past and a revolution unfolding before them. Zeroing in on Philadelphia--a revolutionary center and an enclave of antislavery activity--Dun collapses the supposed geographic and political boundaries that separated the American republic from the West Indies and Europe. 'Dangerous Neighbors elegantly shows how Philadelphians absorbed, debated, and channeled the news of insurrection, emancipation, and independence in the Caribbean. Dun foregrounds the vitality and complexity of print culture as a forum that at once circulated, interpreted, and framed the transformations brought about by the actions of revolutionaries in Saint-Domingue. And he richly shows how engagement with the challenges posed by these events shaped debates about freedom, race, and nation in the United States.'--Laurent Dubois, author of Haiti: The Aftershocks of History. 'While offering a deep, nuanced history of the Haitian Revolution, Dangerous Neighbors is first and foremost a study of early American political culture. James Alexander Dun argues the American people defined their own revolution, figured the place of slavery and African-descended people in their new nation, and determined their national identity through the lens of events in the French colony and, later, the black republic.'--Matthew J. Clavin, University of Houston. 'With this fine book, James Alexander Dun joins a burgeoning and important scholarship reassessing the long-ignored impact of the Haitian Revolution on early America. Based on monumental research, it offers the most comprehensive account we have of Philadelphia's newspaper coverage and indeed of a broad spectrum of public opinion on the Haitian Revolution as it unfolded. The result shows us not silence but cacophony: a striking portrait of a rich, multifaceted, and contested range of debate. Dangerous Neighbors will make a lasting contribution to the field.'--François Furstenberg, Johns Hopkins University. James Alexander Dun teaches history at Princeton University. |
![]() | ![]() | Edgell, Zee. Beka Lamb. London. 1982. Heinemann. 0435984004. Caribbean Writers Series. 171 pages. paperback. CWS 26. Cover photography by Armet Francis Set in Belize, BEKA LAMB is the record of a few months in the life of Beka and her family. The story of Beka’s victory over her habit of lying, which she conquers after deceiving her father about a disgrace at school, is told in flashback. Her reminiscences begin when she wins an essay prize at her convent school, and they stand in lieu of a wake for her friend Toycie. The politics of the small colony, the influence of the matriarchal society and the dominating presence of the Catholic Church are woven into the fabric of the story to provide a compelling portrait of ordinary life in Belize. Zee Edgell grew up in Belize in the early 1950s. Her first job was as a reporter on the Daily Gleaner in Kingston, Jamaica. From 1966—8 she taught at St Catherine Academy in Belize, during which period she was also editor of a small newspaper in Belize City. After travelling widely - apart from Jamaica, Zee Edgell has lived in Britain, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and the USA - she has returned to Belize to teach at St Catherine Academy. She has recently been appointed Director of the Womens’ Bureau in Belize. |
![]() | ![]() | Edgell, Zee. The Festival of San Joaquin. Portsmouth. 1997. Heinemann. 0435989480. Caribbean Writers Series. 155 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Derek Lockhart. Cover design by Touchpaper Luz Marina, cleared of murdering her brutal husband, is released from prison on a three-year probation. Determined to rebuild her life and gain custody of her children, she perseveres, sustained by mother love and her faith in God in her battle against the poverty, guilt, vanity, and vengeance that threaten to overwhelm her. In this novel, set in the Mestizo community in Belize, Zee Edgell explores with sensitivity and understanding the contradictory and secret territory that is domestic violence. Zelma I. Edgell, better known as Zee Edgell, (born 21 October 1940 in Belize City, Belize) is a writer. She has had four of her novels published. She was an associate professor of English at Kent State University. |
![]() | ![]() | Edgell, Zee. The Festival of San Joaquin. Portsmouth. 1991. Heinemann. 0435989278. Caribbean Writers Series. 307 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Rachel Ross A PAPERBACK ORIGINAL. Times of joy, times of grief... the time it takes for the shine of youthful hope to be tarnished by the compromise of experience. Yet Pavana Leslie has not lost sight of the ideals of her student self, fashioned in sixties London far from her homeland of Belize. Resolved to make her contribution to the land of her birth, she returns home with her fatherless children, where the unwitting father IS now influential in the government. Private emotion twists with public crisis: Pavana strives to reconcile her personal and professional life, while the country itself is in turmoil as Independence approaches and rival factions battle for supremacy. Just as Belize will shake off colonial dependency, so, by the end of this enthralling saga, will Pavana achieve a new confidence, a new vision. Zelma I. Edgell, better known as Zee Edgell, (born 21 October 1940 in Belize City, Belize) is a writer. She has had four of her novels published. She was an associate professor of English at Kent State University. |
![]() | ![]() | Fanon, Frantz. Alienation and Freedom. New York. 2018. Bloomsbury Academic. 9781474250214. Edited and compiled by Jean Khalfa and Robert J. C. Young. Translated by Steven Corcoran. 796 pages. hardcover. Cover design: Irene Martinez-Costa. Cover image: Vince Cavataio/Getty Images Since the publication of The Wretched of the Earth in 1961, Fanon's work has been deeply significant for generations of intellectuals and activists from the 60s to the present day. Alienation and Freedom collects together unpublished works comprising around half of his entire output – which were previously inaccessible or thought to be lost. This book introduces audiences to a new Fanon, a more personal Fanon and one whose literary and psychiatric works, in particular, take centre stage. These writings provide new depth and complexity to our understanding of Fanon's entire oeuvre revealing more of his powerful thinking about identity, race and activism which remain remarkably prescient. Shedding new light on the work of a major 20th-century philosopher, this disruptive and moving work will shape how we look at the world. Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was a Martinique-born psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer. He was the author of classic works such as Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961). He was one of the most significant anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist and anti-racist thinkers of the 20th Century. Jean Khalfa is a Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Trinity College Cambridge, UK. He is the editor of the first complete edition of Michel Foucault's History of Madness (2006) and author of Poetics of the Antilles (2016) and an upcoming work on Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. Robert J. C. Young, FBA, is Julius Silver Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University, USA. He is the author of White Mythologies (1990), Colonial Desire (1995), Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (2001), The Idea of English Ethnicity (2008), Empire, Colony, Postcolony (2015). |
![]() | ![]() | Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin White Masks: The Experiences of a Black Man in a White World. New York. 1967. Grove Press. Translated from the French by Charles Lam Markmann. 232 pages. hardcover. Cover: Kuhlman Associates This is Fanon’s first book. At the time of its original publication in France, Fanon said: ‘This book should have been written three years ago. . . . But these truths were a fire in me then. Now I can tell them without being burned.’ Written out of his experiences and observations as a Negro and a psychiatrist in the Antilles, this book is concerned with the warping of the Negro psyche by a ‘superior’ white culture. Fanon believed that it is a e senseless undertaking for the black man in today’s world to deny his blackness; that to do so is at the cost of refusing to know that others see it, and that for many it is the mark of an inferiority. ‘I believe that the fact of the juxtaposition of the white and black races has created a massive psychoexistential complex. I hope by analyzing it to destroy it.’ In this book, Fanon begins with the fact of blackness, and the fact that white men consider themselves superior. He first deals with the modern Negro and his attitudes in the white world — he thus clarifies and exposes the Negro to himself. He then analyzes and criticizes the work of others, such as O. Mannoni, who have dealt with the problem of the Negro and colonization. The core of the book is devoted to a psychopathological and philosophical explanation of the state of being a Negro. Exploring literature, dreams, case histories, the myth of the man of color and the white woman, and the deep inferiority complex which develops as the black man is overwhelmed by the desire to be white, Fanon portrays the Negro face to face with his race, the fact of blackness. Fanon’s impassioned revolt, his fight for a new humanism where independence is not just a word, but an indispensable condition for the existence of a truly liberated people moves this book far beyond a psychoanalytical study of racism and colonialism: it is a remarkable personal narrative of his life as a Negro in a white world which he wrote to further the fight for equality and dignity of all black peoples. Frantz Fanon was born in 1925 in Fort-de-France, Martinique. He studied medicine in France, and later specialized in psychiatry. Out of his experiences in a hospital in Algeria during the French-Algerian war, his sympathies turned toward the rebels. He joined the revolution and became its most articulate spokesman. His book, THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, has become a manifesto for the Third World. |
![]() | ![]() | Fanon, Frantz. Studies in a Dying Colonialism. New York. 1965. Monthly Review Press. Translated from the French by Haakon Chevalier. 181 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Ernest Socolov Written in 1959, during ‘the Fifth Year of the Algerian Revolution,’ its title in the original French edition, this book has lost none of its timeliness, despite the fact that its focus is very specifically on the Algerian people and the Algerian Revolution. STUDIES IN A DYING COLONIALISM has much to say to a world dominated by revolutionary movements in the underdeveloped countries. For Fanon portrays the contagious dynamism of a people’s struggle for national liberation and the transformations that occur both in the personality of individuals and in society as a whole during the course of that struggle. To the disinherited of the world, the book is a message of hope. For the rest of us it offers insights into the social and psychological conflicts of an oppressed people — and those of their oppressors. It also offers us, if we will accept it, a challenge — to lend our support to the underdeveloped nations of the world in their struggle to break the chains of colonial and neo-colonial domination. For, as Adolfo Gilly points out in his introduction, only thus will we find the door to the future and only thus can our action be effective. STUDIES IN A DYING COLONIALISM is the second book by Fanon to be published in the United States this year. The first was THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH (Les Damnés de la Terre), a book which has served as a revolutionary bible for dozens of emerging African and Asian nations. Frantz Fanon was born in 1925 in Fort-de-France, Martinique. He studied medicine in France, and later specialized in psychiatry. Out of his experiences in a hospital in Algeria during the French-Algerian war, his sympathies turned toward the rebels. He joined the revolution and became its most articulate spokesman. His book, THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, has become a manifesto for the Third World. |
![]() | ![]() | Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. London. 1965. MacGibbon & Kee. Translated from the French by Constance Farrington. 255 pages. hardcover. THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH (French: Les Damnés de la Terre, first published 1961), Frantz Fanon's seminal work on the trauma of colonization made him the leading anti-colonialist thinker of the twentieth century. Written at the height of the Algerian war for independence from French colonial rule, it analyses the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for freedom. Fanon, himself a psychotherapist, explored the psychological effect of colonization on the psyche of a nation as well as its broader implications for building a movement for decolonization. Showing how decolonization must be combined with building a national culture, this passionate analysis of relations between the West and the Third World is still illuminating about the world today. A controversial introduction to the text by Jean-Paul Sartre presents the thesis as an advocacy of violence (which Sartre had also examined in his voluminous Critique of Dialectical Reason). This focus derives from the book's opening chapter 'Concerning Violence' which is a caustic indictment of colonialism and its legacy. It discusses violence as a means of liberation and a catharsis to subjugation. Homi K. Bhabha argues that Sartre's opening comments have led to a limited approach to the text that focuses on the promotion of violence. Further reading reveals a thorough critique of nationalism and imperialism which also develops to cover areas such as mental health and the role of intellectuals in revolutionary situations. Fanon goes into great detail explaining that revolutionary groups should look to the lumpenproletariat for the force needed to expel colonists. The lumpenproletariat in traditional Marxist theories are considered the lowest, most degraded stratum of the proletariat, especially criminals, vagrants, and the unemployed, who lacked class consciousness. Fanon uses the term to refer to those inhabitants of colonized countries who are not involved in industrial production, particularly peasants living outside the cities. He argues that only this group, unlike the industrial proletariat, has sufficient independence from the colonists to successfully make a revolution against them. Also important is Fanon's view of the role of language and how it molds the position of ‘natives‘, or those victimized by colonization. The original title of the book is an allusion to the opening words of The Internationale. Frantz Fanon was born in 1925 in Fort-de-France, Martinique. He studied medicine in France, and later specialized in psychiatry. Out of his experiences in a hospital in Algeria during the French-Algerian war, his sympathies turned toward the rebels. He joined the revolution and became its most articulate spokesman. His book, THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, has become a manifesto for the Third World. |
![]() | ![]() | Farmer, Paul. The Uses of Haiti. Monroe. 1994. Common Courage Press. 1567510345. 432 pages. paperback. Cover design by Matt Wuerker. Cover photo by Maggie Steber. Paul Farmer, a physician with over a decade of experience in rural Haiti, brings into stark relief the myriad forces that have long kept the majority of Haitians poor, sick and silenced. "The Uses of Haiti tells the truth about uncomfortable matters—uncomfortable, that is, for the structures of power and the doctrinal framework that protects them from critical scrutiny. It tells the truth about what has been happening in Haiti, and the U.S. role in its bitter fate.' —Noam Chomsky, from the introduction. From THE USES OF HAITI: "There were covert operations to undermine Haitian democracy, but these were not exposed until long after Aristide was over- thrown. The overt efforts, however, were not subtle. Aristide's attempt to raise the minimum daily wage to 25 gourdes a day— about $3.00—did not please the U.S. Agency for International Development, which had invested millions in keeping Haitian wages low... "What, then, is to be done? The first order of business, for citizens of the United States, might be a candid and careful assessment of our ruinous policies towards Haiti. The Haitian people are asking not for charity, but for justice." Paul Farmer, author of AIDS and Accusation (1992), is assistant professor at the Harvard Medical School and a fellow at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. He conducts his research and medical practice in rural Haiti, where he specializes in com- munity-based efforts to improve the health of the poor. Paul Farmer is Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard Medical School, Chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Founding Director of Partners In Health. Among his books are Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues (California, 1999), The Uses of Haiti (1994), and AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame (California, 1992). Farmer is the winner of a MacArthur Foundation ‘genius’ award and the Margaret Mead Award for his contributions to public anthropology. Amartya Sen, whose work challenges conventional market-driven economic paradigms, is the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in economics. He teaches at Trinity College, Cambridge University. |
![]() | ![]() | Farred, Grant (editor). Rethinking C.L.R. James: A Critical Reader. Cambridge. 1996. Blackwell Publishers. 1557865981. 225 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration: Photograph of C. L. R. James in the 1940s. Jacket design by Workhaus Graphics. This collection of essays provides a critique of C. L. R. James's contribution to a broad range of intellectual pursuits. The Trinidadian-born James was a political activist in the Caribbean, the US and Britain, as well as being one of the leading figures in the early Pan-African movement. He also wrote extensively on literature, culture, cricket, and Marxism. This book engages all these aspects of James's life to demonstrate his centrality to the current debates around the issues of postcoloniality and popular culture. James, for too long unavailable to readers, is presented as an intellectual who participated in several key historical developments of the twentieth century. The book locates him in the history of the earliest struggles against colonialism, but it also clearly shows how his thinking - particularly his interest in nineteenth-century British literature - was shaped by the experience of growing up as a colonial subject in Port-of-Spain. The collection grapples with the paradoxes, the tensions, and ironies that characterized James as much as it shows how creatively he applied the lessons of those ambiguities and contradictions. Grant Farred, a native of South Africa, is a professor of Africana Studies and English at Cornell University. He has previously taught at Williams College, the University of Michigan, and Duke University. He has written several books and served for eight years as editor of South Atlantic Quarterly, and is a leading figure in contemporary African-American Studies, Cultural Studies, and Postcolonial Studies. |
![]() | ![]() | Fermor, Patrick Leigh. The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands. New York. 1965. Harper & Brothers. 403 pages. hardcover. ‘The traveller's tree,’ says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘like all the human beings who now inhabit the Antilles, was originally a stranger to these regions.’ Patrick Leigh Fermor was a stranger too, when, prompted by pleasure and inexhaustible curiosity, he came to the Caribbean Islands to embark on the leisurely, fascinating journey of which this book is the superb report. He went by steamer, plane and sailing ship through the long chain of islands extending from Venezuela to the tip of Florida. He explored the jungles, spoke to the natives and learned much curious lore, customs and history. Four and a half centuries ago the forebears of the people who now throng the Vest Indies began converging there. The early Caribs, the Spanish Conquistadors, the French and English filibusterers, buccaneers and planters, and the endless shiploads of African slaves contributed to a chaotic history. Economic, industrial and social burgeoning brought an incredible melange of nationalities, religions and races. Today, one finds the cosmopolitan sophistication of the European expatriate side by side with the warmth and flamboyance of a people who are addicts of the occult and practice its rites with atavistic and sometimes sinister implications. Mr. Leigh Fermor explored with gusto all the aspects of Caribbean life, from architecture to voodoo rites. Today, when the Caribbean attracts new thousands of visitors every year, this perceptive report is more than ever appealing. PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR, of English and Irish descent, was educated at King's School, Canterbury. His interest in remote places began when, at the age of 18, he walked from Rotterdam to Constantinople. Subsequently, he lived and traveled extensively in the Balkans and in the Greek Archipelago. During World War II, he served with the Irish Guards in the halo-Greek War in Albania and fought in the battles of Greece and Crete, returning to the latter three times to organize the Cretan resistance movement. He was awarded the D.S.O. and O.B.E., and was made Honorary Citizen of Herakleion for his services during the war. In addition to The Traveller's Tree, winner of the Heinemann Foundation Prize for Literature and the Kernsley Prize, Mr. Fermor's books include The Violins of Saint Jacques and Mani. Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor (also known as Paddy Fermor), DSO, OBE (11 February 1915 – 10 June 2011) was a British author, scholar and soldier who played a prominent role behind the lines in the Cretan resistance during World War II. He was widely regarded as ‘Britain's greatest living travel writer’ during his lifetime, based on books such as A Time of Gifts (1977). A BBC journalist once described him as ‘a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene.’ He was born in London, the son of Sir Lewis Leigh Fermor, a distinguished geologist, and Muriel Aeyleen (née Ambler). Shortly after his birth, his mother and sister left to join his father in India, leaving the infant Patrick in England with a family in Northamptonshire. He did not meet his family in person until he was four years old. As a child, Leigh Fermor had problems with academic structure and limitations. As a result, he was sent to a school for ‘difficult children’. He was later expelled from The King's School, Canterbury, when he was caught holding hands with a greengrocer's daughter. His last report from The King's School noted that the young Leigh Fermor was ‘a dangerous mixture of sophistication and recklessness.’ He continued learning by reading texts on Greek, Latin, Shakespeare and History, with the intention of entering the Royal Military College Sandhurst. Gradually he changed his mind, deciding to become an author instead, and in the summer of 1933 relocated to Shepherd Market in London, living with a few friends. Soon, faced with the challenges of an author's life in London and rapidly draining finances, he set upon leaving for Europe. At the age of 18, Leigh Fermor decided to walk the length of Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. He set off on 8 December 1933, shortly after Hitler had come to power in Germany, with a few clothes, several letters of introduction, the Oxford Book of English Verse and a volume of Horace's Odes. He slept in barns and shepherds' huts, but also was invited by landed gentry and aristocracy into the country houses of Central Europe. He experienced hospitality in many monasteries along the way. Two of his later travel books, A Time of Gifts (1977) and Between the Woods and the Water (1986), were about this journey. The final part of his journey was unfinished at the time of Leigh Fermor's death, but will be published as The Broken Road: Travels from Bulgaria to Mount Athos in September 2013 by John Murray. The book draws on Leigh Fermor's diary at the time and an early draft he wrote in the 1960s. Leigh Fermor arrived in Constantinople on 1 January 1935, then continued to travel around Greece. In March, he was involved in the campaign of royalist forces in Macedonia against an attempted Republican revolt. In Athens, he met Balasha Cantacuzène (Balasa Cantacuzino), a Romanian Phanariote noblewoman, with whom he fell in love. They shared an old watermill outside the city looking out towards Poros, where she painted and he wrote. They moved on to Baleni, Galati, the Cantacuzène house in Moldavia, where they were living at the outbreak of World War II. As an officer cadet, Leigh Fermor trained alongside Derek Bond and Iain Moncreiffe, and later joined the Irish Guards. Due to his knowledge of modern Greek, he was commissioned in the General List and became a liaison officer in Albania. He fought in Crete and mainland Greece. During the German occupation, he returned to Crete three times, once by parachute. He was one of a small number of Special Operations Executive (SOE) officers posted to organise the island's resistance to German occupation. Disguised as a shepherd and nicknamed Michalis or Filedem, he lived for over two years in the mountains. With Captain Bill Stanley Moss as his second in command, Leigh Fermor led the party that in 1944 captured and evacuated the German commander General Heinrich Kreipe. There is a memorial commemorating Kreipe's abduction near Archanes in Crete. Moss featured the events of the Cretan capture in his book Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe (1950). It was later adapted in a film by the same name. It was directed/produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and released in 1957. In the film, Leigh Fermor was portrayed by Dirk Bogarde. In 1950, Leigh Fermor published his first book, The Traveller's Tree, about his post-war travels in the Caribbean. The book won the Heinemann Foundation Prize for Literature and established his career path, although it has received negative attention for its approach to racial issues. It was quoted extensively in Live and Let Die, by Ian Fleming. He went on to write several further books of his journeys, including Mani and Roumeli, of his travels on mule and foot around remote parts of Greece. Leigh Fermor translated the manuscript The Cretan Runner written by George Psychoundakis, the dispatch runner on Crete during the war, and helped Psychoundakis get his work published. Fermor also wrote a novel, The Violins of Saint-Jacques, which was adapted as an opera by Malcolm Williamson. After many years together, Leigh Fermor was married in 1968 to the Honourable Joan Elizabeth Rayner (née Eyres Monsell), daughter of the 1st Viscount Monsell. She accompanied him on many of his travels until her death in Kardamyli in June 2003, aged 91. They had no children. They lived part of the year in their house in an olive grove near Kardamyli in the Mani Peninsula, southern Peloponnese, and part of the year in Gloucestershire. Leigh Fermor was knighted in the 2004 New Years Honours. In 2007, he said that, for the first time, he had decided to work using a typewriter - having written all his books longhand until then. After his death the house at Kardamyli featured in the 2013 film Before Midnight. Leigh Fermor was noted for his strong physical constitution, even though he smoked 80 to 100 cigarettes a day. Although in his last years he suffered from tunnel vision and wore hearing aids, he remained physically fit up to his death and dined at table on the last evening of his life. For the last few months of his life he suffered from a cancerous tumour, and in early June 2011 he underwent a tracheotomy in Greece. As death was close, he expressed a wish to die in England and returned there on 9 June 2011. He died the following day, aged 96. |
![]() | ![]() | Fermor, Patrick Leigh. The Violins of Saint Jacques. London. 1953. John Murray. 139 pages. hardcover. Patrick Leigh Fermor’s only novel displays the same lustrous way with words as his beloved travel trilogy (A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water, and The Broken Road), the memoir of his youthful walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. This slim book starts with the meeting of an English traveler and an enigmatic elderly Frenchwoman on an Aegean island. He is captivated by her painting of a busy Caribbean port in the shadow of a volcano, which leads her to tell him the story of her childhood in that town back at the beginning of the twentieth century. The tale she unfolds, set in the tropical luxury of the island of Saint-Jacques, is one of romantic intrigue and decadence involving the descendants of slaves and a fading French aristocracy. Then, on the night of the annual Mardi Gras ball, a whole world comes to a catastrophic and haunting end. Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor (also known as Paddy Fermor), DSO, OBE (11 February 1915 – 10 June 2011) was a British author, scholar and soldier who played a prominent role behind the lines in the Cretan resistance during World War II. He was widely regarded as ‘Britain's greatest living travel writer’ during his lifetime, based on books such as A Time of Gifts (1977). A BBC journalist once described him as ‘a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene.’ He was born in London, the son of Sir Lewis Leigh Fermor, a distinguished geologist, and Muriel Aeyleen (née Ambler). Shortly after his birth, his mother and sister left to join his father in India, leaving the infant Patrick in England with a family in Northamptonshire. He did not meet his family in person until he was four years old. As a child, Leigh Fermor had problems with academic structure and limitations. As a result, he was sent to a school for ‘difficult children’. He was later expelled from The King's School, Canterbury, when he was caught holding hands with a greengrocer's daughter. His last report from The King's School noted that the young Leigh Fermor was ‘a dangerous mixture of sophistication and recklessness.’ He continued learning by reading texts on Greek, Latin, Shakespeare and History, with the intention of entering the Royal Military College Sandhurst. Gradually he changed his mind, deciding to become an author instead, and in the summer of 1933 relocated to Shepherd Market in London, living with a few friends. Soon, faced with the challenges of an author's life in London and rapidly draining finances, he set upon leaving for Europe. At the age of 18, Leigh Fermor decided to walk the length of Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. He set off on 8 December 1933, shortly after Hitler had come to power in Germany, with a few clothes, several letters of introduction, the Oxford Book of English Verse and a volume of Horace's Odes. He slept in barns and shepherds' huts, but also was invited by landed gentry and aristocracy into the country houses of Central Europe. He experienced hospitality in many monasteries along the way. Two of his later travel books, A Time of Gifts (1977) and Between the Woods and the Water (1986), were about this journey. The final part of his journey was unfinished at the time of Leigh Fermor's death, but will be published as The Broken Road: Travels from Bulgaria to Mount Athos in September 2013 by John Murray. The book draws on Leigh Fermor's diary at the time and an early draft he wrote in the 1960s. Leigh Fermor arrived in Constantinople on 1 January 1935, then continued to travel around Greece. In March, he was involved in the campaign of royalist forces in Macedonia against an attempted Republican revolt. In Athens, he met Balasha Cantacuzène (Balasa Cantacuzino), a Romanian Phanariote noblewoman, with whom he fell in love. They shared an old watermill outside the city looking out towards Poros, where she painted and he wrote. They moved on to Baleni, Galati, the Cantacuzène house in Moldavia, where they were living at the outbreak of World War II. As an officer cadet, Leigh Fermor trained alongside Derek Bond and Iain Moncreiffe, and later joined the Irish Guards. Due to his knowledge of modern Greek, he was commissioned in the General List and became a liaison officer in Albania. He fought in Crete and mainland Greece. During the German occupation, he returned to Crete three times, once by parachute. He was one of a small number of Special Operations Executive (SOE) officers posted to organise the island's resistance to German occupation. Disguised as a shepherd and nicknamed Michalis or Filedem, he lived for over two years in the mountains. With Captain Bill Stanley Moss as his second in command, Leigh Fermor led the party that in 1944 captured and evacuated the German commander General Heinrich Kreipe. There is a memorial commemorating Kreipe's abduction near Archanes in Crete. Moss featured the events of the Cretan capture in his book Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe (1950). It was later adapted in a film by the same name. It was directed/produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and released in 1957. In the film, Leigh Fermor was portrayed by Dirk Bogarde. In 1950, Leigh Fermor published his first book, The Traveller's Tree, about his post-war travels in the Caribbean. The book won the Heinemann Foundation Prize for Literature and established his career path, although it has received negative attention for its approach to racial issues. It was quoted extensively in Live and Let Die, by Ian Fleming. He went on to write several further books of his journeys, including Mani and Roumeli, of his travels on mule and foot around remote parts of Greece. Leigh Fermor translated the manuscript The Cretan Runner written by George Psychoundakis, the dispatch runner on Crete during the war, and helped Psychoundakis get his work published. Fermor also wrote a novel, The Violins of Saint-Jacques, which was adapted as an opera by Malcolm Williamson. After many years together, Leigh Fermor was married in 1968 to the Honourable Joan Elizabeth Rayner (née Eyres Monsell), daughter of the 1st Viscount Monsell. She accompanied him on many of his travels until her death in Kardamyli in June 2003, aged 91. They had no children. They lived part of the year in their house in an olive grove near Kardamyli in the Mani Peninsula, southern Peloponnese, and part of the year in Gloucestershire. Leigh Fermor was knighted in the 2004 New Years Honours. In 2007, he said that, for the first time, he had decided to work using a typewriter - having written all his books longhand until then. After his death the house at Kardamyli featured in the 2013 film Before Midnight. Leigh Fermor was noted for his strong physical constitution, even though he smoked 80 to 100 cigarettes a day. Although in his last years he suffered from tunnel vision and wore hearing aids, he remained physically fit up to his death and dined at table on the last evening of his life. For the last few months of his life he suffered from a cancerous tumour, and in early June 2011 he underwent a tracheotomy in Greece. As death was close, he expressed a wish to die in England and returned there on 9 June 2011. He died the following day, aged 96. |
![]() | ![]() | Figueroa, John (editor). Caribbean Voices: Combined Edition. New York. 1973. Robert B.Luce Company. 0883310589. 228 pages. hardcover. Philip Sherlock in the Foreword of this book has described the feeling of deprivation he experienced in his youth: 'l belonged to a people without a literature. There was beauty; my island, like Prospero's, was full of sweet sounds; but why were there no voices?' No longer is this true, as this book so amply testifies; the islands of the Caribbean are full of voices, distinctive in their range of tones and diction, and in the sounds they sing. Few anthologies could show more variety in language, subject and concern; Caribbean Voices is a tribute to the success of the poets of the Caribbean in achieving a distinctively West Indian mode of poetic expression in their unique and full language environment. This combined edition of Caribbean Voices contains poems from many islands of the Caribbean, and represents the work of over 75 poets. The two parts of this book, Dreams and Visions and The Blue Horizons were conceived by the editor, Professor Figueroa, as one work: the second volume complements the first and leads on to a deeper critical appreciation. Contributions from - Barnabas J. Ramon-Fortune, Roger Mais, K.E. Ingram, Gilbert Gratiant, Evan Jones, Basil McFarlane, William Arthur, Jan Carew, E.M. Roach, Frank Collymore, Claude McKay, Cecil Herbert, George Campbell, and others. John Joseph Maria Figueroa (4 August 1920 – 5 March 1999) was a Jamaican poet and educator. He played a significant role in the development of Anglophone Caribbean literature both as a poet and an anthologist. He contributed to the development of the University College of the West Indies as an early member of staff, and had a parallel career as a broadcaster, working for various media organizations including the BBC. He also taught in Jamaica, Britain, the United States, Africa and Puerto Rico. Figueroa was born in Jamaica, where he was educated at St George's College. He won a scholarship to attend Holy Cross College, Massachusetts, graduating in 1942, after which he taught at St George's College and at Wolmer Boys' College in Jamaica. In 1946 he went on a British Council fellowship to London University to study for a teaching diploma and a master's degree in education. He subsequently taught in some London schools, and spent six years as an English and philosophy lecturer at the Institute of Education. He also contributed criticism, stories and poetry to the BBC's Caribbean Voices radio programme produced by Henry Swanzy In Jamaica Figueroa became the first West Indian to be appointed to a chair at the University College of the West Indies, and the first Dean of the Faculty of Education. Between 1964 and 1966 he was a visiting professor first at Rhode Island University and then Indiana University. In the early 1970s he became Professor of Humanities leading the Department of Education of the Centro Caribeno de Estudios Postgraduados, Puerto Rico. He later spend time as a professor at the University of Jos in Nigeria. In the 1980s he moved to the UK, where he worked for the Open University, was a Fellow at the Centre for Caribbean Studies, University of Warwick, and an adviser in multicultural education in Manchester. He edited the pioneering two-volume anthology Caribbean Voices (vol 1: Dreams and Visions and vol 2: The Blue Horizons, 1966 and 1970 respectively), comprehensive landmark collections of West Indian poetry. He was also the first general editor of the Heinemann Caribbean Writers Series. He also played an important role in the development of Caribbean studies as a founder member of the Caribbean Studies Association and the Society for Caribbean Studies. His own poetry "reflects his origins as a Jamaican of [Hispanic] descent and a Catholic who, whilst deeply committed to the Caribbean, was concerned to maintain [the diversity of its] heritage without apology. He insisted that drums were not the only Caribbean musical instrument (no doubt a dig at Kamau Brathwaite) and championed Derek Walcott's relationship to the classical and European literary tradition. Ironically, one of Figueroa's most effective poems is in Nation language." In the words of Andrew Salkey, "The phrase 'cosmopolitan poet' does not really adequately describe him or the impact that he has had on Anglophone Caribbean poetry, but it certainly goes some way in defining a part of his concern in not being tagged as regional or provincial. This is so because he is absolutely free from national limitations." |
![]() | ![]() | Fischer, Sibylle. Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Culture of Slavery in the Age of Revolution. Durham. 2004. Duke University Press. 0822332906. 364 pages. paperback. Cover - detail of a mural from a colonial dwelling in Old Havana. Photo by Pedro Abascal MODERNITY DISAVOWED is a pathbreaking study of the cultural, political, and philosophical significance of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). Revealing how the radical antislavery politics of this seminal event have been suppressed and ignored in historical and cultural records over the past two hundred years, Sibylle Fischer contends that revolutionary antislavery and its subsequent disavowal are central to the formation and understanding of Western modernity. She develops a powerful argument that the denial of revolutionary antislavery eventually became a crucial ingredient in a range of hegemonic thought, including Creole nationalism in the Caribbean and G. W. F. Hegel’s master-slave dialectic. Fischer draws on history, literary scholarship, political theory, philosophy, and psychoanalytic theory to examine a range of material, including Haitian political and legal documents and nineteenth-century Cuban and Dominican literature and art. She demonstrates that at a time when racial taxonomies were beginning to mutate into scientific racism and racist biology, the Haitian revolutionaries recognized the question of race as political. Yet, as the cultural records of neighboring Cuba and the Dominican Republic show, the story of the Haitian Revolution has been told as one outside politics and beyond human language, as a tale of barbarism and unspeakable violence. From the time of the revolution onward, the story has been confined to the margins of history: to rumors, oral histories, and confidential letters. Fischer maintains that without accounting for revolutionary antislavery and its subsequent disavowal, Western modernity-including its hierarchy of values, depoliticization of social goals having to do with racial differences, and privileging of claims of national sovereignty-cannot be fully understood. Sibylle Fischer is Associate Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University. |
![]() | ![]() | Flemming, Gregory N. At the Point of a Cutlass: The Pirate Capture, Bold Escape, and Lonely Exile of Philip Ashton. Lebanon. 2014. University Press of New England/ForeEdge. 9781611685152. 256 pages. hardcover. A handful of sea stories define the American maritime narrative. Stories of whaling, fishing, exploration, naval adventure, and piracy have always captured our imaginations, and the most colorful of these are the tales of piracy. Called America's real-life Robinson Crusoe, the true story of Philip Ashton--a nineteen-year-old fisherman captured by pirates, impressed as a crewman, subjected to torture and hardship, who eventually escaped and lived as a castaway and scavenger on a deserted island in the Caribbean--was at one time as well known as the tales of Cooper, Hawthorne, and Defoe. Based on a rare copy of Ashton's 1725 account, Gregory N. Flemming's vivid portrait recounts this maritime world during the golden age of piracy. Fishing vessels and merchantmen plied the coastal waters and crisscrossed the Atlantic and Caribbean. It was a hard, dangerous life, made more so by both the depredations and temptations of piracy. Chased by the British Royal Navy, blown out of the water or summarily hung when caught, pirate captains such as Edward Low kidnapped, cajoled, beat, and bribed men like Ashton into the rich--but also vile, brutal, and often short--life of the pirate. In the tradition of Nathaniel Philbrick, At the Point of a Cutlass expands on a lost classic narrative of America and the sea, and brings to life a forgotten world of ships and men on both sides of maritime law. GREGORY N. FLEMMING is a former journalist who holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He lives with his family in New England. |
![]() | ![]() | Foster, Cecil. No Man in the House. New York. 1992. Ballantine/One World. 0345380673. 304 pages. hardcover. It is 1964. The small island protectorate of Barbados crackles with the spark of independence. Although poverty is everywhere, the promise of a better future, always denied to its children, may yet be fulfilled. In this beautiful, poignant, and ultimately hopeful novel, the fate of one Bajan family rests in the hands of change - change that only liberation and knowledge can bring. Howard Prescod, his brothers, his two aunts, and his grandmother live a hand-to-mouth existence in their tiny, exhausted shack. Every day is a supreme struggle to stay alive, as they cook what food they can get over an open fire. Howard's parents left for England long ago and, more than anything, he and his brothers want their parents to send for them. Still, Howard and his extraordinary grandmother share a fierce love, which sustains them both through the harsh beatings he suffers daily at school and the cruelties inflicted upon the defenseless family by the local bullies because there is no man in the house to protect them. But their lives change forever when Mr. Bradshaw, the island's first black headmaster, is hired for Howard's school. As Howard begins to blossom under Bradshaw's guidance, he learns that neither freedom nor knowledge comes without sacrifice and that even battles that are won leave victims. The living symbol of the power of education and self-rule, Howard becomes the harbinger of a new future for all. In No Man In the House, Cecil Foster brilliantly captures the light and sound of Barbados with an exquisite portrait of its character, its energy, and its people, especially the strong women, who are both desperate and hopeful in the face of change. His is a rich new voice in contemporary fiction. Barbados in 1964 is the scene of this powerful, evocative novel - highly acclaimed in its American debut. Against the backdrop of the island's bid for independence from Great Britain unfolds the story of a young boy's struggle. Eight-year-old Howard faces a life robbed of hope, but from his grandmother he learns strength and pride. Cecil Foster was born in Barbados and moved to Canada in 1978. His first novel, NO MAN IN THE HOUSE, was published to critical acclaim in the United States and Canada. Since leaving his position of senior editor at the Financial Post, Foster has worked for CBC radio and television and has written for several leading magazines. |
