Abstract
Introduction
This year’s bibliography for the Caribbean is divided into two sections, including listings for, respectively, 2012 and 2013. Poet, dramatist and director Kendel Hippolyte’s new book of poetry, Fault Lines, opens the 2012 creative writing section. This inspiring collection of vivid memories from Hippolyte’s life in St Lucia is constructed through verses that juggle with language in order to raise public awareness. The book starts with a series of slow motion mementos that seem to have frozen in the mind of the poetic voice as if they were vistas framed by a window. The Caribbean spirit-famishing landscape, as described in the first pages, conjoins old and future generations through an ahistorical view of the region. The dynamic poetic voice moves towards the new millennium while the same old images stay still. Touristic exploitation of the environment and corruption are just two of the concerns in “Paradise” and other central poems that explore the consequences of neo-colonisation in a generation of violent youngsters involved with gangs and trapped in a spiral of self-destruction. New millennium despair is not only represented by the odes to greedy McWanting or exploited McNulland, but also by references to the London riots, which make the poetic voice wonder if society “here” and “there” is really disintegrating. Some of Hippolyte’s poems show the dark side of human nature through horror and others utilise an ironic sense of humour aimed at academia, which the poet has just left. The collection is superbly organised, culminating in an evocative poem entitled “Archipelago” that explores the transcultural nature of the islands and serves as the colophon for this genuinely unique book of poetry.
The history of the early colonisation of the islands is the main source of inspiration that motivates Anthony C. Winkler’s new novel, God Carlos. Through the use of precise references regarding time and space, the narration delves into the climactic moment of the Spanish Empire. God Carlos works enthusiastically on presenting an elaborate portrayal of the crew that sailed on board the Santa Inez following the echoing marvels of the newly-colonised land by the first European expeditions. Carlos was one of the many sailors on Santa Inez expecting to make a fortune. The captain himself dreamed of imprinting his name on the “new” land. The first half of the novel focuses on the hardships of the sea, with some intervening chapters in which we travel ahead of the Santa Inez and glimpse at the indigenous populations of Xamaca and their telluric cosmogony. Adopting the role of an anthropologist, the omniscient narrator regularly introduces cultural and historical explanations. Accordingly, various points of view are to be found in the different chapters. When adopting the perspective of the explorers, the narrator describes a hostile landscape while portraying the native population as naïve and obliging, a community that would easily worship a human god. However, when the narrator adopts the point of view of the Arawaks, defamiliarisation illustrates the abuses of the genocidal Catholicism practiced against the native populations that inhabited the Caribbean islands. God Carlos suggests that crime was virtually unknown on the islands and the indigenous population was not ready to fight the explorers’ thirst for blood and gold.
Creative writing serves Erna Brodber as an anthropological tool to research the public and private spheres of female experience. In her new collection of short stories, The World Is a High Hill, she once again chooses characters from different social backgrounds and different ethnic groups to create a sense of sisterhood. Some of the stories are dominated by a sense of uncanny feeling that emerges from the violent and oppressive gender inequalities dominating the relationships in the Caribbean and in the diaspora. Migration, as it is understood in a number of short stories in the collection, is not only a physical phenomenon but also an emotional one; it is, indeed, a state of mind.
Similarly, Ifeona Fulani’s new collection of short stories also explores the impact of migration on Jamaican cultural identity. Ten Days in Jamaica depicts troublesome personal relationships between women who care about everyone but themselves and selfish men who abuse selfless mothers, generous partners and disinterested friends. The female body is a site of conflict through which issues of race, gender and sexuality are explored. Some of these female protagonists are on a quest to find their place in society. The stories feature prominent dichotomies: women-men, mothers-siblings, home-diaspora, and sexual pleasure-sexual obligation, amongst other polarities that shape the collection.
Junot Díaz’s new collection of short stories, This Is How You Lose Her, which includes award-winning “Miss Lora”, also revolves around conflictive relationships. The different interconnected short stories take us through the life of a series of characters whom the protagonist randomly encounters in life. Yunior, a Dominican immigrant in the United States serves as the perceiving consciousness of most of the stories; yet, the female addressees or protagonists of some of them are as powerful and memorable as well as disconcerting. This constitutes one of the most interesting effects achieved by this new collection. The tone of the stories is sometimes melancholic, sometimes hilarious; the protagonists are sweet chicos malos who think they can beat cancer, over-sexualised alterlatinas stigmatised by patriarchal dictates or immigrants that become foreigners in their own country. The stories realistically portray the hardships of earning one’s life in the diaspora; they critique the touristic and sexual exploitation of the Caribbean, or they offer experimental second-person perspectives on love and indifference. This Is How You Lose Her is so addictive, however, that the quest for romance almost overshadows the more serious issues.
Colin Channer’s edited crime collection for the Akashic Noir series, Kingston Noir, is impressively wide in its range of disturbing, hilarious, lusty and violent stories. Even though it might be read as a travel book, this anthology does not depict the Jamaica we might expect to find in any tourist guide but paints a dark picture of its capital city. Violence is definitely the common theme shared by the eleven short stories. Some of the protagonists find themselves in the middle of the most distressing situations without expecting it, and others purposefully look for revenge. Most of the stories revolve around female characters who are victims of sadistic and irrational revenge. Special mention should be made of Marlon James’s brilliant “Immaculate”, a truly moving tale about the quest for justice and the struggle against police incompetence.