![]() | ![]() | Foster, Cecil. Slammin' Tar. Toronto. 1998. Random House Of Canada. 0679308792. 437 pages. hardcover. Cover: Bhandari & Co. These are the men of Edgecliff, a farm just outside Toronto in cold, unforgiving Canada. For ten months of the year, they pick tobacco from dawn to dusk, living in a ramshackle cabin with broken-down furniture and questionable plumbing. They all talk about leaving the Program, of taking the chance of living illegally in Canada. Yet year after year they get back on that plane to Barbados, unprepared for the changes that may have occurred in their absence. Weaving Bajan folklore into the fabric of his tale, Cecil Foster once again celebrates the resilience of the human spirit with a deeply moving glimpse into a world that few of us will ever encounter. Cecil Foster was born in Barbados and moved to Canada in 1978. His first novel, NO MAN IN THE HOUSE, was published to critical acclaim in the United States and Canada. Since leaving his position of senior editor at the Financial Post, Foster has worked for CBC radio and television and has written for several leading magazines. |
![]() | ![]() | Foster, Cecil. Sleep On Beloved. New York. 1995. One World/Ballantine Books. 0345390156. 352 pages. hardcover. When Cecil Foster's NO MAN IN THE HOUSE was published, E. Annie Proulx proclaimed that ‘he shows the brave characters of West Indian women as no one else has.’ Now, in Sleep On, Beloved, Foster tells the moving story of a Caribbean immigrant woman who leaves behind everything in order to build a better life for her family. Ona Morgan is a passionate, determined woman who leaves her Jamaican home, her friends and traditions, and her newborn daughter, Suzanne, to come to North America. Thwarted by the demons of bad luck, lack of money, and an unfortunate marriage, Ona is plunged into an alien culture and a painful struggle against racism. As her young daughter grows up in Jamaica, devotedly cared for by her beloved grandmother, Ona must defer her plans to bring Suzanne to Toronto again and again. It takes twelve long years before Suzanne and Ona are reunited. But Suzanne cannot warm to this mother who left her behind, and who never prepared her for the harsh realities of life in North America. Now Ona is left to struggle with the rebelliousness of her beloved daughter. Ona and Suzanne find themselves locked in battle, each too proud and too damaged to ask for help. Suzanne punishes her mother by hiding the obedient, devout Suzanne of Jamaica and creating a new urban Suzanne—hard, rebellious, and detached. It is only when Ona, overwhelmed by worldly pressures, becomes utterly lost that Suzanne allows her true self to emerge—strong, resourceful, and able to rebuild her mother's shattered hopes. Cecil Foster was born in Barbados and moved to Canada in 1978. His first novel, NO MAN IN THE HOUSE, was published to critical acclaim in the United States and Canada. Since leaving his position of senior editor at the Financial Post, Foster has worked for CBC radio and television and has written for several leading magazines. |
![]() | ![]() | Fowler, Carolyn. A Knot in the Thread: The Life and Work of Jacques Roumain. Washington DC. 1980. Howard University Press. 0882580574. 383 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Judy Byron Jacques Roumain lived only 37 years, but during that short time he evolved from scion of the Haitian elite to idealistic nationalist to committed Communist. And, while he evolved, he wrote: essays, editorials, letters, poems and novels. Dr. Carolyn Fowler traces this complex man through his writing, published and unpublished. From his well-known works - La Proie et L'Ombre, Les Fantoches, La Montagne Ensorcelée, Le Champ du Potier and Gouverneurs de la Rosée - and from original manuscripts and letters, Dr. Fowler weaves an insightful text. When he died in 1944, Roumain was mourned for both his lyrical literary works and his hard-won political convictions. During his lifetime he was a journalist, poet, politician, diplomat, professor, novelist, short story writer, ethnographer, and revolutionary. In all these incarnations, he searched for tools to help the cause of human solidarity, in literature and in life. All French and Spanish passages are translated in a paginated appendix. Dr. Carolyn Fowler, associate professor of black literature at Atlanta University, was the recipient of the Conrad Kent Rivers Memorial Award (1971) and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1975). She has recently completed further research in Haiti on a Fulbright Fellowship. |
![]() | ![]() | Franketienne. Ready to Burst. Brooklyn. 2014. Archipelago Books. 9781935744788. Translated from the French by Kaiama L. Glover. 162 pages. paperback. Cover art by Franketienne. Book design by David Bullen. Ready to Burst tells the tale of a young man’s efforts to navigate the challenges of a deeply troubled society. The novel moves fluidly between his experiences and those of his alter ego, opening a window onto the absurd realities of a dictatorship. First published in 1968, Ready to Burst presents a sensitive critique of François Duvalier’s suffocating regime and its consequences for a generation of young people in Haiti. The novel offers at once an exquisite verbal painting of life within a specific context of terror and a vivid exploration of love, hope, and the delicate membrane between reality and dream. Considered by many to be the ‘father of Haitian letters,’ Frankétienne is a prolific poet, novelist, visual artist, playwright, musician, and ‘spiraliste.’ He writes in both French and Haitian Creole and often juggles the two. His paintings have been exhibited internationally. An outspoken challenger of political oppression, Frankétienne was a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009 and, in 2010, was named a Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Frankétienne (born Franck Étienne on April 12, 1936 in Ravine-Sèche, Haiti) is a writer, poet, playwright, painter, musician, activist and intellectual, is recognized as one of Haiti's leading writers and playwrights of both French and Haitian Creole. He has been recently called The father of Haitian letters by The New York Times (April 29, 2011). As a painter, he is known for his colorful abstract works, often emphasizing the colors blue and red. He was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009, and was made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres (Order of the Arts and Letters) and was named UNESCO Artist for Peace in 2010. Frankétienne was born in Ravine-Sèche, a small village in Haiti. He was abandoned by his father, a very rich American industrialist, at a young age and was raised by his mother in the Bel Air neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, where she worked as a street merchant to support her eight children, managing to send him, who was the eldest, to school. |
![]() | ![]() | French, Patrick. The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul. New York. 2008. Knopf. 9781400044054. 557 pages. hardcover. Front-of-jacket photograph by Lord Snowden. jacket design by Carol Devine Carson Since V. S. Naipaul left his Caribbean birthplace at the age of seventeen, his improbable life has followed the global movement of peoples, whose preeminent literary chronicler he has become. In THE WORLD IS WHAT IT IS, Patrick French offers the first authoritative biography of the controversial Nobel laureate, whose only stated ambition was greatness as a writer, in pursuit of which goal nothing else was sacred. Beginning with a richly detailed portrait of Naipaul's childhood in colonial Trinidad, French gives us the boy born to an Indian family, the displaced soul in a displaced community, who by dint of talent and ambition finds the only imaginable way out: a scholarship to Oxford. London in the 1950s offers hope and his first literary success, but homesickness and depression almost defeat Vidia, his narrow escape aided by Patricia Hale, an Englishwoman who will devote herself to his work and well-being. She will stand by him, sometimes tenuously, for more than four decades, even as Naipaul embarks on a twenty-four-year affair, which will awaken half-dead passions and feed perhaps his greatest wave of dizzying creativity. Amid this harrowing emotional life, French traces the course of the fierce visionary impulse underlying Naipaul's singular power, a gift to produce masterpieces of fiction and nonfiction. Informed by exclusive access to V. S. Naipaul's private papers and personal recollections, and by great feeling for his formidable body of work, French's revelatory biography does full justice to an enigmatic genius. Patrick French (born 1966) is a British writer, historian and academician. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh where he studied English and American literature, and received a PhD in South Asian Studies. He was appointed as the inaugural Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Ahmedabad University in July 2017. |
![]() | ![]() | Gilroy, Beryl. Boy-Sandwich. Oxford. 1989. Heinemann. 0435988107. Caribbean Writers Series. 122 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Brian Bolger. As a black child, born in present-day London, Tyrone has always been encircled by the loving arms of his family, keeping him safe, sandwiched-in. But this secure world begins to fragment when his grandparents are evicted to an institution. Its callousness and cupidity make it a mockery of ‘home,’ and for the old people Tyrone is the only lifeline. When a horrifying act of violence shatters the heart of a black community the bread turns stale. What encloses Tyrone now is fear, confusion, frustration. Family ties begin to chafe - he feels an insistent need to find and assert his own identity. Could some kind of answer lie in the far-off island that had nurtured his parents and grandparents? Beryl Gilroy has drawn deeply on her personal and professional experience. As a sequel to FRANGIPANI HOUSE this is a story that recognises human differences - in age, in race, in history, in place - and triumphantly transcends them. Beryl Agatha Gilroy (née Answick) (30 August 1924 – 4 April 2001) was a novelist and teacher, and ‘one of Britain's most significant post-war Caribbean migrants’. Born in what was then British Guiana (now Guyana), she moved in the 1950s to the United Kingdom, where she became the first black headteacher in London. She was the mother of academic Paul Gilroy. Beryl Gilroy was born in Skeldon, Berbice, Guyana. She grew up in a large, extended family, largely under the influence of her maternal grandmother, Sally Louisa James (1868–1967), a herbalist, manager of the family small-holding, keen reader, imparter to the young Beryl of the stories of ‘Long Bubbies’, Cabresses and Long Lady and a treasury of colloquial proverbs. Gilroy did not enter full-time schooling until she was twelve. From 1943 to 1945, she attended teacher training college in Georgetown, gaining a first-class diploma. She subsequently taught and lectured on a Unicef nutrition programme. In 1951, at the age of 27, she was selected to attend university in the United Kingdom. Between 1951 and 1953 she attended the University of London pursuing a Diploma in Child Development. Although Gilroy was a qualified teacher, racism prevented her getting a post for some time, and she had to work as a washer, a factory clerk and maid. She taught for a couple of years, married and spent the next twelve years at home bringing up and educating her children, furthering her own higher education, reviewing and reading for a publisher. In 1968 she returned to teaching and eventually became the first Black headteacher in London. Her experiences of those years are told in Black Teacher (1976). Later she worked as a researcher at the Institute of Education, University of London, and developed a pioneering practice in psychotherapy, working mainly with Black women and children. She gained a PhD in counselling psychology from an American university in 1987 while working at the Institute of Education. In 2000 she was also awarded an honorary doctorate from the Institute ‘in recognition of her services to education’. She died of a heart attack at the age of 76 on 4 April 2001. As noted by Roxann Bradshaw: ‘Two days later over one hundred Anglopjone women writers from around the world gathered at Goldsmith College in London, where Dr Gilroy had been scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the 4th annual Caribbean Women Writers Association conference. The news of her death was received with great sorrow for the passing of one of the first wave of Anglophone women writers, whose contribution to Caribbean women's literature is invaluable.’ An orange skirt suit worn by Beryl Gilroy was included in an exhibition entitled Black British Style at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2004. Gilroy's creative writing began in childhood, as a teacher for children and then in the 1960s when she began writing what was later published by Peepal Tree Press as In Praise of Love and Children. Between 1970 and 1975 she wrote the pioneering children’s series Nippers, which contain probably the first reflection of the Black British presence in UK writing for children. It was not until 1986 that her first novel, the award-winning Frangipani House was published (Heinemann). It won a GLC Creative Writing Prize in 1982. Set in an old person’s home in Guyana, it reflects one of her professional concerns: the position of ethnic minority elders and her persistent emphasis on the drive for human freedom. Boy Sandwich (Heinemann) was published in 1989, followed by Stedman and Joanna: A Love in Bondage (Vantage, 1991), and a collection of poems, Echoes and Voices (Vantage, 1991). Then came Sunlight and Sweet Water (Peepal Tree, 1994), Gather the Faces, In Praise of Love and Children and Inkle and Yarico (all Peepal Tree, 1994). Her last novel, The Green Grass Tango (Peepal Tree) was published in 2001, sadly after Beryl Gilroy’s death in April of that year. Gilroy's early work examined the impact of life in Britain on West Indian families and her later work explored issues of African and Caribbean diaspora and slavery. In 1998, a collection of her non-fiction writing, entitled Leaves in the Wind, came out from Mango Publishing. It included her lectures, notes, essays, dissertations and personal reviews. |
![]() | ![]() | Gilroy, Beryl. Frangipani House. London. 1986. Heinemann. 0435988522. Prize winner in the GLC Black Literature Competition. Caribbean Writers Series. 111 pages. paperback. CWS37. Cover illustration by Ramo Avella. Cover design by Keith Pointing FRANGIPANI HOUSE, Beryl Gilroy’s first novel, won a prize in the GLC Black Literature Competition even before it was published. Set in Guyana, it is the story of Mama King, trapped by age and infirmity, but ultimately indomitable. She becomes too much for her family who send her away to Frangipani House, a dreary claustrophobic rest home - but Mama King does not give in. She makes her mark—first-through anguish, then near madness, and finally by escape to the dangerous, dirty, vital world of the poor. FRANGIPANI HOUSE is a beautifully written protest at institutions that isolate, and a way of life that denies respect and responsibility for the weak. Beryl Agatha Gilroy (née Answick) (30 August 1924 – 4 April 2001) was a novelist and teacher, and ‘one of Britain's most significant post-war Caribbean migrants’. Born in what was then British Guiana (now Guyana), she moved in the 1950s to the United Kingdom, where she became the first black headteacher in London. She was the mother of academic Paul Gilroy. Beryl Gilroy was born in Skeldon, Berbice, Guyana. She grew up in a large, extended family, largely under the influence of her maternal grandmother, Sally Louisa James (1868–1967), a herbalist, manager of the family small-holding, keen reader, imparter to the young Beryl of the stories of ‘Long Bubbies’, Cabresses and Long Lady and a treasury of colloquial proverbs. Gilroy did not enter full-time schooling until she was twelve. From 1943 to 1945, she attended teacher training college in Georgetown, gaining a first-class diploma. She subsequently taught and lectured on a Unicef nutrition programme. In 1951, at the age of 27, she was selected to attend university in the United Kingdom. Between 1951 and 1953 she attended the University of London pursuing a Diploma in Child Development. Although Gilroy was a qualified teacher, racism prevented her getting a post for some time, and she had to work as a washer, a factory clerk and maid. She taught for a couple of years, married and spent the next twelve years at home bringing up and educating her children, furthering her own higher education, reviewing and reading for a publisher. In 1968 she returned to teaching and eventually became the first Black headteacher in London. Her experiences of those years are told in Black Teacher (1976). Later she worked as a researcher at the Institute of Education, University of London, and developed a pioneering practice in psychotherapy, working mainly with Black women and children. She gained a PhD in counselling psychology from an American university in 1987 while working at the Institute of Education. In 2000 she was also awarded an honorary doctorate from the Institute ‘in recognition of her services to education’. She died of a heart attack at the age of 76 on 4 April 2001. As noted by Roxann Bradshaw: ‘Two days later over one hundred Anglopjone women writers from around the world gathered at Goldsmith College in London, where Dr Gilroy had been scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the 4th annual Caribbean Women Writers Association conference. The news of her death was received with great sorrow for the passing of one of the first wave of Anglophone women writers, whose contribution to Caribbean women's literature is invaluable.’ An orange skirt suit worn by Beryl Gilroy was included in an exhibition entitled Black British Style at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2004. Gilroy's creative writing began in childhood, as a teacher for children and then in the 1960s when she began writing what was later published by Peepal Tree Press as In Praise of Love and Children. Between 1970 and 1975 she wrote the pioneering children’s series Nippers, which contain probably the first reflection of the Black British presence in UK writing for children. It was not until 1986 that her first novel, the award-winning Frangipani House was published (Heinemann). It won a GLC Creative Writing Prize in 1982. Set in an old person’s home in Guyana, it reflects one of her professional concerns: the position of ethnic minority elders and her persistent emphasis on the drive for human freedom. Boy Sandwich (Heinemann) was published in 1989, followed by Stedman and Joanna: A Love in Bondage (Vantage, 1991), and a collection of poems, Echoes and Voices (Vantage, 1991). Then came Sunlight and Sweet Water (Peepal Tree, 1994), Gather the Faces, In Praise of Love and Children and Inkle and Yarico (all Peepal Tree, 1994). Her last novel, The Green Grass Tango (Peepal Tree) was published in 2001, sadly after Beryl Gilroy’s death in April of that year. Gilroy's early work examined the impact of life in Britain on West Indian families and her later work explored issues of African and Caribbean diaspora and slavery. In 1998, a collection of her non-fiction writing, entitled Leaves in the Wind, came out from Mango Publishing. It included her lectures, notes, essays, dissertations and personal reviews. |
![]() | ![]() | Glissant, Edouard. Black Salt. Ann Arbor. 1998. University Of Michigan Press. 0472096664. Translated from the French by Betsy Wing. 156 pages. hardcover. BLACK SALT brings together three books of poetry by Edouard Glissant written during the period 1947-79. It was first published as a single volume by Gallimard in Collection ‘Poésie,’ a famous paperback series devoted to the most significant work of the major French-language poets, particularly those of modern times (such as Ponge, Char, Michaux, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé). Although Glissant wrote and published other poetry during this period, the Black Salt grouping remains most clearly representative of his poetic project and its evolution, representing important moments in Glissant’s trajectory as a writer. Glissant works, and reworks, in many fields at once so he is almost always engaged in writing simultaneously a novel, philosophical/political essays, and poetry. The subject matter of one emerges with different modulations in another and later will reemerge in other texts, not quite repeated. Glissant’s own description of this practice, with its inherent notion of the fragility, the erasability of words and their enduring power, is ‘a spiral retelling.’ All of his writing is undertaken as a process of knowledge, where the knowledge-always possible and always incomplete-would be a ‘thorough, thick (opaque) experience of the world. Édouard Glissant (21 September 1928 – 3 February 2011) was a Martinican writer, poet and literary critic. He is widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary. |
![]() | ![]() | Glissant, Edouard. Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays. Charlottesville. 1989. University Press Of Virginia. 0813912199. Translated from the French by J. Michael Dash. 272 pages. hardcover. Front cover photograph of Edouard Glissant by Josephine Guattari Edouard Glissant’s Caribbean Discourse is both a discourse on the Caribbean and a provocative analysis of the cultural and linguistic discourse of the Caribbean. An accomplished poet and novelist, Glissant uses the essay form to continue his scrutiny of the problems of post-plantation society, economic dependency, cultural nationalism, folk culture, Creole, and literary creation. His essays focus on Martinique as an example of a community whose history is one of missed opportunities and whose present is one of self-denial. Caught in the web of nonproductivity, cultural amnesia, and empty consumerism, Martinique has no sense of its identity. It is only by discovering what it means to be Martinican that Martinique can assume its Caribbean and American heritage. Despite the gloomy picture painted of Martinique, Glissant’s work is not a pessimistic one. He repeats his faith in the future of small societies where the pace of social and cultural transformation is dynamic. The Caribbean is made up of a number of small societies that attest to this process of constant metamorphosis, or metissage. To this extent the Caribbean offers a rare insight into the process of cultural creolization, which is acute in the Americas. This selection of essays concentrates on literary, linguistic, cultural, and aesthetic issues. In them, Glissant, the epitome of the writer as wanderer across cultures, offers his vision of the poetics of the cross-cultural imagination and the fragile reality of a new civilization emerging in the Caribbean. Édouard Glissant (21 September 1928 – 3 February 2011) was a Martinican writer, poet and literary critic. He is widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary. |
![]() | ![]() | Glissant, Edouard. Faulkner, Mississippi. New York. 2000. Farrar Straus Giroux. 0374153922. Translated from the French by Barbara Lewis & Thomas C. Spear. 273 pages. hardcover. Cover photograph by Martin Dain, from FAULKNER'S WORLD. Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson. In 1989, while teaching literature in Louisiana, the Caribbean writer Edouard Glissant visited Rowan Oak, William Faulkner's home in Oxford, Mississippi. His visit spurred him to an original and powerful reappraisal of Faulkner's work. Like Faulkner's literary descendants in the United States, Glissant is fascinated by the stories of Yoknapatawpha County and disturbed by the author's equivocations about the racism there. Glissant, however, stands in a distinctive relation to Faulkner and his fictional county: as a black Martinican, Glissant is descended from slaves; as a native French speaker, he first encountered the great novelist's work in translation. FAULKNER, MISSISSIPPI is a revealing look at an American icon by a writer deeply involved in the issues of Faulkner's work. Glissant sees the racial complexities of Faulkner as the key to his influence in the next century, and presents Faulkner as the progenitor of Flannery O'Connor, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alejo Carpentier, and Toni Morrison, all of them authors of fiction in which the characters are implicated in a single multiracial calamity. Glissant exhorts the reader to ‘look him straight in the eyes, the son of the slave and the son of the slave owner’ – and Glissant's own clear-eyed gaze makes this book a revelation about the work of one of our greatest but still least understood writers. EDOUARD GLISSANT, born in Martinique, was a pivotal figure in modern Caribbean literature and one of the most esteemed writers working in French today. Among his more than two dozen works are MONSIEUR TOUSSAINT (a play), CARIBBEAN DISCOURSE (an essay), and THE INDIES (a collection of poetry). |
![]() | ![]() | Glissant, Edouard. Monsieur Toussaint: A Play. Washington DC. 1981. Three Continents Press. 0984101285. Translated from the French by Joseph G. Foster & Barbara A. Franklin. Introduction & Notes by Juris Silenieks. 131 pages. hardcover. Edouard Glissant can rightfully claim a place of preeminence among Caribbean men of letters. Hailing from Martinique, like Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, Glissant seeks to elucidate in his work the experience of the blacks in the New World. His first volumes of poetry and essays already established him as a writer of original sensibilities and profundity of thought. In his four novels published so far, of which the first, La Lézarde, received the prestigious Renaudot Prize, Glissant retraces the collective history of his people in order to accord a new relevance of meaning to the traumatic past. Monsieur Toussaint projects the tragic destiny of Toussaint Louverture, the charismatic leader of the first successful slave revolt that led to the independence of Haiti. The French critic Robert Kanters wrote in L ‘Express: ‘It is Shakespeare redone from life: grandeur of subject matter, tragic sense of build-up, flash of a poetic language cast in strong and original forms.’ Édouard Glissant (21 September 1928 – 3 February 2011) was a Martinican writer, poet and literary critic. He is widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary. |
![]() | ![]() | Glissant, Edouard. Poetic Intention. Callicoon, New York. 2010. Nightboat Books. 9780982264539. Translated from the French by Nathalie Stephens. 233 pages. paperback. Cover design by typeslowly This marks the publication of the first English-language translation of Poetic Intention, Glissant's classic meditation on poetry and art. In this wide-ranging book, Glissant discusses poets, including Stephane Mallarme and Saint-John Perse, and visual artists, such as the Surrealist painters Matta and Wilfredo Lam, arguing for the importance of the global position of art. He states that a poem, in its intention, must never deny the ‘way of the world.’ Capacious, inventive, and unique, Glissant's Poetic Intention creates a new landscape for understanding the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Born in Martinique in 1928, influenced by poet/politician Aime Cesaire, and educated at the Sorbonne in Paris, EDOUARD GLISSANT has emerged as one of the most influential postcolonial theorists, novelists, playwrights, and poets not only in the Caribbean but also in contemporary French literature. He has twice been a finalist for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include Poetics of Relation, Caribbean Discourse, Faulkner Mississippi, Collected Poems, and the novel The Ripening. He is currently Distinguished Professor of French at the Graduate Center, CUNY and lives in New York, Paris, and Martinique. NATHALIE STEPHENS, author of 16 books, translates between French and English. |
![]() | ![]() | Glissant, Edouard. Sun of Consciousness. Callicoon, New York. 2020. Nightboat Books. 9781937658953. Translated by Nathanael. 93 pages. paperback. Cover design and interior typesetting by Kit Schluter. The first English- language translation of a leading Caribbean writer’s debut volume. Soleil de la Conscience (Sun of Consciousness), Martinican philosopher Édouard Glissant’s first published essay, is characterized by its exploratory, intimate character, and introduces Glissant’s concerns with creolization, worldliness (as opposed to globalization), and opacity, inscribing his work within a refusal of colonialism and inverted exoticism. By positioning himself as both different and same, Glissant opens a space for the writing of a(nother) history: that of the Caribbean. REVIEWS: ‘Sun of Consciousness is decolonizing in the basic sense of that term. Glissant tries to peel layers off of his consciousness to arrive at a balance of forces. Decolonization is not simply the departure of a colonial political power — former colonial subjects must also work to decolonize the mind… Sun of Consciousness is suggestive — potently suggestive — of global futures.’ - Matt Reeck, LARB. ‘From Glissant I am learning how to stand between two worlds: the beauty of nature and the darkness of history. Sometimes the rift between them looks endless, but the important thing is the present. That’s my personal insight into Sun of Consciousness. In Western ideology, it’s crucial to have definitions. As he says, Who hasn’t dreamt of the poem that explains everything, of the philosophy whose last word illumines the universe, of the novel that organizes all the truths, all the passions, and conducts and enlightens them? I believe Glissant understands how fragile that need for definition is.’ - Miho Hatori, BOMB. Born in Martinique in 1928, influenced by poet/politician Aime Cesaire, and educated at the Sorbonne in Paris, EDOUARD GLISSANT has emerged as one of the most influential postcolonial theorists, novelists, playwrights, and poets not only in the Caribbean but also in contemporary French literature. He has twice been a finalist for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include Poetics of Relation, Caribbean Discourse, Faulkner Mississippi, Collected Poems, and the novel The Ripening. He is currently Distinguished Professor of French at the Graduate Center, CUNY and lives in New York, Paris, and Martinique. NATHALIE STEPHENS, author of 16 books, translates between French and English. |
![]() | ![]() | Glissant, Edouard. The Collected Poems of Edouard Glissant. Minneapolis. 2005. University Of Minnesota Press. 0816641943. Translated from the French by Jeff Humphries with Melissa Manulas. Edited & With An Introduction by Jeff Humphries. 259 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Frances Baca The complete poems of the two-time finalist for the Nobel Prize in Literature, available in English for the first time. This volume collects and translates-most for the first time-the nine volumes of poetry published by Édouard Glissant, a poet, novelist, and critic increasingly recognized as one of the great writers of the twentieth century. The poems bring to life what Glissant calls ‘an archipelago-like reality,’ partaking of the exchanges between Europe and its former colonies, between humans and their geographies, between the poet and the natural world. Reciting and re-creating histories of the African diaspora, Columbus’s ‘discovery’ of the New World, the slave trade, and the West Indies, Glissant underscores the role of poetic language in changing both past and present irrevocably. As translator Jeff Humphries writes in his introduction, Glissant’s poetry embraces the aesthetic creed of the French symbolists Mallarmé and Rimbaud (‘The poet must make himself into a seer’) and aims at nothing less than a hallucinatory experience of imagination in which the differences among poem, reader, and subject dissolve into one immediate present. . Born in Martinique in 1928, influenced by the controversial Martinican poet/politician Aimé Césaire, and educated at the Sorbonne in Paris, Édouard Glissant has emerged as one of the most influential postcolonial theorists, novelists, playwrights, and poets not only in the Caribbean but also in contemporary French letters. He has twice been a finalist for the Nobel Prize in Literature as well as the recipient of both the Prix Renaudot and the Prix Charles Veillon in France. His works include Poetics of Relation, Caribbean Discourse, Faulkner Mississippi, and the novel The Ripening. He currently serves as Distinguished Professor of French at City University of New York, Graduate Center. . Jeff Humphries is Louisiana State University Foundation Distinguished Professor of French, English, and Comparative Literature. He has published several books of poetry, fiction, essays, and literary criticism, including Borealis (2002). . . Édouard Glissant (21 September 1928 – 3 February 2011) was a Martinican writer, poet and literary critic. He is widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary. |
![]() | ![]() | Glissant, Edouard. The Fourth Century. Lincoln. 2001. University Of Nebraska Press. 0803221746. Translated from the French by Betsy Wing. 295 pages. hardcover. ‘Originally published in 1964, this award-winning novel by a noted Caribbean author explores the history, culture, and myth of his native Martinique. In the mid-1940s, ancient medicine man Papa Longoue, the last of his family line, traces the history of the Longoues and Beluzes to young Mathieu Beluze, the youngest of his line. Even as they were delivered to the island by slave ship in 1789, Longoue and Beluze hated each other. Yet despite the different paths of their lives--Beluze as a plantation slave and Longoue, who escapes to the wild, as a maroon--their families become intertwined through friendship, marriage, even murder. Glissant is a poet as well, and his prose often borders on poetry, with long passages virtually devoid of capitalization and punctuation. The tale, while generally chronologically true, sometimes leaps ahead or doubles back; Mathieu complains to Papa, Can’t you announce the dates one after the other and quit spinning around back and forth? Still, the result is a richly textured novel with vivid images.’ - Michele Leber. Édouard Glissant (21 September 1928 – 3 February 2011) was a Martinican writer, poet and literary critic. He is widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary. |
![]() | ![]() | Glissant, Edouard. The Fourth Century. Lincoln. 2001. University Of Nebraska Press. 0803270836. Translated from the French by Betsy Wing. 295 pages. paperback. ‘Originally published in 1964, this award-winning novel by a noted Caribbean author explores the history, culture, and myth of his native Martinique. In the mid-1940s, ancient medicine man Papa Longoue, the last of his family line, traces the history of the Longoues and Beluzes to young Mathieu Beluze, the youngest of his line. Even as they were delivered to the island by slave ship in 1789, Longoue and Beluze hated each other. Yet despite the different paths of their lives--Beluze as a plantation slave and Longoue, who escapes to the wild, as a maroon--their families become intertwined through friendship, marriage, even murder. Glissant is a poet as well, and his prose often borders on poetry, with long passages virtually devoid of capitalization and punctuation. The tale, while generally chronologically true, sometimes leaps ahead or doubles back; Mathieu complains to Papa, Can’t you announce the dates one after the other and quit spinning around back and forth? Still, the result is a richly textured novel with vivid images.’ - Michele Leber. Édouard Glissant (21 September 1928 – 3 February 2011) was a Martinican writer, poet and literary critic. He is widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary. |
![]() | ![]() | Glissant, Edouard. The Overseer's Cabin. Lincoln/London. 2011. Bison Books/University of Nebraska Press. 9780803234796. Translated from the French by Betsy Wing. 215 pages. paperback. Cover image courtesy of Betsy Wing With Édouard Glissant’s THE FOURTH CENTURY, the Village Voice observed, ‘we get the full effect of his overarching project: a literary exorcism of Martinique’s scarred psyche and past, a lingering cry against the ‘black hole of time and forgetting.’’ Glissant, ‘one of the most significant figures in Caribbean literature’ (Washington Post), continues that project in The Overseer’s Cabin, conjuring in one woman’s story centuries knotted together by unknown blood, voiceless suffering, and death without echo. Beginning with the birth in 1928 of Mycea, the last of the intertwining ancestral families introduced in THE FOURTH CENTURY, and ending with her release from an asylum in 1978, the novel moves back and forth across a framework that weaves the story of Mycea’s family against the legacy of Martinique as an island whose history and indigenous people have all but been erased. From the beginnings of Mycea’s family in the tale of two blood brothers, both named Odono, to its ending with the fate of her two sons, the novel encapsulates the island’s destiny in one Martinican woman’s plight. With the past irretrievable and the future in doubt, Mycea journeys inward, finding in her connection to the land of Martinique, and to the seafloor littered with drowned slaves, a reality, and a possibility, uncolonized by others’ history. Edouard Glissant (born 1928) is a Martinican playwright, critic, essayist, and novelist. Édouard Glissant (21 September 1928 – 3 February 2011) was a Martinican writer, poet and literary critic. He is widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary. Betsy Wing’s previous translations include Paule Constant’s White Spirit, Glissant’s The Fourth Century, and Hélène Cixous’s The Book of Promethea, all available from the University of Nebraska Press. |
![]() | ![]() | Glissant, Edouard. The Ripening. Kingston. 1985. Heinemann. 0435982222. Winner Of The Prix Renaudot. Translated from the French by Michael Dash. Caribbean Writers Series. 195 pages. paperback. CWS34. Cover illustration by George Rodney This extraordinary novel tells the story of the rise to political maturity of eight young Martinicans, and their plans to stage a political murder. Concerned for the justice of the forthcoming elections, they fix upon a government agent who stands in the way of the people. They determine to kill him and, as their instrument, they choose Thael, an unsophisticated shepherd from the hills. THE RIPENING is set in Martinique, on a rich landscape full of life and death. It is one of the most accomplished works by any French Caribbean writer. Edouard Glissant was born in 1928 in Martinique, and is well known as a poet, and a novelist. THE RIPENING won the Prix Renaudot on its first publication in 1958. Édouard Glissant (21 September 1928 – 3 February 2011) was a Martinican writer, poet and literary critic. He is widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary. |
![]() | ![]() | Glissant, Edouard. The Ripening. New York. 1959. George Braziller. Winner Of The Prix Renaudot. Translated from the French by Frances Frenaye. 253 pages. hardcover. JACKET DESIGN BY HAL SIEGEL From the moment when Thaël, the young man from the mountains, is summoned to join a group of revolutionaries in the town in order to perform a political murder, to his tragic return to mountain savagery, we are enveloped in the seething tropical atmosphere of the Caribbean. THE RIPENING is much more than the story of a murder or of a political uprising. In microcosm, it is the saga of a whole people on their Caribbean island - their past, their future, the interweaving of the magic spells of old and the far-reaching potentialities of the future. Complementing and, in effect, shaping their destiny, is the vital force of the tropical island itself, the dark mountains, the sweltering plains, the surging sea, and the river Lizard, leading to the outside world. In this climate, conviction and passion take on an earthy taste and are as tangible as the landscape. It is against this background that the young Martinique author, Edouard Glissant, introduces his group of youthful conspirators. Their search for a synthesis of past and present, over their aspirations for the future, and their gradual development of self-awareness and self-expression, are interwoven with the drama of the birth of an entire people. THE RIPENING, a first novel, was awarded the Renaudot Prize in 1958. It has been acclaimed by French critics as a masterpiece’, a novel of ‘epic stature.’ . EDOUARD GLISSANT was born in 1928 in Sainte-Marie, Martinique. He now lives in France, where he studied at the Sorbonne and the Musee. de l’Homme. He had already made his name as a poet before publication of THE RIPENING, which was titled La Lézarde in the French edition. . (original title: La Lezarde, 1958 - Editions du Seuil). Édouard Glissant (21 September 1928 – 3 February 2011) was a Martinican writer, poet and literary critic. He is widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary. |
![]() | ![]() | Guadeloupe, Francio. Chanting Down the New Jerusalem: Calypso, Christianity, and Capitalism in the Caribbean. Berkeley. 2008. University of California Press. 9780520254893. 255 pages. paperback. In this brilliantly evocative ethnography, Francio Guadeloupe probes the ethos and attitude created by radio disc jockeys on the binational Caribbean island of Saint Martin/Sint Maarten. Examining the intersection of Christianity, calypso, and capitalism, Guadeloupe shows how a multiethnic and multireligious island nation, where livelihoods depend on tourism, has managed to encourage all social classes to transcend their ethnic and religious differences. In his pathbreaking analysis, Guadeloupe credits the island DJs, whose formulations of Christian faith, musical creativity, and capitalist survival express ordinary people's hopes and fears and promote tolerance. Francio Guadeloupe is Assistant Professor at the Radboud University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, Research Fellow at the Royal Institute for Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, and Extraordinary Research Fellow at the University of Saint Martin. |
![]() | ![]() | Guede, Alain. Monsieur De Saint-George: Virtuoso, Swordsman, Revolutionary. New York. 2003. Picador. 0312309279. 292 pages. hardcover. Jacket painting - 'Monsieur De St George' by William Ward After Mather Brown. Jacket design by Nina Laricchia The first full biography of one of the greatest figures of eighteenth-century Europe, known in his time as the ‘Black Mozart’. Virtually forgotten until now, his life is the stuff of legend. Born in 1739 in Guadeloupe to a slave mother and a French noble father, he became the finest swordsman of his age, an insider at the doomed court of Louis XVI, and, most of all, a virtuosic musician. A violinist, he directed the Olympic Society of Concerts, which was considered the finest in Europe in an age of great musicians, including Haydn, from whom he commissioned a symphony, and Mozart, to whom he was often compared. He also became the first Freemason of color, embracing the French Revolution with the belief that it would end the racism against which-despite his illustrious achievements-he struggled his whole life. This is the life of Joseph Bologne, known variously as Monsieur de Saint-George, the ‘Black Mozart,’ and, because of his origins, ‘the American.’ Alain Guédé offers a fascinating account of this extraordinary individual, whose musical compositions are at long last being revived and whose story will never again be forgotten. Alain Guédé is a journalist for the French newspaper Le canard enchaine. A leading expert on the life and music of Saint-George, Guédé has organized a website that follows developments in Saint-George’s rediscovery. |
![]() | ![]() | Guirty, Geraldo. Harlem's Danish-American West Indians 1899-1964. New York. 1989. Vantage Press. 0533081793. 191 pages. hardcover. In this polyglot nation that we call the United States, an almost unimaginable number of immigrant groups have grown and prospered, each adding in its own way to the culture of our nation. One such group is Harlem’s Danish-American West Indians. Although they are a very active presence in their community, few outsiders are aware of them. In HARLEM’S DANISH-AMERICAN WEST INDIANS, 1899—1964, Geraldo Guirty provides a brief overview of these interesting people. Mr. Guirty begins with the history of these people, tracing their origins in the Virgin Islands, originally owned by Denmark and then transferred to the United States. He continues to write of prominent West Indians, including Ashley L. Totten, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Mr. Guirty then examines the roles of Harlem’s West Indians both in preserving their culture and contributing to their new community. Scholarly and yet entertaining. HARLEM’S DANISH-AMERICAN WEST INDIANS will enlighten anyone with little knowledge of this diversified group of people and those who are familiar with them but seek more knowledge. Geraldo Guirty is a four-generation Saint Thomian. He was born January 16, 1906, a subject of Denmark, and witnessed the transfer of his island country, Saint Thomas, to Uncle Sam. Guirty began his education at Saint Thomas’s Catholic School, finished high school with Rhodes Preparatory, New York City, and graduated from Long Island University. Post-graduate courses were taken at Columbia, the City University, and New York Law School. Guirty has traveled the Orient, the United States, South America, Europe, and the Caribbean. The author has written for the New York Amsterdam News, the Jamaica (West Indies) Daily Gleaner, and the Guyana (South America) Chronicle. Presently he writes for the Virgin Islands Daily News. Guirty is married to Louise Blake. They celebrated their golden anniversary in January 1989. |