Set on the imaginary, once-colonised, island of Jacaranda, Curdella Forbes’s new novel Ghosts is a captivating story of family secrets related to the reader by a series of unreliable narrators. The Pointy-Morris family secret is the main linking device of the different chapters, which adopt various points of views that take us to the near past, the present and the near future so as to uncover the obsessive love between Tramadol and Pete. The motif of historical and familial memory runs throughout the four main chapters, each narrated by a different character. Diaspora is one of the main themes in Ghosts, an interest probably motivated by Forbes’s academic research. Most of the members of the family clan experience migration; they are the illegitimate children of the nation: not fully belonging to the home or to the host country. This in-between status leads to a strong sense of anxiety and, in some cases, it is also the catalyst for magic. The final pages of the novel are characterised by a mythical tone that prepares the reader for a climactic denouement set in the near future.
Also set in a near future, The Chaos is Nalo Hopkinson’s 2012 novel, for young adults. The text begins in a realist fashion, although there are certain latent magical elements already there, which are made evident when an active volcano emerges from Lake Ontario and chaos begins. Until then, Scotch, the mixed-race adolescent protagonist, lives an apparently normal life with her family whilst dealing with the most common problems that affect others her age. Racial issues question from the very beginning the officially recognised status of Canada as a multicultural nation. Her light skin confuses those who surround her when they realise that Rich, her dark-skinned brother, is actually her relative.
In between publishing The Chaos and her 2013 Sister Mine, Hopkinson produced a collection including two reprinted short stories, a lecture converted into an essay and an interview with the editor of the book. In Report from Planet Midnight, the opening “Message in a Bottle” explores issues of parenthood, the nature of childhood, cloning, adoption, and the limits of the imagination. The open ending of the short story, which so wonderfully works within the speculative fictional universe of the plot, leaves things in the hands of the reader. Something similar occurs in the second short story, “Shift”, which seems to re-write The Tempest whilst dealing closely with themes related to racial and cultural identity or the family. Additionally, Hopkinson’s readers can find here an extended version of a speech she delivered at the International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts. In this speech, the author addresses the theme of race in the literature of the fantastic through the voice of the “reluctant ambassador” of this Planet Midnight. For both the author and the ambassador, globalisation, as a colonial inheritance, has disempowered and deprived various communities. The pathological disenfranchisement of peoples is one of the core issues of Hopkinson’s literary production, which she overviews in the interview with Terry Bisson that closes the collection. Apart from the diachronic perspective she adopts in discussing her work, Hopkinson also talks about her creative process as a writer and her work as an editor, identifying the main influences that can be found in her work, as well as pointing out some future avenues of literary creation.
Focusing on the non-fiction publications included in the 2012 bibliography, Rupert Roopnaraine’s versatile essays are worth highlighting. This extended publication is grouped into four different categories that cover thirty years of critical work. The Sky’s Wild Noise, winner of the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction, is an annotated collection of essays that will assist the reader in exploring the contribution of one of the leading Guyanese thinkers of our times in the areas of politics, literary analysis, art and tribute writing. The collection gathers thirty-nine essays, starting with a group of texts that bear witness to the quest for national reconciliation after the political instability that marked last century’s Guyanese politics. Paramount considerations regarding human rights, and Afro, Indian and indigenous populations are illustrated in this first collection of essays that take the reader back to colonial struggles. The charismatic figure of Cuffy, the leader of the famous Berbice Slave Rebellion of 1763, assists Roopnaraine to explore the historical relations of the country with the former Empire. But the essays are also concerned with contemporary crises such as the humanitarian health alerts in Africa and the revolutionary struggles in the Caribbean. The Caribbean region undoubtedly focuses much of Roopnaraine’s attention: racial and ethnic identity are two of the main issues discussed both in his political essays, which highlight the need of inclusive politics, and in his critical works on literary form. As one might expect, this second group of essays starts with a reference to Guyana’s acclaimed poet Martin Carter, since Roopnaraine is one of his best-known critical readers. Political activism and the literary form work in parallel in this second section, which warns of the dangers of cultural imperialism and globalisation and emphasises the need of fostering what he refers to as a “community of ideas”. Before closing with a series of tribute writings to different public figures, this collection also includes a series of selected essays on Caribbean art, ranging in focus from cartoonist Hawley Harris’ satirical works denouncing corporative and political interests to the paintings of Ras Ishi Butcher or Ras Akyem-I, representing a new generation of regional art that utilises the richness of blackness.