![]() | ![]() | Guy, Rosa (editor). Children of Longing. New York. 1970. Holt Rinehart Winston. Introduction by Julius Lester. 140 pages. hardcover. Essays by young African-Americans reflecting on the turbulent decade of the Sixties and how it affected them. Rosa Cuthbert Guy (September 1, 1922 – June 3, 2012) was a Trinidad-born American writer, acclaimed for her books of fiction for adults and young people. She died of cancer on Sunday, June 3, 2012. Born in Diego Martin, on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, Rosa and her sister Ameze were left with relatives when their parents, Audrey and Henry Cuthbert, emigrated in 1927 to the United States. The children joined their parents in Harlem in 1932. However, the following year their mother became ill, and Rosa and her sister were sent to Brooklyn to live with a cousin, whose espousal of Garveyism and black nationalistic politics deeply affected Rosa. On their mother's death in 1934 they returned to Harlem to live with their father, who remarried, but he too died in 1937. Subsequently Rosa and her sister lived in foster homes. Rosa left school at the age of fourteen and took a job in a garment factory to support herself and her sister. In 1941, when she was nineteen, Rosa met and married Warner Guy. While her husband was serving in the Second World War she continued working in the factory, and a co-worker introduced her to the American Negro Theatre, where she studied acting; other graduates included Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier. In 1942, her son Warren Guy, Jr, was born. After the war, Rosa Guy moved to Connecticut with her husband and son, but five years later, on the dissolution of her marriage, she returned to New York. In 1950, along with John Oliver Killens, Rosa Guy formed a workshop that was to become the Harlem Writers Guild (HWG), whose aim was ‘to develop and aid in the publication of works by writers of the African Diaspora’. Its members and participants included Willard Moore, Walter Christmas, Maya Angelou, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Paule Marshall, Audre Lorde, Alice Childress, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Douglas Turner Ward. More than half of all successful African-American writers were associated with the workshop between 1950 and 1971. Guy also belonged to the Black nationalist literary organization On Guard for Freedom, founded by Calvin Hicks on the Lower East Side of New York City. Among On Guard's other members were LeRoi Jones, Sarah E. Wright and Harold Cruse. Rosa Guy's work has received The New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year citation, and the American Library Association’s Best Book Award. In 1954, Rosa Guy wrote and performed in her first play, Venetian Blinds, which was successfully produced Off-Broadway at the Tropical Theater. Most of Guy's books are about the dependability of family members that care and love each other. Her 1985 novel, My Love, My Love: Or, The Peasant Girl - commonly described as a Caribbean re-telling of Hans Christian Andersen's ‘The Little Mermaid‘, but ‘with a dash of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet‘ - was the basis for the Broadway musical Once on This Island, which ran for a year from 1990 to 1991. |
![]() | ![]() | Guy, Rosa. A Measure of Time. New York. 1983. Holt Rinehart & Winston. 0030576539. 365 pages. hardcover. Jacket design and illustration by Paul Bacon Rosa Guy, award-winning author of many novels for young adults and ‘recognized as one of today’s most expressive and perceptive authors building on the lives of blacks in America’ (Pub1ishers Weekly), presents an important adult novel of twentieth-century American history. A MEASURE OF TIME traces the pell-mell life of one brash, sassy woman from her escape from Alabama to her blitz on Harlem in the l920s. The Montgomery Dorine Davis leaves is one of rigid slave-master relations between black and white; the Harlem she takes by storm is a kingdom of broad, tree-lined avenues, glittering nightclubs, and luxury doorman buildings, ruled by gentlemen ‘policy-makers’ and intellectuals of its Renaissance Era. ‘Ordinary folks,’ Dorine insists from the outset, are not for her. Her lovers are the dream and schemers who are Harlem: her adventures in a gang of boosters reap wealth enough to support herself in high style and her family back home in comfort; her rags-to-riches life witnesses Lindbergh, Bessie Smith, Garvey’s back-to-Africa movement, the Depression, World War II and the problems black soldiers faced on returning home, Harlem’s invasion by armed white gangster and drugs, and the awakening civil rights movement of the 1950s. Rosa Guy chronicles the loves and adventures of this extraordinary woman with historical accuracy and electrifying life. The result is a rich, poignant, unforgettable novel. Prize-winning author of eight previous novels - BIRD AT MY WINDOW, CHILDREN OF LONGING, THE FRIENDS, RUBY, EDITH JACKSON, THE DISAPPEARANCE, MOTHER CROCODILE, and MIRROR OF HER OWN, Rosa Guy was West Indian by birth and lived for many years in New York. She was also the co-founder of the Harlem Writers Guild. |
![]() | ![]() | Guy, Rosa. And I Heard a Bird Sing. New York. 1987. Delacorte Press. 0385295634. 232 pages. hardcover. Young adult novel set in Brooklyn, NY, which follows the story of Imamu Jones as he ventures into a world of mystery and a whole new life. Eighteen-year-old Imamu's newly-found contentment, with his job and the apartment he shares with his frail mother, is shattered when he is inadvertently drawn into the sinister events taking place in a wealthy household where he has been delivering groceries. Rosa Cuthbert Guy (September 1, 1922 – June 3, 2012) was a Trinidad-born American writer, acclaimed for her books of fiction for adults and young people. She died of cancer on Sunday, June 3, 2012. Born in Diego Martin, on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, Rosa and her sister Ameze were left with relatives when their parents, Audrey and Henry Cuthbert, emigrated in 1927 to the United States. The children joined their parents in Harlem in 1932. However, the following year their mother became ill, and Rosa and her sister were sent to Brooklyn to live with a cousin, whose espousal of Garveyism and black nationalistic politics deeply affected Rosa. On their mother's death in 1934 they returned to Harlem to live with their father, who remarried, but he too died in 1937. Subsequently Rosa and her sister lived in foster homes. Rosa left school at the age of fourteen and took a job in a garment factory to support herself and her sister. In 1941, when she was nineteen, Rosa met and married Warner Guy. While her husband was serving in the Second World War she continued working in the factory, and a co-worker introduced her to the American Negro Theatre, where she studied acting; other graduates included Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier. In 1942, her son Warren Guy, Jr, was born. After the war, Rosa Guy moved to Connecticut with her husband and son, but five years later, on the dissolution of her marriage, she returned to New York. In 1950, along with John Oliver Killens, Rosa Guy formed a workshop that was to become the Harlem Writers Guild (HWG), whose aim was ‘to develop and aid in the publication of works by writers of the African Diaspora’. Its members and participants included Willard Moore, Walter Christmas, Maya Angelou, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Paule Marshall, Audre Lorde, Alice Childress, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Douglas Turner Ward. More than half of all successful African-American writers were associated with the workshop between 1950 and 1971. Guy also belonged to the Black nationalist literary organization On Guard for Freedom, founded by Calvin Hicks on the Lower East Side of New York City. Among On Guard's other members were LeRoi Jones, Sarah E. Wright and Harold Cruse. Rosa Guy's work has received The New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year citation, and the American Library Association’s Best Book Award. In 1954, Rosa Guy wrote and performed in her first play, Venetian Blinds, which was successfully produced Off-Broadway at the Tropical Theater. Most of Guy's books are about the dependability of family members that care and love each other. Her 1985 novel, My Love, My Love: Or, The Peasant Girl - commonly described as a Caribbean re-telling of Hans Christian Andersen's ‘The Little Mermaid‘, but ‘with a dash of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet‘ - was the basis for the Broadway musical Once on This Island, which ran for a year from 1990 to 1991. |
![]() | ![]() | Guy, Rosa. Bird at My Window. Philadelphia. 1966. Lippincott. 282 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Robert Korn. There have been many books out of Harlem in the last few years, but none like this one: the story of a man whose whole life is directed against the forces that created him. Wade Williams has been exposed to the harshest aspects of ghetto life when it comes upon him, quite by accident, that he is a brilliant child. Although from birth he has been condemned to a life of poverty, chance offers him a way out; and when he muffs that, the "violence of World War Il provides another: it frees him from the moral fear of killing. With no wasted words and no special pleas, the author makes us see, hear, smell, feel the world that Wade Williams grew up in and to which he always returns: the heat, the reeking hallways, the drifters and drunks, the lure of Lenox Avenue, the poverty—and also the intelligence, the indomitable courage, the patches of happiness. So powerful is the empathy that Mrs. Guy sets up between her characters and the reader that we know them with an almost painful intimacy: Wade's half-white father, whose rage kept him alive for a year after a bullet had entered his heart . his mother, who having been forced to her knees years ago deep in cotton country never got up off them . . . brother Willie Earl, tight of fist and small of heart sister Faith, as close to Wade as his own skin. But this is Wade's story, first and last; and it is Wade himself, a "family man," as he says, committed to a course he has not charted, who holds us rapt with compassion and terror as he unknowingly approaches the tragic fulfillment of his life. Rosa Cuthbert Guy (September 1, 1922 – June 3, 2012) was a Trinidad-born American writer, acclaimed for her books of fiction for adults and young people. She died of cancer on Sunday, June 3, 2012. Born in Diego Martin, on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, Rosa and her sister Ameze were left with relatives when their parents, Audrey and Henry Cuthbert, emigrated in 1927 to the United States. The children joined their parents in Harlem in 1932. However, the following year their mother became ill, and Rosa and her sister were sent to Brooklyn to live with a cousin, whose espousal of Garveyism and black nationalistic politics deeply affected Rosa. On their mother's death in 1934 they returned to Harlem to live with their father, who remarried, but he too died in 1937. Subsequently Rosa and her sister lived in foster homes. Rosa left school at the age of fourteen and took a job in a garment factory to support herself and her sister. In 1941, when she was nineteen, Rosa met and married Warner Guy. While her husband was serving in the Second World War she continued working in the factory, and a co-worker introduced her to the American Negro Theatre, where she studied acting; other graduates included Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier. In 1942, her son Warren Guy, Jr, was born. After the war, Rosa Guy moved to Connecticut with her husband and son, but five years later, on the dissolution of her marriage, she returned to New York. In 1950, along with John Oliver Killens, Rosa Guy formed a workshop that was to become the Harlem Writers Guild (HWG), whose aim was ‘to develop and aid in the publication of works by writers of the African Diaspora’. Its members and participants included Willard Moore, Walter Christmas, Maya Angelou, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Paule Marshall, Audre Lorde, Alice Childress, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Douglas Turner Ward. More than half of all successful African-American writers were associated with the workshop between 1950 and 1971. Guy also belonged to the Black nationalist literary organization On Guard for Freedom, founded by Calvin Hicks on the Lower East Side of New York City. Among On Guard's other members were LeRoi Jones, Sarah E. Wright and Harold Cruse. Rosa Guy's work has received The New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year citation, and the American Library Association’s Best Book Award. In 1954, Rosa Guy wrote and performed in her first play, Venetian Blinds, which was successfully produced Off-Broadway at the Tropical Theater. Most of Guy's books are about the dependability of family members that care and love each other. Her 1985 novel, My Love, My Love: Or, The Peasant Girl - commonly described as a Caribbean re-telling of Hans Christian Andersen's ‘The Little Mermaid‘, but ‘with a dash of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet‘ - was the basis for the Broadway musical Once on This Island, which ran for a year from 1990 to 1991. |
![]() | ![]() | Guy, Rosa. Edith Jackson. New York. 1978. Viking Press. 067028906x. 188 pages. hardcover. Jacket painting by Leo and Diane Dillon. Edith Jackson lived in Peekskill, New York, with her three sisters, two foster brothers, and her foster mother, Mother Peters. Soon she would be eighteen, and when she left high school, she swore, she would take her sisters and give them a home of their own. But then she met Mrs. Bates, a retired lawyer, who laughed at Edith's ambition and gave her the reasons she felt Edith would fail. Edith hated Mrs. Bates for her "preaching" and wanted to stop visiting her comfortable, disheveled home. But if she did, she would lose her chance to see ' 'Mr. Brown" again, Mrs. Bates's handsome nephew. Meanwhile, Edith's sisters were making plans of their own—and they were not the same as Edith's. Bessie with the mussy eyes had begun to cuddle up to Uncle Daniels, Mother Peters' friend, and bright Minnie was hoping Mrs. Cramer, the mother of her best friend, would adopt her. Only Suzy, like Edith herself, seemed to have nowhere to go. Finally "Mr. Brown" gave Edith the loving she wanted, and she set her sights on marriage and a real home for her sisters. With insight and sensitivity, Rosa Guy tells the moving story of Edith's search for and security. Her compassion for the abandoned ones among us overwhelms this realistic novel about the failures of the institutions of America, whether church, school, or welfare. Ultimately, Edith learns, people must take the responsibility for shaping their own destinies, as the structure of caste and class in society leaves each of us on our own. Rosa Cuthbert Guy (September 1, 1922 – June 3, 2012) was a Trinidad-born American writer, acclaimed for her books of fiction for adults and young people. She died of cancer on Sunday, June 3, 2012. Born in Diego Martin, on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, Rosa and her sister Ameze were left with relatives when their parents, Audrey and Henry Cuthbert, emigrated in 1927 to the United States. The children joined their parents in Harlem in 1932. However, the following year their mother became ill, and Rosa and her sister were sent to Brooklyn to live with a cousin, whose espousal of Garveyism and black nationalistic politics deeply affected Rosa. On their mother's death in 1934 they returned to Harlem to live with their father, who remarried, but he too died in 1937. Subsequently Rosa and her sister lived in foster homes. Rosa left school at the age of fourteen and took a job in a garment factory to support herself and her sister. In 1941, when she was nineteen, Rosa met and married Warner Guy. While her husband was serving in the Second World War she continued working in the factory, and a co-worker introduced her to the American Negro Theatre, where she studied acting; other graduates included Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier. In 1942, her son Warren Guy, Jr, was born. After the war, Rosa Guy moved to Connecticut with her husband and son, but five years later, on the dissolution of her marriage, she returned to New York. In 1950, along with John Oliver Killens, Rosa Guy formed a workshop that was to become the Harlem Writers Guild (HWG), whose aim was ‘to develop and aid in the publication of works by writers of the African Diaspora’. Its members and participants included Willard Moore, Walter Christmas, Maya Angelou, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Paule Marshall, Audre Lorde, Alice Childress, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Douglas Turner Ward. More than half of all successful African-American writers were associated with the workshop between 1950 and 1971. Guy also belonged to the Black nationalist literary organization On Guard for Freedom, founded by Calvin Hicks on the Lower East Side of New York City. Among On Guard's other members were LeRoi Jones, Sarah E. Wright and Harold Cruse. Rosa Guy's work has received The New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year citation, and the American Library Association’s Best Book Award. In 1954, Rosa Guy wrote and performed in her first play, Venetian Blinds, which was successfully produced Off-Broadway at the Tropical Theater. Most of Guy's books are about the dependability of family members that care and love each other. Her 1985 novel, My Love, My Love: Or, The Peasant Girl - commonly described as a Caribbean re-telling of Hans Christian Andersen's ‘The Little Mermaid‘, but ‘with a dash of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet‘ - was the basis for the Broadway musical Once on This Island, which ran for a year from 1990 to 1991. |
![]() | ![]() | Guy, Rosa. Mirror of Her Own. New York. 1981. Delacorte Press. 044005513x. 183 pages. hardcover. Coming of age novel set in the African American upper class social world of Oak Bluff on Martha's Vineyard, an island off Cape Cod. Having lived in her older sister's shadow all her life, Mary Abbot comes into the spotlight the summer she turns 18. Rosa Cuthbert Guy (September 1, 1922 – June 3, 2012) was a Trinidad-born American writer, acclaimed for her books of fiction for adults and young people. She died of cancer on Sunday, June 3, 2012. Born in Diego Martin, on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, Rosa and her sister Ameze were left with relatives when their parents, Audrey and Henry Cuthbert, emigrated in 1927 to the United States. The children joined their parents in Harlem in 1932. However, the following year their mother became ill, and Rosa and her sister were sent to Brooklyn to live with a cousin, whose espousal of Garveyism and black nationalistic politics deeply affected Rosa. On their mother's death in 1934 they returned to Harlem to live with their father, who remarried, but he too died in 1937. Subsequently Rosa and her sister lived in foster homes. Rosa left school at the age of fourteen and took a job in a garment factory to support herself and her sister. In 1941, when she was nineteen, Rosa met and married Warner Guy. While her husband was serving in the Second World War she continued working in the factory, and a co-worker introduced her to the American Negro Theatre, where she studied acting; other graduates included Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier. In 1942, her son Warren Guy, Jr, was born. After the war, Rosa Guy moved to Connecticut with her husband and son, but five years later, on the dissolution of her marriage, she returned to New York. In 1950, along with John Oliver Killens, Rosa Guy formed a workshop that was to become the Harlem Writers Guild (HWG), whose aim was ‘to develop and aid in the publication of works by writers of the African Diaspora’. Its members and participants included Willard Moore, Walter Christmas, Maya Angelou, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Paule Marshall, Audre Lorde, Alice Childress, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Douglas Turner Ward. More than half of all successful African-American writers were associated with the workshop between 1950 and 1971. Guy also belonged to the Black nationalist literary organization On Guard for Freedom, founded by Calvin Hicks on the Lower East Side of New York City. Among On Guard's other members were LeRoi Jones, Sarah E. Wright and Harold Cruse. Rosa Guy's work has received The New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year citation, and the American Library Association’s Best Book Award. In 1954, Rosa Guy wrote and performed in her first play, Venetian Blinds, which was successfully produced Off-Broadway at the Tropical Theater. Most of Guy's books are about the dependability of family members that care and love each other. Her 1985 novel, My Love, My Love: Or, The Peasant Girl - commonly described as a Caribbean re-telling of Hans Christian Andersen's ‘The Little Mermaid‘, but ‘with a dash of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet‘ - was the basis for the Broadway musical Once on This Island, which ran for a year from 1990 to 1991. |
![]() | ![]() | Guy, Rosa. My Love, My Love Or the Peasant Girl. New York. 1985. Holt Rinehart Winston. 0030005078. 119 pages. hardcover. Front jacket illustration by Sara Schwartz. Jacket typography design by Abby Kagan The Washington Post called Rosa Guy ‘one of that rare and wonderful breed, a storyteller. May her tribe increase.’ And once again, Ms. Guy brings her spellbinding storytelling talents to this, her tenth novel, MY LOVE, MY LOVE tells the tragic yet lyrical tale of an impossible love - that of a poor peasant girl for a rich boy from the city. Based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fable ‘The Little Mermaid,’ it is set on a lush and beautiful Caribbean island, a place where the tempers of the gods loom large in the daily lives of the people and where differences in color and class loom equally as large. Into this world of contrasts, of sensuality and self-indulgence, poverty and exhausting labor, passion and cunning, Ms. Guy tells of a young orphan girl possessed by a love for a mulatto boy whose life she saves. Bargaining with the gods for his life, she pledges her own. What follows is foreordained. Awash with the voluptuousness of this tropical island, filled with the rich spirituality of voodoo and the heartbreaking simplicity of a fairy tale, MY LOVE, MY LOVE is a novel of universal themes, elemental power, and total enchantment. Rosa Cuthbert Guy (September 1, 1922 – June 3, 2012) was a Trinidad-born American writer, acclaimed for her books of fiction for adults and young people. She died of cancer on Sunday, June 3, 2012. Born in Diego Martin, on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, Rosa and her sister Ameze were left with relatives when their parents, Audrey and Henry Cuthbert, emigrated in 1927 to the United States. The children joined their parents in Harlem in 1932. However, the following year their mother became ill, and Rosa and her sister were sent to Brooklyn to live with a cousin, whose espousal of Garveyism and black nationalistic politics deeply affected Rosa. On their mother's death in 1934 they returned to Harlem to live with their father, who remarried, but he too died in 1937. Subsequently Rosa and her sister lived in foster homes. Rosa left school at the age of fourteen and took a job in a garment factory to support herself and her sister. In 1941, when she was nineteen, Rosa met and married Warner Guy. While her husband was serving in the Second World War she continued working in the factory, and a co-worker introduced her to the American Negro Theatre, where she studied acting; other graduates included Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier. In 1942, her son Warren Guy, Jr, was born. After the war, Rosa Guy moved to Connecticut with her husband and son, but five years later, on the dissolution of her marriage, she returned to New York. In 1950, along with John Oliver Killens, Rosa Guy formed a workshop that was to become the Harlem Writers Guild (HWG), whose aim was ‘to develop and aid in the publication of works by writers of the African Diaspora’. Its members and participants included Willard Moore, Walter Christmas, Maya Angelou, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Paule Marshall, Audre Lorde, Alice Childress, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Douglas Turner Ward. More than half of all successful African-American writers were associated with the workshop between 1950 and 1971. Guy also belonged to the Black nationalist literary organization On Guard for Freedom, founded by Calvin Hicks on the Lower East Side of New York City. Among On Guard's other members were LeRoi Jones, Sarah E. Wright and Harold Cruse. Rosa Guy's work has received The New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year citation, and the American Library Association’s Best Book Award. In 1954, Rosa Guy wrote and performed in her first play, Venetian Blinds, which was successfully produced Off-Broadway at the Tropical Theater. Most of Guy's books are about the dependability of family members that care and love each other. Her 1985 novel, My Love, My Love: Or, The Peasant Girl - commonly described as a Caribbean re-telling of Hans Christian Andersen's ‘The Little Mermaid‘, but ‘with a dash of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet‘ - was the basis for the Broadway musical Once on This Island, which ran for a year from 1990 to 1991. |
![]() | ![]() | Guy, Rosa. Ruby. New York. 1976. Viking Press. 0670610232. 217 pages. hardcover. Lone, Alone. Lonely. Ruby is all of these. Ruby is desperately, self-absorbedly alone. Her mother has been dead for a year - her mother, whose grace and strength and devotion to Ruby had sustained her when the family first arrived on the mean, crowded streets of Harlem from the sun and blue seas of the West Indies. Rosa Cuthbert Guy (September 1, 1922 – June 3, 2012) was a Trinidad-born American writer, acclaimed for her books of fiction for adults and young people. She died of cancer on Sunday, June 3, 2012. Born in Diego Martin, on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, Rosa and her sister Ameze were left with relatives when their parents, Audrey and Henry Cuthbert, emigrated in 1927 to the United States. The children joined their parents in Harlem in 1932. However, the following year their mother became ill, and Rosa and her sister were sent to Brooklyn to live with a cousin, whose espousal of Garveyism and black nationalistic politics deeply affected Rosa. On their mother's death in 1934 they returned to Harlem to live with their father, who remarried, but he too died in 1937. Subsequently Rosa and her sister lived in foster homes. Rosa left school at the age of fourteen and took a job in a garment factory to support herself and her sister. In 1941, when she was nineteen, Rosa met and married Warner Guy. While her husband was serving in the Second World War she continued working in the factory, and a co-worker introduced her to the American Negro Theatre, where she studied acting; other graduates included Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier. In 1942, her son Warren Guy, Jr, was born. After the war, Rosa Guy moved to Connecticut with her husband and son, but five years later, on the dissolution of her marriage, she returned to New York. In 1950, along with John Oliver Killens, Rosa Guy formed a workshop that was to become the Harlem Writers Guild (HWG), whose aim was ‘to develop and aid in the publication of works by writers of the African Diaspora’. Its members and participants included Willard Moore, Walter Christmas, Maya Angelou, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Paule Marshall, Audre Lorde, Alice Childress, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Douglas Turner Ward. More than half of all successful African-American writers were associated with the workshop between 1950 and 1971. Guy also belonged to the Black nationalist literary organization On Guard for Freedom, founded by Calvin Hicks on the Lower East Side of New York City. Among On Guard's other members were LeRoi Jones, Sarah E. Wright and Harold Cruse. Rosa Guy's work has received The New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year citation, and the American Library Association’s Best Book Award. In 1954, Rosa Guy wrote and performed in her first play, Venetian Blinds, which was successfully produced Off-Broadway at the Tropical Theater. Most of Guy's books are about the dependability of family members that care and love each other. Her 1985 novel, My Love, My Love: Or, The Peasant Girl - commonly described as a Caribbean re-telling of Hans Christian Andersen's ‘The Little Mermaid‘, but ‘with a dash of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet‘ - was the basis for the Broadway musical Once on This Island, which ran for a year from 1990 to 1991. |
![]() | ![]() | Guy, Rosa. The Friends. New York. 1973. Holt Rinehart Winston. 0030078768. 204 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Bob Owens Phyllisia Cathy is a young West Indian girl who has moved with her parents and her sister to Harlem, New York. Rejected by her classmates because she "talks funny" and is the teacher's pet, Phyl is forced to become friends with the only one who will have her—a poor, frazzled girl named Edith. The distance between the carpeted, comfortable existence of the Cathy's and the gnawing poverty that dominates Edith's life is one that Phyl is intent on maintaining. She sneaks short visits to Edith's apartment where rags are stuffed in broken walls and where a listless father bides his time before deserting his hungry children. When Phyl finally invites Edith to visit her dying mother, the girl is driven from the house by Mr. Cathy's dizzying insults which are silently cheered by Phyl's misdirected pride. How Phyllisia grows to need Edith's special love and how she learns to give something of herself in return makes a powerful and deeply moving story. Rosa Cuthbert Guy (September 1, 1922 – June 3, 2012) was a Trinidad-born American writer, acclaimed for her books of fiction for adults and young people. She died of cancer on Sunday, June 3, 2012. Born in Diego Martin, on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, Rosa and her sister Ameze were left with relatives when their parents, Audrey and Henry Cuthbert, emigrated in 1927 to the United States. The children joined their parents in Harlem in 1932. However, the following year their mother became ill, and Rosa and her sister were sent to Brooklyn to live with a cousin, whose espousal of Garveyism and black nationalistic politics deeply affected Rosa. On their mother's death in 1934 they returned to Harlem to live with their father, who remarried, but he too died in 1937. Subsequently Rosa and her sister lived in foster homes. Rosa left school at the age of fourteen and took a job in a garment factory to support herself and her sister. In 1941, when she was nineteen, Rosa met and married Warner Guy. While her husband was serving in the Second World War she continued working in the factory, and a co-worker introduced her to the American Negro Theatre, where she studied acting; other graduates included Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier. In 1942, her son Warren Guy, Jr, was born. After the war, Rosa Guy moved to Connecticut with her husband and son, but five years later, on the dissolution of her marriage, she returned to New York. In 1950, along with John Oliver Killens, Rosa Guy formed a workshop that was to become the Harlem Writers Guild (HWG), whose aim was ‘to develop and aid in the publication of works by writers of the African Diaspora’. Its members and participants included Willard Moore, Walter Christmas, Maya Angelou, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Paule Marshall, Audre Lorde, Alice Childress, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Douglas Turner Ward. More than half of all successful African-American writers were associated with the workshop between 1950 and 1971. Guy also belonged to the Black nationalist literary organization On Guard for Freedom, founded by Calvin Hicks on the Lower East Side of New York City. Among On Guard's other members were LeRoi Jones, Sarah E. Wright and Harold Cruse. Rosa Guy's work has received The New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year citation, and the American Library Association’s Best Book Award. In 1954, Rosa Guy wrote and performed in her first play, Venetian Blinds, which was successfully produced Off-Broadway at the Tropical Theater. Most of Guy's books are about the dependability of family members that care and love each other. Her 1985 novel, My Love, My Love: Or, The Peasant Girl - commonly described as a Caribbean re-telling of Hans Christian Andersen's ‘The Little Mermaid‘, but ‘with a dash of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet‘ - was the basis for the Broadway musical Once on This Island, which ran for a year from 1990 to 1991. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Dunstan. Island Barbecue: Spirited Recipes From the Caribbean. San Francisco. 1995. Chronicle Books. 0811805107. Illustrated by Brooke Scudder. 119 pages. hardcover. Zesty, flavorful, and easy to prepare, Caribbean-style barbecue dishes are fast becoming an American favorite. From Rum Barbecue Sauce to Jerked Baby Back Ribs, Island Barbecue offers a sizzling collection of over 60 recipes for delicious sauces and marinades; breads, salads, and side dishes; fish, poultry, meat, and vegetable entrees; and tropical beverages and desserts to revitalize the standard barbecue repertoire. Complete with vibrant, full-color illustrations, invaluable information on grilling techniques, and a source list of Caribbean ingredients, Island Barbecue will spice up any table with the rich culinary heritage of the Caribbean. Dunstan A. Harris is a Jamaican-born native and has devoted his life to an appreciation of the islands' distinctive cuisines. The author of Island Cooking: Recipes from the Caribbean and a manufacturer for Island Cooking Kitchen, Inc. -- a developer of Caribbean marinades and sauces -- he lives and works in New York City. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. Ascent to Omai. London. 1970. Faber & Faber. 0571090591. 128 pages. hardcover. Some of the themes that have preoccupied Mr. Harris throughout his oeuvre find in this novel their most challenging and complex imaginative expression. In exploring the relationship between Victor (a man in some ways reminiscent of Fenwick of The Secret Ladder or Stevenson of Heartland) and his father, the author explores, by means of brilliant and daringly conceived technical devices, a whole tract of history, the entire development of a civilization; and his handling of time, place and 'character' reveals the essential unity of these disparate concepts. Wilson Harris’s ninth novel, first published in 1970, is a work of the most revolutionary and far-reaching kind of science or speculative fiction. In it time and space are truly elastic, so that events in recent time become part of remote geological time and the boundaries between events and remembering, individual persons and different locations are fluid and permeable. Victor is in search of his father, Adam, once a revolutionary worker who was sent to prison many years ago for burning down the factory he worked in. Since then Victor has lost touch with him, but suspects he is living as a pork-knocker (gold prospector) in the remote Cuyuni-Mazaruni district of Guyana – now the site of one of the largest open-cast goldmines in the world and the site of immense environmental degradation. Prophetically, the clash between the material/technological and the primordial/spiritual is one of the intercutting themes of the novel, connecting to the El Doradean myth so central to the Guyanese imagining. As he climbs in search of his father, Victor both revisits his past relationship with him and replays his father’s trial, which also becomes his own, in a way that echoes the "Nighttown" episode of Ulysses, though unlike Bloom’s. Victor’s offences are not sexual, but represent blockages in the openness of his thinking. Victor’s search is for spiritual grace, for the compensations of love and the glimmerings of a true understanding of the world he exists in, though Harris refuses to impose a false coherency upon material one had to digest and the reader is invited to share in Victor’s struggling ascent to consciousness, knowing that it can never be other than provisional. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. Black Marsden. London. 1972. Faber & Faber. 0571101046. 111 pages. hardcover. A modern 'gentleman of leisure' meets in the ruined Dunfermline Abbey a hypnotically charismatic figure whom he invites back to stay with him in his house in Edinburgh; before long other mysterious strangers - among them a beautiful girl - join the ménage To all appearances, then, this novel marks a considerable departure for Wilson Harris, not least in its setting, for hitherto his work has mainly exploited the real and psychic landscapes of his native Guyana. Those who know his writings will nevertheless recognize his uniquely imaginative sense of place powerfully at work in new surroundings; those who know Edinburgh will be fascinated by Mr. Harris's response to the character and history of one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in Europe. The handling of theme and character, too, shows a new humour and tightness of touch (the novel is, indeed, a comedy), but its preoccupation with time, place and identity and the quality of its expression are unmistakably of its author. Wilson Harris's tenth novel, first published in 1972, is set in Edinburgh but, like much of his subsequent work, bridges continents by its imaginative reach. ''Doctor Black Marsden', tramp, shaman, and conjurer, is an ambivalent Merlin-figure representing both the hero's personal (and archetypal) shadow, and the creative, magus-like activity of the author himself.' Michael Gilkes, Journal of Commonwealth Literature. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. Carnival. London. 1985. Faber & Faber. 0571134491. 176 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Pentagram. Illustration by Chris Brown. 'Soon I was to perceive in the complex loves and sorrows of Masters' life that I was as much a character (or character- mask) in Carnival as he was. Indeed in a real and unreal sense he and other character-masks were the joint authors of Carnival and I was their creation. They drew me to surrender myself to them.’ The speaker is narrator of Wilson Harris's new fiction, and biographer of its leading character, Everyman Masters. His enquiries into his subject's life lead him into a Dantesque spiritual journey through time and space in which the Caribbean carnival of masks acquires a transcendental resonance. 'Wilson Harris seems to me one of the most genuinely original talents at work in the field today... for what [he] is doing... is to extend the boundaries of our very conception of fiction; and this is likely to be recognized increasingly by readers who require more of fiction than mere skilful figure-skating over the surface of life.’ - Robert Nye. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. Companions of the Day and Night. London. 1975. Faber & Faber. 0571106633. 83 pages. hardcover. Wilson Harris's new novel further develops the tabula rasa theme that fan through Black Marsden. During a sojourn in Mexico lasting both days and centuries, a faceless and many-faced narrator records in diary form various encounters and episodes, which shade into elements from the country's past, creating a vivid dream-sequence with the strangely hypnotic power characteristic of Wilson Harris's writing. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. Da Silva Da Silva's Cultivated Wilderness & Genesis of the Clowns. London. 1977. Faber & Faber. 0571108199. 160 pages. hardcover. The first of these two novels is about a painter, Brazilian by birth and British by adoption, living and working in London with his wife, whose equally varied spiritual and cultural inheritance complements his. Wilson Harris evokes with vividness and characteristic imaginative power the daily life and landscape of the city. The setting of "Genesis of the Clowns" returns to the jungle hinterland of its author's native Guyana. A government surveyor and his gang, for whose work and well-being he is responsible, are exploring and recording the course and currents of the remote upper reaches of the ancient rivers. Unexpected incidents and tensions in the formal and personal relationships between the surveyor and his men have mysterious consequences with effects and implications far beyond the immediate time and place. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. Explorations: A Selection of Talks and Articles. Mundelstrup. 1981. Dangaroo. 8788213005. Edited with an introduction by Hena Maes-Jelinek. 145 pages. paperback. Essays written between 1966 and 1981 by this highly acclaimed Guyanese novelist and critic between 1966 and 1981. "Together they represent an imaginative writer's effort to express theoretically the vision to which he has intuitively given shape in his fiction." Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. Palace of the Peacock. London. 1977. Faber & Faber. 0571089305. 152 pages. paperback. PALACE OF THE PEACOCK (1960) is the first of seven novels published to date by Wilson Harris. The author (b. 1921) now lives in London where his works are written, but his novels grow out of his responsiveness to the brooding continental landscape and the fabulous fragmented history of his native Guyana (formerly British Guiana). The declaration of the dreaming, half-blinded narrator of PALACE OF THE PEACOCK might well serve as an epigraph: ‘They were an actual stage, a presence, however mythical they seemed to the universal and the spiritual eye. They were as close to me as my ribs, the rivers and the flatland, the mountains and heartland I intimately saw. I could not help cherishing my symbolic map, and my bodily prejudice like a well-known room and house of superstition within which I dwelt. I saw this kingdom of man turned a colony and battleground of spirit, a priceless tempting jewel I dreamed I possessed’ (p. 20). Harris's fiction brings imperial/slave history and the aftermath into its field, but the author's way of seeing the world around him and kind of fiction which it expresses itself challenge us to see with new eyes. – from the Preface by Kenneth Ramchand. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (born 24 March 1921) is a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but has since become a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. Palace of the Peacock. London. 1968. Faber & Faber. 0571089305. 152 pages. paperback. PALACE OF THE PEACOCK (1960) is the first of seven novels published to date by Wilson Harris. The author (b. 1921) now lives in London where his works are written, but his novels grow out of his responsiveness to the brooding continental landscape and the fabulous fragmented history of his native Guyana (formerly British Guiana). The declaration of the dreaming, half-blinded narrator of PALACE OF THE PEACOCK might well serve as an epigraph: ‘They were an actual stage, a presence, however mythical they seemed to the universal and the spiritual eye. They were as close to me as my ribs, the rivers and the flatland, the mountains and heartland I intimately saw. I could not help cherishing my symbolic map, and my bodily prejudice like a well-known room and house of superstition within which I dwelt. I saw this kingdom of man turned a colony and battleground of spirit, a priceless tempting jewel I dreamed I possessed’ (p. 20). Harris's fiction brings imperial/slave history and the aftermath into its field, but the author's way of seeing the world around him and kind of fiction which it expresses itself challenge us to see with new eyes. – from the Preface by Kenneth Ramchand. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. Resurrection at Sorrow Hill. London. 1993. Faber & Faber. 0571169783. 244 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Chris Brown The image of a perilous voyage up-river, portaging past rapids deep into the heart of the South American rain-forest, will be a sign to Wilson Harris’s readers that his new novel encompasses artistic concerns which have preoccupied him throughout his writing life, from the dazzling Palace of the Peacock onwards. His story is one of exploration, quest, danger, adultery, breakdown and violent death and the location the Guyana of the Quartet. Of that work the critic Wilfred Cartey has written: ‘Harris imbues the immediate landscape with a quality of the marvellous, transforming history into fable, fable into myth and legend. Thus, the whole novelistic canvas takes on emblematic qualities and, trembling through the transformative process, merges together the real, the marvellous, the mythic and the legendary.’ The same applies here and throughout his oeuvre. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (born 24 March 1921) is a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but has since become a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. The Age of the Rainmakers. London. 1971. Faber & Faber. With line drawings by Karen Usborne. 104 pages. hardcover. Cover art by Karen Usborne In the four ‘fables’, as he calls them, which make up this book Wilson Harris draws on the history and legend, anthropological fact and native myth, the landscape and the people of Guyana as it exists now and as it did before it had a name. The dazzling technical skill with which he combines and puts to use these elements will be familiar to readers of his novels, and will be accessible to new readers attracted by his reputation as one of the most important writers of his own (or any other) country. The mode of this volume develops further that of THE SLEEPERS OF RORAIMA, published in 1970. . Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. The Angel at the Gate. London. 1982. Faber & Faber. 0571119298. 128 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustrations by Donna Muir. Here are people who inhabit one another's dreams - who inhabit and are one another. Here are the streets of West London and the realities of our time - resolved into stranger avenues, greater realities, other times. As her child creates continents from a rumpled bed-sheet, a woman discovers new worlds within herself - worlds populated by Khublall the philosopher, mildly paranoid Jackson, Mack the Knife - worlds like Planet Bale. Over these worlds leans the figure of Father Marsden - and on Marsden leans the great Spirit. Wilson Harris has drawn together the threads of Mary Stella Holiday's automatic writings and Marsden's notes to weave a multi-dimensional tapestry of arresting images - images that shift and recur and overlap. From their pattern emerges a truth of great compassion: to be whole we must endure the traffic of many souls. 'Wilson Harris seems to me one of the most genuinely original talents at work in the field of fiction today, for what Harris is doing is to extend the boundaries of our very conception of fiction; and this is likely to be recognised increasingly by readers who require more of fiction than mere skilful figure-skating over the surface of life.’ - Robert Nye. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. The Eye of the Scarecrow. London. 1974. Faber & Faber. 0571105572. 108 pages. paperback. Mr Harris’s new novel opens with a hauntingly powerful evocation of childhood: the age when the whole world of sensation - even the day-to-day dealings with family and friends - has a hallucinating freshness. Events in the narrator’s early life in a Guyanese seaport town - death in the family, the strange apparent betrayals in childhood relationships-are counterpointed with events years later in the depths of the hinterland, where the tensions between past and present manifest themselves in terms both personal and universal. The mechanized acquisitiveness of the twentieth century and the hidden riches of the immemorial jungle are the cause of conflicts whose destructiveness is more than merely material and transitory. Although the growing number of those who have come to value Mr Harris’s writings will recognize his theme, they will discover new and unsuspected facets revealed by the intensity of his vision. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. The Eye of the Scarecrow. London. 1965. Faber & Faber. 108 pages. hardcover. Mr Harris’s new novel opens with a hauntingly powerful evocation of childhood: the age when the whole world of sensation - even the day-to-day dealings with family and friends - has a hallucinating freshness. Events in the narrator’s early life in a Guyanese seaport town - death in the family, the strange apparent betrayals in childhood relationships-are counterpointed with events years later in the depths of the hinterland, where the tensions between past and present manifest themselves in terms both personal and universal. The mechanized acquisitiveness of the twentieth century and the hidden riches of the immemorial jungle are the cause of conflicts whose destructiveness is more than merely material and transitory. Although the growing number of those who have come to value Mr Harris’s writings will recognize his theme, they will discover new and unsuspected facets revealed by the intensity of his vision. . . Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. The Far Journey of Oudin. London. 1961. Faber & Faber. 136 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Peter Snow Set like his first novel, PALACE OF THE PEACOCK, in British Guiana, FAR JOURNEY OF OUDIN is further proof of the intensity and originality of Wilson Harris’s imaginative power and literary skill. Against a background of swamp, jungle and savannah a strange drama is played out in which the chief characters are the moneylender Ram-an evil, presiding genius, the illegitimate Beti whom all men desire, and Oudin the beggar who works for several masters and belongs to none. Reviewing Palace of the Peacock in the Spectator, Ronald Bryden hailed ‘the arrival of what looks like the most striking Caribbean imagination since George Lamming’s’. The Times Literary Supplement compared the book with Rimbaud’s Le Bateau lyre and added, ‘it can stand the comparison’. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. The Four Banks of the River of Space. London. 1990. Faber & Faber. 057114361x. 161 pages. hardcover. Jacket Illustration by Ray Belletty. Writing this novel Wilson Harris completes the trilogy which began with Carnival and The Infinite Rehearsal. As in those books his narrator may be seen as an alter ego of his creator. Anselm is Guyanese by birth (born in Georgetown in 1912) with intimate artistic, professional and family connections with British Guyana and the South American continent. In his 'book of dreams' , time and space — history and geography — are transfigured and universalized. Of Carnival Valentine Cunningham said in the Observer: 'an exposition of post- Shandyesque fabulism at its most captivating, but also an earnestly questioning, postcolonialist novel of painful, accusing force.' Of The Infinite Rehearsal Brian Morton wrote in the TLS: 'If he has dared to write more densely, he has certainly never written better.' This is a novel about the complexities of memory, Wilson Harris's The Four Banks of the River of Space is a return to the writer's childhood haunts. Shunning what he calls sterile realism, Harris digs under the reality of perception and language to find the hidden music or pattern which gives significance to apparently desperate situations. Memory thus becomes a form of creation which follows the Odyssean metaphor of the quest naturalized here in the author's original Guyana heartland. This journey into the past does not limit itself to the reassertion of the protagonist's multiculturalism. It states that poetic language can only progress through erasure leading to the opening out of new doors or windows into essential reality, where polarities melt away. The Four Banks of the River of Space fragments the epic figure of Ulysses into several personalities who conduct self-analyses to redefine the nature and function of myth. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. The Guyana Quartet. London. 1985. Faber & Faber. 0571134513. 480 pages. paperback. Cover design by Pentagram. Illustration by Chris Brown. The Guyana Quartet is Wilson Harris's collection of novels comprising Palace of the Peacock, The Far Journey of Oudin, The Whole Armour and The Secret Ladder. In Palace of the Peacock, a tale of a doomed crew beating their way up-river through the jungles of Guyana, can be traced the poetic vision, themes and designs of Harris's subsequent work. It was described in The Times as displaying 'that staggering ebullience of language we have begun to recognize in West Indian writers'. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. Wilson Harris was born in New Amsterdam in what was then called British Guiana, where his father worked at an insurance company. After studying at Queen's College in the capital of Guyana, Georgetown, he became a government surveyor, before taking up a career as lecturer and writer. The knowledge of the savannas and rain forests he gained during his time as a surveyor formed the setting for many of his books, with the Guyanese landscape dominating his fiction. Between 1945 and 1961, Harris was a regular contributor of stories, poems and essays to Kyk-over-Al literary magazine and was part of a group of Guyanese intellectuals that included Martin Carter and Ivan Van Sertima. Harris came to England in 1959 and published his first novel Palace of the Peacock in 1960. This became the first of a quartet of novels, The Guyana Quartet, which includes The Far Journey of Oudin (1961), The Whole Armour (1962), and The Secret Ladder (1963). He subsequently wrote the Carnival trilogy: Carnival (1985), The Infinite Rehearsal (1987), and The Four Banks of the River of Space (1990). His most recent novels include Jonestown (1996), which tells of the mass-suicide of followers of cult leader Jim Jones, The Dark Jester (2001), his latest semi-autobiographical novel, The Mask of the Beggar (2003), and The Ghost of Memory (2006). Harris also writes non-fiction and critical essays and has been awarded honorary doctorates by several universities, including the University of the West Indies (1984) and the University of Liège (2001). He has twice won the Guyana Prize for Literature. Harris was created a Knight Bachelor in June 2010, in the Queen Elizabeth II Birthday Honours. In 2014, Sir Wilson Harris won a Lifetime Achievement Prize from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. Literary critics have stated that although reading Harris's work is challenging, it is rewarding in many ways. Harris has been admired for his exploration of the themes of conquest and colonization as well as the struggles of colonized peoples. Readers have commented that his novels are an attempt to express truths about the way people experience reality through the lens of the imagination. Harris has been faulted for his novels that have often nonlinear plot lines, and for his preference of internal perceptions over external realities. Critics have described Harris's abstract, experimental narratives as difficult to read, dense, complex, or opaque. Many readers have commented that Harris's essays push the boundaries of traditional literary criticism, and that his fiction pushes the limits of the novel genre itself. Harris's writing has been associated with many different literary genres by critics, including: surrealism, magic realism, mysticism and modernism. Over the years, Harris has used many different concepts to define his literary approach, including: cross-culturalism, modern allegory, epic, and Quantum Fiction. One critic described Harris's fictions as informed by "quantum penetration where Existence and non-existence are both real. You can contemplate them as if both are true." His writing has been called ambitiously experimental and his narrative structure is described as "multiple and flexible." Wilson Harris categorized his innovations and literary techniques as quantum fiction. He uses the definition in The Carnival Trilogy and in the final novel, The Four Banks of the River of Space. Harris noted in an interview that "in describing the world you see, the language evolves and begins to encompass realities that are not visible". Harris attributed his innovative literary techniques as a development that was the result of being witness to the physical world behaving as quantum theory. To accommodate his new perceptions, Harris said he realized he was writing "quantum fiction". The technique of Wilson Harris has been called experimental and innovative. Harris describes that conventional writing is different from his style of writing in that "conventional writing is straightforward writing" and "My writing is quantum writing. Do you know of the quantum bullet? The quantum bullet, when it's fired, leaves not one hole but two." The use of nonlinear events and metaphor is a substantive component of his prose. Another technique employed by Harris is the combination of words and concepts in unexpected, jarring ways. Through this technique of combination, Harris displays the underlying, linking root that prevents two categories from ever really existing in opposition. The technique exposes and alters the power of language to lock in fixed beliefs and attitudes, "freeing" words and concepts to associate in new ways. Harris sees language as the key to social and human transformations. His approach begins with a regard of language as a power to both enslave and free. This quest and understanding underlies his narrative fiction themes about human slavery. Harris cites language as both, a crucial element in the subjugation of slaves and indentures, and the means by which the destructive processes of history could be reversed. In Palace of the Peacock, Harris seeks to expose the illusion of opposites that create enmities between people. A crew on a river expedition experiences a series of tragedies that ultimately bring about each member's death. Along the way, Harris highlights as prime factor in their demise their inability to reconcile binarisms in the world around them and between each other. With his technique of binary breakdowns, and echoing the African tradition of death not bringing the end to a soul, Harris demonstrates that they find reconciliation only in physical death, pointing out the superficiality of illusions of opposites that separated them. Mr.Harris died on 8 March 2018, at his home in Chelmsford, England, of natural causes. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. The Infinite Rehearsal. London. 1987. Faber & Faber. 0571148859. 88 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Brian Grimwood. ‘My grandfather’s FAUST possesses roots as much in the modem age as in the pre-Columbian workshop of the gods and therefore addresses a European myth from a multi-faceted and partly non-European standpoint.’ In this ‘fictional autobiography’, the narrator is indeed fictional, but readers of Wilson Harris’s recent work will recognize both him and his relationship to his creator. The characters who inhabit this book as family and friends are both individuals and archetypes, vividly alive both in the present and in history. Drawing on his usual wide range of imagery, including on this occasion, sources both maritime and theatrical, Wilson Harris’s new allegorical fiction uses some of the elements of auto- biography to present a version of the Faust legend which shares the visionary intensity and vividness of language of all his work, most recently CARNIVAL . From reviews of CARNIVAL: ‘An exposition of post-Shandyesque fabulism at its most captivating . . . an earnestly questioning, post-colonialist novel of painful, accusing force . . .’ – Observer. ‘Gifted and Extraordinary’ – Guardian. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (born 24 March 1921) is a Guyanese writer. He first wrote poetry, but since has become a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be quite abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter very wide-ranging. Wilson Harris was born in New Amsterdam in the then British Guiana. After studying at Queen's College in the capital of Guyana, Georgetown, Harris became a government surveyor, before taking up a career as lecturer and writer. The knowledge of the savannas and rain forests he gained during his time as a surveyor has formed the setting for many of his books, with the Guyanese landscape dominating his fiction. He came to England in 1959 and published his first novel PALACE OF THE PEACOCK in 1960. This became the first of a quartet of novels, THE GUYANA QUARTET, WHICH ALSO INCLUDES THE FAR JOURNEY OF OUDIN (1961), THE WHOLE ARMOUR (1962), and THE SECRET LADDER (1963). He later wrote the Carnival trilogy consisting of CARNIVAL (1985), THE INFINITE REHEARSAL (1987), and THE FOUR BANKS OF THE RIVER OF SPACE (1990). His most recent novels are JONESTOWN (1996), which tells of the mass-suicide of a thousand followers of cult leader Jim Jones; THE DARK JESTER (2001), his latest semi-autobiographical novel, THE MASK OF THE BEGGAR (2003), and one of his most accessible novels in decades, THE GHOST OF MEMORY (2006). Wilson Harris also writes non-fiction and critical essays and has been awarded honorary doctorates by several universities, including the University of the West Indies (1984) and the University of Liège (2001). He has twice been winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. The Secret Ladder. London. 1963. Faber & Faber. 127 pages. hardcover. Russell Fenwick, a young land-surveyor, is charting the upper reaches of the Canje river deep in the Guiana hinterland, in preparation for a new irrigation scheme. The tedium of the work, rivalries and resentments among the men of whom he is in charge, suspicion and hostility from the local population of poverty-stricken farmers and fishermen - all these combine to make Fenwick’s position a precarious one in an atmosphere of powerful tensions in uneasy equilibrium. He stands at the point where the modern, the scientific and the benign meet the primitive and the mysterious. This is the last volume in Mr Harris’s ‘Guiana Quartet’ and, as readers of the others - THE PALACE OF THE PEACOCK, THE FAR JOURNEY OF OUDIN, THE WHOLE ARMOUR - have come to expect, the narrative carries with it an imaginative charge as richly suggestive as that of myth, and employs a highly individual and evocative mode of expression. Now that the sequence is complete, the correspondences and interdependence of its elements begin to become apparent, revealing an ambitious design whose achieved brilliance makes a unique contribution to Caribbean literature. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. The Sleepers of Raraima. London. 1970. Faber & Faber. 0571092721. Illustrations by Karen Usborne . 82 pages. hardcover. Drawing on jacket by Karen Usborne Until the coming of the Spanish invader the Carib warriors were masters of the sea which bears their name. Now they have virtually disappeared as a people, though remnants of their mythology can be traced deep into the South American continent. It is in the myths and history of this vanished tribe that Harris has found the inspiration for the tales in this book. In each of them the central character is a young boy, through whom the ancestral mysteries begin to reveal their meaning —a meaning enriched by a unique and encompassing vision, which adds new (and sometimes overwhelming) dimensions to our notions of time, place and people. all its imaginative rich- ness, this book is one of the most immediately attractive and engaging Mr Harris has written: it will not only delight his existing readers but provide those previously unfamiliar with his work with a haunting and memorable experience. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. The Tree of the Sun. London. 1978. Faber & Faber. 0571111815. 112 pages. hardcover. This new novel is a sequel to Da Silva da Silva's Cultivated Wilderness. Jen, da Silva's wife, has conceived after eight years of marriage and the Brazilian- born painter is moved by the knowledge of his wife's pregnancy to recall a painting that he started on the very morning that they slept together and she conceived. This becomes the evolving foetus of imagination through which to relate himself to his and Jen's masked antecedents in the womb of history and to previous tenants, of mixed ancestry, who lived a long time ago in the flat they now occupy in the Kensington area, London. Those previous tenants, Julia and Francis Cortez, have deposited papers and letters that address da Silva and Jen with an intimacy and force to do not only with the nature of the community, in an open sense, but with Julia's private desires and her great longing to have a child, a longing that is never fulfilled and that shakes Francis to the core in a secret novel he begins to write of her illnesses and of her great beauty. The Tree of the Sun sets out by various strategies of imagination to imply a resurrection of others in and through ourselves. It seeks to do so within complexes and motivations that can never be wholly explicit. There is therefore an element of carnival in the simultaneous and parallel expeditions in art and industry - in the imperial splendours at home and half-forgotten plantations established abroad - that occurred in the building of societies in Europe and in her possessions and conquests around the globe. Values of survival are threaded into a comedy of inner spectres of history that are native to civilization. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. The Whole Armour. London. 1962. Faber & Faber. 128 pages. hardcover. With his first two novels, PALACE OF THE PEACOCK and THE FAR JOURNEY OF OUDIN, Wilson Harris has established a unique place for himself among West Indian writers. Profoundly imaginative, richly evocative, splendidly and passionately written, his books explore a strange and fascinating world derived from the myths and landscapes of his native British Guiana. THE WHOLE ARMOUR tells the story of Cristo and Sharon, of Magda and Abram; a story of passion and violence, of crime and punishment. It will more than consolidate Mr. Harris's reputation as a gifted and entirely original artist whose work seems likely to endure. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Harris, Wilson. The Whole Armour and The Secret Ladder. London. 1973. Faber & Faber. 057110231x. 259 pages. paperback. THE WHOLE ARMOUR tells the story of Cristo and Sharon, of Magda and Abram; a story of passion and violence, of crime and punishment. It will more than consolidate Mr. Harris's reputation as a gifted and entirely original artist whose work seems likely to endure. In THE SECRET LADDER Russell Fenwick, a young land-surveyor, is charting the upper reaches of the Canje river deep in the Guiana hinterland, in preparation for a new irrigation scheme. The tedium of the work, rivalries and resentments among the men of whom he is in charge, suspicion and hostility from the local population of poverty-stricken farmers and fishermen - all these combine to make Fenwick’s position a precarious one in an atmosphere of powerful tensions in uneasy equilibrium. He stands at the point where the modern, the scientific and the benign meet the primitive and the mysterious. Sir Theodore Wilson Harris (24 March 1921 – 8 March 2018) was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English. |
![]() | ![]() | Hausman, Gerald. Duppy Talk: West Indian Tales of Mystery and Magic. New York. 1994. Simon & Schuster. 067189000x. 102 pages. hardcover. Authentic West Indian ghost stories brim with unusual characters, including duppies, restless spirits who haunt the living; angels, a mermaid, a witch doctor, a bush doctor, and a menacing poisonous toad. By the author of Turtle Island Alphabet. Gerald Andrews Hausman (born October 13, 1945) is a storyteller and award-winning author of books about Native America, animals, mythology, and West Indian culture. Hausman comes from a long line of storytellers and educators, and has published over seventy books for both children and adults. |
![]() | ![]() | Headley, Victor. Yardie. New York. 1993. Atlantic Monthly Press. 0871135507. 185 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Alicia Exum YARDIE is, quite simply, a literary sensation in England. Originally published by X Press, a two-man operation, the book was produced on a desktop computer and distributed through unusual channels: it was sold at clothing shops, hairdressers, and even on top of over-turned dumpsters outside of nightclubs. On word of mouth alone, YARDIE has sold over twelve thousand copies. Victor Headley has written a tight, fast-paced narrative that brings us into the previously unexplored territory of Yardies: West Indian gangsters who know that the only route to success available to them is through the dangerous, violent world of drugs. YARDIE introduces us to D., a tough, streetwise man from Jamaica who, using a falsified passport, enters London to deliver a kilo of cocaine to the Spicers, the ruling operation in cocaine distribution. D., knowing it could be his only chance for a break, steals half a kilo and runs out into a city he is entirely unfamiliar with, having only vague contacts from the life he left behind. D. recruits soldiers, sets up his own operation, and quickly establishes himself as a main force in the drug wars of East End London. Soon he is ensconced in a life of crack, cash, guns, and power, fighting to keep his turf from the Spicers, who are plotting their imminent revenge. Written with style and intensity, YARDIE is the first book to come out of this subculture defined by music, dancing, drugs, violence, and, perhaps most of all, anger. Beneath the action lies the unavoidable fact of economic survival faced by a community struggling to make its way in a hostile urban environment. . Victor Headley (born 1959) is a Jamaican-born British author. He is the author of the bestselling novel Yardie (1992), which gained cult status upon publication and was heralded a new wave of black British pulp fiction". Other books by Headley included Excess (1993) Yush (1994), Fetish (1995), Here Comes the Bride (1997), Off Duty (2001) and Seven Seals (2003). |
![]() | ![]() | Hearne, John. Land of the Living. New York. 1962. Harper & Row. 281 pages. hardcover. The Times Literary Supplement says of LAND OF THE LIVING: ‘Turning to a map of the Caribbean, one wonders at the carelessness of the cartographer who has left Cayuna out of the archipelago. Here are the ecstatic sea and the exultant sun and the opulent landscape, here is an organic and self-contained community, lazy, gossipy, cheerful, self-important, whose mishmash of colors indicates nothing more barbaric than social differences. Here a young Jewish refugee scientist, emotionally neutered by his past experiences so that for the rest of his life he feels he is doomed to be an onlooker, is drawn back into midstream as much by the pressures of a live and affirmative society as by two women and a remarkable old man, leader of an apocalyptic native freedom movement. Mr. Hearne writes very well both about love (married at that) and about honest and affectionate lust. Also he writes very well.’ Mr. Hearne is a born storyteller. There is no need, any longer, to speak of his promise; his reputation is firmly established. This moving and deeply felt story of Stefan Mahler’s return to the land of the living is Mr. Hearne’s finest achievement to date. John Hearne writes of himself in 1962: ‘I was born in Montreal about thirty years ago, but grew up in Jamaica, where both sides of my family have been settled since the early part of the eighteenth century. For the most part we have been planners, soldiers, civil servants and churchmen; but writing probably came into the family a generation or so before the French Revolution when two journalist brothers who had played too close to the encyclopaedist fringe were forced to choose between prison or exile, and decided that the British West Indies offered more freedom if less scope. ‘The Hearnes were originally an Irish family but since about 1750 the main stream has received generous tributary strains of Scottish, African, English, French, Jewish, Spanish and American Indian blood.’ John Edgar Colwell Hearne (4 February 1926, Montreal, Canada - 12 December 1994, Stony Hill, Jamaica) was a white Jamaican novelist, journalist, and teacher. Hearne was born in Montreal, Canada, of Jamaican parents and attended Jamaica College in Kingston. After serving in the RAF during the Second World War, he read English and Philosophy at Edinburgh University. He trained as a teacher at London University and from 1950 to 1952 taught in a Jamaican school. He also worked as a journalist. He then travelled in Europe for some years (part of the time with novelist Roger Mais, before returning to Jamaica in 1957. He was subsequently on the staff of the Extra-Mural Department of the University of the West Indies, Mona. Hearne's first published work was the novel Voices under the Window, issued in 1955. Set in Jamaica in the late 1940s or early 1950s, it uses the framing device of a progressive politician's injury and death in a riot to narrate the story of a man who, born into racial and economic privilege, decided to cast his lot with the underprivileged. Hearne followed this with four novels written between 1956 and 1961 -- The Faces of Love, Stranger at the Gate, The Autumn Equinox and Land of the Living—set in the imaginary island of Cayuna which is a fictionalized Jamaica (the map of Cayuna included with the novels bears a remarkable resemblance to Jamaica), and which referred to issues relating to Jamaican life at the time, such as the beginning of the bauxite industry and the Rastafari movement, or to events in nearby territories such as the Cuban Revolution. He also wrote a number of short stories, one of which, 'At the Stelling', set in Guyana, was included in the Independence Anthology of Jamaican Literature. Hearne then turned to the academy and journalism—writing a regular column for the Gleaner newspaper, first under the pseudonym 'Jay Monroe', and later under his own name, and administering the Creative Arts Centre (now the Sir Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts) at the University of the West Indies. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he collaborated with planter and journalist Morris Cargill on a series of three thrillers -- Fever Grass, The Candywine Development, and The Checkerboard Caper—involving an imaginary Jamaican secret service. These were written under the pseudonym 'John Morris'. In 1985 he published his last novel, The Sure Salvation, set on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic in the mid-nineteenth century. The voyage ends in the imaginary British South American colony of Abari, also mentioned in The Checkerboard Caper. |
![]() | ![]() | Hearne, John. Stranger at the Gate. London. 1956. Faber & Faber. 304 pages. hardcover. The explosive interaction of political and private passion, the dark crosscurrents of race and history, the clash of loyalties in conflict, all combine to charge John Hearne’s second novel with pace and concentrated power. Only a narrow stretch of Caribbean water divides Cayuna from St Pierre: the first solid, settled, British for centuries; the second a black republic under the left-wing dictatorship of Henri Etienne. And when Etienne’s government is overthrown and he himself driven to Cayuna for clandestine refuge his coming is a catalyst which precipitates violence and disaster - and love and heroism - in several different lives. In the life of Carl Brandt, handsome, generous, universally liked and respected, owner of Brandt’s Pen and head of the Brandts who for two centuries have been among the island’s leading families; of his best friend, Roy Mackenzie, lawyer and left-wing politician, brilliant, ambitious, unstable, fanatical in his devotion both to causes and to people; of Sheila Pearce who disorients both their lives; of Hector Slade, the decent, likeable man and devoted amateur scholar who is the tough and efficient head of the island’s police; of Tiger Johnson, uncrowned king of that pullulating shantytown which everybody calls ‘the jungle’. When John Hearne’s first novel, Voices Under the Window, was published in 1955, it was very widely acclaimed; and was accepted as exciting evidence that a new and outstanding writer had arrived. Stranger at the Gate more than fulfils the promise of its predecessor. In its breadth and scope, in the suppleness and solidity of its characterization, in its narrative and descriptive power, it marks an impressive development in the range of John Hearne’s already impressive powers. John Edgar Colwell Hearne (4 February 1926, Montreal, Canada - 12 December 1994, Stony Hill, Jamaica) was a white Jamaican novelist, journalist, and teacher. Hearne was born in Montreal, Canada, of Jamaican parents and attended Jamaica College in Kingston. After serving in the RAF during the Second World War, he read English and Philosophy at Edinburgh University. He trained as a teacher at London University and from 1950 to 1952 taught in a Jamaican school. He also worked as a journalist. He then travelled in Europe for some years (part of the time with novelist Roger Mais, before returning to Jamaica in 1957. He was subsequently on the staff of the Extra-Mural Department of the University of the West Indies, Mona. Hearne's first published work was the novel Voices under the Window, issued in 1955. Set in Jamaica in the late 1940s or early 1950s, it uses the framing device of a progressive politician's injury and death in a riot to narrate the story of a man who, born into racial and economic privilege, decided to cast his lot with the underprivileged. Hearne followed this with four novels written between 1956 and 1961 -- The Faces of Love, Stranger at the Gate, The Autumn Equinox and Land of the Living—set in the imaginary island of Cayuna which is a fictionalized Jamaica (the map of Cayuna included with the novels bears a remarkable resemblance to Jamaica), and which referred to issues relating to Jamaican life at the time, such as the beginning of the bauxite industry and the Rastafari movement, or to events in nearby territories such as the Cuban Revolution. He also wrote a number of short stories, one of which, 'At the Stelling', set in Guyana, was included in the Independence Anthology of Jamaican Literature. Hearne then turned to the academy and journalism—writing a regular column for the Gleaner newspaper, first under the pseudonym 'Jay Monroe', and later under his own name, and administering the Creative Arts Centre (now the Sir Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts) at the University of the West Indies. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he collaborated with planter and journalist Morris Cargill on a series of three thrillers -- Fever Grass, The Candywine Development, and The Checkerboard Caper—involving an imaginary Jamaican secret service. These were written under the pseudonym 'John Morris'. In 1985 he published his last novel, The Sure Salvation, set on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic in the mid-nineteenth century. The voyage ends in the imaginary British South American colony of Abari, also mentioned in The Checkerboard Caper. |
![]() | ![]() | Hearne, John. The Autumn Equinox. New York. 1961. Vanguard. 272 pages. hardcover. Cayuna - an island in the West Indies, the product of John Hearne’s imagination, but so real you can feel its hot sun, its verdure, its blazing beaches. So do you enter at once into the passions of three different kinds of love-loves involving the dominating personality of Uncle Nicholas, an old man but full of the strength and character that make old men young; his adopted niece Eleanor, beautiful, with a strange past but a present just awakening to love, and Jim Diver, a young American seeking his fulfillment in revolution. When Diver comes to Cayuna to set up an illegal printing press for an insurgent army-and arrives on Nicholas’ doorstep with a message from the past that cannot be ignored-an explosive situation develops. For to the clandestine and vicious violence of revolution and counter-revolution is added the sudden passion between Jim and Eleanor-a situation resolved in a climax of shattering power. . . John Edgar Colwell Hearne (4 February 1926, Montreal, Canada - 12 December 1994, Stony Hill, Jamaica) was a white Jamaican novelist, journalist, and teacher. Hearne was born in Montreal, Canada, of Jamaican parents and attended Jamaica College in Kingston. After serving in the RAF during the Second World War, he read English and Philosophy at Edinburgh University. He trained as a teacher at London University and from 1950 to 1952 taught in a Jamaican school. He also worked as a journalist. He then travelled in Europe for some years (part of the time with novelist Roger Mais, before returning to Jamaica in 1957. He was subsequently on the staff of the Extra-Mural Department of the University of the West Indies, Mona. Hearne's first published work was the novel Voices under the Window, issued in 1955. Set in Jamaica in the late 1940s or early 1950s, it uses the framing device of a progressive politician's injury and death in a riot to narrate the story of a man who, born into racial and economic privilege, decided to cast his lot with the underprivileged. Hearne followed this with four novels written between 1956 and 1961 -- The Faces of Love, Stranger at the Gate, The Autumn Equinox and Land of the Living—set in the imaginary island of Cayuna which is a fictionalized Jamaica (the map of Cayuna included with the novels bears a remarkable resemblance to Jamaica), and which referred to issues relating to Jamaican life at the time, such as the beginning of the bauxite industry and the Rastafari movement, or to events in nearby territories such as the Cuban Revolution. He also wrote a number of short stories, one of which, 'At the Stelling', set in Guyana, was included in the Independence Anthology of Jamaican Literature. Hearne then turned to the academy and journalism—writing a regular column for the Gleaner newspaper, first under the pseudonym 'Jay Monroe', and later under his own name, and administering the Creative Arts Centre (now the Sir Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts) at the University of the West Indies. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he collaborated with planter and journalist Morris Cargill on a series of three thrillers -- Fever Grass, The Candywine Development, and The Checkerboard Caper—involving an imaginary Jamaican secret service. These were written under the pseudonym 'John Morris'. In 1985 he published his last novel, The Sure Salvation, set on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic in the mid-nineteenth century. The voyage ends in the imaginary British South American colony of Abari, also mentioned in The Checkerboard Caper. |
![]() | ![]() | Hearne, John. The Autumn Equinox. London. 1959. Faber & Faber. 272 pages. hardcover. Among the young West Indian writers who have done so much recently to enliven the literary scene John Hearne has a unique place. Set in the West Indies though his stories are, they depend for their effect not on ‘local colour’ or self-conscious regionalism but on his possession and mastery of the novelist’s essential equipment - narrative power, an ability to bring characters completely and vividly to life, an inborn ease and assurance with dialogue and description. In STRANGER AT THE GATE and THE FACES OF LOVE he created and peopled a West Indian island, Cayuna; and to Cayuna he returns in THE AUTUMN EQUINOX. Nicholas Stacey had come back there in his old age; and though his life had been shot through with passion and violence, it seemed that nothing could disturb the peace and fulfilment which the years had brought and the deep emotional content centred on his love for his adopted daughter, Eleanor, But when Jim Diver and Peter Conroy came to Cayuna to set up an illegal printing press for Castro’s insurgent Cuban army - and arrived on Nicholas’s doorstep with a message from the past which could not be ignored - things changed beyond recognition. To the clandestine and vicious violence of revolution and counter-revolution was added a sudden passion between Jim and Eleanor; an explosive situation was rapidly built up and resolved at last in a climax of shattering power. In his latest novel John Hearne has achieved a new technical mastery; and he has told, as always, a story which is both gripping and unforgettable. John Edgar Colwell Hearne (4 February 1926, Montreal, Canada - 12 December 1994, Stony Hill, Jamaica) was a white Jamaican novelist, journalist, and teacher. Hearne was born in Montreal, Canada, of Jamaican parents and attended Jamaica College in Kingston. After serving in the RAF during the Second World War, he read English and Philosophy at Edinburgh University. He trained as a teacher at London University and from 1950 to 1952 taught in a Jamaican school. He also worked as a journalist. He then travelled in Europe for some years (part of the time with novelist Roger Mais, before returning to Jamaica in 1957. He was subsequently on the staff of the Extra-Mural Department of the University of the West Indies, Mona. Hearne's first published work was the novel Voices under the Window, issued in 1955. Set in Jamaica in the late 1940s or early 1950s, it uses the framing device of a progressive politician's injury and death in a riot to narrate the story of a man who, born into racial and economic privilege, decided to cast his lot with the underprivileged. Hearne followed this with four novels written between 1956 and 1961 -- The Faces of Love, Stranger at the Gate, The Autumn Equinox and Land of the Living—set in the imaginary island of Cayuna which is a fictionalized Jamaica (the map of Cayuna included with the novels bears a remarkable resemblance to Jamaica), and which referred to issues relating to Jamaican life at the time, such as the beginning of the bauxite industry and the Rastafari movement, or to events in nearby territories such as the Cuban Revolution. He also wrote a number of short stories, one of which, 'At the Stelling', set in Guyana, was included in the Independence Anthology of Jamaican Literature. Hearne then turned to the academy and journalism—writing a regular column for the Gleaner newspaper, first under the pseudonym 'Jay Monroe', and later under his own name, and administering the Creative Arts Centre (now the Sir Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts) at the University of the West Indies. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he collaborated with planter and journalist Morris Cargill on a series of three thrillers -- Fever Grass, The Candywine Development, and The Checkerboard Caper—involving an imaginary Jamaican secret service. These were written under the pseudonym 'John Morris'. In 1985 he published his last novel, The Sure Salvation, set on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic in the mid-nineteenth century. The voyage ends in the imaginary British South American colony of Abari, also mentioned in The Checkerboard Caper. |
![]() | ![]() | Hearne, John. The Eye of the Storm. Boston. 1957. Atlantic/Little Brown. 328 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Galdone. The West Indian island of Cayuna is the background for THE EYE OF THE STORM, and bears a marked resemblance to the author’s native Jamaica. It is a lush, tropical island of intense colors and strong contrasts, whose complex society is made up of passionate, ambitious people of mixed racial origins. With skill and dramatic force, John Hearne recreates this people and their island in a compelling story that reveals human insight as well as a sense of inevitable tragedy. Three characters predominate: Rachel Ascom, half Negro, half German, handsome. sensual, greedy for power, who came to Queenshaven with "two pairs of cotton drawers and a pair of Japanese silk stockings," and became the driving force behind the island Newsletter; and her two lovers - Michael Lovelace, the new editor from England, cultivated, sensitive; and Jojo Rygin, a native construction-expert of redoubtable force and magnetism, who has just ended a jail term. Two men could not be more sharply contrasted. As the Caribbean summer blazes into drought and searing heat, this explosive power-sex situation mounts in tension, and at last breaks in a climax as violent and terrible as the hurricane that sweeps up over the sea and provides one of the hair-raising scenes of the novel. This is John Hearne’s third book, published in England as The Faces of Love. John Edgar Colwell Hearne (4 February 1926, Montreal, Canada - 12 December 1994, Stony Hill, Jamaica) was a white Jamaican novelist, journalist, and teacher. Hearne was born in Montreal, Canada, of Jamaican parents and attended Jamaica College in Kingston. After serving in the RAF during the Second World War, he read English and Philosophy at Edinburgh University. He trained as a teacher at London University and from 1950 to 1952 taught in a Jamaican school. He also worked as a journalist. He then travelled in Europe for some years (part of the time with novelist Roger Mais, before returning to Jamaica in 1957. He was subsequently on the staff of the Extra-Mural Department of the University of the West Indies, Mona. Hearne's first published work was the novel Voices under the Window, issued in 1955. Set in Jamaica in the late 1940s or early 1950s, it uses the framing device of a progressive politician's injury and death in a riot to narrate the story of a man who, born into racial and economic privilege, decided to cast his lot with the underprivileged. Hearne followed this with four novels written between 1956 and 1961 -- The Faces of Love, Stranger at the Gate, The Autumn Equinox and Land of the Living—set in the imaginary island of Cayuna which is a fictionalized Jamaica (the map of Cayuna included with the novels bears a remarkable resemblance to Jamaica), and which referred to issues relating to Jamaican life at the time, such as the beginning of the bauxite industry and the Rastafari movement, or to events in nearby territories such as the Cuban Revolution. He also wrote a number of short stories, one of which, 'At the Stelling', set in Guyana, was included in the Independence Anthology of Jamaican Literature. Hearne then turned to the academy and journalism—writing a regular column for the Gleaner newspaper, first under the pseudonym 'Jay Monroe', and later under his own name, and administering the Creative Arts Centre (now the Sir Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts) at the University of the West Indies. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he collaborated with planter and journalist Morris Cargill on a series of three thrillers -- Fever Grass, The Candywine Development, and The Checkerboard Caper—involving an imaginary Jamaican secret service. These were written under the pseudonym 'John Morris'. In 1985 he published his last novel, The Sure Salvation, set on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic in the mid-nineteenth century. The voyage ends in the imaginary British South American colony of Abari, also mentioned in The Checkerboard Caper. |