2012 criticism offers a series of general studies that offer a comparative perspective on the different areas and traditions of the islands. For instance, Michael Niblett’s study, The Caribbean Novel since 1945: Cultural Practice, Form and the Nation-state, examines different Caribbean literary traditions while exploring the connection between Latin American and Caribbean literatures through an analysis of their tropes and paradigms. This monograph is a wonderful example of recent attempts to illustrate the interplay of the indigenous folk traditions and the philosophical base of Caribbean culture. Niblett examines the parallels between national transformation on the islands and the evolution of their literary writings. Magical realism shows the contradictions of a newly developed globalised neo-liberal attitude also illustrated in the contemporary literary production of the islands. Using a rich corpus from the Hispanic, French, Dutch and Anglophone traditions, this study analyses the historical alienation of the subject from the Caribbean cosmogony due to the pressures of capitalism. In a chronological fashion, the five chapters of the study explore the tensions that emerge from the evocations of the nation-state during the literary production of the 1940s and 1950s towards more contemporary literary manifestations. Taking Ortíz’s conceptualisation of Caribbean transculturation as a social process, Niblett starts analysing anti-colonial discourses in literature and moves towards highlighting the disillusionment created by native elites illustrated in works by Harris, Lovelance, and Chauvet, among others. The crisis of political representation in literature gives place to a new boost of social relations and innovative stylistic devices that is carefully analysed in Chapters Three and Four through the literary production of Chamoiseau, Sánchez or Brodber, who postulate an inventive epic form to reconfigure the idea of the nation-state. Finally, Chapter Five focuses on gender relations and issues of sexuality in order to illustrate the unfulfilled utopian aspirations in works by Oonya Kempadoo, Michelle Cliff and Shani Mootoo, among others.
The varied literary traditions of the Caribbean and its diaspora are also addressed in A Poetics of Relation: Caribbean Women Writing at the Millennium. In her multilingual study, Ferly adopts Édouard Glissant’s postulations as a point of departure for her comparative reading of what she refers to as womanist expansions of theoretical paradigms. The author questions preconceived binaries while addressing the division of the Caribbean into colonial blocks in terms of the linguistic legacy of the different islands. For Ferly, archipelagic consciousness articulates a corpus of works that establishes a dialogue among the islands, regardless of the different official languages. In a similar fashion, diasporic writing is also included in her analysis so as to explore the socio-cultural impact of migration as well as the processes of identity-formation that result from mass migrations. Accordingly, a pan-Caribbean vision of the area is adopted so as to turn the rhetorical gaze to a female literary tradition. This is done in order to illustrate the common concerns found in women writing in reference to their situation within a patriarchal society, despite their self-sufficient and accomplished role. Works by Gisèle Pineau, Ana Luz García Calzada, Edwidge Danticat, Julia Álvarez, Aurora Arias and Cristina García, among others, are carefully analysed according to the different motifs and concerns found in their cultural fictions. Gender symbolism of early postcolonial texts aimed at empowering female figures, re-writings of historically silenced voices, problems of national discourses regarding gender issues, and the dichotomy between official and vernacular languages or identity politics are some of the avenues of research opened up by Ferly.
Finally, special mention should be made of Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze: Literature between Postcolonialism and Post-Continental Philosophy, where Lorna Burn offers a thought-provoking exploration of Deleuze’s thought in a wide range of Caribbean fiction. According to the author, the theoretical basis of postcolonial literatures is driven by their capacity to reconsider the legacies of a colonial past while celebrating the creativity and novelty of the postcolonial imagination. Taking the existing connection between Surrealism and Caribbean writing as her point of departure, the author identifies the artistic strategies found in a series of contemporary works that illustrate what she refers to as a capacity to generate unforeseeable futures. Thus, after bridging the gap between post-continental philosophical expression and the productive shift found in contemporary Caribbean fiction, Burns locates the importance of Deleuzian thought in the Anglophone Caribbean literary production. In the different chapters that shape this interesting book, Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze considers works by Derek Walcott, Wilson Harris and Édouard Glissant as the heart of the Caribbean postcolonial literary imagination and moves towards an exploration of post-continental philosophy in analysis of transnational authors, such as Robert Antoni, Nalo Hopkinson and Pauline Melville, whose works serve to illuminate the connection between Deleuze and Caribbean writing that motivated this study.
2013’s creative section starts with a list of poetry books published, in some cases, by authors whose debut collections indicate that attention should be paid to the new generation of poets. Among these young voices, special mention should be made of Malika Booker’s Pepper Seed. Set both in the Caribbean and in the diaspora, the poems included in this collection draw on everyday stories, weaving together a set of emotional dramas through different characters and locations. Booker’s poetic voice is rich and powerful, finding its inspiration in harsh realism while elevating its complex vision of life experiences through a number of prevailing metaphors marked by dilemmas of history and identity. Women in Pepper Seed are at the centre of most of the poems, dealing with themes of maternity, family and emigration.
Motivated by contemporary issues, Sai Murray’s debut collection of poetry, published under the title Ad-liberation, engages with the importance of raising public awareness of the dangers of globalisation. Murray’s fascinating live performances enlighten the magnetism of this poetry book through astonishing dramatic monologues and humorous and witty language while mastering diverse poetic voices. Ecology, consumerism, justice and politics are some of Ad-liberation’s main concerns. Murray warns about capitalist and neo-liberal abuses marking everyday life, together with the challenge to telluric cosmogony that ecological over-exploitation and the food industry are causing. Murray is without question a fresh voice that wants to and needs to be heard.
After a first incursion into fiction for young-adult readers and a miscellaneous collection, both published in 2012, Nalo Hopkinson published another Toronto-based urban fantasy, Sister Mine. Conjoined twins Makeda and Abby are the protagonists of this novel where, as the author herself acknowledges in an article published in Locus, sisterhood and the connections between body, mind and soul are extremely important. Caribbean and African mythologies are identifiable as early as the first pages of the text, where the readers learn that the two sisters are cursed for being the fruit of a forbidden relationship that their demi-god father maintained with their mother, who was converted into a monster and secluded in Lake Ontario. Through a number of intertwined flashbacks, characteristic of Hopkinson’s narrative style, we learn that Abby kept the magic once she was separated from her sister within their mother’s womb. This conditions Makeda’s relationship with the semi-celestial part of the family, who do not see her as one of them. The relationship between Makeda and Abby, who is dating Jimi Hendrix’s guitar, is fascinating and serves to explore complex and hybrid identities thanks to several bizarre and uncanny episodes where the sisters are chased by an extended family of dysfunctional mythical relatives. The fragility of memory and the symbiosis between humans and nature is beautifully represented by a father who is the Trinidadian lord of the forest who disappears from the care home where he lives due to his degenerative mental condition. This complex contextualisation creates the appropriate narrative voice that Hopkinson needs to make her novel work. Sister Mine is an epic quest with elements of a coming-of-age novel, using a fantastic form that does not work in a dystopian or speculative way, as some of Hopkinson’s previous works, but in parallel with the magical realist philosophy that characterises some works of the contemporary Caribbean literary production.
Jamaica Kincaid is the kind of author who knows how to write superbly well about relationships, be they familial or romantic ones. In her new novel, See Now Then, the most common and basic routine becomes that thin line that separates love from deep, even insane hatred. Mr and Mrs Sweet are not in a happy marriage; neither of them is sweet. Through a series of flashbacks and intimations of the future, the different narrators and points of views that inform the novel insist on the idea of subjectivity, thus warning of the unreliability of the narrating voice. Time does not evolve as the reader would expect, but traps the characters in a series of temporal loops that create an erratic cadence and magnify the gap between childhood and adulthood. Indeed, the reason for Mr and Mrs Sweet’s disintegrating relationship is to be found in their childhoods: a happy and a miserable one, respectively. Intertextuality also plays a major role in the novel. Mrs Sweet is that mad woman in the attic, as we can see by the end of the text, a fitting description that assists to illustrate a series of cultural and emotional clashes between the couple. Even though there are some loose references to the author’s personal experiences, readily identifiable for those familiar with Kincaid’s work, See Now Then is not a novel about the author but about life itself and, above all, about the expectations the characters build up of others and of themselves.
In his new novel, As Flies to Whatless Boys, Robert Antoni experiments with narrative form through a number of memoirs, letters, emails, and newspaper articles, among other forms and genres, to tell the story of a group of pioneers who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean on-board the Rosalind. Willy is the narrator of most of the novel, recounting to his son the peripatetic adventures of the members of the Tropical Emigration Society on following the charlatan engineer Mr Etzler. Mr Etzler was transporting a mysterious machine called “Satellite” to the American continent on the eve of what was for him the most eventful moment of humankind. Using an epic tone to describe the utopian society that this small group of people aimed to set up in the Caribbean after liberating humans from slave labour, thanks to Mr Etzler’s invention, As Flies to Whatless Boys unfolds different interconnected sketches of the lives and the expectations of the colonies after slavery was abolished on the islands and the American mainland. A series of flashbacks and flashforwards depict the hardships of the sea passage to Chaguabarriga. Framing this narrative, Antoni includes the story of a coming-of-age couple that the reader will find among the members of the expedition. As previously mentioned, Willy is the narrator of most of the novel, and thanks to him we find explicit details of his clandestine relationship with Margarite, a young girl who was born without vocal chords and had to communicate in writing. The couple themselves are representative of the spirit of the whole novel; they are curious and adventurous; she is extremely sceptical while Willy seems to follow the pioneering impetus promoted by Mr Etzler, and they are both aware that their different class status could jeopardize their relationship. All in all, Antoni’s new novel is a beautiful tale of wonders motivated, as the author himself acknowledges, by the intention to push the hybrid form of the novel beyond the borders of the genre.
A new collection deserving mention is Writing down the Vision, described by the author, Kei Miller, as a collection of essays and prophecies. It contains texts previously published or presented at various conferences and events revealing Miller’s thoughts on the migrant condition. Some of the prophecies are set in Jamaica and revolve around the author’s youth, presenting personal and family anecdotes that prepare the ground for stories located in diasporic spaces.
In the evocatively titled The Tropics Bite Back: Culinary Coups in Caribbean Literature, Valérie Loichot explores the presence of food and hunger in a series of oral, fictional, poetic and essayistic texts with the aim of analysing literary cannibalism. The image of the tropical cannibal subject is reclaimed by the authors of the selected corpus to resist colonial discourses and to empower subaltern subjects while evoking cultural production by means of “biting back”. Instead of limiting her approach to the politics of hunger, Loichot expands her analysis to other potential metaphors of material experience. The book’s opening chapter provides the theoretical basis of the study. Édouard Glissant’s culinary creolisation is represented through masala, an East Indian spice mix that serves as a transcultural food metaphor. Taking food as a powerful cultural symbol for Caribbean communities, Loichot moves on to analyse specific case studies. Chapter Two, exploring the work of Patrick Chamoiseau and Aimé Césaire, focuses on communal, cultural, gender and racial identities as constructed around the obsession with hunger. Other slavery and post-slavery texts are also included in this chapter to illustrate the dangers of political and economic dependence on the colonial system to avoid food paucity. Diasporic culinary creolisation bridges Gisèle Pineau’s and Edwidge Danticat’s literary outputs and these two authors are included in Chapter Three. In these texts, the acts of cooking and writing suggest innovative forms of resistance. Revolutions are baked in the kitchen, a privileged place for cultural transmission from one generation to the next. These texts cook up words as a form of culinary survival in exile. The two final chapters question the acts of cannibalising cultural representation. Works by Dany Laferrière and Gisèle Pineau are discussed in Chapter Four to analyse the processes of literary ingestion and the exotic eroticism of Caribbean bodies. Finally, The Tropics Bite Back ends with examples of “writing back” to literary cannibalism in Suzanne Césaire’s and Maryse Condé’s work as a response to colonial discourses.