![]() | ![]() | Hearne, John. The Faces of Love. London. 1957. Faber & Faber. 267 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Charles Mozley Rachel Ascom was the driving force behind The Newsletter. Without her it would never have been anything much; but with her personality-that explosive compound of ambition and ability and sensuality and unscrupulousness-at its centre, it had become the power it undoubtedly was. Everybody in Cayuna knew it. Andrew Fabricus and Oliver Hyde knew it better than most for they worked for her and knew all there was to know-or nearly all-about Rachel and The .Newsletter. What they wondered about in particular was how long it would take Michael Lovelace to find out when he arrived from England-he was the new editor; and what he would do when he did. And what would happen, too, when Jojo Rygin came out of gaol; for his sentence was nearly up and he would expect for more reasons than one-to find Rachel waiting for him. The fuses were lit. John Hearne’s new novel, set in that West Indian island he brought so vividly to life in Stranger at the Gate, is charged with pace and power. Its mounting tensions are masterfully sustained and heightened-and resolved in a tremendous climax of violence and hurricane. It will maintain and enhance the big reputation he has made for himself as a leading figure among the young Caribbean writers who so notably enliven the literary scene today. John Edgar Colwell Hearne (4 February 1926, Montreal, Canada - 12 December 1994, Stony Hill, Jamaica) was a white Jamaican novelist, journalist, and teacher. Hearne was born in Montreal, Canada, of Jamaican parents and attended Jamaica College in Kingston. After serving in the RAF during the Second World War, he read English and Philosophy at Edinburgh University. He trained as a teacher at London University and from 1950 to 1952 taught in a Jamaican school. He also worked as a journalist. He then travelled in Europe for some years (part of the time with novelist Roger Mais, before returning to Jamaica in 1957. He was subsequently on the staff of the Extra-Mural Department of the University of the West Indies, Mona. Hearne's first published work was the novel Voices under the Window, issued in 1955. Set in Jamaica in the late 1940s or early 1950s, it uses the framing device of a progressive politician's injury and death in a riot to narrate the story of a man who, born into racial and economic privilege, decided to cast his lot with the underprivileged. Hearne followed this with four novels written between 1956 and 1961 -- The Faces of Love, Stranger at the Gate, The Autumn Equinox and Land of the Living—set in the imaginary island of Cayuna which is a fictionalized Jamaica (the map of Cayuna included with the novels bears a remarkable resemblance to Jamaica), and which referred to issues relating to Jamaican life at the time, such as the beginning of the bauxite industry and the Rastafari movement, or to events in nearby territories such as the Cuban Revolution. He also wrote a number of short stories, one of which, 'At the Stelling', set in Guyana, was included in the Independence Anthology of Jamaican Literature. Hearne then turned to the academy and journalism—writing a regular column for the Gleaner newspaper, first under the pseudonym 'Jay Monroe', and later under his own name, and administering the Creative Arts Centre (now the Sir Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts) at the University of the West Indies. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he collaborated with planter and journalist Morris Cargill on a series of three thrillers -- Fever Grass, The Candywine Development, and The Checkerboard Caper—involving an imaginary Jamaican secret service. These were written under the pseudonym 'John Morris'. In 1985 he published his last novel, The Sure Salvation, set on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic in the mid-nineteenth century. The voyage ends in the imaginary British South American colony of Abari, also mentioned in The Checkerboard Caper. |
![]() | ![]() | Hearne, John. The Sure Salvation. London. 1981. Faber & Faber. 0571116701. 224 pages. hardcover. Jacket painting by Vic Trevett. Empty sea; empty sky; windless sails. The Sure Salvation, surrounded by the growing, glistening stain of its own filth, is helplessly becalmed on the South Atlantic between Africa and Brazil. The crew can only wait; the cargo, being perishable, can only, in the end, perish. William Hogarth, Captain and owner, before returning to the embittered company of his wife, makes regular, immaculate, copperplate entries in the log. For Reynolds, the Second Officer, the calm provides space to exercise a curious, personal, perverted freedom; Alex Delfosse, Ship's Cook and physician, guards his central secret which will, in the end, reserve for him a fate different from that of the rest. John Hearne's novel grips hypnotically from the first page; and the resolution of its deadlocked opening, the revelation of what is battened down in the ship itself and in the human beings aboard her, creates a narrative of mounting power and tension, an ending compounded equally of pity and terror. More than twenty years ago John Hearne, with a series of novels set in the West Indies, built up a reputation as a writer with natural narrative mastery and inborn ability to bring characters, places and situations to vivid and convincing life. The Sure Salvation is triumphant proof that John Hearne, superb creative novelist, has been restored to us. John Edgar Colwell Hearne (4 February 1926, Montreal, Canada - 12 December 1994, Stony Hill, Jamaica) was a white Jamaican novelist, journalist, and teacher. Hearne was born in Montreal, Canada, of Jamaican parents and attended Jamaica College in Kingston. After serving in the RAF during the Second World War, he read English and Philosophy at Edinburgh University. He trained as a teacher at London University and from 1950 to 1952 taught in a Jamaican school. He also worked as a journalist. He then travelled in Europe for some years (part of the time with novelist Roger Mais, before returning to Jamaica in 1957. He was subsequently on the staff of the Extra-Mural Department of the University of the West Indies, Mona. Hearne's first published work was the novel Voices under the Window, issued in 1955. Set in Jamaica in the late 1940s or early 1950s, it uses the framing device of a progressive politician's injury and death in a riot to narrate the story of a man who, born into racial and economic privilege, decided to cast his lot with the underprivileged. Hearne followed this with four novels written between 1956 and 1961 -- The Faces of Love, Stranger at the Gate, The Autumn Equinox and Land of the Living—set in the imaginary island of Cayuna which is a fictionalized Jamaica (the map of Cayuna included with the novels bears a remarkable resemblance to Jamaica), and which referred to issues relating to Jamaican life at the time, such as the beginning of the bauxite industry and the Rastafari movement, or to events in nearby territories such as the Cuban Revolution. He also wrote a number of short stories, one of which, 'At the Stelling', set in Guyana, was included in the Independence Anthology of Jamaican Literature. Hearne then turned to the academy and journalism—writing a regular column for the Gleaner newspaper, first under the pseudonym 'Jay Monroe', and later under his own name, and administering the Creative Arts Centre (now the Sir Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts) at the University of the West Indies. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he collaborated with planter and journalist Morris Cargill on a series of three thrillers -- Fever Grass, The Candywine Development, and The Checkerboard Caper—involving an imaginary Jamaican secret service. These were written under the pseudonym 'John Morris'. In 1985 he published his last novel, The Sure Salvation, set on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic in the mid-nineteenth century. The voyage ends in the imaginary British South American colony of Abari, also mentioned in The Checkerboard Caper. |
![]() | ![]() | Hearne, John. Voices Under the Window. London. 1955. Faber & Faber. 1st Novel. 163 pages. hardcover. When Mark Lattimer was chopped all they could do - Brysie his mistress and Ted his best friend - was to carry him through an open door and up the stairs and try to keep him alive there until the riot was over. On the island Mark was somebody - a lawyer, a politician, a public man - but he was helpless now, cut off from doctors, ambulances, police. He had been born on the island and grown up there, conscious always that although his skin was white, he didn’t count as a white man. And though the war had taken him first to Canada and then to England, though he had married an English wife and had an English child, in the end he had come back to the island. He had come back to discover his gift for oratory; and Ted Burrow and the People’s Party and Brysie Dean; and to bleed his life away in a hot, squalid, airless room, filled unbearably with the yells of the mob outside. VOICES UNDER THE WINDOW is a first novel by a young West Indian writer at present living and working in London. The sharpness and power of its writing, the speed and concentration of its narrative, produce a story which is vivid and memorable; and full of high promise for the future. John Edgar Colwell Hearne (4 February 1926, Montreal, Canada - 12 December 1994, Stony Hill, Jamaica) was a white Jamaican novelist, journalist, and teacher. Hearne was born in Montreal, Canada, of Jamaican parents and attended Jamaica College in Kingston. After serving in the RAF during the Second World War, he read English and Philosophy at Edinburgh University. He trained as a teacher at London University and from 1950 to 1952 taught in a Jamaican school. He also worked as a journalist. He then travelled in Europe for some years (part of the time with novelist Roger Mais, before returning to Jamaica in 1957. He was subsequently on the staff of the Extra-Mural Department of the University of the West Indies, Mona. Hearne's first published work was the novel Voices under the Window, issued in 1955. Set in Jamaica in the late 1940s or early 1950s, it uses the framing device of a progressive politician's injury and death in a riot to narrate the story of a man who, born into racial and economic privilege, decided to cast his lot with the underprivileged. Hearne followed this with four novels written between 1956 and 1961 -- The Faces of Love, Stranger at the Gate, The Autumn Equinox and Land of the Living—set in the imaginary island of Cayuna which is a fictionalized Jamaica (the map of Cayuna included with the novels bears a remarkable resemblance to Jamaica), and which referred to issues relating to Jamaican life at the time, such as the beginning of the bauxite industry and the Rastafari movement, or to events in nearby territories such as the Cuban Revolution. He also wrote a number of short stories, one of which, 'At the Stelling', set in Guyana, was included in the Independence Anthology of Jamaican Literature. Hearne then turned to the academy and journalism—writing a regular column for the Gleaner newspaper, first under the pseudonym 'Jay Monroe', and later under his own name, and administering the Creative Arts Centre (now the Sir Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts) at the University of the West Indies. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he collaborated with planter and journalist Morris Cargill on a series of three thrillers -- Fever Grass, The Candywine Development, and The Checkerboard Caper—involving an imaginary Jamaican secret service. These were written under the pseudonym 'John Morris'. In 1985 he published his last novel, The Sure Salvation, set on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic in the mid-nineteenth century. The voyage ends in the imaginary British South American colony of Abari, also mentioned in The Checkerboard Caper. |
![]() | ![]() | Heath, Roy A. K. A Man Come Home. London. 1974. Longman. 058278610x. 156 pages. paperback. Heath's first published novel, published in London in 1974. Heath said that his writing was "intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana". His work has been described as "marked by comprehensive social observation, penetrating psychological analysis, and vigorous, picaresque action." A MAN COME HOME is inspired equally by the 'fair- maid' myth of Guyanese folklore and by the realities of George- town 'yard' society. When Bird Foster becomes suddenly and unaccountably rich and disappears for long spells with- out explanation to his woman or his friends, the myth is implicit: once again a 'fair-maid' has fallen in love with a human being and tried to win him with jewels, with money - money, the one way to break out of his confining, one-level Georgetown life. Bird returns to his immensely human woman, and loses all. A MAN COME HOME has a vigour and freshness, a humour and unpatronising sympathy quite of its own. No one has written like this before of the Guyana 'yard', where myth and reality are equally familiar and where a break is the longed-for impossible possibility. Roy A(ubrey) K(elvin) Heath (13 August 1926 - 14 May 2008) was a Guyanese writer, most noted for his ‘Georgetown Trilogy’ of novels (also published in an omnibus volume as THE ARMSTRONG TRILOGY, 1994), consisting of FROM THE HEAT OF THE DAY (1979), ONE GENERATION (1980), and GENETHA (1981). Heath said that his work was ‘intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana’. Educated at Central High School, Georgetown, he worked as a Treasury clerk (1944-51) before leaving Guyana for England in 1951. He attended the University of London (1952-6), earning a B.A. Honours degree in Modern Languages. He also studied law and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1964 (and the Guyana bar in 1973), although he never practiced as a lawyer, pursuing a career since 1959 as a writer and a schoolteacher in London, where he lived until his death at the age of 81. In 1974 his first novel, A MAN COME HOME, was published. This was followed four years later by THE MURDERER (1978), which won the Guardian Fiction Prize that same year and was described by the Observer as ‘mysteriously authentic, and unique as a work of art’. His other published novels are KWAKU; OR, THE MAN WHO COULD NOT KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT (1982), OREALLA (1984), THE SHADOW BRIDE (1988) and THE MINISTRY OF HOPE (1997). Heath also wrote non-fiction, including SHADOWS ROUND THE MOON: CARIBBEAN MEMOIRS (1990), plays - INEZ COMBRAY was produced in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1972, in which year he won the Guyana Theatre Guild Award - and short stories. He was awarded the Guyana Literature Prize in 1989. |
![]() | ![]() | Heath, Roy A. K. From the Heat of the Day. London. 1979. Allison & Busby. 0850313252. 159 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Joanthan Field. From a writer in full command of his material, here is a devastatingly accurate and unforgettable portrait of an ill-starred marriage - the hopeful beginning, the half- hearted compromises, the estrangement that comes of being locked lovelessly together. They both search for solace - she within herself, he in the easy company of drinking friends and local girls. But they find they have grown into each other like the hundred-year-old trees in the back yard, irrevocably entwined Set against the vividly drawn background of Georgetown, Guyana, this remarkable novel (the first of a projected trilogy) shows all the qualities which won the 1978 GUARDIAN Fiction Prize for Roy Heath's last and widely-acclaimed novel The Murderer. Roy A(ubrey) K(elvin) Heath (13 August 1926 - 14 May 2008) was a Guyanese writer, most noted for his ‘Georgetown Trilogy’ of novels (also published in an omnibus volume as THE ARMSTRONG TRILOGY, 1994), consisting of FROM THE HEAT OF THE DAY (1979), ONE GENERATION (1980), and GENETHA (1981). Heath said that his work was ‘intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana’. Educated at Central High School, Georgetown, he worked as a Treasury clerk (1944-51) before leaving Guyana for England in 1951. He attended the University of London (1952-6), earning a B.A. Honours degree in Modern Languages. He also studied law and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1964 (and the Guyana bar in 1973), although he never practiced as a lawyer, pursuing a career since 1959 as a writer and a schoolteacher in London, where he lived until his death at the age of 81. In 1974 his first novel, A MAN COME HOME, was published. This was followed four years later by THE MURDERER (1978), which won the Guardian Fiction Prize that same year and was described by the Observer as ‘mysteriously authentic, and unique as a work of art’. His other published novels are KWAKU; OR, THE MAN WHO COULD NOT KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT (1982), OREALLA (1984), THE SHADOW BRIDE (1988) and THE MINISTRY OF HOPE (1997). Heath also wrote non-fiction, including SHADOWS ROUND THE MOON: CARIBBEAN MEMOIRS (1990), plays - INEZ COMBRAY was produced in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1972, in which year he won the Guyana Theatre Guild Award - and short stories. He was awarded the Guyana Literature Prize in 1989. |
![]() | ![]() | Heath, Roy A. K. From the Heat of the Day. New York. 1993. Persea Books. 0892551755. 159 pages. hardcover. Cover: REM Studio Inc. The publication of Roy Heath's award- winning novel, The Murderer, introduced this distinguished Guyanese writer to the American public. Now here is Heath's tour de force on marital love, From the Heat of the Day. The first book in the acclaimed Armstrong family trilogy, this deft, masterly novel of few pages presents a devastating portrait of a man and a woman tragically entwined. Set in Georgetown, Guyana, the story begins when Sonny Armstrong, from the poorer part of town, comes to court Gladys Davis. The Davis family objects, but Gladys is awed by Sonny's free spirit, attracted by his passion. Sonny is drawn to Gladys by "the phantom of an eventual conquest." With clear and unwavering focus, Heath follows the course of this doomed romance. The couple marry, but eventually become estranged. Then Sonny stops providing even the basic necessities to his family, which now includes a son and a daughter. Yet a powerful force holds the couple together in their tragic union: 'Gladys searched for a reason for this terrible liason, but could not find one. Things were just so. There was a sky and an earth; there was the wind and the sun; and there was marriage." As Gladys grows more and more desperate, Sonny tries to escape the pressures of the family, poverty, and his own failings through his friendship with Doc, a man who has found genuine love with a mistress. In a highly emotional epiphany, he finally comes to understand the woman he has loved and denied. Roy A(ubrey) K(elvin) Heath (13 August 1926 - 14 May 2008) was a Guyanese writer, most noted for his ‘Georgetown Trilogy’ of novels (also published in an omnibus volume as THE ARMSTRONG TRILOGY, 1994), consisting of FROM THE HEAT OF THE DAY (1979), ONE GENERATION (1980), and GENETHA (1981). Heath said that his work was ‘intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana’. Educated at Central High School, Georgetown, he worked as a Treasury clerk (1944-51) before leaving Guyana for England in 1951. He attended the University of London (1952-6), earning a B.A. Honours degree in Modern Languages. He also studied law and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1964 (and the Guyana bar in 1973), although he never practiced as a lawyer, pursuing a career since 1959 as a writer and a schoolteacher in London, where he lived until his death at the age of 81. In 1974 his first novel, A MAN COME HOME, was published. This was followed four years later by THE MURDERER (1978), which won the Guardian Fiction Prize that same year and was described by the Observer as ‘mysteriously authentic, and unique as a work of art’. His other published novels are KWAKU; OR, THE MAN WHO COULD NOT KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT (1982), OREALLA (1984), THE SHADOW BRIDE (1988) and THE MINISTRY OF HOPE (1997). Heath also wrote non-fiction, including SHADOWS ROUND THE MOON: CARIBBEAN MEMOIRS (1990), plays - INEZ COMBRAY was produced in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1972, in which year he won the Guyana Theatre Guild Award - and short stories. He was awarded the Guyana Literature Prize in 1989. |
![]() | ![]() | Heath, Roy A. K. Genetha. London. 1981. Allison & Busby. 0850314100. 186 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Joanthan Field. Tormented by the repressed emotions of her youth, Gentha eventually breaks away from a life of conventional respectability and boredom. She takes up a relationship with a ne'er-do-well called Fingers and realizes that she has "tasted the fruit of depravity and enjoyed it'. But in her efforts to please her lover and keep him, she is tricked into losing much more than his attentions. Destitute and lonely, she faces all the physical and mental symptoms of a life starved of real sustenance, in which she finds that the only pleasures that seem to be offered are those of the flesh.... Roy Heath brilliantly shows a character hounded as much by her own sense of propriety as by the rigid morality and vicious gossip of Georgetown, Guyana. With the story of Genetha, daughter of the ill-starred marriage described in From the Heat of the Day and sister of Rohan who featured in One Generation, he brings his haunting Guyanese trilogy to a powerful ending that would have been unthinkable at its outset. Roy A(ubrey) K(elvin) Heath (13 August 1926 - 14 May 2008) was a Guyanese writer, most noted for his ‘Georgetown Trilogy’ of novels (also published in an omnibus volume as THE ARMSTRONG TRILOGY, 1994), consisting of FROM THE HEAT OF THE DAY (1979), ONE GENERATION (1980), and GENETHA (1981). Heath said that his work was ‘intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana’. Educated at Central High School, Georgetown, he worked as a Treasury clerk (1944-51) before leaving Guyana for England in 1951. He attended the University of London (1952-6), earning a B.A. Honours degree in Modern Languages. He also studied law and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1964 (and the Guyana bar in 1973), although he never practiced as a lawyer, pursuing a career since 1959 as a writer and a schoolteacher in London, where he lived until his death at the age of 81. In 1974 his first novel, A MAN COME HOME, was published. This was followed four years later by THE MURDERER (1978), which won the Guardian Fiction Prize that same year and was described by the Observer as ‘mysteriously authentic, and unique as a work of art’. His other published novels are KWAKU; OR, THE MAN WHO COULD NOT KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT (1982), OREALLA (1984), THE SHADOW BRIDE (1988) and THE MINISTRY OF HOPE (1997). Heath also wrote non-fiction, including SHADOWS ROUND THE MOON: CARIBBEAN MEMOIRS (1990), plays - INEZ COMBRAY was produced in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1972, in which year he won the Guyana Theatre Guild Award - and short stories. He was awarded the Guyana Literature Prize in 1989. |
![]() | ![]() | Heath, Roy A. K. Kwaku Or the Man Who Could Not Keep His Mouth Shut. London. 1982. Allison & Busby. 0850314704. 254 pages. hardcover. KWAKU tells of the outrageous adventures of a unique character, part con-man, part Everyman, part Holy Fool, and is by far the best and funniest novel Roy Heath has yet written. It is a picaresque saga that follows Kwaku from his childhood dreams of a glorious destiny to his search for the ideal wife, the ideal job and the easy life. He pursues his dreams of wealth, happiness and position with a fanaticism that is only defeated by his own magnificent failings. Roy Heath is already acknowledged as an outstanding novelist. But in KWAKU his writing really begins to sing and he reaches new heights. It is brilliantly conceived and constructed - but above all, it is hugely enjoyable Roy A(ubrey) K(elvin) Heath (13 August 1926 - 14 May 2008) was a Guyanese writer, most noted for his ‘Georgetown Trilogy’ of novels (also published in an omnibus volume as THE ARMSTRONG TRILOGY, 1994), consisting of FROM THE HEAT OF THE DAY (1979), ONE GENERATION (1980), and GENETHA (1981). Heath said that his work was ‘intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana’. Educated at Central High School, Georgetown, he worked as a Treasury clerk (1944-51) before leaving Guyana for England in 1951. He attended the University of London (1952-6), earning a B.A. Honours degree in Modern Languages. He also studied law and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1964 (and the Guyana bar in 1973), although he never practiced as a lawyer, pursuing a career since 1959 as a writer and a schoolteacher in London, where he lived until his death at the age of 81. In 1974 his first novel, A MAN COME HOME, was published. This was followed four years later by THE MURDERER (1978), which won the Guardian Fiction Prize that same year and was described by the Observer as ‘mysteriously authentic, and unique as a work of art’. His other published novels are KWAKU; OR, THE MAN WHO COULD NOT KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT (1982), OREALLA (1984), THE SHADOW BRIDE (1988) and THE MINISTRY OF HOPE (1997). Heath also wrote non-fiction, including SHADOWS ROUND THE MOON: CARIBBEAN MEMOIRS (1990), plays - INEZ COMBRAY was produced in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1972, in which year he won the Guyana Theatre Guild Award - and short stories. He was awarded the Guyana Literature Prize in 1989. |
![]() | ![]() | Heath, Roy A. K. One Generation. London. 1981. Allison & Busby. 0850313546. 202 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Joanthan Field. This memorable story of domestic passions and jealousy continues the saga of the family Roy Heath first described in FROM THE HEAT OF THE DAY. Much is changing in the Armstrong household in Georgetown, Guyana. As one generation inexorably gives way to the next, Rohan supplants his father in his sister's attentions. She resents his growing involvement with Indrani, a married East Indian woman, while finding it hard to form satisfactory relationships of her Plagued by feelings of remorse about the past and displeasure at his sister, Rohan leaves home and takes a job up-river, near where Indrani lives with her in-laws. His presence has an unsettling effect on this tightly-knit community where everybody watches everybody else and the threat of scandal is constant. And out of an atmosphere of charged emotion comes an unexpected and horrifying climax. Roy Heath's sharp eye for place and character and his masterly control of language have enabled him to build up this intimate and compelling picture of a society of richly different individuals (which will be further explored in the last volume of this trilogy, GENETHA). His widely-acclaimed novel THE MURDERER won the 1978 Guardian Fiction Prize, and his other work includes short stories and essays published in his native Guyana and a first novel, A MAN COME HOME (1974), which The Times described as "a concise, unsentimental masterpiece". Roy A(ubrey) K(elvin) Heath (13 August 1926 - 14 May 2008) was a Guyanese writer, most noted for his ‘Georgetown Trilogy’ of novels (also published in an omnibus volume as THE ARMSTRONG TRILOGY, 1994), consisting of FROM THE HEAT OF THE DAY (1979), ONE GENERATION (1980), and GENETHA (1981). Heath said that his work was ‘intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana’. Educated at Central High School, Georgetown, he worked as a Treasury clerk (1944-51) before leaving Guyana for England in 1951. He attended the University of London (1952-6), earning a B.A. Honours degree in Modern Languages. He also studied law and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1964 (and the Guyana bar in 1973), although he never practiced as a lawyer, pursuing a career since 1959 as a writer and a schoolteacher in London, where he lived until his death at the age of 81. In 1974 his first novel, A MAN COME HOME, was published. This was followed four years later by THE MURDERER (1978), which won the Guardian Fiction Prize that same year and was described by the Observer as ‘mysteriously authentic, and unique as a work of art’. His other published novels are KWAKU; OR, THE MAN WHO COULD NOT KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT (1982), OREALLA (1984), THE SHADOW BRIDE (1988) and THE MINISTRY OF HOPE (1997). Heath also wrote non-fiction, including SHADOWS ROUND THE MOON: CARIBBEAN MEMOIRS (1990), plays - INEZ COMBRAY was produced in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1972, in which year he won the Guyana Theatre Guild Award - and short stories. He was awarded the Guyana Literature Prize in 1989. |
![]() | ![]() | Heath, Roy A. K. The Murderer. London. 1979. Allison & Busby. 0850312280. 190 pages. hardcover. When both his parents die, Galton Flood, a man raised in Guyana, leaves Georgetown for the townships of Wismar and Mackenzie, where he meets Gemma and encounters multiracial conflicts, disintegrating tenement blocks, and his own paranoia. 'Against the vague mist-enshrouded riverscape of Georgetown, Guyana, a picture of a lost soul emerges that is mysteriously authentic and unique as a work of art' — Stephen Vaughan, The Observer. 'The Murderer is a tense study of the violence set off in Galton Flood, a young man ruined by his unsuccessful struggle against a dominating and fiercely puritanical mother. The background is vividly rendered and Roy Heath has a fine eye for the significant detail ... in the more realistic tradition, Roy Heath promises much' — Martin Seymour-Smith, Financial Times. 'This haunting tale of a mind falling into madness is taut with suspense' — Eddie Woods, Morning Star. 'Galton —weak, unreliable, unloveable, introspective, pitiable — is a character who might have been created by Dostoievsky; and the fact that that comparison comes to mind suggests the strength and validity of Mr Heath's conception of him .. Few weeks bring a novel in which not a single character is a stereotype and the chief character is unique' — Francis King, Spectator. 'A writer who must surely be ranked with the best of the Caribbean school ... a notable study of paranoia, remarkable for its psychological insight and the restraint of its climax . Observation, tolerance, vivid locale, make it difficult to forget the sombre figure haunting the riverside with his ghosts and delusions' — Christopher Wordsworth, The Guardian. Roy A(ubrey) K(elvin) Heath (13 August 1926 - 14 May 2008) was a Guyanese writer, most noted for his ‘Georgetown Trilogy’ of novels (also published in an omnibus volume as THE ARMSTRONG TRILOGY, 1994), consisting of FROM THE HEAT OF THE DAY (1979), ONE GENERATION (1980), and GENETHA (1981). Heath said that his work was ‘intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana’. Educated at Central High School, Georgetown, he worked as a Treasury clerk (1944-51) before leaving Guyana for England in 1951. He attended the University of London (1952-6), earning a B.A. Honours degree in Modern Languages. He also studied law and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1964 (and the Guyana bar in 1973), although he never practiced as a lawyer, pursuing a career since 1959 as a writer and a schoolteacher in London, where he lived until his death at the age of 81. In 1974 his first novel, A MAN COME HOME, was published. This was followed four years later by THE MURDERER (1978), which won the Guardian Fiction Prize that same year and was described by the Observer as ‘mysteriously authentic, and unique as a work of art’. His other published novels are KWAKU; OR, THE MAN WHO COULD NOT KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT (1982), OREALLA (1984), THE SHADOW BRIDE (1988) and THE MINISTRY OF HOPE (1997). Heath also wrote non-fiction, including SHADOWS ROUND THE MOON: CARIBBEAN MEMOIRS (1990), plays - INEZ COMBRAY was produced in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1972, in which year he won the Guyana Theatre Guild Award - and short stories. He was awarded the Guyana Literature Prize in 1989. |
![]() | ![]() | Heath, Roy. Orealla. London. 1984. Allison & Busby. 085031528x. 255 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Mick Keates and Wendy Taylor. Illustration by Michael O’Brien. Human desires, yearnings and mysteries run close to the surface in Orealla, set in the sultry atmosphere of Guyana's capital, Georgetown, where decadence and the promise of excitement flourish among avenues of jacaranda and secret back yards. This is the world of Ben, who is suspended between the poles of two women of contrasting dispositions but is unable to find peace with either. Haunted by a restlessness born of being able and educated yet having to submit to the humiliation of serving a man he does not respect, he glimpses the tantalizing vision of a different way of life through his strange friendship with the aboriginal Indian Carl from Orealla - a village which seems doomed to lose its battle against the advance of an alien civilization. Ben finds his situation increasingly intolerable and his revenge, when it comes, is devastating. But is it revenge on his master and on the world, or on himself? Roy Heath, acknowledged for his skill at portraying human psychology at its most profound, knows his characters on a level where they hardly know themselves, and in this brimming but brilliantly controlled new novel he presents a community of people who respond fervently and with humour to life's ironies and passions. Roy A(ubrey) K(elvin) Heath (13 August 1926 - 14 May 2008) was a Guyanese writer, most noted for his ‘Georgetown Trilogy’ of novels (also published in an omnibus volume as THE ARMSTRONG TRILOGY, 1994), consisting of FROM THE HEAT OF THE DAY (1979), ONE GENERATION (1980), and GENETHA (1981). Heath said that his work was ‘intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana’. He was awarded the Guyana Literature Prize in 1989. |
![]() | ![]() | Heath, Roy. Shadows Round the Moon: Caribbean Memoirs. London. 1990. Collins. 0002155842. 254 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustrations by Poul Webb Roy Heath's novels have established him as not only one of the Caribbean's leading writers, but, in Edward Blishen's words, 'simply one of the most astonishingly good novelists of our time'. Now, in the first volume of his autobiography, Roy describes his early years, whose experiences have supplied a rich basis for much of his fiction. Born in Guyana, when it was still a British colony, into a family whose roots lay far back in the islands of the West Indies, Roy spent his childhood amidst the vibrant culture of pre-war Georgetown. In a glorious panorama of a multicultural society he provides unforgettable portraits of friends and neighbours, and most of all of his family - his widowed mother, struggling to bring up her children; his grandfather, holding sway over a large household; his admired elder brother, Sonny, later to suffer a tragic mental breakdown. Roy describes the ever-changing scenery of his family life, his schooldays and early working years, and draws out the influences that will eventually lead him, in his mid-twenties, to leave Guyana for a new life in Britain. The result, written with the warmth, humour and acute observation that have come to characterize Roy Heath's novels, is a portrayal both of an extended family and a society in transition. Adrift between a failing colonial past and an uncertain future, Heath's Guyana is a memorable compound of brooding landscapes, slowly evolving cultures and social and political restlessness. While its evocation of bygone experience invites comparison with the best of V. S. Naipaul, Roy Heath’s own distinctive voice transforms Shadows Round the Moon inot a classic of its kind. Roy A(ubrey) K(elvin) Heath (13 August 1926 - 14 May 2008) was a Guyanese writer, most noted for his ‘Georgetown Trilogy’ of novels (also published in an omnibus volume as THE ARMSTRONG TRILOGY, 1994), consisting of FROM THE HEAT OF THE DAY (1979), ONE GENERATION (1980), and GENETHA (1981). Heath said that his work was ‘intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana’. Educated at Central High School, Georgetown, he worked as a Treasury clerk (1944-51) before leaving Guyana for England in 1951. He attended the University of London (1952-6), earning a B.A. Honours degree in Modern Languages. He also studied law and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1964 (and the Guyana bar in 1973), although he never practiced as a lawyer, pursuing a career since 1959 as a writer and a schoolteacher in London, where he lived until his death at the age of 81. In 1974 his first novel, A MAN COME HOME, was published. This was followed four years later by THE MURDERER (1978), which won the Guardian Fiction Prize that same year and was described by the Observer as ‘mysteriously authentic, and unique as a work of art’. His other published novels are KWAKU; OR, THE MAN WHO COULD NOT KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT (1982), OREALLA (1984), THE SHADOW BRIDE (1988) and THE MINISTRY OF HOPE (1997). Heath also wrote non-fiction, including SHADOWS ROUND THE MOON: CARIBBEAN MEMOIRS (1990), plays - INEZ COMBRAY was produced in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1972, in which year he won the Guyana Theatre Guild Award - and short stories. He was awarded the Guyana Literature Prize in 1989. |
![]() | ![]() | Heath, Roy. The Ministry of Hope. New York. 1997. Marion Boyars. 0714530158. 320 pages. hardcover. Cover: Susi Mawani Kwaku is back; a small-time chiseller and ineffective healer in a village in Guyana but now down in the dumps: his wife has gone blind, his twin sons brutalize him, he is toppled from his perch as a healer and becomes once again the laughing stock of all and sundry. But fate intervenes, and Kwaku's fortunes are resurrected as he makes his way to Georgetown to become a dealer in 'antique' chamber pots. With a recommendation and some borrowed cash from an old woman whose son has become a government minister, he embarks on an odyssey in search of riches, only to find himself a lowly servant of the corrupt minister who steals his ideas and sends him on demeaning errands designed to further the minister's financial scams, sexual peccadillos and political intrigues. Kwaku now faces the dilemma of going under - the fate of so many who migrate from the country to the town - or adapting his character to suit his urban existence. What distinguishes this novel is the closely observed psychological metamorphosis of Kwaku. Just barely escaping from a murderous gang, he finally succeeds in establishing himself as a respected, wealthy citizen - whilst remaining, of course, his own inimitable, infuriating, brilliantly engaging self. In this bright and comic novel, Roy Heath deals vividly with the social and political conflicts and conundrums facing the nouveaux riches in the third world and the staggeringly poor, emerging into independence and unheard-of prospects. The colourful language of the characters is perfectly captured, and their shenanigans and valour are depicted with wit and compassion. Roy A(ubrey) K(elvin) Heath (13 August 1926 - 14 May 2008) was a Guyanese writer, most noted for his ‘Georgetown Trilogy’ of novels (also published in an omnibus volume as THE ARMSTRONG TRILOGY, 1994), consisting of FROM THE HEAT OF THE DAY (1979), ONE GENERATION (1980), and GENETHA (1981). Heath said that his work was ‘intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana’. He was awarded the Guyana Literature Prize in 1989. |
![]() | ![]() | Heath, Roy. The Shadow Bride. New York. 1996. Persea Books. 0892552131. 428 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Dorothy Wachtenheim. The story begins in the late 1920s with Betta Singh's return from his medical studies in Dublin to Guyana and the opulent chaos of his mother's household. Mrs. Singh, a curiously vulnerable widow and fiercely possessive mother, wears pants and gives orders like a man. She wants her son to stay with her and open a private practice, but Betta is determined to devote his expertise to those who need it most - his own people, the destitute descendants of immigrants from India. He rejects the insulated world of his mother's home and once again leaves her, accepting an appointment as a Government Medical Officer on a sugar plantation run by British expatriates. In the midst of battling both the malaria that is widespread among the workers and the corruption of the plantation manager. Betta marries - a step which further antagonizes his mother, who has now allied herself with the Pujaree, an influential Hindu religious leader. Ultimately, the myriad of family, religious, and racial conflicts escalate, with consequences that are brutal and far-reaching for all. Roy A(ubrey) K(elvin) Heath (13 August 1926 - 14 May 2008) was a Guyanese writer, most noted for his ‘Georgetown Trilogy’ of novels (also published in an omnibus volume as THE ARMSTRONG TRILOGY, 1994), consisting of FROM THE HEAT OF THE DAY (1979), ONE GENERATION (1980), and GENETHA (1981). Heath said that his work was ‘intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana’. Educated at Central High School, Georgetown, he worked as a Treasury clerk (1944-51) before leaving Guyana for England in 1951. He attended the University of London (1952-6), earning a B.A. Honours degree in Modern Languages. He also studied law and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1964 (and the Guyana bar in 1973), although he never practiced as a lawyer, pursuing a career since 1959 as a writer and a schoolteacher in London, where he lived until his death at the age of 81. In 1974 his first novel, A MAN COME HOME, was published. This was followed four years later by THE MURDERER (1978), which won the Guardian Fiction Prize that same year and was described by the Observer as ‘mysteriously authentic, and unique as a work of art’. His other published novels are KWAKU; OR, THE MAN WHO COULD NOT KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT (1982), OREALLA (1984), THE SHADOW BRIDE (1988) and THE MINISTRY OF HOPE (1997). Heath also wrote non-fiction, including SHADOWS ROUND THE MOON: CARIBBEAN MEMOIRS (1990), plays - INEZ COMBRAY was produced in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1972, in which year he won the Guyana Theatre Guild Award - and short stories. He was awarded the Guyana Literature Prize in 1989. |
![]() | ![]() | Heinl, Robert Debs and Heinl, Nancy Gordon. Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People 1492-1971. Boston. 1978. Houghton Mifflin. 0395263050. 785 pages. hardcover. This book is a complete history of Haiti from 1492 to the end of 1995. The first edition was and remains the most complete history of Haiti ever written in English and one of the most complete in any language. This second edition, revised and expanded by Michael Heinl, contains two more chapters as well as updated information to make it a must read for anyone interested in the history of Haiti and its people. Robert Debs Heinl, deceased, and Nancy Gordon Heinl, both writers and historians, lived in Haiti from 1959 to 1963. Robert Heinl was Chief of the U.S. Naval Mission to Haiti until he was declared persona non grata by François Duvalier. He retired from the Marine Corps in 1964 and wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column until his death in 1979. Nancy Gordon Heinl was an independent writer and journalist who wrote extensively on black history and voodoo. Born in London, she came to the United States in 1933. She died in 1997. |
![]() | ![]() | Hendriks, A. L. and Lindo, Cedric (editors). The Independence Anthology of Jamaican Literature. Kingston. 1962. Arts Celebration Committee Of The Ministry Of Development & Welfare Of The Government Of Jamaica. Introduction by Peter Abrahams. 227 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Karl Parboosingh This anthology of literature, published in commemoration of Jamaica’s achievement of political independence on August 6,1962, covers the whole range of Jamaican prose and poetry from the writers of the early 20th century, Tom Redcam and H. G. de Lisser, to the poets, novelists, historians and short story writers of today. There are 12 short stories, 35 poems (from 28 poets), extracts from five published novels and specimens of autobiography, history, folklore and humour. The introduction is contributed by Peter Abrahams, the South African novelist who has now made his home in Jamaica where he is well known as a radio commentator and editor. Nearly all of the material has already appeared in print — some in distinguished papers and magazines - the New Yorker and. the Christian Science Monitor, for example - and some items are very well known to Jamaicans, such as Claude McKay’s famous ‘Flameheart.’ On the other hand there are a few unpublished items, among them some pages from the autobiography of W. Adolphe Roberts which is now in progress. The first and longest story is by John Hearne, the best known and most prolific of the post-war Jamaican novelist. An adventure story of a man who loved shooting as others loved women, it also portrays vividly the clash of two personalities. The other short stories deal with many subjects including Jamaica’s history, village life and legend. Not forgotten, too, are the children for whom some items are specially included. The poetry section is as varied as the short stories, both in style and subject matter. There is the carefully constructed sonnet form of the Poet Laureate of Jamaica, J. E. Clare McFarlane, and the free verse of younger writers, while the historical poems of W. Adolphe Roberts and Philip Sherlock vie wit4h the more personal evocation of Louis Simpson and the descriptive verse of Vivian Virtue. The novels from which extracts are taken present various aspects of Jamaican life - that of a domestic servant in de Lisser’s ‘Susan Proudleigh,’ that of the last century in Vic Reid’s New Day’ or the underworld of western Kingston in Brother Man’ of Roger Mais. Humour, too, is not omitted and Louise Bennett is represented both by a tale of Anancy and by one of her humorous verses. Also in this section is an example of a humorist of a different type, A. E. T. Henry, who used to bring many a laugh to Jamaican lips through a weekly newspaper column some twenty years ago. The variety of Jamaican literature included herein is wide-ranging in subject matter, style and treatment. There is something to suit all tastes. |