In Desire between Women in Caribbean Literature, Keja L. Valens examines ideas of desire, sexuality and family, identifying these Western notions as colonial constructs. Accordingly, literary works from Hispano, Franco and Anglophone traditions are here considered so as to illustrate how the conceptual frameworks that condition the different texts included in the analysis may vary in time and space. Bearing this in mind, Valens utilises queer theory to challenge imposed binary oppositions or heteronormativities. The author suggests that sexuality in the Caribbean does not fit a categorical hetero-homo binary. Texts are discussed in a chronological order, creating a global picture of Caribbean writers from different literary traditions.
Finally, among the different titles of the studies’ section, the works of contemporary British authors of mixed cultural background are the focus of Cecilia Rosa Acquarone’s Barriers, Borders and Crossings in British Postcolonial Fiction. The novels analysed in this study, amongst which we could highlight those by Caryl Phillips, Zadie Smith, Fred D’Aguiar and David Dabydeen, revolve around the past and the present of the British nation, pointing to the heterogeneity of the identity issues that characterise the historical legacy of the present-day cultural mosaic of Britain. Acquarone illustrates the transcultural dimension of contemporary British fiction, celebrating hybridity and multinational experience. The author seeks to establish gender differentiations: male writing, according to Acquarone, exemplifies a melancholic view of the postmodern black male in the dawn of Enlightenment metanarrative fictions that deal with historical discourses. In view of this, it is not surprising that Phillips’s The Nature of Blood and A Distant Shore, D’Aguiar’s Bethany Bettamy, and Dabydeen’s Our Lady of Demerara are some of the works analysed in the first chapters of the book. Barriers, Borders and Crossings in British Postcolonial Fiction considers the use of realism, including that of magical realism, as the narrative form that serves authors to criticize ideological implications as a matter-of-fact system of representation. However, realism is often subverted in the texts discussed. Some of the most interesting findings of the study showcase the contesting nature of the texts, which primarily address historical connotations and the dogmatism that have originated in the oxymoronic nature of contemporary Britain.
Bibliography 2012
Poetry
Hippolyte, Kendel Fault Lines 78pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Kellman, Anthony South Eastern Stages 66pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Lim, Ann-Margaret The Festival of Wild Orchid 80pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Fiction
Brodber, Erna The World Is a High Hill: Stories about Jamaican Women 218pp Ian Randle (Kingston) $18.95.
Díaz, Junot This Is How You Lose Her 224pp Faber (London) £12.99.
Forbes, Curdella Ghosts 182pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Fulani, Ifeona Ten Days in Jamaica 164pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Hopkinson, Nalo The Chaos 241pp Margaret K McElderry (New York) $9.99.
Lalla, Barbara Cascade A Novel 308pp University of the West Indies Press (Kingston) $18.00.
McCaulay, Diana Huracan 294pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £10.99.
Patterson, Orlando An Absence of Ruins 152pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
—– The Children of Sisyphus 220pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £9.99.
Persaud, Lakshmi Daughters of Empire 336pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £12.99.
Roffey, Monique Archipelago 384pp Simon & Schuster (London) £7.99.
Scott, Lawrence Light Falling on Bamboo 472pp Tindal St (London) £12.99.
Senior, Olive and Eugenie Fernandes Birthday Suit 32pp Annick (Toronto) $19.95.
Winkler, Anthony C. God Carlos 200pp Akashic (New York) $15.95.
Young, Kerry Pao 288pp Bloomsbury (London) £7.99.
Miscellaneous
Hopkinson, Nalo Report from Planet Midnight 128pp PM Press (Oakland) $12.00.
Anthologies
The Bowling Was Superfine: West Indian Writing and West Indian Cricket eds Stewart Brown and Ian McDonald 372pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £21.99.
Jubilation! ed Kwame Dawes 182pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £9.99.
Kingston Noir ed Colin Channel 288pp Akashic (New York) $15.95.
Criticism
“‘All My Weapons with Me:’ Bodily Archives in the Caribbean Diaspora” Manuela Coppola Women’s Identities and Bodies in Colonial and Postcolonial History and Literature ed María Isabel Romero Ruíz Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Newcastle upon Tyne) pp25–44.
Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance Emily Zobel Marshall 215pp University of the West Indies Press (Kingston) $33.00.
“Beyond the Colonized and the Colonizer: Caribbean Writing as Postcolonial ‘Health’” Lorna Burns Postcolonial Literatures and Deleuze: Colonial Pasts, Differential Futures pp145–164.
Caribbean Cultural Thought. From Plantation to Diaspora eds Yanique Hume and Aaron Kamugisha 656pp Ian Randle (Kingston) $49.95.
The Caribbean Novel since 1945: Cultural Practice, Form, and the Nation-State Michael Niblett 304pp University Press of Mississippi (Jackson) $60.00.
Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze: Literature between Postcolonialism and Post-Continental Philosophy Lorna Burns 224pp Continuum (London & New York) £60.00.
Creolizing the Metropole: Migrant Caribbean Identities in Literature and Film H. Adlai Murdoch 344pp Indiana University Press (Indiana) $80.00.
Critical Perspectives on Indo-Caribbean Women’s Literature ed Joy Mahabir and Mariam Pirbhai 274pp Routledge (London & New York) £85.00.
Humor in the Caribbean Literary Canon Sam Vásquez 222pp Palgrave (London & New York) £58.00.
“Of Male Exiles and Female Nations: ‘Sexual Errancy’ in Haitian Immigrant Literature” Corine Tachtiris Callaloo 35(2) pp442–458.
Marronage and Arts: Revolts in Bodies and Voices ed Stéphanie Melyon-Reinette 225pp Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Newcastle upon Tyne) £44.99.
“Marvellous Realism and Female Representation from the Caribbean Diaspora” María Alonso Alonso The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 47(1) pp57–67.
New Perspectives on the Black Atlantic eds Bénédicte Ledent and Pilar Cuder-Domínguez 316pp PeterLang (Berlin & New York) $97.95.
A Poetics of Relation: Caribbean Women Writing at the Millennium Odile Ferly 222pp Palgrave (London & New York) £61.00.
Re-Constructing Place and Space: Media, Culture, Discourse and the Constitution of Caribbean Diasporas eds Kamille Gentles-Peart and Maurice L. Hall 195pp Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Newcastle upon Tyne) £34.99.
Teaching Anglophone Caribbean Literature ed Supriya M. Nair 459pp Modern Language Association of America (New York) $25.00.
Antoni, Robert “Carnival and the Carnivalesque in Robert Antoni’s Carnival” Imen Najar New Perspectives on the Black Atlantic pp155–172 [see
—– “Postcolonial Literature as Health: Robert Antoni and Nalo Hopkinson” Lorna Burns Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze: Literature between Postcolonialism and Post-Continental Philosophy pp148–188 [see
Bennett, Louise “Slackness and a Mento Aesthetic: Louise Bennett’s Trickster Poetics and Jamaican Women’s Explorations of Sexuality” Sam Vásquez Humor in the Caribbean Literary Canon pp55–90 [see
Brand, Dionne “Toxic Bodies |That Matter: Trans-Corporeal Materialities in Dionne Brand’s Ossuaries” Libe García Zarranz Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies 2(1-2) pp55–68.
Brathwaite, Edward K. “Questioning as Utopian Practice in Edward (Kamau) Brathwaite’s Rights of Passage” Amor Kohli The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 47(3) pp411–427.
Césaire, Aimé “The Laughing Corpse: Humorous Performances of Spirituality, Sexuality, and Identity in Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest” Sam Vásquez Humor in the Caribbean Literary Canon pp91–116 [see
Danticat, Edgidge “Desiring Diaspora: ‘Testing’ the Boundaries of National Identity in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory” Clare Counihan Small Axe 16(1) pp36–52.
—– “In/justice and Necro-natality in Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying” Wendy Knepper The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 47(2) pp191–205.
—– “The Postcolonial Bildungsroman and Haitian American Youth in Danticat’s Behind the Mountains and Breath, Eyes, Memory” Jo Collins Wasafiri 27(4) pp27–34.
Díaz, Junot “Beyond Multiculturalism: Ethnic Studies, Transnationalism, and Junot Díaz’s Oscar Wao” Elisabeth Maria Mermann-Jozwiak Ariel: A Review of International English Studies 43(2) pp1–24.
—– “Flashes of Transgression: The Fukú, Negative Aesthetics, and the Future in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz” Richard Perez Moments of Magical Realism in US Ethnic Literatures eds Lyn Di Iorio Sandín and Richard Perez Palgrave (New York) pp91–108.
Espinet, Ramabai “‘Music and a Story’: Sound Writing in Ramabai Espinet’s The Swinging Bridge” Njelle Hamilton Critical Perspectives on Indo-Caribbean Women’s Literature pp70–92 [see General Studies].
—– “Revising Female Indian Memory: Ramabai Espinet’s Reconstruction of an Indo-Trinidadian Diaspora in The Swinging Bridge” Rodolphe Solbiac Critical Perspectives on Indo-Caribbean Women’s Literature pp229–252 [see General Studies].
Glissant, Édouard “Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of the Chaosmos” Lorna Burns Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze: Literature between Postcolonialism and Post-Continental Philosophy pp109–147 [see
Harris, Wilson “Writing Back to the Colonial Event: Derek Walcott and Wilson Harris” Lorna Burns Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze: Literature between Postcolonialism and Post-Continental Philosophy pp68–108 [see
Hopkinson, Nalo “Postcolonial Literature as Health: Robert Antoni and Nalo Hopkinson” Lorna Burns Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze: Literature between Postcolonialism and Post-Continental Philosophy pp148–188 [see
—– “Revolutionizing Pleasure in Writing: Subversive Desire and Micropolitical Affects in Nalo Hopkinson’s The Salt Roads” Milena Marinkova Postcolonial Literatures and Deleuze: Colonial Pasts, Differential Futures pp181–198.