![]() | ![]() | Henriques, Anna Ruth. The Book of Mechtilde. New York. 1997. Knopf. 0375400230. Illustrated by Anna Ruth Henriques. 96 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustrations by Anna Ruth Henriques. Jacket design by Abby Weintraub A ravishingly beautiful modern-day illuminated manuscript created by a brilliant young Jamaican artist who weaves together in words and paintings the story of her mother’s life and death. Anna Ruth Henriques began the extraordinary pages that would become THE BOOK OF MECHTILDE at the kitchen table in her grandparents’ house outside Kingston, Jamaica, where she grew up. She was twenty-two years old, and for the next seven years she worked on it as an act of love, to both celebrate and mourn her mother, Sheila Mechtilde Henriques, who had died of breast cancer when Anna was eleven years old. Inspired by texts from the Book of Job, Anna tells her mother’s story - her youth, her love for her husband and their happy marriage, the birth of her daughters, her slow illness, death, and final peace-all in the form of a fable, sometimes in prose, sometimes in poetry. Each scene is illustrated with a painting encircled with calligraphy and set in a gold border of flowers, fruit, or symbolic creatures. Both the story and the paintings are enriched by Anna’s remarkable family heritage-Jewish and Christian, European, African, Chinese, Indian, and Creole-and by her amazing drive to use her enormous artistic gifts to transform loss into a passionate celebration of life. ANNA RUTH HENRIQUES is a U.S.-based jeweler, visual artist, and writer who moves adeptly between each genre. Jamaican-born and raised, Anna has resided in France, Spain, England and japan, each culture contributing to the universality and richness of her work. she completed her BA.at Williams College, and MFA. at the university of California, San Diego. her new jewelry collection focuses on unusual yet highly wearable gemstone combinations as well as finely sculpted organic forms. Anna recently won a jewelry design competition that sent her to India to create a collection for future brilliance, an afghan charity. her paintings are in the permanent collections of new york’s el museo del barrio and the jewish museum, as well as the national gallery of jamaica. she is the author and illustrator of the book of mechtilde (knopf). she played the leading role in artist eleanor antin’s feature-length film, man without a world. anna presently lives in new york city. |
![]() | ![]() | Henry, Paget and Buhle, Paul (editors). C. L. R. James's Caribbean. Durham. 1992. Duke University Press. 082231231x. 288 pages. hardcover. For more than half a century, C. L. R. James (1901–1989)—’the Black Plato,’ as coined by the London Times—has been an internationally renowned revolutionary thinker, writer, and activist. Born in Trinidad, his lifelong work was devoted to understanding and transforming race and class exploitation in his native West Indies, as well as in Britain and the United States. In C. L. R. JAMES’S CARIBBEAN, noted scholars examine the roots of both James’s life and oeuvre in connection with the economic, social, and political environment of the West Indies. Drawing upon James’s observations of his own life as revealed to interviewers and close friends, this volume provides an examination of James’s childhood and early years as colonial literatteur and his massive contribution to West Indian political-cultural understanding. Moving beyond previous biographical interpretations, the contributors here take up the problem of reading James’s texts in light of poststructuralist criticism, the implications of his texts for Marxist discourse, and for problems of Caribbean development. ‘These penetrating studies throw much-needed light both on C. L. R. James and the Caribbean worlds about which he cared so much. . . . Required reading for all who would like to understand James’s varied work.’ - David Barry Gaspar, author of BONDMEN AND REBELS. ‘This volume is a provocative and powerful introduction to the political and literary writings of C. L. R. James, one of the twentieth century’s greatest intellectuals of the left. This creative collection explores new dimensions of James’s thought and is essential reading for those interested in the black intellectual tradition of the Caribbean in literature, politics, and history.’ - Manning Marable, University of Colorado at Boulder. Paget Henry, a native of Antigua, is Associate Professor of Sociology and Afro-American Studies at Brown University. His books include PERIPHERAL CAPITALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN ANTIGUA. Paul Buhle is the author of C. L. R. JAMES: HIS LIFE AND WORK. |
![]() | ![]() | Hercules, Frank. I Want a Black Doll. New York. 1967. Simon & Schuster. 320 pages. hardcover. Frank Hercules’ second book, I WANT A BLACK DOLL, published in 1967, takes on a bleaker tone than his previous novel, WHEN THE HUMMINGBIRD SINGS, although it does retain some comic elements. The novel traces the troubled path and the eventual dissolution into violence of an interracial marriage. When John Lincoln, recently graduated as a doctor, met and married Barbara Wakeley, a beautiful Southern girl in her final year at university, they moved to New York and prepared to face the normal tensions of early married life - but with one great difference: John Lincoln was a Negro. There have been many novels with a racial theme, but I Want a Black Doll is the first to show the social stresses from both blacks and whites to which a mixed marriage is subject - even a marriage between two intelligent, loving, deeply civilized people who believe they are aware of, and can face, humiliating discrimination, embarrassment for one’s own ethnic group or patronage from one’s partner’s. For all its intensity, it is written without bitterness - often, indeed, with warm humour and a keen eye for the ridiculous as Frank Hercules, himself a Trinidadian, shows up the excesses of whites and blacks in a wide range of characters drawn from every social level. But it is in his ability to convey the inmost thoughts and feelings of white men, and above all of a white woman, that he displays to best advantage the insight and imaginative power that are the hallmarks of the born novelist. And in its powerful progression towards a disaster rendered inevitable by the very qualities in John and Barbara that first drew them together, his novel has the fateful air of a Greek tragedy. This is not a pretty book. It IS impassioned; immensely powerful; intensely interesting; grippingly written; frequently brutal; but always fascinating. A fixture of intellectual life for several decades in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem, Frank Hercules was uniquely situated to understand the American racial dilemma. Born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, he arrived in New York as a young man after a turbulent life that had already been touched by the racism of British colonialism. In novels and nonfiction writings that included several widely circulated magazine articles, Hercules scrutinized both Trinidadian and American societies. |
![]() | ![]() | Hercules, Frank. I Want a Black Doll. London. 1967. Collins. 320 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Jenny Williams When John Lincoln, recently graduated as a doctor, met and married Barbara Wakeley, a beautiful Southern girl in her final year at university, they moved to New York and prepared to face the normal tensions of early married life - but with one great difference: John Lincoln was a Negro. There have been many novels with a racial theme, but I Want a Black Doll is the first to show the social stresses from both blacks and whites to which a mixed marriage is subject - even a marriage between two intelligent, loving, deeply civilized people who believe they are aware of, and can face, humiliating discrimination, embarrassment for one’s own ethnic group or patronage from one’s partner’s. For all its intensity, it is written without bitterness - often, indeed, with warm humour and a keen eye for the ridiculous as Frank Hercules, himself a Trinidadian, shows up the excesses of whites and blacks in a wide range of characters drawn from every social level. But it is in his ability to convey the inmost thoughts and feelings of white men, and above all of a white woman, that he displays to best advantage the insight and imaginative power that are the hallmarks of the born novelist. And in its powerful progression towards a disaster rendered inevitable by the very qualities in John and Barbara that first drew them together, his novel has the fateful air of a Greek tragedy. This is not a pretty book. It IS impassioned; immensely powerful; intensely interesting; grippingly written; frequently brutal; but always fascinating. A fixture of intellectual life for several decades in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem, Frank Hercules was uniquely situated to understand the American racial dilemma. Born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, he arrived in New York as a young man after a turbulent life that had already been touched by the racism of British colonialism. In novels and nonfiction writings that included several widely circulated magazine articles, Hercules scrutinized both Trinidadian and American societies. |
![]() | ![]() | Hercules, Frank. On Leaving Paradise. New York. 1980. Harcourt Brace & Jovanovich. 0151699216. 312 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Fred Marcellino This is the dazzling, exuberant, hilarious story of Johnny Sebastian Alexander Caesar Octavian de Paria. Despite the aphrodisiac climate of Trinidad, despite oceans of rum, tons of spices, scores of carnivals, and hordes of ardent young ladies, Johnny is still resolutely a virgin at the age of twenty-one. It is also the story of Aunt Jocasta, a woman of great dignity and Himalayan proportions; Professor Wolfgang von Buffus zu Damnitz, the world’s leading authority on urinometrics and everything else; Joe Caldeira, a Portuguese bartender by occupation, a sweetman in his leisure; and Marcellin Gros-Caucaud, a magnificent African of awesome sexual power. In the town of San Fernando, Trinidad, from a swaying hammock under a graceful palm to the smoky interior of the Black Cat Bar, life is joyous for Johnny and his friends. But not for long. A crime of passion, a failed business venture, a venomous snake, and they are all forced to leave paradise. Their chosen route of escape is a sea voyage to England. On the high seas, too, despite the persistent advances of a radish-faced Englishwoman whose rigidity of spine extends to her upper lip, Johnny still preserves his virginity. The ocean liner docks in transit at Madeira, and by grand design Johnny and his entourage converge upon a whorehouse, where they are presented to the cream of local society: a Catholic prelate, a chief rabbi, the prefect of police, a pimp. Now the action really gets rolling. ON LEAVING PARADISE is an elegantly written fable, a pungent satire of colonialism, a sunlit mockery of manners, and above all a grand celebration of youth and sex, lone, and life. A fixture of intellectual life for several decades in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem, Frank Hercules was uniquely situated to understand the American racial dilemma. Born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, he arrived in New York as a young man after a turbulent life that had already been touched by the racism of British colonialism. In novels and nonfiction writings that included several widely circulated magazine articles, Hercules scrutinized both Trinidadian and American societies. |
![]() | ![]() | Hercules, Frank. Where the Hummingbird Flies. New York. 1961. Harcourt Brace & Company. 212 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Ellen Raskin When Mrs. Napoleon Walker, the wife of a wealthy Negro doctor in Port of Spain, selects guests for her famous parties, she uses only one measuring rod - the color of their skins. When Mervyn Herrick, a brilliant Negro lawyer, contemplates a Trinidad governed by the Trinidadians, he wishes the British would rule forever. When Dr. Ivor Griffiths, the eccentric Welsh physician, thinks of the island’s British population, he wishes them all at the bottom of the sea. And when the Governor’s aide-de-camp, who has been having an affair with the Governor’s wife, tells his superior of the alliance, the old boy secretly relishes the thought of what is in store for his young subordinate. Frank Hercules combines these characters with humor and insight in his highly readable novel. To him Trinidad is its people, and his compassion for their ambitions, shortcomings, and human foibles is evident in every situation he creates. In WHERE THE HUMMINGBIRD FLIES, the West Indian island of Trinidad ceases to be the paradise it is often pictured, and becomes Trinidad as it really is - an island anxious for independence but fearful of cutting itself adrift in what might prove to be not merely an unknown but a stormy sea. FRANK HERCULES was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and educated in London at the University Tutorial College and at the well-known school of law the Middle Temple. From 1946 to 1956 he was a business executive; his full-time occupation now is writing. Mr. Hercules became an American citizen in 1959, and lives in New York City. WHERE THE HUMMINGBIRD FLIES is his first novel. . A fixture of intellectual life for several decades in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem, Frank Hercules was uniquely situated to understand the American racial dilemma. Born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, he arrived in New York as a young man after a turbulent life that had already been touched by the racism of British colonialism. In novels and nonfiction writings that included several widely circulated magazine articles, Hercules scrutinized both Trinidadian and American societies. |
![]() | ![]() | Hiss, Philip Hanson. Netherlands America: The Dutch Territories in the West. New York. 1943. Duell Sloan & Pearce. 64 pages of photos. 225 pages. hardcover. A study of the territories of the Netherlands in the Western Hemisphere from the discovery of the New World to the 1940s. Contents include chapters on Curacao, The Rise of Surinam and The Slave Insurrections, oil refineries, government, effects of war and more. Indexed with tables and photo plates. Philip Hanson Hiss was an architectural designer whose career also included photography, public service and public information. Mr. Hiss had been a chairman of the trustees of New College in Sarasota, Fla., and chairman of the Sarasota school board, in which capacity he supervised the redesigning of the Sarasota schools. He also designed and built homes in Florida, although he was not a trained architect. For a time after World War II, Mr. Hiss was a regional director of the United States Information Agency in the Netherlands. He was the author of ''Bali'' and ''Netherlands America,'' photographic histories for which he contributed both pictures and text. Hiss died on October 24, 1988 after a long illness. He was 78 years old and lived in Monterey, California. |
![]() | ![]() | Hodge, Merle. Crick Crack, Monkey. Portsmouth. 1981. Heinemann. 0435984012. Caribbean Writers Series. 255 pages. paperback. CWS 24. Cover photograph by Armet Francis. The world of CRICK CRACK, MONKEY is a dual one. Tee, the central character, is suspended between the warmth, spontaneity and exuberance of Tantie’s household, into which she and her brother are received when their father emigrates to England, and the formality and pretension of Aunt Beatrice’s world, which Tee is obliged to accept when she wins a scholarship. Tee’s initiation into the negro middle class is an uneasy one: she is confused and disturbed by the discrimination of colour and class that she learns at Aunt Beatrice’s hands and by the attitudes and values that divide her two aunts. The dislocation that Tee feels, the sense of alienation aroused by her discovery of a society marked by its gentility and affectation, the consequent erosion of dignity, early memories of happiness, ultimately Tee’s integration with the factitious world of Aunt Beatrice - these shifting perceptions find no resolution, only acknowledgment that coherence will require a mature revaluation of her experience. Merle Hodge (born 1944) is a Trinidadian novelist and critic. Her 1970 novel Crick Crack, Monkey is a classic of West Indian literature. Merle Hodge was born in 1944, in Curepe, Trinidad, the daughter of an immigration officer. She received both her elementary and high-school education in Trinidad, and as a student of Bishop Anstey High School, she won the Trinidad and Tobago Girls' Island Scholarship in 1962. The scholarship allowed her to attend University College, London, where she pursued studies in French. In 1965 she completed her B.A. Hons. and received a Master of Philosophy degree in 1967, the focus of which concerned the poetry of the French Guyanese writer Léon Damas. Hodge did quite a bit of traveling after obtaining her degree, working as a typist and baby-sitter to make ends meet. She spent much time in France and Denmark but visited many other countries in both Eastern and Western Europe. After returning to Trinidad in the early 1970s, she taught French for a short time at the junior secondary level. She then received a lecturing position in the French Department at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Jamaica. At UWI she also began the pursuit of a Ph.D. in French Caribbean Literature. In 1979 Maurice Bishop became prime minister of Grenada, and Hodge went there to work with the Bishop regime. She was appointed director of the development of curriculum, and it was her job to develop and install a socialist education program. Hodge had to leave Grenada in 1983 because of the execution of Bishop and the resulting U.S. invasion. Hodge is currently working in Women and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. To date, Merle Hodge has written two novels: Crick Crack, Monkey (1970) and The Life of Laetitia, which was published more than two decades later, in 1993. Hodge's first novel, Crick Crack, Monkey, concerns the conflicts and changes a young girl, Tee, faces as she switches from a rural Trinidadian existence with her Aunt Tantie to an urban, anglicized existence with her Aunt Beatrice. With Tee as narrator, Hodge guides the reader through an intensely personal study of the effects of the colonial imposition of various social and cultural values on the Trinidadian female. Tee recounts the various dilemmas in her life in such a way that it is often difficult to separate the voice of the child, experiencing, from the voice of the woman, reminiscing; in this manner, Hodge broadens the scope of the text considerably. Cultural appropriation, when those who are colonized appropriate the culture of the colonizers, is exemplifed in the story of Crick Crack Monkey. The Life of Laetitia (1993), the story of a young Caribbean girl's first year at school away from home, was well received, one review calling it 'a touching, beautifully written coming-of-age story set in Trinidad'. Hodge has also published various essays concerning life in the Caribbean and the life and works of Léon Damas, including a translation of Damas's collection of poetry, Pigments. |
![]() | ![]() | Hodge, Merle. For the Life of Laetitia. New York. 1993. Farrar Straus Giroux. 0374324476. 224 pages. hardcover. Twelve-year-old Lacey is thrilled to be the first in her family to be admitted to secondary school, even though it means leaving her small Caribbean village and moving into town. As the first in her family to go to secondary school, twelve-year-old Lacey struggles with a variety of problems including a cruel teacher and a difficult home life with her father and stepmother. Merle Hodge (born 1944) is a Trinidadian novelist and critic. Her 1970 novel Crick Crack, Monkey is a classic of West Indian literature. Merle Hodge was born in 1944, in Curepe, Trinidad, the daughter of an immigration officer. She received both her elementary and high-school education in Trinidad, and as a student of Bishop Anstey High School, she won the Trinidad and Tobago Girls' Island Scholarship in 1962. The scholarship allowed her to attend University College, London, where she pursued studies in French. In 1965 she completed her B.A. Hons. and received a Master of Philosophy degree in 1967, the focus of which concerned the poetry of the French Guyanese writer Léon Damas. Hodge did quite a bit of traveling after obtaining her degree, working as a typist and baby-sitter to make ends meet. She spent much time in France and Denmark but visited many other countries in both Eastern and Western Europe. After returning to Trinidad in the early 1970s, she taught French for a short time at the junior secondary level. She then received a lecturing position in the French Department at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Jamaica. At UWI she also began the pursuit of a Ph.D. in French Caribbean Literature. In 1979 Maurice Bishop became prime minister of Grenada, and Hodge went there to work with the Bishop regime. She was appointed director of the development of curriculum, and it was her job to develop and install a socialist education program. Hodge had to leave Grenada in 1983 because of the execution of Bishop and the resulting U.S. invasion. Hodge is currently working in Women and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. To date, Merle Hodge has written two novels: Crick Crack, Monkey (1970) and The Life of Laetitia, which was published more than two decades later, in 1993. Hodge's first novel, Crick Crack, Monkey, concerns the conflicts and changes a young girl, Tee, faces as she switches from a rural Trinidadian existence with her Aunt Tantie to an urban, anglicized existence with her Aunt Beatrice. With Tee as narrator, Hodge guides the reader through an intensely personal study of the effects of the colonial imposition of various social and cultural values on the Trinidadian female. Tee recounts the various dilemmas in her life in such a way that it is often difficult to separate the voice of the child, experiencing, from the voice of the woman, reminiscing; in this manner, Hodge broadens the scope of the text considerably. Cultural appropriation, when those who are colonized appropriate the culture of the colonizers, is exemplifed in the story of Crick Crack Monkey. The Life of Laetitia (1993), the story of a young Caribbean girl's first year at school away from home, was well received, one review calling it 'a touching, beautifully written coming-of-age story set in Trinidad'. Hodge has also published various essays concerning life in the Caribbean and the life and works of Léon Damas, including a translation of Damas's collection of poetry, Pigments. |
![]() | ![]() | Holder, Geoffrey (with Tom Harshman). Black Gods, Green Islands: Folk Tales of the Caribbean. Garden City. 1959. Doubleday. Illustrations by Geoffrey Holder. 235 pages. hardcover. Jacket painting by Geoffrey Holder This is a collection of folk tales from the exotic island of Trinidad, woven out of the vivid legends that live in the minds of the island's handsome inhabitants. Witchcraft and curses that spell death hang in the air, with happiness always just a step away from disaster. The distinctions between man, nature, and the animal world blur and recede when a hunter shakes off the evil of the city and glides lithely into the forest, when a boa constrictor comes to the aid of a young married couple, or when a servant girl hears the beckoning call of the sea god. There is about these tales a dream quality - of women in dresses, men in bright shirts and pantaloons, their sudden joys, and their no less sudden griefs. Moving in a rhythm of their own, streaked by the wild logic of pagan lore, these stories of a place in the Caribbean where fact and fancy entwine are enchanting. Geoffrey Lamont Holder (August 1, 1930 – October 5, 2014) was a Trinidadian-American actor, voice actor, dancer, choreographer, singer, director and painter. He was known for his height (6 ft 6 in, 1.98 m), "hearty laugh", and heavily accented bass voice combined with precise diction. He is particularly remembered as the villain Baron Samedi in the 1973 Bond-movie Live and Let Die and for his 7 Up commercials of the 1970s and 80s. |
![]() | ![]() | Hopkinson, Nalo (edited). Whispers From the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction. Montpelier. 2000. Invisible Cities Press. 0967968313. 318 pages. hardcover. Jacket painting by Michel Ange- 'Mermaid and Butterflies'. The lushness of language and the landscape, wild contrasts, and pure storytelling magic abound in this anthology of Caribbean writing. Steeped in the tradition of fabulism, where the irrational and inexplicable coexist with the realities of daily life, the stories in this collection are infused with a vitality and freshness that most writing traditions have long ago lost. From spectral slaving ships to women who shed their skin at night to become owls, stories from writers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Marcia Douglas, Ian MacDonald, and Kamau Brathwaite pulse with rhythms, visions, and the tortured history of this spiritually rich region of the world. NALO HOPKINSON was born on December 20, 1960 in Jamaica and grew up in Guyana, Trinidad, and Canada. The daughter of a poet/playwright and a library technician, she has won the Ontario Arts Council Foundation Award for Emerging Writers, and her most recent book, the award-winning short fiction collection SKIN FOLK, was selected in 2002 for the New York Times Summer Reading List and was one of the New York Times Best Books of the Year. She is also the author of BROWN GIRL IN THE RING and MIDNIGHT ROBBER and editor of MOJO: CONJURE STORIES. Hopkinson lives in Toronto. |
![]() | ![]() | Howes, Barbara (editor). From the Green Antilles. New York. 1966. Macmillan. 368 pages. hardcover. A landmark anthology of contemporary Caribbean literature. Includes selections of short stories, novel excerpts, and poems by such writers as: Derek Walcott, V. S. Naipaul, John Hearne, Daniel Samaroo Joseph, V. S. Reid, Frank Collymore, Roger Mais, Austin Clarke, George Lamming, Karl Sealy, A.N. Forde, Alejandro Carpentier, Aime Cesaire and Samuel Selvon, just to name a few. The book is divided up into an English section, a Dutch section, a French section and a Spanish section. Barbara Howes (May 1, 1914 New York City - February 24, 1996 Bennington, Vermont) was an American poet. She was adopted by well-to-do Massachusetts family, and reared chiefly in Chestnut Hill, where she attended Beaver Country Day School. She graduated from Bennington College in 1937. She worked briefly for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Mississippi, and then edited the literary magazine, Chimera, from 1943 to 1947 and lived in Greenwich Village. In 1947 she married the poet William Jay Smith, and they lived for a time in England and Italy. They had two sons, David Smith, and Gregory. They divorced in the mid-1960s, and she lived in Pownal, Vermont. In 1971, she signed a letter protesting proposed cuts to the School of the Arts, Columbia University. Her work was published in, Atlantic, Chicago Review, New Directions, New Republic, New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, Saturday Review, Southern Review, University of Kansas Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Yale Review. |
![]() | ![]() | Howes, Barbara (editor). From the Green Antilles. London. 1967. Souvenir Press. 368 pahes. hardcover. Jacket design by Brian Payne. A landmark anthology of contemporary Caribbean literature. Includes selections of short stories, novel excerpts, and poems by such writers as: Derek Walcott, V. S. Naipaul, John Hearne, Daniel Samaroo Joseph, V. S. Reid, Frank Collymore, Roger Mais, Austin Clarke, George Lamming, Karl Sealy, A.N. Forde, Alejandro Carpentier, Aime Cesaire and Samuel Selvon, just to name a few. The book is divided up into an English section, a Dutch section, a French section and a Spanish section. Barbara Howes (May 1, 1914 New York City - February 24, 1996 Bennington, Vermont) was an American poet. She was adopted by well-to-do Massachusetts family, and reared chiefly in Chestnut Hill, where she attended Beaver Country Day School. She graduated from Bennington College in 1937. She worked briefly for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Mississippi, and then edited the literary magazine, Chimera, from 1943 to 1947 and lived in Greenwich Village. In 1947 she married the poet William Jay Smith, and they lived for a time in England and Italy. They had two sons, David Smith, and Gregory. They divorced in the mid-1960s, and she lived in Pownal, Vermont. In 1971, she signed a letter protesting proposed cuts to the School of the Arts, Columbia University. Her work was published in, Atlantic, Chicago Review, New Directions, New Republic, New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, Saturday Review, Southern Review, University of Kansas Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Yale Review. |
![]() | ![]() | Hughes, Langston and Bontemps, Arna (editors). The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1949. New York. 1949. Doubleday. 429 pages. Various translators. Poems by: Jean Brierre (Haiti), Roussan Camille (Haiti), Aimé Césaire (Martinique), Leon Damas (French Guiana), Oswald Durand (Haiti), Luc Grimard (Haiti), Louis Morpeau (Haiti), Ignace Nau (Haiti), Charles F. Pressoir (Haiti), Jacques Roumain (Haiti), Emile Roumer (Haiti), Normil Sylvain (Haiti), Philippe Thoby-Marcelin (Haiti), Isaac Toussaint-L'Ouverture (Haiti), Duraciné Vaval (Haiti), Christian Werleigh (Haiti). Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was born in Joplin, Missouri, and grew up in Kansas, Illinois, and Ohio. He moved to New York City when he was 19 years old to attend Columbia University. He was one of the most versatile writers of the artistic movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Though known primarily as a poet, Hughes also wrote plays, essays, novels, and a series of short stories that featured a black Everyman named Jesse B. Semple. His writing is characterized by simplicity and realism and, as he once said, ‘people up today and down tomorrow, working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten.’ POPO AND FIFINA, written in collaboration with fellow poet Arna Bontemps, was his first novel written especially for children. Arna Bontemps (1902-1973) was born in Louisiana and grew up in California. He moved to New York City in 1923, and it was there that he met Langston Hughes and other writers who were leaders of the Harlem Renaissance. Bontemps began his literary career as a poet but also wrote novels and edited anthologies of African-American poetry and folktales. Hughes and Bontemps collaborated on POPO AND FIFINA and also worked together on other novels for young adults and several anthologies, such as POETRY OF THE NEGRO, 1746-1949 and THE BOOK OF NEGRO FOLKLORE. Bontemps is known as one of our major African-American poets, but he is also credited with making black folklore and literature available to the public through his anthologies and through his work as a historian, librarian, and teacher at several American universities. Arnold Rampersad is a professor of English and director of the Program in American Studies at Princeton University. Among his books are THE ART AND IMAGINATION OF W. E. B. DU BOIS and the two-volume THE LIFE OF LANGSTON HUGHES. |
![]() | ![]() | Humfrey, Michael. A Shadow in the Weave. New York. 1987. Overlook Press. 0879512652. 176 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Susan Newman. Illustration by Barbara Bachman This powerful novel, set on a small island in the British Indies, is the story of a man in search of his past and his future, haunted by the shadow of a woman he has never met. Victoria Hulbert was born at the turn of the century on a sprawling landed plantation worked by slaves. After her mother's death in childbirth, she is raised by her devoted older sister before being sent off to a European convent to be educated. Upon returning from a Europe torn by war and bloodshed, she is reunited with her sister for only a short time before she is banished, disappearing from the colonial society in which she was raised and her existence The story opens years later, after yet another European war, when the narrator of this eloquent and exquisitely written novel comes across Victoria's letters among his mother's effects. As clues to her disappearance come to light he becomes obsessed with finding her, returning to San Sebastian to trace the odyssey of her exile and her life. Part mystery and part a simple love story, A SHADOW IN THE WEAVE tells a stirring tale of love and betrayal. As seen through the lives of the natives and their colonizers, and through the love of a man and a woman, the ferocity of men's hatreds and the possibility of redemption and transcendence bring this novel brilliantly to light. Michael Humfrey was born in Grenada and educated in Barbados and England. He lives with his wife on the Norfolk/Suffolk border in England. |
![]() | ![]() | Hutchinson, Lionel. Man From the People. London. 1969. Collins. 1st Novel. 253 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Bernard Brett. ‘Election time in Barbados means money,’ said Old Sam, ‘spending money like you just going into a back room and printing it.’ And as election fever grips the island, he could not be more right. When the leader of the Conservative Party departs from the political scene, the forthcoming election is thrown wide open. In St. Anne’s, Sam Martin, a lifelong Labour man and a much respected local figure, decides to stand for the House of Assembly. Nearby, urged on by his ambitious and attractive wife, the politically inexperienced Piker Green offers his candidacy to the Democrats. The issue appears to be simple: the virtues of honesty versus the sly crafts of ambition. But as the rival campaigns get under way, it becomes all too clear that the many uncommitted voters are none too interested with in principles or politics, only in the depth of each candidate’s pocket. With each vote at a premium, the voter sells to the highest bidder. This humourous and vastly entertaining novel about electioneering in the Caribbean takes a long look at democracy in action. It has all the rowdy vitality of the hustings, the bustle of party meetings, of plot and counter-plot behind the scenes and the shameless wheedling of a community that only too well knows its price. But if this is politics without morality, there is a moral that is as true as democracy is old: that it is not always the best man who wins. Lionel Hutchinson was born in Barbados in 1923 and should have made the fifth consecutive generation of Hutchinsons in the history of his country’s Police Force. Instead, he started life as a newspaper reporter. At the age of nineteen he volunteered for active service with the R. A. F., and after the end of World War II he returned home to his newspaper work. Three years later, he took a job with his country’s Parliament, but still found time to contribute frequently to press, radio and television. Austin Clarke referred to Lionel Hutchinson as ‘ the most underrated Barbadian writer.’ |
![]() | ![]() | Hutchinson, Lionel. One Touch of Nature. London. 1971. Collins. 0002216094. 318 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Eileen Walton. Every community has its own rules and you break them at your peril. That’s was Harriet Jivenot’s problem. She no longer felt she belonged to the free and easy society of Bridgetown’s Lamberts Lane into which she had been born. She wanted to escape to a better life by ridding herself of the brand of the Lane that she so much resented: that of Red-leg, or poor-white Barbadian. The three men in her life each offered a different kind of love, a different escape route. Mike had the glamour of the local hero; Hugh, a business man with a weakness for the bright lights of Bridgetown, offered the temptation of London; only Robert, a quietly determined man, understood that he must wait till Harriet had found her own salvation. When it came, it was more sudden and more dramatic than anyone imagined. This is Lionel Hutchinson’s second novel, and once more it is set in the colourful, exciting life of Barbados. As in the wry comedy of MAN FROM THE PEOPLE, he evokes a sharp portrait of a changing, vibrant society. But with great sympathy and sensitivity he has added a central story whose lesson is universal; a moving study of a young girl’s search for love. Lionel Hutchinson was born in Barbados in 1923 and should have made the fifth consecutive generation of Hutchinsons in the history of his country’s Police Force. Instead, he started life as a newspaper reporter. At the age of nineteen he volunteered for active service with the R. A. F., and after the end of World War II he returned home to his newspaper work. Three years later, he took a job with his country’s Parliament, but still found time to contribute frequently to press, radio and television. Austin Clarke referred to Lionel Hutchinson as ‘ the most underrated Barbadian writer.’ |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. A History of Pan-African Revolt. Washington DC. 1969. Drum and Spear Press. Introduction by Marvin Holloway. 151 pages. paperback. cover design by workshop A historical survey of Black resistance covering revolt in the Pan-African world since the days of the San Domingo Revolution by the author of THE BLACK JACOBINS and BEYOND A BOUNDARY. To the original manuscript which appeared in FACT in 1938, James has added the important events from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. This study includes material on - San Domingo; The Old United States; The Civil War; Revolts in Africa; The Old Colonies; Religious revolts in the New Colonies; The Congo; The Union of South Africa; Marcus Garvey; Negro Movements in recent Years; Epilogue: The History of African Revolt; A Summary of 1939-1969; index. ‘A History of Pan-African Revolt is one of those rare books that continues to strike a chord of urgency, even half a century after it was first published. Time and time again, its lessons have proven to be valuable and relevant for understanding liberation movements in Africa and the diaspora. Each generation who has had the opportunity to read this small book finds new insights, new lessons, new visions for their own age… No piece of literature can substitute for a crystal ball, and only religious fundamentalists believe that a book can provide comprehensive answers to all questions. But if nothing else, A History of Pan-African Revolt leaves us with two incontrovertible facts. First, as long as Black people are denied freedom, humanity and a decent standard of living, they will continue to revolt. Second, unless these revolts involve the ordinary masses and take place on their own terms, they have no hope of succeeding.’ - Robin D.G. Kelley. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. American Civilization. Cambridge. 1993. Blackwell Publishers. 0631189084. Edited & Introduced by Anna Grimshaw and Keith hart. Afterword by Robert A. Hill. 387 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Workhaus Graphics In his study of Herman Melville, ‘Mariners, Renegades and Castaways’ (1976) C.L.R. James wrote: ‘My ultimate aim.is to write a study of American Civilization’. This project, long in gestation, at last sees the light of day in this posthumous publication of what may be seen as the most wide-ranging expression of James’s thought, the link between his mature writings on politics and his semi-autobiographical work, ‘Beyond a Boundary’. In the tradition of de Tocqueville’s ‘Democracy in America’, James addresses the fundamental question of the ‘right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. Ranging across American politics, society and culture, C.L.R. James sets out to integrate his analysis of American society in transition with a commentary on the popular arts of cinema and literature. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. At the Rendezvous of Victory. London. 1984. Allison & Busby. 0850314046. Edited by David Austin. 303 pages. paperback. "C. L. R. James has had an extraordinary life. He has arguably had a greater influence on the underlying thinking of independence movements in the West Indies and Africa than any living man" - Sunday Times. "C. L. R. James is one of the most remarkable writers of our generation. His writings over the past half century, here, in the West Indies, in America or in Africa, reveal the eye and heart of an artist, a humanist, one of this century's most genuine Socialists" - Labour Weekly. "It remains remarkable how far ahead of his time he was on so many issues" - New Society. "C. L.R. James is one of those rare individuals whom history proves right" - Race Today. "The black Plato of our generation" - The Times. "A mine of richness and variety" - The Times Educational Supplement. "C. L. R. James is among the great of the twentieth century" - Time Out. C.L.R. James (1901-1989) was born in Trinidad and was a prominent anti-colonial scholar and cultural critic throughout his life. With Grace Lee and Raya Dunayevskaya, he helped define and popularize the autonomist Marxist tradition in the United States and Canada. David Austin is founder and trustee of the Alfie Roberts Institute, an independent research institute based in Montreal. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Beyond a Boundary. New York. 1984. Pantheon Books. 0394535685. Introduction by Robert Lipstyle. 257 pages. hardcover. Jacket Illustration by Guy Billout. Jacket design by Louise Fili. In ‘the most important sports book of our time’ (Warren Susman), the sport is cricket; the scene, the colonial West Indies; and the commentator, the eloquent and always provocative C.L.R. James, who shows us how, in the rituals of performance and conflict on the field, we are watching not just prowess but politics and psychology at play Part memoir of a boyhood in a black colony (by one of the founding fathers of African nationalism), part passionate celebration of an unexpected and unusual game, BEYOND A BOUNDARY raises, in a warm and witty voice, serious questions about sports and society With his acute political vision always informed by his abiding player’s enthusiasm, James probes the manners, morals, and heroes of cricket-taking in along the way the history of organized athletics, Greek drama, the aesthetics of batting, Karl Marx, and the behavior of American baseball fans. The scenes could be yesterday’s Negro Baseball League, the boxing ring in Capetown, or tomorrow’s Olympics, for this twenty-year-old classic-now in its first American edition-remains a startling and prophetic statement on the issues of race and sport today. C. L. R. JAMES, historian, novelist, cultural and political critic and activist, was born in Tunapuna, near Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1901. The son of a schoolteacher, he attended the island’s major government secondary school where, in the twenties, he became a teacher himself. During those years he also played club cricket and began writing fiction. James went to England in 1932 to help his friend and cricketing opponent, Learie Constantine, with his autobiography, and published in that year his first political book, THE LIFE OF CAPTAIN CIPRIANI, a pioneering argument on behalf of West Indian self-government. He also became cricket correspondent for the Manchester Guardian and, later, the Glasgow Herald. Now one of the last surviving founders of the African nationalist movement, James edited, during the thirties in London, the journal of the International African Service Bureau, the Pan-African organization whose leaders included Jomo Kenyatta. James came to America on a lecture tour in 1938 and stayed fifteen years. He was the first man to argue for an autonomous, Socialist black movement, independent of white-majority parties; while in the States, he took part in wartime sharecroppers’ strikes and was active in the Socialist Workers’ Party. He was interned on Ellis Island in 1952 (where he wrote MARINERS, RENEGADES AND CASTAWAYS, a study of Melville) and was expelled the following year, returning to England. In 1958, James returned for four years to Trinidad to take part in the preparations for colonial emancipation he’d advocated for a quarter century. Since 1962 he has lived in England, with a brief return to the West Indies to cover a cricketing test series in 1965. C. L. R. James’s many works include his famous study of the Haitian revolution, The BLACK JACOBINS (1938); MINTY ALLEY (1936), a novel; the play TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE, in which he and Paul Robeson performed in London in 1936; MODERN POLITICS (1960) and Party POLITICS IN THE WEST INDIES (1961); BEYOND A BOUNDARY (1963); NKRUMAH AND THE GHANA REVOLUTION (1977); and three volumes of selected writings, THE FUTURE IN THE PRESENT, SPHERES OF EXISTENCE, and AT THE RENDEZVOUS OF VICTORY. He continues to write prolifically, contributing to such journals as Radical America, Freedomways, New Society, and New Left Review. C.L.R. James died in London in 1989. ROBERT LIPSYTE was born in New York City. He was a sports reporter and columnist for the New York Times for fifteen years and is currently sports columnist for Charles Kuralt’s ‘Sunday Morning’ on CBS television. His books include NIGGER (the autobiography of Dick Gregory), SPORTSWORLD: AN AMERICAN DREAMLAND, and numerous highly acclaimed works for young adults. . Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Beyond a Boundary. London. 1963. Hutchinson & Company. 