Khan, Ismith Ismith Khan: The Man & His Works Roydon Salick 128pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £9.99.
Kincaid, Jamaica “Reading and Being Read: Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place as Literary Agent” Lesley Larkin Callaloo 35(1) pp193–211.
—– “Trauma, Magic, and Genealogy: Moments of Magical Realism in Daughters of the Stone by Dhalma Llanos-Figueroa and The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid” Lyn Di Iorio Sandín Moments of Magical Realism in US Ethnic Literatures eds Lyn Di Iorio Sandín and Richard Perez Palgrave (New York) pp19–38.
Lamming, George “Ariel over the Airwaves: George Lamming’s Rituals of Revenant History” Chris Campbell Journal of Postcolonial Writing 48(5) pp485–496.
Levy, Andrea “Post-heritage Narratives: Migrancy and Travelling Theory in V.S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival and Andrea Levy’s Fruit of the Lemon” Weihsin Gui The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 47(1) 73–89.
Lorde, Audre “‘Which Me Will Survive’: Rethinking Identity, Reclaiming Audre Lorde” Keith D. Leonard Callaloo 35(3) pp758–777.
McKay, Claude Claude McKay’s Liberating Narrative Tatiana A Tagirova-Daley 144pp PeterLang (Berlin & New York) $70.95.
Melville, Pauline “The Other Postcolonial Wars: Amerindians versus Coastlanders in The Ventriloquist’s Tale” Albert Braz Teaching Anglophone Caribbean Literature pp29–44 [see
Mootoo, Shani “Illicit Intimacies, the Ramaya and Synaesthetic Rememberin in Shami Mootoo’s Valmiki’s Daughter” Donna McCormack Critical Perspectives on Indo-Caribbean Women’s Literature pp203–228 [see
—– “Indo-Trinidadian Identities and Sexuality: A Survey of Shani Mootoo’s Fiction” Frank Birbalsingh Critical Perspectives on Indo-Caribbean Women’s Literature pp203–228 [see
—– “Unspeakable Thoughts, Unspoken Loss in Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night: Trauma, Gender, and Sexuality” Grant Farred Teaching Anglophone Caribbean Literature pp292–304 [see
Naipaul, V.S. “Post-heritage Narratives: Migrancy and Travelling Theory in V.S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival and Andrea Levy’s Fruit of the Lemon” Weihsin Gui The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 47(1) 73–89.
NourbeSe Philip, Marlene “Accounts Unpaid, Accounts Untold: M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! And the Catalogue” Erin M. Fehskens Callaloo 35(2) 407–424.
Persaud, Lekshmi “Domestic Altars, Female Avatars: Hindu Wives and Widows in Lakshmi Persaud’s Raise the Lanterns High” Supriya M. Nair Critical Perspectives on Indo-Caribbean Women’s Literature pp48–69 [see
Phillips, Caryl Caryl Phillips: Writing in the Key of Life ed Bénédicte Ledent and Daria Tunca 441pp Rodopi (Amsterdam) €92.00.
—– “‘Who Are You Calling a Foreigner?’ Caryl Phillips in Conversation with John McLeod” New Perspectives on the Black Atlantic pp275–294 [see
Powell, Patricia “Transgender, Memory, and Colonial History in Patricia Powell’s The Pagoda” Tzarina T. Prater Small Axe 16(1) pp20–35.
Rhys, Jean “The Taming of the Creole: The (Little) Death of Otherness in Wide Sargasso Sea” Mariacristina Natalia Bertoli Women’s Identities and Bodies in Colonial and Postcolonial History and Literature ed María Isabel Romero Ruíz Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Newcastle upon Tyne) pp61–78.
Smith, Zadie “‘A Liberal Susceptibility to the Pains of Others’: Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, Haiti and the Limits of a Fosterian Intervention” Alberto Fernández Carbajal Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 43(3) pp35–57.
Walcott, Derek “Man Friday Speaks: Calypso Humor and the Reworking of Hierarchy in Derek Walcott’s Pantomime” Sam Vásquez Humor in the Caribbean Literary Canon pp117–150 [see
—– “‘Prediction and Memory’: Two Texts in Conversation: Homer’s Odyssey and Derek Walcott’s Omeros” Mimi Pipino Teaching Anglophone Caribbean Literature pp405–419 [see
—– “Writing Back to the Colonial Event: Derek Walcott and Wilson Harris” Lorna Burns Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze: Literature between Postcolonialism and Post-Continental Philosophy pp68–108 [see
Walrond, Eric Eric Walrond: The Critical Heritage ed Louis J. Parascandola and Carl A. Wade 232pp The University of the West Indies Press (Kingston) $30.00.
Non-fiction
Roopnaraine, Rupert The Sky’s Wild Noise: Selected Essays 240pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £24.99.
Journals
The Journal of West Indian Literature 20(2) eds Stephanie Decouvelaere and Malachi McIntosh Samuel Selvon.
Small Axe 16(2) ed David Scott Reading Edward Baugh Reading.
—– 16(3) ed David Scott Erna Brodber’s Poetics.