256 pages. hardcover. Jacket designed by Peter Chadwick. This is a great nuggetty gold mine of a book, It is written about cricket in the West Indies, sociology, the culture of ancient Greece, aesthetics, the Lancashire League, politics, art, philosophy and W. G. Grace, It begins in the author’s boyhood home in Trinidad, ‘superbly situated’, with a direct view from behind the bowler’s arm, and ends as he sees, in Frank Worrell’s admirable leadership in Australia, the triumph of his long campaign for Worrell’s captaincy. A grandly exciting cricket book, but something much more. There are clear and tender pictures of C, L. R, James’s family, lit with a Dickensian humour and vividness; there are endearing character sketches of the old West Indian cricketers: George John, ‘Piggy’ Piggot, Old Cons, Sir Learie Constantine’s father, and Victor Pascall, Learie’s delightful uncle; and besides these profiles there are masterly full-length portraits of the cricketers he most admired: Wilton St. Hill, George Headley, Learie himself, whom he followed to England, and, of course, W. G. Grace, This is a splendidly written record of the author’s triple love-affair with cricket, West Indian independence (of which he has been a leading protagonist) and the glories of English literature. His immense learning, which he wields as lightly as Worrell wields a bat, is deployed to support his thesis that cricket is an art, akin to those of ancient Greece, which reached the heights with Grace and may yet, with its skills, its elegances and its high ethical code, form the basis of new moral and educational structures. This closely packed narrative and analysis is integrated by the author’s own wide personal experiences, These experiences convince him that it was through English literature and English cricket that he and his people have made their most fruitful and most enduring contact with the essence of English life. C. L. R. JAMES, historian, novelist, cultural and political critic and activist, was born in Tunapuna, near Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1901. The son of a schoolteacher, he attended the island’s major government secondary school where, in the twenties, he became a teacher himself. During those years he also played club cricket and began writing fiction. James went to England in 1932 to help his friend and cricketing opponent, Learie Constantine, with his autobiography, and published in that year his first political book, THE LIFE OF CAPTAIN CIPRIANI, a pioneering argument on behalf of West Indian self-government. He also became cricket correspondent for the Manchester Guardian and, later, the Glasgow Herald. Now one of the last surviving founders of the African nationalist movement, James edited, during the thirties in London, the journal of the International African Service Bureau, the Pan-African organization whose leaders included Jomo Kenyatta. James came to America on a lecture tour in 1938 and stayed fifteen years. He was the first man to argue for an autonomous, Socialist black movement, independent of white-majority parties; while in the States, he took part in wartime sharecroppers’ strikes and was active in the Socialist Workers’ Party. He was interned on Ellis Island in 1952 (where he wrote MARINERS, RENEGADES AND CASTAWAYS, a study of Melville) and was expelled the following year, returning to England. In 1958, James returned for four years to Trinidad to take part in the preparations for colonial emancipation he’d advocated for a quarter century. Since 1962 he has lived in England, with a brief return to the West Indies to cover a cricketing test series in 1965. C. L. R. James’s many works include his famous study of the Haitian revolution, The BLACK JACOBINS (1938); MINTY ALLEY (1936), a novel; the play TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE, in which he and Paul Robeson performed in London in 1936; MODERN POLITICS (1960) and Party POLITICS IN THE WEST INDIES (1961); BEYOND A BOUNDARY (1963); NKRUMAH AND THE GHANA REVOLUTION (1977); and three volumes of selected writings, THE FUTURE IN THE PRESENT, SPHERES OF EXISTENCE, and AT THE RENDEZVOUS OF VICTORY. He continues to write prolifically, contributing to such journals as Radical America, Freedomways, New Society, and New Left Review. C.L.R. James died in London in 1989. . Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. C. L. R. James and Revolutionary Marxism: Selected Writings of C. L. R. James. Atlantic Highlands/New Jersey. 1994. Humanities Press. 0391037862. Edited by Scott McLemee & Paul Le Blanc. 252 pages. hardcover. Designed by Suzanne G. Bennett C. L. R. James (1901-1989). a prominent black Trinidadian intellectual, has been increasingly recognized as a social critic, historian, and cultural commentator of central importance. During the late 1930s and 1940s, James played a key role in the revolutionary socialist current associated with Leon Trotsky. This volume provides an in-depth look at James’s ‘Trotskyist years,’ presenting writings by James on Trotsky’s life and work that are unavailable in other collections. The volume also includes essays by James on the work of Edmund Wilson and Richard Wright, on the impact of European colonialism on Africa, on the interrelationship between U.S. and international labor history, and on African-American history. Substantial essays by the editors, as well as by Paul Buhle, John Bracey, Martin Glaberman, and Charles van Gelderen, contextualize the actual contributions by James himself, which form the heart of the book. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Cricket. London. 1986. Allison & Busby. 0850316774. Edited by Anna Grimshaw. 319 pages. hardcover. For over half a century - from the early 1930s to the present day - C.L.R. James has distinguished himself as a writer on cricket, and to many people his name is synonymous with a fine appreciation of the game. Here, for the first time in one volume, is a comprehensive selection from this aspect of his work - informed first-hand portraits of cricketers through the years, evocative reports of both Test and county matches, perceptive observations about controversies such as the Australian "body-line" tour or the West Indies tour of South Africa, brilliant expositions of the history and international social context of the game, correspondence with other enthusiasts and writers (including John Arlott, V.S. Naipaul, Jack Fingleton), as well as unpublished articles from his personal archives. James has always approached cricket with the same scrupulousness and imagination he has brought to bear on questions of politics, history and culture. The game is a critical component in his total view of the world, and so this collection cannot fail to have a significant place alongside those of his publications already available. It shows the developing range and scope of his thinking about cricket - as played by West Indians, Australians, Pakistanis, the English, or others - and will make lively and engrossing reading even for those who have not yet acquired a passion for what James unequivocally terms an art-form. Each chronological section is preceded by notes which place the articles in the context of James's other work, for concerns in cricket are frequently part of his more general preoccupations. As James himself observed in his classic Beyond a Boundary. "What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?" Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Every Cook Can Govern: A Study of Democracy in Ancient Greece. Detroit. 1956. Correspondence Publishing Company. 22 pages. paperback. GREEK DEMOCRACY - "The vast majority of Greek officials were chosen by a method which amounted to putting names into hat and appointing the ones whose names came out. The average CIO bureaucrat would fall in a fit if it was suggested that any worker selected at random could do the work he is doing. But that was the guiding principle of Greek Democracy. And this is the government under which flourished the greatest civilization the world has ever known. NEGRO AMERICANS – The defense of their full citizenship rights by Negroes is creating a new concept of citizenship and community. When, for months, 50,000 Negroes in Montgomery, Alabama, do not ride buses and overnight organize their own system of transportation, welfare, and political discussion and decision, that is the end of representative democracy." Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. History of Negro Revolt. London. 1938. Fact #18. FACT is a British monograph journal published on the 13th of every month. 98 pages. paperback. A historical survey of Black resistance covering revolt in the Pan-African world since the days of the San Domingo Revolution by the author of THE BLACK JACOBINS and BEYOND A BOUNDARY. This study includes material on - San Domingo; The Old United States; The Civil War; Revolts in Africa; The Old Colonies; Religious revolts in the New Colonies; The Congo; The Union of South Africa; Marcus Garvey; Negro Movements in recent Years (circa 1938). Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In. New York. 1953. C.L.R. James. Self-Published. 204 pages. paperback. Political theorist and cultural critic, novelist and cricket enthusiast, C. L. R. James (1901 - 1989) was a brilliant polymath who has been described by Edward Said as ‘a centrally important 20th-century figure.’ Through such landmark works as THE BLACK JACOBINS, BEYOND A BOUNDARY, and AMERICAN CIVILIZATION, James's thought continues to influence and inspire scholars in a wide variety of fields. ‘There is little doubt,’ wrote novelist Caryl Phillips in The New Republic, ‘that James will come to be regarded as the outstanding Caribbean mind of the twentieth century.’ In his seminal work of literary and cultural criticism, MARINERS, RENEGADES AND CASTAWAYS, James anticipated many of the concerns and ideas that have shaped the contemporary fields of American and Postcolonial Studies, yet this widely influential book has been unavailable in its complete form since its original publication in 1953. A provocative study of Moby Dick in which James challenged the prevailing Americanist interpretation that opposed a ‘totalitarian’ Ahab and a ‘democratic, American’ Ishmael, he offered instead a vision of a factory-like Pequod whose ‘captain of industry’ leads the ‘mariners, renegades and castaways’ of its crew to their doom. In addition to demonstrating how such an interpretation supported the emerging US national security state, James also related the narrative of Moby Dick, and its resonance in American literary and political culture, to his own persecuted position at the height (or the depth) of the Truman/McCarthy era. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. In 1932, he moved to Nelson in Lancashire, England in the hope of furthering his literary career. There he worked for the Manchester Guardian and helped the cricketer Learie Constantine write his autobiography. In 1933, James moved to London. James had begun to campaign for the independence of the West Indies while in Trinidad, and his Life of Captain Cipriani and the pamphlet The Case for West-Indian Self Government were his first important published works, but now he became a leading champion of Pan-African agitation and the Chair of the International African Friends of Abyssinia, formed in 1935 in response to Fascist Italy’s invasion of what is now Ethiopia. He then became a leading figure in the International African Service Bureau, led by his childhood friend George Padmore, to whom he later introduced Kwame Nkrumah. In Britain, he also became a leading Marxist theorist. He had joined the Labour Party, but in the midst of the Great Depression he became a Trotskyist. By 1934, James was a member of an entrist Trotskyist group inside the Independent Labour Party. In this period, amid his frantic political activity, James wrote a play about Toussaint L’Ouverture, which was staged in the West End in 1936 and starred Paul Robeson and Robert Adams. That same year saw the publication in London of James’s only novel, Minty Alley, which he had brought with him in manuscript from Trinidad; it was the first novel to be published by a black Caribbean author in the UK. He also wrote what are perhaps his best-known works of non-fiction: World Revolution (1937), a history of the rise and fall of the Communist International, which was critically praised by Leon Trotsky, and The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938), a widely acclaimed history of the Haitian revolution, which would later be seen as a seminal text in the study of the African diaspora. In 1936, James and his Trotskyist Marxist Group left the Independent Labour Party to form an open party. In 1938, this new group took part in several mergers to form the Revolutionary Socialist League. The RSL was a highly factionalised organisation and when James was invited to tour the United States by the leadership of the Socialist Workers’ Party, then the US section of the Fourth International, in order to facilitate its work among black workers, he was encouraged to leave by one such factional opponent, John Archer, in the hope of removing a rival. James moved to the USA in late 1938, and after a tour sponsored by the SWP stayed on for over twenty years. But by 1940 he had developed severe doubts about Trotsky’s analysis of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers state and left the SWP along with Max Shachtman, who formed the Workers’ Party. Within the WP he formed the Johnson-Forest Tendency with Raya Dunayevskaya (his pseudonym being Johnson and Dunayevskaya’s Forest) and Grace Lee (later Grace Lee Boggs) in order to spread their views within the new party. While within the WP the views of the J-F tendency underwent considerable development and by the end of the Second World War they had definitively rejected Trotsky’s theory of Russia as a degenerated workers state, instead analysing it as being state capitalist. This political evolution was shared by other Trotskyists of their generation, most notably Tony Cliff. Unlike Cliff, they were increasingly looking towards the autonomous movements of oppressed minorities, a theoretical development already visible in James’ thought in his discussions with Leon Trotsky which took place in 1939. An interest in such autonomous struggles came to take centre stage for the tendency. After 1945 the WP saw the prospects for a revolutionary upsurge as receding. The J-F Tendency, by contrast, were more enthused by prospects for mass struggles and came to the conclusion that the SWP, which they considered more proletarian than the WP, thought similarly to themselves about such prospects. Therefore, after a short few months as an independent group when they published a great deal of material for a small group, the J-F tendency joined the SWP in 1947. James would still describe himself as a Leninist, despite his rejection of Lenin’s conception of the vanguard role of the revolutionary party, and argue for socialists to support the emerging black nationalist movements. By 1949, he came to reject the idea of a vanguard party. This led his tendency to leave the Trotskyist movement and rename itself the Correspondence Publishing Committee. In 1955, nearly half the membership of Committee would leave under the leadership of Raya Dunayevskaya to form a separate tendency of Marxist-humanism and found the organization, News and Letters Committees. Whether Raya Dunayevskaya’s faction constituted a majority or minority seems to be a matter of dispute. Historian Kent Worcester claims that Dunayevskaya’s supporters formed a majority of the pre-split Correspondence Publishing Committee but Martin Glaberman has claimed in New Politics that the faction loyal to James had a majority. The Committee split again in 1962 as Grace Lee Boggs and James Boggs, two key activists, left to pursue a more Third Worldist approach. The remaining Johnsonites, including leading member Martin Glaberman reconstituted themselves as Facing Reality, which James advised from Britain until the group dissolved, against James’ advice, in 1970. James’s writings were influential in the development of Autonomist Marxism as a current within Marxist thought, though he himself saw his life’s work as developing the theory and practice of Leninism. In 1953, James was forced to leave the US under threat of deportation for having overstayed his visa by over ten years. In his attempt to remain in the USA, James wrote a study of Herman Melville, Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In, and had copies of the privately published work sent to every member of the Senate. He wrote the book while being detained on Ellis Island. He returned back to England and then, in 1958 returned to Trinidad, where he edited The Nation newspaper for the pro-independence People’s National Movement (PNM) party. He also had become involved again in the Pan-African movement, believing that the Ghana revolution showed that decolonisation was the most important inspiration for international revolutionaries. James also advocated the West Indies Federation, and it was over this that he fell out with the PNM leadership. He returned to Britain, then to the USA in 1968, where he taught at the University of the District of Columbia. Ultimately, he returned to Britain and spent his last years in Brixton, London. In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of books by James were republished or reissued by Allison and Busby, including four volumes of selected writings: The Future In the Present, Spheres of Existence, At the Rendezvous of Victory and Cricket. In 1983, a short British film featuring James in dialogue with the famous historian E. P. Thompson was made. A public library in Hackney, London is named in his honor; in 2005 a reception there to mark its 20th anniversary was attended by his widow, Selma James. C. L. R. James is widely known as a writer on cricket, especially for his autobiographical 1963 book, Beyond a Boundary. This is considered a seminal work of cricket writing, and is often named as the best single book on cricket (or even the best book on any sport) ever written. The book’s key question, which is frequently quoted by modern journalists and essayists, is inspired by Rudyard Kipling and asks: What do they know of cricket who only cricket know? James uses this challenge as the basis for describing cricket in an historical and social context, the strong influence cricket had on his life, and how it meshed with his role in politics and his understanding of issues of class and race. The literary quality of the writing attracts cricketers of all political views. While editor of The Nation, he led the successful campaign in 1960 to have Frank Worrell appointed as the first black captain of the West Indies cricket team.. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In. Hanover. 2001. University Press of New England. 9781584650942. paperback. Political theorist and cultural critic, novelist and cricket enthusiast, C. L. R. James (1901 - 1989) was a brilliant polymath who has been described by Edward Said as ‘a centrally important 20th-century figure.’ Through such landmark works as THE BLACK JACOBINS, BEYOND A BOUNDARY, and AMERICAN CIVILIZATION, James's thought continues to influence and inspire scholars in a wide variety of fields. ‘There is little doubt,’ wrote novelist Caryl Phillips in The New Republic, ‘that James will come to be regarded as the outstanding Caribbean mind of the twentieth century.’ In his seminal work of literary and cultural criticism, MARINERS, RENEGADES AND CASTAWAYS, James anticipated many of the concerns and ideas that have shaped the contemporary fields of American and Postcolonial Studies, yet this widely influential book has been unavailable in its complete form since its original publication in 1953. A provocative study of Moby Dick in which James challenged the prevailing Americanist interpretation that opposed a ‘totalitarian’ Ahab and a ‘democratic, American’ Ishmael, he offered instead a vision of a factory-like Pequod whose ‘captain of industry’ leads the ‘mariners, renegades and castaways’ of its crew to their doom. In addition to demonstrating how such an interpretation supported the emerging US national security state, James also related the narrative of Moby Dick, and its resonance in American literary and political culture, to his own persecuted position at the height (or the depth) of the Truman/McCarthy era. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In. Detroit. 1978. Bewick/Ed. 154 pages. paperback. Cover design by Peter Glaberman Political theorist and cultural critic, novelist and cricket enthusiast, C. L. R. James (1901 - 1989) was a brilliant polymath who has been described by Edward Said as ‘a centrally important 20th-century figure.’ Through such landmark works as THE BLACK JACOBINS, BEYOND A BOUNDARY, and AMERICAN CIVILIZATION, James's thought continues to influence and inspire scholars in a wide variety of fields. ‘There is little doubt,’ wrote novelist Caryl Phillips in The New Republic, ‘that James will come to be regarded as the outstanding Caribbean mind of the twentieth century.’ In his seminal work of literary and cultural criticism, MARINERS, RENEGADES AND CASTAWAYS, James anticipated many of the concerns and ideas that have shaped the contemporary fields of American and Postcolonial Studies, yet this widely influential book has been unavailable in its complete form since its original publication in 1953. A provocative study of Moby Dick in which James challenged the prevailing Americanist interpretation that opposed a ‘totalitarian’ Ahab and a ‘democratic, American’ Ishmael, he offered instead a vision of a factory-like Pequod whose ‘captain of industry’ leads the ‘mariners, renegades and castaways’ of its crew to their doom. In addition to demonstrating how such an interpretation supported the emerging US national security state, James also related the narrative of Moby Dick, and its resonance in American literary and political culture, to his own persecuted position at the height (or the depth) of the Truman/McCarthy era. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Minty Alley. London. 1936. Secker & Warburg. 320 pages. hardcover. MINTY ALLEY is an early classic of modern Caribbean writing in English. It is the only novel written by C. L. R. James and belongs to the ‘Beacon period’ of Caribbean literature in the late 20s and 30s of this century. C. L. R. James promised another novel after MINTY ALLEY, first published in 1936, but that novel never emerged. MINTY ALLEY and James’s short stories establish the compassionate creative imagination that was to illuminate a brilliant social, political and historical analysis of the Caribbean and the world at large. They also underline a special dimension of the spirit behind his creative critical writing. C. L. R. JAMES’s works include THE BLACK JACOBINS, HISTORY OF PAN AFRICAN REVOLT, BEYOND A BOUNDARY, FACING REALITY; PARTY POLITICS IN THE WEST INDIES, MARINERS RENEGADES AND CASTAWAYS, WORLD REVOLUTION, and others. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Minty Alley. London. 1971. New Beacon Books. 0901241075. 244 pages. hardcover. Cover design - photograph by Barry Ferguson of Errol Lloyd's bronze bust of C. L. R. James. MINTY ALLEY is an early classic of modern Caribbean writing in English. It is the only novel written by C. L. R. James and belongs to the ‘Beacon period’ of Caribbean literature in the late 20s and 30s of this century. C. L. R. James promised another novel after MINTY ALLEY, first published in 1936, but that novel never emerged. MINTY ALLEY and James’s short stories establish the compassionate creative imagination that was to illuminate a brilliant social, political and historical analysis of the Caribbean and the world at large. They also underline a special dimension of the spirit behind his creative critical writing. As Kenneth Ramchand states in his Introduction, the present reprint of MINTY ALLEY ‘offers an opportunity to sketch out some of the continuities in the West Indian literary scene, and to introduce a new generation to an important and interesting work by the most distinguished West Indian of our time and his.’ C. L. R. JAMES’s works include THE BLACK JACOBINS, HISTORY OF PAN AFRICAN REVOLT, BEYOND A BOUNDARY, FACING REALITY; PARTY POLITICS IN THE WEST INDIES, MARINERS RENEGADES AND CASTAWAYS, WORLD REVOLUTION, and others. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Minty Alley. Jackson. 1997. University Press of Mississippi. 1578060273. Introduction by Kenneth Ramchand. 244 pages. paperback. There is a strong belief among devotees of C. L. R. James that it is not possible to have full comprehension of Caribbean literary art in English without first reading MINTY ALLEY. Although frequently reprinted in the United Kingdom, MINTY ALLEY at last reaches the United States. Now American readers can learn what much of the rest of the English-speaking world has long known—that before he wrote such masterworks as BLACK JACOBINS,WORLD REVOLUTION, and BEYOND A BOUNDARY C. L. R. James had already made his mark as one of the foremost of West Indian novelists. In this ground-breaking novel, James discerns new forms of society rooted in the oldest of desires and aspirations through the interactions of the characters of Maisie, Haynes, Mrs. Rouse, and Benoit. In the everyday language and unforgettable dialogue James reveals new modes of human relationships. Haynes, a young middle-class lodger at No. 2 Minty Alley, becomes both confidant and judge as he examines the other inhabitants at this address. From his experiences he is made aware of the educated West Indians impoverishing alienation from society’s mainstream. Through Haynes’s vivid narration James reveals the rich cultural life on Minty Alley. Haynes. an outsider among people of lower class, knows his fellow lodgers only as they have revealed themselves to him through their speech and actions, yet each has a mysterious inner life. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Modern Politics. Port-of-Spain. 1960. Political Information Committee. 116 pages. paperback. Book produced from a series of lectures on the subject of modern politics given at the Trinidad public library in its adult education programme. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Notes On Dialectics: Hegel-Marx-Lenin. Westport. 1980. Lawrence Hill & Company. 0882081276. 231 pages. paperback. Notes on Dialectics, probably the key work in the development of C.L.R, James's thinking, was written in 1948, and though its influence has been deeply felt through privately circulated mimeographed editions, this is its first publication in book form, with a new introduction by the author. James aims at making Hegel’s Logic - a thorough study of which Lenin saw as essential for understanding Marx's Capital - 'a part of our marxist thinking today'. Close textual and explanatory reference to the Science of Logic itself, and to Marx's and Lenin's use of 'dialectic', provide a conceptual framework for examining the history of the workers' movement and the Internationals; and James concludes that Trotsky's marxism, that of the Fourth International, was inadequate for the post-war world. This book's central and prophetic concerns - the revolutionary nature of the proletariat, the state and the party - are just as important in the present world crisis as they were when it was first written. 'C.L.R. James is one of those rare individuals whom history proves right. It is more than a misjudgement to think of him as a black professor, as a black historian, or indeed as the premier intellectual product of the West Indies. To think of him as such is to circumscribe and to limit the achievements of one of the marxist thinkers of our time who has kept the thread of the marxist science weaving through the internationalist concerns of a lifetime' - Race Today. 'One of this century's most genuine Socialists' — Labour Weekly. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Special Delivery: The Letters of C. L. R. James To Constance Webb 1939-1948. Oxford. 1996. Blackwell Publishers. 1557866279. 393 pages. hardcover. C. L. R. James's correspondence with Constance Webb, the young American woman who eventually became his wife, began in 1939 and lasted a decade. Passionate, poetic, and wonderfully readable, the letters chart an extraordinary friendship and gripping period in the life of C. L. R. James as a revolutionary activist in America. Beginning with James's first letters to Webb (written whilst visiting Trotsky in Coyoacan, Mexico) and ending with his letters from 'exile' in Nevada, the correspondence is simultaneously an intimate record of a romantic relationship and a profound meditation on politics, art, and American civilization. Whether debating with Richard Wright in New York, lecturing in Los Angeles, or singing arias aboard ship in the Gulf of Mexico, James is always a superb traveling companion: quick to draw historical and political lessons from everyday life, and always able to illuminate experience through art. Something powerful was unlocked by James's experience of America. And at the centre of this experience was his attempt to bridge the gap of race, age, and gender between himself and Constance Webb. Already celebrated while unpublished, these letters form one of the major resources on James's life and thought during his American period. But they also tell a story as intellectually stimulating as it is affecting. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Spheres of Existence: Selected Writings. Westport. 1980. Lawrence Hill & Company. 085031299x. 272 pages. paperback. A new selection of writings by a remarkable scholar and thinker - essays, stories, excerpts from longer works, written between the 1920s and 1970s and including material from all aspects of James's enormously wide range of interests. It is a similar brilliant mixture to his previous selected volume, The Future in the Present, of which the critics wrote: ‘C.L.R. James has had an extraordinary life. Writer, cricketer, cricket-writer, Marxist politician, intellectual strategist of West Indian independence, Pan-Africanist . . . he has arguably had a greater influence on the underlying thinking of independence movements in the West Indies and Africa than any living man.' - Sunday Times. ‘C.L.R. James is one of the most remarkable writers of our generation. He is a scholar, journalist, an historian, a practical politician, a cricketer. Yet he has integrated these activities into a unified life ... His writings over the past century, here, in the West Indies, in America or in Africa, reveal the eye and heart of an artist, a humanist, one of this century's most genuine Socialists.' - Labour Weekly. ‘For anyone who wishes to understand Westindian history, Westindian society and the Westindian's view of the world, this selection is incomparable.’ - Westindian World. ‘ A valuable introduction to the work of a man who took part in the politics of the Caribbean, the United States, England and Africa whilst writing on much more, and becoming involved with personalities as different as Leon Trotsky, Jomo Kenyatta, Neville Cardus and Kwame Nkrumah ... a remarkable range of material.’ - West Africa. ‘An immensely stimulating book. James has long been one of the most influential of West Indian writers, but it remains remarkable how far ahead of his time he was on many issues ... An indispensable book. ' — New Society. ‘C.L.R. James ... has a special place in the history of Third World revolutionary movements ... he combines Caribbean nationalism, Black radicalism, a once Trotskyist blend of revolutionary anti-imperialism, and the European classic tradition in an individual and potent mix ... A mine of richness and variety.’ - The Times Educational Supplement. ‘C.L.R. James is one of those rare individuals whom history proves right.' - Race Today. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. State Capitalism and World Revolution. Chicago. 1986. Charles Kerr. 0882860798. 135 pages. paperback. Written in collaboration with Raya Dunayevskaya & Grace Lee, this is another pioneering critique of Lenin and Trotsky, and reclamation of Marx, from the West Indian scholar and activist. This edition includes the original introduction from Martin Glaberman, a new introduction from Paul Buhle, and one from the author himself. "Two generations ago, CLR James and a small circle of collaborators set forth a revolutionary critique of industrial civilization. Their vision possessed a striking originality. So insular was the political context of their theoretical breakthroughs, however, and so thoroughly did their optimistic expectations for working class activity defy trends away from class and social issues to the so-called 'End Of Ideology', that the documents of the signal effort never reached public view. Happily, times have changed. Readers have discovered much, even after all these years, to challenge Marxist (or any other) orthodoxy. They will never find a more succinct version of James' general conclusions that State Capitalism and World Revolution. In this slim volume, James and his comrades successfully predict the future course of Marxism." [Paul Buhle, from his Introduction] "When one looks back over the last 20 years to those men who were most far-sighted, who first began to tease out the muddle of ideology in our times, who were at the same time Marxists with a hard theoretical basis, and close students of society, humanists with a tremendous response to and understanding of human culture, Comrade James is one of the first one thinks of." [E P Thompson] Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York. 1939. Dial Press. 328 pages. hardcover. In 1789 the French West Indian colony of San Domingo supplied two thirds of the overseas trade of France and was the greatest individual market for the European slave trade. Its whole structure rested on the labor of half a million Negro slaves controlled by a handful of whites. To cow the Negroes into docility necessitated a regime of calculated brutality and terrorism, and it was not unusual for a white master to fill a disobedient slave with gunpowder and blow him up with a match. Rebellious slaves were buried up to the neck in sand and their faces smeared with sugar so that the flies might devour the. Others were flogged with the long cowhide rigoise, often receiving as many as one hundred blows. All that was needed to start an organized rebellion in an atmosphere so full of smouldering hatred was a dynamic leader, and he emerged in the person of Toussaint l’Ouverture. His post as a plantation steward had given him experience in administration and authority, and he had further, by diligent study, taught himself to read and write. Not only was he a commanding personality but he was so strong physically that when he was nearly sixty years old he could still jump on a horse running at full speed and do what he liked with it. With Toussaint at the helm, the revolution quickly took shape, and over a period of time succeeded in completely liberating the enslaved Negroes and driving the whites from their colonial possession. The revolt, the only successful slave uprising in history, saw one man completely transform thousands of trembling slaves into a people able to organize themselves and defeat the most powerful European nations of their day. It is one of the great epics of revolutionary struggle and achievement, and in this book C. L. R. James, one of the foremost of contemporary historians, vividly traces the story of the San Domingo revolution as reflected in the achievements of Toussaint l’Ouverture. A classic and impassioned account of the first revolution in the Third World. This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803, a revolution that began in the wake of the Bastille but became the model for the Third World liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York. 1963. Vintage Books. 0394702425. 426 pages. paperback. V-242. Cover: Loren Eutemy A classic and impassioned account of the first revolution in the Third World. This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803, a revolution that began in the wake of the Bastille but became the model for the Third World liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of master toward slave was commonplace and ingeniously refined. And it is the story of a barely literate slave named Toussaint L’Ouverture, who led the black people of San Domingo in a successful struggle against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces and in the process helped form the first independent nation in the Caribbean. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. The C. L. R. James Reader. Oxford. 1992. Blackwell Publishers. 0631181792. Edited by Anna Grimshaw. 452 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Steve Flemming The C.L.R. James Reader was begun in James’s lifetime. It was during the summer of 1988 that James and the editor, Anna Grimshaw, started to discuss in detail the contents of a volume which would introduce his work to a new generation of readers. They planned to include a number of key writings from his published corpus and a selection of previously unpublished documents, essays and correspondence. In seeking to escape from the mere chronological documentation of James’s life-one of the major problems James had encountered in his attempt to write an autobiography-they agreed that the principle governing the selection of material should be the organic connection between the different pieces. The introduction to the Reader reflects this approach. It is animated by the expansive and yet unifying theme of James’s remarkable life. And it is rooted in an understanding of his distinctive method. A fragment from James’s autobiography serves as a useful illustration: ‘I had been reading from early Aeschylus, Sophocles, Thackeray, Dickens and later Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and a whole list of writers. And I got a conception of human character and the interesting aspects of human personality, and the plain fact of the matter is the middle class people to whom I belonged and among whom I lived were busy trying to shape their lives according to the British idea of behaviour and principles. They were not very interesting. I dare say in time I could have done something with them. But the people who had passion, human energy, anger, violence and generosity were the common people whom I saw around me. They shaped my political outlook and from that time to this day those are the people I have been most concerned with. That’s why I was able to understand Marx very easily, and particularly Lenin who was concerned with them. . . . I didn’t learn everything from Marxism. When I went to Marxism I was already well prepared. . . . Even in my days of fiction I had the instinct which enabled me to grasp the fundamentals of Marxism so easily and then to work at Marxism having the basic elements of a Marxist view-my concern with the common people.’ . . . James’s method was essentially empirical. From boyhood he had meticulously gathered information-through observation, reading, research and conversation. His mastery of the concrete details of particular forms of human activity gave him enormous confidence in his approach to the world. It formed the basis for his exploration of ideas; and throughout his life, moving with ease between the general current of world history and the concrete particulars of everyday life, James was able to capture both the complexity and unity of the modern world. For many years James’s work was poorly circulated. During the 1970s, however, books by James became much more easily available, largely as a result of Margaret Busby’s initiative in the London-based publishing house, Allison and Busby. In the last decade of James’s life most of his full-length works were reprinted; and three volumes of selected writings brought together his articles and essays which had long been buried in obscure publications. The C.L.R. James Reader, while drawing upon these materials, contains much that is new. In particular, it makes available previously unpublished writings from James’s personal archive. A good deal of the work for the Reader was built upon earlier projects associated with the James archive. The collection of papers, originally organised and catalogued by Jim Murray in the early 1980s, formed the basis of the exhibition, C.L.R. James: Man of the People, held in London in 1986. It also yielded many documents for James’s volume, Cricket, published later in the same year. . . The availability of new materials in the James archive has not just made it possible to fill out the picture of James’s remarkable life, to marvel at the sheer productivity of his eighty and more years or to add on a few more labels to the already long list-Pan-Africanist, Marxist, cricket commentator, critic and writer of fiction. What these documents make possible is a new conception of that life’s work itself. The Reader is such an attempt. Its primary purpose is not to offer a representative sample of writings; but to break some of the old categories which fragment and confine James. We now know more about the scope and precision of James’s project. It is, however, the integration of the parts, the weaving of disparate, scattered pieces into a whole, the creation, as James would say, of something new, which will secure and extend the legacy of one of our century’s most outstanding figures. This was the basis of James’s approach to the work of the great figures-artists, writers and revolutionaries-of history. He knew, too, that it was the challenge of his own autobiography. The Reader, like the autobiography, was unfinished at the time of James’s death. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. The Case For West-Indian Self Government. New York. 1967. University Place Bookshop. Originally Published In by Hogarth Press. 32 pages. paperback. The Life of Captain Cipriani (1932) is the earliest full-length work of nonfiction by the Trinidadian writer C. L. R. James, one of the most significant historians and Marxist theorists of the twentieth century. It is partly based on James's interviews with Arthur Andrew Cipriani (1875–1945). As a captain with the British West Indies Regiment during the First World War, Cipriani was greatly impressed by the service of black West Indian troops and appalled at their treatment during and after the war. After his return to the West Indies, he became a Trinidadian political leader and advocate for West Indian self-government. James's book is as much polemic as biography. Written in Trinidad and published in England, it is an early and powerful statement of West Indian nationalism. An excerpt, The Case for West-Indian Self Government, was issued by Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press in 1933. This volume includes the biography, the pamphlet, and a new introduction in which Bridget Brereton considers both texts and the young C. L. R. James in relation to Trinidadian and West Indian intellectual and social history. She discusses how James came to write his biography of Cipriani, how the book was received in the West Indies and Trinidad, and how, throughout his career, James would use biography to explore the dynamics of politics and history. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. The Future in the Present: Selected Writings. Westport. 1977. Lawrence Hill & Company. 0882080784. 271 pages. hardcover. The work of C. L. R. James spans several decades of writing in the West Indies, Europe and the USA. This first volume of selected writings includes essays, stories, excerpt: from longer works, ranging in date from 1929 to the 1970s. Some of the pieces have never been published before, the majority have not previously been easily available, and their subject matter reflects the areas in which James has been deeply involved throughout his life - politics, black studies, history, literature, fine arts, sport. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. The Life of Captain Cipriani, with the pamphlet THE CASE FOR WEST-INDIAN SELF GOVERNMENT. Durham. 2014. Duke University Press. 9780822356516. With a new introduction by Bridget Brereton. 193 pages. paperback. Cover: Photo courtesy of the Trinidad and Togabo Guardian. The Life of Captain Cipriani (1932) is the earliest full-length work of nonfiction by the Trinidadian writer C. L. R. James, one of the most significant historians and Marxist theorists of the twentieth century. It is partly based on James's interviews with Arthur Andrew Cipriani (1875–1945). As a captain with the British West Indies Regiment during the First World War, Cipriani was greatly impressed by the service of black West Indian troops and appalled at their treatment during and after the war. After his return to the West Indies, he became a Trinidadian political leader and advocate for West Indian self-government. James's book is as much polemic as biography. Written in Trinidad and published in England, it is an early and powerful statement of West Indian nationalism. An excerpt, The Case for West-Indian Self Government, was issued by Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press in 1933. This volume includes the biography, the pamphlet, and a new introduction in which Bridget Brereton considers both texts and the young C. L. R. James in relation to Trinidadian and West Indian intellectual and social history. She discusses how James came to write his biography of Cipriani, how the book was received in the West Indies and Trinidad, and how, throughout his career, James would use biography to explore the dynamics of politics and history. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. Christian Høgsbjerg is a historian who lectures at Leeds Metropolitan University. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. The Nobbie Stories For Children & Adults. Lincoln. 2006. University Of Nebraska Press. 080322608x. Edited & Introduced by Constance Webb. Foreword by Anna Grimshaw. 119 pages. hardcover. Jacket photo - C.L.R. James with his son, courtesy of Anna Grimshaw After more than a decade in the United States, the Caribbean writer C. L. R. James ran afoul of McCarthyism in 1953 and was deported. In exile in London, he began to write stories in the form of letters to his four-year-old son ‘Nobbie,’ who remained in the States. Through a distinctive, imaginary, and sometimes absurd cast of characters-Good Boongko, Bad boo-boo-loo, Moby Dick, and Nicholas the worker, among others-these stories explore questions of friendship, conflict, community, ethics, and power in humorous and often ingenious ways; they also stand as a moving testament to a father’s struggle to be a vivid presence in the life of his son despite separation and distance. Attesting to James’s remarkable gifts as a writer and his unusual talent for engaging wide and diverse audiences, these witty and poignant stories, published here for the first time, are not just for James aficionados. Each story is a delight in its own way, making the book irresistible for children and adults alike. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History; a Play in Three Acts. Durham. 2013. Duke University Press. 9780822353140. Edited and introduced by Christian Høgsbjerg. With a foreword by Laurent Dubois. 224 pages. paperback. Cover: The British Library Board, ‘The Sketch’, 25 March 1936, pg 613. In 1934 C. L. R. James, the widely known Trinidadian intellectual, writer, and political activist, wrote the play Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History, which was presumed lost until the rediscovery of a draft copy in 2005. The play's production, performed in 1936 at London's Westminster Theatre with a cast including the American star Paul Robeson, marked the first time black professional actors starred on the British stage in a play written by a black playwright. This edition includes the program, photographs, and reviews from that production, a contextual introduction and editorial notes on the play by Christian Hogsbjerg, and selected essays and letters by James and others. In Toussaint Louverture, James demonstrates the full tragedy and heroism of Louverture by showing how the Haitian revolutionary leader is caught in a dramatic conflict arising from the contradiction between the barbaric realities of New World slavery and the modern ideals of the Enlightenment. In his portrayal of the Haitian Revolution, James aspired to vindicate black accomplishments in the face of racism and to support the struggle for self-government in his native Caribbean. Toussaint Louverture is an indispensable companion work to The Black Jacobins (1938), James's classic account of Haiti's revolutionary struggle for liberation. This edition of Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History includes the program, photographs, and reviews from its 1936 production at London's Westminster Theatre, a contextual introduction and editorial notes on the play by Christian Hogsbjerg, and selected essays and letters by James and others. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. Christian Høgsbjerg is a historian who lectures at Leeds Metropolitan University. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. Wilson Harris-A Philosophical Approach. Trinidad. 1965. University Of The West Indies. Pamphlet. 15 pages. paperback. The text of a lecture given by James at the University of the West Indies in April 1965. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. World Revolution 1917-1936. Atlantic Highlands/New Jersey. 1993. Humanities Press. 0391037900. Introduction by Al Richardson. 446 pages. paperback. A popular history of high quality, WORLD REVOLUTION 1917-1936, first published in 1937, was one of the few contemporary attempts to synthesize the experience of the revolutionary movement after World War I. It continues to hold up well more than half a century after publication, and attests to the depth and breadth that were to become a hallmark of C.L.R. James’s work. Indeed, James’s analysis of the Soviet Union bears an amazing freshness in view of the events of the last few years. Many of James’s short-term predictions have proved surprisingly accurate and, as Al Richardson says in his introduction to this new paperback edition, we can only await the confirmation (or otherwise) of James’s grim prophecy: ‘If the Soviet Union goes down, then Socialism receives a blow which will cripple it for a generation.’ Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. World Revolution 1917-1936: The Rise & Fall of the Communist International. London. 1937. Secker & Warburg. 429 pages. hardcover. A popular history of the rise and fall of the Communist International. First published in 1937, this was one of the few contemporary attempts to synthesize the experience of the revolutionary movement after World War I . . . ‘This book is an introduction to and survey of the revolutionary Socialist movement since the War-the antecedents, foundation and development of the Third International-its collapse as a revolutionary force. The Bolshevik Party, and the Soviet Union which it controls, being the dominating factors in the Third International, are given extensive treatment. The ideas on which the book are based are the fundamental ideas of Marxism. Since 1923 they have been expounded chiefly by Trotsky and a small band of collaborators. Many who sneered or ignored for years are now uncomfortably aware that inside Russia there is something vaguely called ‘Trotskyism,’ which the Soviet authorities, despite the economic successes, discover in the very highest offices in the State and in increasingly wide circles of the population. At the same time in Western Europe, statesmen and publicists, frightened at the steady rise of the revolutionary wave, join with the Stalinist regime in Russia to condemn ‘Trotskyism.’ Mr. Winston Churchill, in the Evening Standard of October 16th, 1936, unleashes a fierce diatribe against the ‘Trotskyists,’ coupled with scarcely veiled approval of the Stalinists, i.e. of the Third International. Governments and national statesmen do pot concern themselves with jesuitical differences between interpretations of Marx and Lenin. The whole future of civilization is involved. The present crisis in world affairs, the growth of Fascism, the Spanish revolution, the inevitable revolution in France, the role of Russia yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, the constant ebb and flow of political parties and movements all over the world, these things must be seen, can only be understood at all, as part of the international revolutionary movement against Capitalism which entered a decisive stage in 1917 with the foundation of the first Workers’ State and, two years later, the organisation of a revolutionary International. Ruhr invasion; the illness and death of Lenin and the quick victory of Stalin over Trotsky in 1923; Chang-Kai-Shek’s northern expedition in 1926, the failure of the Shanghai Commune and the disastrous adventure of the Canton insurrection; the breakdown of the New Economic policy in 1928, the ‘liquidation of the kulak,’ and the capitulation without a blow of the powerful working-class movement of Germany before Hitler; the restoration of private property on the Russian countryside, the Popular Front in France, the murder of Zinoviev and Kamenev, the turning of guns by the Third International on the P.O.U.M. in Spain because it agitates for the Socialist revolution-all these major events of post-war history are one closely-connected whole. Seen in isolation they are a jumble. This book shows their inter-connection. How much the book owes to the writings of Trotsky, the text can only partially show. But even with that great debt, it could never have been written at all but for the material patiently collected and annotated in France, China, America, Germany and Russia. My task has been chiefly one of selection and co-ordination. Yet in so wide and complicated a survey, differences of opinion and emphasis are bound to arise. Therefore while the book owes so much to others as to justify the use of the term ‘we,’ the ultimate responsibility must remain my own.’ - from the author’s preface to the book. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, C. L. R. You Don’t Play With Revolution: The Montreal Lectures of C. L. R. James. Oakland. 2009. AK Press. 9781904859932. Edited by David Austin. 334 pages. paperback. Cover by Chris Wright Revolution is a serious business, and C.L.R. James knew more than most. Our brand-new collection presents eight never-before-published lectures by the celebrated Marxist cultural critic, delivered during his stay in Montreal in 1967 and 1968. Ranging in topic from Marx and Lenin to Shakespeare and Rousseau to Caribbean history and the Haitian Revolution, these lectures demonstrate the staggering breadth and clarity of James' knowledge and interest. Strikingly little information exists today about the period of time James spent working with West Indian intellectuals and students in Canada in the late 1960s, but the research of editor David Austin demonstrates the critical role these encounters played in the development of James' more mature critical theory. Readers just beginning to delve into James work will find this collection accessible and engaging, an ideal introduction to a complex and multi-faceted body of scholarship. Also included are two seminal interviews produced with James during his stay in Canada, selected correspondence from the time period, and an appendix of essays on James' work, which includes the seminal Marty Glaberman essay, "C.L.R. James: The Man and His Work.". You Don't Play With Revolution also includes a preface by Robert A. Hill, co-founder of the C.L.R. James Study Circle and historical advisor to the new James archive at Columbia University, and a lengthy historical introduction by David Austin. C.L.R. James (1901-1989) was born in Trinidad and was a prominent anti-colonial scholar and cultural critic throughout his life. With Grace Lee and Raya Dunayevskaya, he helped define and popularize the autonomist Marxist tradition in the United States and Canada. David Austin is founder and trustee of the Alfie Roberts Institute, an independent research institute based in Montreal. |
![]() | ![]() | [James, C. L. R.] Grimshaw, Anna. C. L. R. James: A Revolutionary Vision For the 20th Century. New York. 1991. C. L. R. James Institute. 0918266300. 44 pages. paperback. The front cover shows C. L. R. James speaking at Trafalgar Square, London, in the 1930s, Photograpger unknown. This pamphlet contains Anna Grimshaw’s Preface and Introduction to a forthcoming book, The C. L. R. James Reader, Which she edited. Anna Grimshaw is Associate Professor in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, Emory University. She is author of Servants of the Buddha and The Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology. |
![]() | ![]() | [James, C. L. R.] Grimshaw, Anna. Popular Democracy and the Creative Imagination: The Writings of C. L. R. James. New York. 1991. C. L. R. James Institute. 0918266289. Published in cooperation by Smyrna Press. 48 pages. paperback. The front cover photo is of a 1940s sculpture of C. L. R. James by Brinka Stern. Popular Democracy and the Creative Imagination: The Writings of C.L.R. James 1950-1963 is the second pamphlet in the series published by the C.L.R. James Institute. The Institute was established in 1984 with James's full support and approval and it is committed to the dissemination of his life's work. Just as James in 1953 wrote Mariners, Renegades and Castaways to publicise his case, his threatened deportation from America, so too the writing of these pamphlets is intended to publicise the case for making his work more widely and easily available. The series will explore the major themes of James's writing, examining particular texts and inviting discussion from anyone interested in the remarkable legacy of this major twentieth century figure. Since James's death in May 1989 it has become increasingly difficult to obtain his books. The few volumes which are in print are almost impossible to find and the bulk of his other titles remain out or print. Furthermore, there is a vast quantity of James's work which has never been published; the most outstanding is, of course, his great work on American civilization - The Struggle for Happiness This pamphlet has drawn attention to some of the documents contained in the C.L.R. James archive which are indispensable for a full evaluation of James's contribution to modern history. A number will appear in the C.L.R. James Reader (edited by Anna Grimshaw, Basil Blackwell 1991); but a complete annotated list of the papers contained in the James archive will be published in a forthcoming pamphlet of the Institute. Anna Grimshaw is Associate Professor in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, Emory University. She is author of Servants of the Buddha and The Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology. |
![]() | ![]() | [James, C. L. R.] Grimshaw, Anna. The C. L. R. James Archive: A Reader's Guide. New York. 1991. C. L. R. James Institute. 0918266297. Published in cooperation by Smyrna Press. Also included is a 19-page insert of a converaation held by Kent Worcester, Jim Murray, and Anna Grimshaw in New York City on April 24, 1991. 108 pages. paperback. Front cover photograph: James as a young man in Trinidad c. 1920. The C.L.R. James Archive: A Reader's Guide is the third in a series of publications from the CLR. James Institute. The Institute was established in 1984 with James's full support and approval; and it is committed to the dissemination of his life's work. Just as James in 1953 wrote Mariners, Renegades and Castaways to publicise his case against threatened deportation from America, so too this series has been issued to publicise the case for making his work more widely and easily available. Since James's death in May 1989 it has become increasingly difficult to obtain his books. The few volumes remaining in print are almost impossible to find; and the bulk of his other titles are out of print. Furthermore, as this catalogue reveals, there is a vast quantity of James's work which has never been published, the most outstanding example being his great study of American civilization, The Struggle for Happiness. Two of the Institute's earlier pamphlets offer a critical appraisal of this and other key unpublished documents — C.L.R. James and The Struggle for Happiness by Anna Grimshaw and Keith Hart (60pp); and Popular Democracy and the Creative Imagination: The Writings of C.L.R. James 1950-1963 by Anna Grimshaw (48pp). The papers described in this third publication of the C.L.R. James Institute have so far not been made available to the public. Readers interested in consulting the James Archive, and in securing its public accessibility, should write to the executors of the C.L.R. James Estate, c/o Benedict Birnberg, 103 Borough High Street, London SE1 1NN. Anna Grimshaw is Associate Professor in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, Emory University. She is author of Servants of the Buddha and The Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology. |
![]() | ![]() | [James, C. L. R.] Johnson, J. R. / Forest, F. / Stone, Ria. The Invading Socialist Society. New York. 1947. Johnson-Forest Tendency. One Of Trotskyite Pamphlets Written In Part by C. L. R. James Under The Name Of J. R. Johnson. 63 pages. paperback. Includes chapters on "Trotsky 1940", "The Historical Role of the Fourth International", "The Communist Parties in Western Europe", "The Character of the Stalinist Parties", "Imperialism Thirty Years After", and some polemics against someone called "Germain". C.L.R James uses the pseudonym J.R. Johnson in this pamphlet and Dunayevskay uses Forest. This pamphlet by the Johnson-Forest Tendency was published in 1947. The Johnson-Forest Tendency was a grouping in the Trotskyist movement which split off from the Socialist Workers Party in 1940 and went with what became the Workers Party. However, inside the Workers Party, the movement found it necessary to clarify its positions, not only against the empirical and eclectic jumps of Max Shachtman; we found it imperative to clarify our positions against those of Trotsky, positions which the Socialist Workers Party was repeating with ritual emphasis. It was in the course of doing this that in 1947 we published The Invading Socialist Society. But precisely our serious attitude to the fundamentals of Marxism led us to leave the happy-go-lucky improvisations of the Workers Party, and in 1948, to return to the Socialist Workers Party. This brief explanation will serve to place the document historically, and also to explain to the reader, the many polemical references to contemporary Marxist wraiths such as Shachtman, Muniz, and one who wrote under the now-forgotten name of Germain. Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony, James attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain before becoming a cricket journalist, and also an author of fiction. He would later work as a school teacher, teaching among others the young Eric Williams. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine. |
![]() | ![]() | James, Kelvin Christopher. Secrets. New York. 1993. Villard. 0679424091. 197 pages. hardcover. In his provocative and striking way, James writes of the disturbing transition from adolescence to adulthood, a passage no less brutal or monumental for having been experienced on a lush tropical island in the Caribbean. In fact, Secrets shows us how deceptive, and how much more dangerous, this splendid paradise - overflowing with brilliantly colored flowers and ripe, detectable fruit - can be for a young girl coming of age. The heroine of Secrets, Uxann, is blessed among her friends: Her father is an overseer, comparatively well off by island standards, and she a gifted student. She is reluctant to recognize the signs that this idyllic childhood is at an end - her own physical maturity, her friends' trysts in secret places, and terrifying omens, including the gabilan, a raptor with blazing eyes, which foretells evil. When the call to consciousness finally comes, the truth is revealed as so powerful that it disrupts Uxann's life forever, destroying all that she has taken for granted. Kelvin Christopher James is the critically-acclaimed author of six novels: People and Peppers, a romance (Harvard Square Editions), Secrets (Villard & Vintage & KDP Indie), Fling with a Demon Lover (HarperCollins & KDP Indie), The Sorcerer's Drum, Web of Freedom, Mooch, the Meek (KDP Indie), and short story collections Jumping Ship and other stories (Villard & KDP Indie), City Lives, Crazy Loves, Backcountry Tales (KDP Indie). He has been the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in Fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. |
![]() | ![]() | James, Marlon. Black Leopard Red Wolf. New York. 2019. Riverhead Books. 9780735220171. 621 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration: Pablo Gerardo Camacho. Jacket design: Helen Yentus. The epic novel from Marlon James, the Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings an African Game of Thrones. In the stunning first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard. As Tracker follows the boy's scent — from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers — he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying? Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both. Marlon James (born 24 November 1970) is a Jamaican writer. He has published three novels: John Crow's Devil (2005), The Book of Night Women (2009), and A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize. Now living in Minneapolis, James teaches literature at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. James was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to parents who were both in the Jamaican police: his mother (who gave him his first prose book, a collection of stories by O. Henry) became a detective and his father (from whom James took a love of Shakespeare and Coleridge) a lawyer. James is a 1991 graduate of the University of the West Indies, where he read Language and Literature. He left Jamaica because he was scared of homophobic violence. He received a master's degree in creative writing from Wilkes University (2006). James has taught English and creative writing at Macalester College since 2007. His first novel, John Crow's Devil – which was rejected 70 times before being accepted for publication – tells the story of a biblical struggle in a remote Jamaican village in 1957. His second novel, The Book of Night Women, is about a slave woman's revolt in a Jamaican plantation in the early 19th century. His most recent novel, 2014's A Brief History of Seven Killings, explores several decades of Jamaican history and political instability through the perspectives of many narrators. It won the fiction category of the 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, having been the first book by a Jamaican author ever to be shortlisted. He is the second Caribbean winner of the prize, following Trinidad-born V. S. Naipaul who won in 1971. James has indicated his next work will be a fantasy novel, titled Black Leopard, Red Wolf. It will be the first in a series. |
![]() | ![]() | James, Marlon. The Book of Night Women. New York. 2009. Riverhead Books. 9781594488573. 418 pages. hardcover. Front jacket painting - Marie-Guihemine Benoist, 'Portrait of a Negress (1799-1800).' The Book of Night Women is a sweeping, startling novel, a true tour de force of both voice and storytelling. It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they-and she-will come to both revere and fear. The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been plotting a slave revolt, and as Lilith comes of age and reveals the extent of her power, they see her as the key to their plans. But when she begins to understand her own feelings and desires and identity, Lilith starts to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman in Jamaica, and risks becoming the conspiracy's weak link. Lilith's story overflows with high drama and heartbreak, and life on the plantation is rife with dangerous secrets, unspoken jealousies, inhuman violence, and very human emotion-between slave and master, between slave and overseer, and among the slaves themselves. Lilith finds herself at the heart of it all. And all of it told in one of the boldest literary voices to grace the page recently-and the secret of that voice is one of the book's most intriguing mysteries. Marlon James (born 24 November 1970) is a Jamaican writer. He has published three novels: John Crow's Devil (2005), The Book of Night Women (2009), and A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize. Now living in Minneapolis, James teaches literature at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. James was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to parents who were both in the Jamaican police: his mother (who gave him his first prose book, a collection of stories by O. Henry) became a detective and his father (from whom James took a love of Shakespeare and Coleridge) a lawyer. James is a 1991 graduate of the University of the West Indies, where he read Language and Literature. He left Jamaica because he was scared of homophobic violence. He received a master's degree in creative writing from Wilkes University (2006). James has taught English and creative writing at Macalester College since 2007. His first novel, John Crow's Devil – which was rejected 70 times before being accepted for publication – tells the story of a biblical struggle in a remote Jamaican village in 1957. His second novel, The Book of Night Women, is about a slave woman's revolt in a Jamaican plantation in the early 19th century. His most recent novel, 2014's A Brief History of Seven Killings, explores several decades of Jamaican history and political instability through the perspectives of many narrators. It won the fiction category of the 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, having been the first book by a Jamaican author ever to be shortlisted. He is the second Caribbean winner of the prize, following Trinidad-born V. S. Naipaul who won in 1971. James has indicated his next work will be a fantasy novel, titled Black Leopard, Red Wolf. It will be the first in a series. |
![]() | ![]() | James, Winston. A Fierce Hatred of Injustice: Claude McKay's Jamaica & His Poetry of Rebellion. London/New York. 2000. Verso. 1859847404. 265 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Clinton Hutton Claude McKay remains one of the most influential intellectuals of the African diaspora. Best remembered for his extraordinary poetry, his achievement in verse has been widely analysed and praised. Yet in the welter of discussion about McKay, little has been said about his early writing in Jamaican. Two collections from the period, SONGS OF JAMAICA and CONSTAB BALLADS, are known about but little known, and his poems for the Jamaican press, most of which have never been anthologized, are even less known, let alone studied. In A FIERCE HATRED OF INJUSTICE, Winston James elegantly redresses this omission. Through a subtle and detailed consideration of McKay’s formative years on the island, James reviews the themes and politics of poetry which McKay began writing at the age of ten. James demonstrates that McKay’s radicalism in exile can not be properly understood without an appreciation of the poets Jamaican political formation. which a study of McKay’s early poetry elucidates. Above all, James focuses on McKay’s pioneering use of Jamaican creole, revealing the way in which this laid a foundation for subsequent work by writers such as Louise Bennett, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Michael Smith. The volume concludes with a comprehensive anthology of McKay’s early poems together with a little-known interview the poet gave in 1911, a comic sketch of Jamaican peasant life which he wrote in 1912, and an autobiographical story McKay wrote about his experience in the Kingston police force. Winston James, who grew up in Jamaica and Britain, earned his doctorate at the London School of Economics and teaches History at Columbia University. His previous publications include INSIDE BABYLON: THE CARIBBEAN DIASPORA IN BRITAIN (Verso 1993), edited with Clive Harris. |
![]() | ![]() | James, Winston. Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America. New York. 1998. Verso. 1859849997. 406 pages. hardcover. Cover photograph: African Legions of the Universal Negro Improvement Association on parade in New York City, c.1921 (courtesy of the Estate of Amy Ashwood Garvey). Jacket design by Alan Hill. Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, Richard B. Moore, Amy Jacques Garvey, Cyril Briggs, Claude McKay, Claudia Jones, C.L.R. James, Stokely Carmichael - the roster of immigrants from theh Caribbean who have made a profound impact on the development of radical politics in the United States is extensive. In this magisterial and lavishly illustrated work, Winston James focuses on the twentieth century’s first waves of migrants from the Caribbean and their contribution to political dissidence in America. Examining how the characteristics of the societies they left shaped their perceptions of the land to which they traveled, James draws sharp distinctions between Hispanic, Anglophone, and other non-Hispanic arrivals. He explores the interconnections between the Cuban independence struggle, Puerto Rican nationalism, Afro-American feminism, and black communism in the first turbulent decades of the twentieth century. He also provides fascinating insights into the peculiarities of Puerto Rican radicalism’s impact in New York City and recounts the remarkable story of Afro-Cuban radicalism in Florida. Virgin Islander Hubert Harrison, whom A. Philip Randolph dubbed ‘the father of Harlem radicalism,’ is rescued from the historical shadows by James’s analysis of his pioneering contribution to Afro-America’s radical tradition. In addition to a subtle re-examination of Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association - including the exertions and contributions of its female members - James provides the most detailed exploration so far undertaken of Cyril Briggs and his little-known but important African Blood Brotherhood. This diligently researched, wide-ranging and sophisticated book will be welcomed by all those interested in the Caribbean and its émigrés, the Afro-American current within America’s radical tradition, and the history, politics, and culture of the African diaspora. Winston James, who grew up in Jamaica and Britain, earned his doctorate at the London School of Economics and teaches History at Columbia University. His previous publications include INSIDE BABYLON: THE CARIBBEAN DIASPORA IN BRITAIN (Verso 1993), edited with Clive Harris. |
![]() | ![]() | Johnson, Linton Kwesi. Dread Beat and Blood. London. 1980. Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications. 71 pages. paperback. Dread Beat and Blood is perhaps, the most important commentary on the condition of Black people in British society which any of our poets have achieved so far. Its importance lies in the fact that the poems speak directly to the people through a medium which does not falsify the experiences they wish to convey: experiences which have meaning for every Black person in Britain and which illustrate the impact of the frustration and pain felt iii our community today. No amount of comment by journalists or sociologists could speak of our experience quite as these poems do. Andrew Salkey writes in his introduction to the poems: ‘Linton’s poetry is one with Linton’s own experience as a man and as a poet in struggle. No editing gesture need intervene the unity of the two. He grants no concessions. His is a whole world, where to stay dead centre in ghetto suffering and say the following, taken from ‘To Show It So’, is to say it to those who share and understand a common experience of oppression and the matching language of pain, knowing implicitly that those who feel it deep down will also recognise it, and require no glossary or explanatory notes to do so. Linton Kwesi Johnson is Britain's most influential black poet. The author of four previous collections of poetry and numerous record albums, he is known world-wide for his fusion of lyrical verse and reggae (dub). |
![]() | ![]() | Johnson, Linton Kwesi. Inglan Is a Bitch. London. 1980. Race Today Publications. 0950349828. 31 pages. paperback. Linton Kwesi Johnson was born in August 1952 in Chapleton, a small town in the rural parish of Clarendon in Jamaica. He attended Miss Emily’s private school and later Chapleton and Stacyville All Age schools. He left Jamaica in November 1963 to join his mother who had emigrated to England in 1961. Between 1963 and 1970, Linton attended the Tulse Hill Comprehensive School in Brixton graduating with six O’levels. He worked as an accounts clerk and a clerical officer in the Treasury and the Greater London Council while successfully studying for 2 A’ levels. In 1973, he entered Goldsmith’s College where he read for the Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology and after a period of unemployment, he worked as an assembly worker at Twinlock’s in. Croydon. In January 1977, Linton was awarded the Cecil Day Lewis Fellowship as a writer in residence in the Borough of Lambeth and then to the Keskidee Arts Centre as a Library Resources and Education officer. Linton Kwesi Johnson has woven his political and artistic pursuits into the disciplines of waged work and the education industry. On leaving the Tulse Hill Comprehensive School, he joined the Black Panther Movement, a mass organisation of young blacks mobilised to pursue the liberation of blacks from colonial oppression here in Brixton. Within the Black Panther Movement, he, along with others, organized a poetry workshop and later developed his work with a group of poets and drummers called Rasta Love. His work was first published in the journal ‘Race Today’ in 1973 and one year later Race Today published his first book of poems, ‘The Voices of the Living and the Dead’. Bogle L’Ouverture published his second volume of poems, ‘Dread Beat and Blood’ in 1975. A film of the same title, financed by the Arts Council of Great Britain, documented a. poet in the making and was screened by the B.B.C. at peak viewing time. Linton, the recording artist, appeared on the Virgin label in 1978 under the title ‘Dread Beat and Blood’. Then followed ‘Forces of Victory’ in 1979 and ‘Bass Culture’ in 1980 all on the Island Label. . . Linton Kwesi Johnson is Britain's most influential black poet. The author of four previous collections of poetry and numerous record albums, he is known world-wide for his fusion of lyrical verse and reggae (dub). |
![]() | ![]() | Johnson, Linton Kwesi. Mi Revalueshanary Fren. Keene, NY. 2006. Ausable Press. 9781931337298. 114 pages. paperback. Cover design by Rebecca Soderholm ‘In 2002 Linton Kwesi Johnson became the second living and the first black poet to have his selected poems published in England in the Penguin Classics series. He is Jamaican by birth, and though he has resided for most of his adult life in England, where he took a university degree in sociology, he writes in Jamaican Creole. Not a dialect, not strictly a ‘patois,’ either, and not a mere post-colonial version of Standard English, Jamaican Creole is a language created out of hard necessity by African slaves from 17th century British English and West African, mostly Ashanti, language groups, with a lexical admixture from the Caribe and Arawak natives of the island. It is a powerfully expressive, flexible and, not surprisingly, musical vernacular, sustained and elaborated upon for over four hundred years by the descendants of those slaves, including those who, like LKJ, have migrated out of Jamaica in the second great diaspora for England, Canada, and the United States. Fortunately, its grammar and orthography, like that of pre-18th century British English, have never been rigidly formalized or fixed by an academy of notables or any authoritative dictionary. It is, therefore, a living, organically evolving language, intimately connected to the lived experience of its speakers.’ -from the Introduction by Russell Banks. CONTAINS FULL-LENGTH CD OF JOHNSON READING. Linton Kwesi Johnson is Britain's most influential black poet. The author of four previous collections of poetry and numerous record albums, he is known world-wide for his fusion of lyrical verse and reggae (dub). |
![]() | ![]() | Johnson, Linton Kwesi. Tings An Times: Selected Poems. Newcastle Upon Tyne. 1991. Bloodaxe Books. 1852241683. 64 pages. paperback. Poems about racism, race riots, radical politics, police oppression, and black youth by a popular Jamaican-born but British-based reggae artist. Linton Kwesi Johnson is Britain's most influential black poet. The author of four previous collections of poetry and numerous record albums, he is known world-wide for his fusion of lyrical verse and reggae (dub). |
![]() | ![]() | Johnson, Sara E. The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Imagination in the Revolutionary Americas. Berkeley. 2012. University of California Press. 9780520271128. flashPoints, 12. 6 x 9. 29 b/w photos. 312 pages. paperback. The Fear of French Negroes is an interdisciplinary study that explores how people of African descent responded to the collapse and reconsolidation of colonial life in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1845). Using visual culture, popular music and dance, periodical literature, historical memoirs, and state papers, Sara E. Johnson examines the migration of people, ideas, and practices across imperial boundaries. Building on previous scholarship on black internationalism, she traces expressions of both aesthetic and experiential transcolonial black politics across the Caribbean world, including Hispaniola, Louisiana and the Gulf South, Jamaica, and Cuba. Johnson examines the lives and work of figures as diverse as armed black soldiers and privateers, female performers, and newspaper editors to argue for the existence of competing inter-Americanisms as she uncovers the struggle for unity amidst the realities of class, territorial, and linguistic diversity. These stories move beyond a consideration of the well-documented anxiety insurgent blacks occasioned in slaveholding systems to refocus attention on the wide variety of strategic alliances they generated in their quests for freedom, equality and profit. Sara E. Johnson is Associate Professor of Literature at UC San Diego. Sara Johnson received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University and her B.A. in Comparative Literature and African American Studies from Yale University. She is currently working on a book documenting the work of Moreau de Saint-Méry, a late eighteenth-century Caribbean intellectual. She has performed extensive research abroad, living in Senegal, Cuba, Haiti and Martinique. Recent fellowships include those from the Ford Foundation, the University of California President’s Postdoctoral Program, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the Hellman Fund. Her book The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary Americas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012) is an inter-disciplinary study that explores how people of African descent responded to the collapse and reconsolidation of colonial life in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1845). Using visual culture, popular music and dance, periodical literature, historical memoirs, and state papers, the book traces expressions of transcolonial black politics, both aesthetic and experiential, in places including Hispaniola, Louisiana, Jamaica, and Cuba. It was published by the University of California Press as part of the Modern Language initiative, a partnership between the Modern Language Association, the Mellon Foundation, and several university presses. Johnson is the co-editor of Kaiso! Writings By and About Katherine Dunham (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, Studies in Dance History Series, 2006) and Una ventana a Cuba y los Estudios cubanos (San Juan: Ediciones Callejon, Spring 2010). Kaiso! was named one of the top ten arts books of 2006. |
![]() | ![]() | Jones, Edward Allen (editor and translator). Voices of Négritude: The Expression of Black Experience in the Poetry of Senghor, Césaire, and Damas. Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. 1971. Judson Press. 0818005293. Bibliography. 125 pages. Jacket Design by Janie Russell. Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, and Léon Damas are the major subjects of the collection of the poetry of Négritude as it developed among Afro-French writers. Négritude is defined here as the totality of black experience, for example, Césaire's realization that he could not deny his relationship with even the humblest black man because they were bound in a common experience. The poetry contained in this book is part of the rootage of more recent expressions of black awareness. These poets wrote out of their own experience, shaping the French idiom to their own purposes. Edward A. Jones has written a brief introduction to the work of each of these three poets and provided an English translation to accompany some of their major works in French. Also included in the. book are the works of several lesser poets of the Négritude school. Edward A. Jones is Professor of French and Chairman of the Department of Modern Foreign Languages at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. A native of Mississippi, he took his undergraduate work at Morehouse, and then he earned the Master of Arts degree in French at Middlebury College and the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Romance Language and Literature at Cornell University. He also holds the Diplome de Professeur de Francais from the Sorbonne and the Certificat d'Études Francaises from the University of Grenoble. Dr. Jones has published a number of articles and book reviews in journals, such as South Atlantic Quarterly, French Review, Modern Language Journal, and the Journal of Negro History. He is the author of A Candle in the Dark: A History of Morehouse College. He has been appointed by President Léopold Sédar Senghor, of the West African Republic of Senegal, to serve as Honorary Consul of Senegal in Atlanta. |
![]() | ![]() | Kadish, Doris Y. and Jenson, Deborah (editors). Poetry of Haitian Independence. New Haven. 2015. Yale University Press. 9780300195590. Translations by Norman R. Shapiro. Foreword by Edwidge Danticat. 301 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration: Edouard Duval-Carrie, ‘Azaka Agro Rex’ (1979). At the turn of the nineteenth century, Haiti became the first and only modern country born from a slave revolt. During the first decades of Haitian independence, a wealth of original poetry was created by the inhabitants of the former French Caribbean island colony and published in Haitian newspapers. These deeply felt poems celebrated the legitimacy of the new nation and the value of the authors’ African origins while revealing a common mission shared by all Haitians in the young republic: freedom from oppressors and equality for all. This collection of deeply felt and powerfully moving Haitian poetry dating back to the first decades of the Caribbean island’s independence from French colonial rule sheds a much needed light on an important and often neglected period in Haiti’s literary history. Editors Kadish and Jenson have made a significant corpus of largely unknown poetry accessible to a wide audience for the first time with this essential bilingual volume of early-nineteenth-century verse that celebrates the authors’ African origins, freedom from oppression, equality for all, and the legitimacy of the only modern country born from a slave revolt. Doris Y. Kadish is Distinguished Research Professor Emerita of French and Women’s Studies at the University of Georgia. Deborah Jenson is Professor of Romance Studies and Global Health at Duke University. Norman R. Shapiro is Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Distinguished Professor of Literary Translation at Wesleyan University and an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. |
![]() | ![]() | Kamau, Kwadwo Agymah. Flickering Shadows. Minneapolis. 1996. Coffee House Press. 1566890497. 302 pages. hardcover. Jacket art/design by Jinger Peissig Deeply engrossing and beautifully written, this debut novel marks the stunning arrival of a major new talent. Set on a fictional Caribbean island, Flickering Shadows is the story of the colorful and compelling inhabitants of a small ex-colony, a village called the Hill. Cephus’s grandfather - one of the most intriguing narrators to appear in fiction in some time - draws the reader into the lives and vivid dramas of the whole community. Cephus, Doreen, Boysie, Inez, young Kwame, the ghost, Dolphus, and an array of vibrantly-depicted characters form a rich and hypnotic tale of love and betrayal, selflessness and honor, lust and dignity. Played out against a backdrop of political chicanery and religious corruption, this entrancing novel captivates from its first sentence to its breathtaking and unforgettable conclusion. ‘People have been asking for some time now: where are the Bajan griot voices to succeed George Lamming, Paule Marshall, Austin Clark? Well, look in vain no further. Here, fresh & young in the spirit-fields of that nearest-to-Africa Caribbean island, is my namesake Kwadwo Agymah Kamau’s first novel, Flickering Shadows, continuing the great coral/choral-calling tradition of Barbados.’ - Kamau Brathwaite. Kwadwo Agymah Kamau is an Barbadian American novelist. He is a native of Barbados, moved to New York in 1977. He studied at Virginia Commonwealth University. He graduated from Baruch College of CUNY with a bachelor's degree in finance and a master's degree (1985) in quantitative economics. He served first as a statistician at the New York City Department of Investigations, then as a senior economist at the New York State Department of Taxation & Finance. He studied with Paule Marshall at Virginia Commonwealth University in the MFA program. His work has appeared in Callaloo, Caribbean Vibes, Gumbo, InSyte Magazine, He teaches creative writing at the University of Oklahoma. |
![]() | ![]() | Kasinitz, Philip. Caribbean New York. Ithaca. 1992. Cornell University Press. 0801426510. 283 pages. hardcover. Since 1965, West Indians have been emigrating to the United States in record numbers, and to New York City in particular. Caribbean New York shows how the new immigration is reshaping American race relations and sheds much-needed light on factors that underlie some of the city's explosive racial confrontations. Philip Kasinitz examines how two forces-racial solidarity and ethnic distinctiveness-have helped to shape the identity of New York's West Indian community. He compares ‘new’ (post-1965) immigrants with West Indians who arrived earlier in the century, and looks in detail at the economic, political, and cultural rules that Afro-Caribbean immigrants have played in the city during each period. Philip Kasinitz is Presidential Professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He has chaired the doctoral program in Sociology from since 2001-2011 and 2014-the present. Kasinitz graduated Boston University in 1979 and earned his doctorate from New York University in 1987. He specializes in immigration, ethnicity, race relations, urban social life and the nature of contemporary cities. Much of his work focuses on New York. He is the author of Caribbean New York for which he won the Thomas and Znaniecki Book Award in 1996. His co-authored book Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age won the Eastern Sociological Society’s Mirra Komarovsky Book Award in 2009 and the American Sociological Association Distinguished Scholarly Book Award in 2010. Kasinitz served as the President of the Eastern Sociological Society in 2007-2008 and was awarded the Society’s Merritt Award for career contributions in 2015. Since 2005 has been the book review editor of the ESS journal, Sociological Forum. He is a member of the Historical Advisory Board of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation and a former member of the Social Science Research Council’s Committee on International Migration and the Russell Sage Foundation’s committee to study the social effects of 9-11 on New York City. Kasinitz is frequently quoted in media venues and his work has appeared in CNN On Line, New York Newsday; Dissent; The Nation; The Wall Street Journal; Lingua Franca, and Telos as well as in numerous academic journals. Prior to coming to the Graduate Center, Kasinitz taught at Williams College. He has held visiting appointments at Princeton University, The University of Amsterdam and the Technical University of Berlin. |
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