Bibliography 2013
Poetry
Baugh, Edward Black Sand: New and Selected Poems 134pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Booker, Malika Pepper Seed 84pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Capildeo, Vahni Utter 78pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Clarke, Austin Where the Sun Shines Best 70pp Guernica (Toronto) $15.00.
Goodison, Lorna Oracabessa 160pp Carcanet (Manchester) £12.95.
King, Jane Performance Anxiety 122pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Murray, Sai Ad-liberation 72pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Pollard, Velma And Caret Bay Again: New & Selected Poems 190pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £10.99.
Ramcharitar, Raymond Here 72pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Robinson, Roger The Butterfly Hotel 72pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Fiction
Antoni, Robert As Flies to Whatless Boys 320pp Akashic (New York) $15.95.
Augustave, Elsie The Roving Tree 300pp Akashic (New York) $15.95.
Clarke, Austin They Never Told Me: And Other Stories 216pp Exile (Toronto) $19.95.
Dabydeen, David Johnson’s Dictionary 224pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £9.99.
Danticat, Edwidge Claire of the Sea Light 256pp Quercus (London) £14.99.
Hopkinson, Nalo Sister Mine 320pp Hachette (New York) $17.99.
Jenkins, Barbara Sic Transit Wagon and Other Stories 180pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Kempadoo, Oonya All Decent Animals 272pp Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York) $26.00.
Kincaid, Jamaica See Now Then 192pp Farrar, Straus and Girous (New York) $13.00.
Kobbé, Montague The Night of the Rambler 256pp Akashic (New York) $15.95.
Newland, Courttia The Gospel according to Cane 224pp Akashic (New York) $15.95.
Senior, Olive and Laura James Anna Carries Water 40pp Tradewind (Vancouver) $18.95.
Winkler, Anthony C. The Family Mansion 224pp Akashic (New York) $15.95.
Miscellaneous
Miller, Kei Writing down the Vision: Essays & Prophecies 160pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £9.99.
Sekou, Lasana M. and Fabian Adekunle Badejo Maroon Lives Tribute to Maurice Bishop & Grenadian Freedom Fighters. Revolution as Poetic Inspiration: Grenada in Maroon Lives 96pp House of Nehesi (Philipsburg) $20.00.
Anthologies
Visions and Voices: Conversations with Fourteen Caribbean Playwrights Oliver Stephenson 436pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £19.99.
Where I See the Sun: Contemporary Poetry in St. Martin ed Lasana M. Sekou 120pp House of Nehesi (Philipsburg) $20.00.
Criticism
“At the Interstices of Diaspora: Queering the Long Story Short in Caribbean Literature by Women” M. Catherine Jonet The Postcolonial Short Story: Contemporary Essays eds Maggie Awadalla and Paul March-Russell Palgrave (New York) pp151–166.
Barriers, Borders and Crossings in British Postcolonial Fiction. A Gender Perspective Cecilia Rosa Acquarone 245pp Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Newcastle upon Tyne) £44.99.
“Becoming a Madman, Becoming a Madwoman: Ex-centricity in Caribbean Writing” John Thieme Ex-centric Writing: Essays on Madness in Postcolonial Fiction eds Susanna Zinato and Annalisa Pes Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Newcastle upon Tyne) pp95–118.
Caribbean Poetics Silvio Torres-Saillant 372pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £19.99.
“Celebrating Difference and Community: The Vampire in African-American and Caribbean Women’s Writing” Wina Wisker Transnational and Postcolonial Vampires: Dark Blood eds Tabish Khair and Johan Höglund Palgrave (New York) pp46-66.
Desire between Women in Caribbean Literature Keja L. Valens 224pp Palgrave (New York) $90.00.
Disturbers of the Peace: Representations of Madness in Anglophone Caribbean Literature Kelly Baker Josephs 224pp University of Virginia Press (Charlottesville) $59.50.
Essays: Exploring the Gobal Caribbean ed Susan Roberson 235pp Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Newcastle upon Tyne) £44.99.
“Frantz Fanon and the Négritude Movement: How Strategic Essentialism Subverts Manichean Binaries” Cynthia R. Nielsen Callaloo 36(2) pp342–352.
“Guyanese Literature, Magic Realism and the South American Connection” Pauline Melville Wasafiri 28(3) pp7–11.
“Indian-Trinidadian Women Writers: An Overview” Frank Birbalsingh Wasafiri 28(2) pp14-19.
“New Writing for the Island of Trinidad” Monique Roffey Wasafiri 28(2) pp4-6.
Methods in Caribbean Research: Literature, Discourse, Culture eds Barbara Lalla, Nicole Roberts, Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw and Valerie Youssef 296pp The University of the West Indies Press (Kingston) $35.00.
“‘Pon di Borderline’: Exploring Constructions of Jamaican Masculinity in Dancehall and Roots Theatre” Donna P. Hope The Journal of West Indian Literature 21(1&2) pp105–128.
Queer Narratives of the Caribbean Diaspora: Exploring Tactics Zoran Pecic 208pp Palgrave (Oxford & New York) £50.00.
Reassembling the Fragments: Voice and Identity in Caribbean Discourse eds Paula Morgan and Valerie Youssef 204pp The University of the West Indies Press (Kingston) $25.00.
Rewriting the African Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean: Beyond Disciplinary and National Boundaries Robert L. Adams Jr. 172pp Routledge (London & New York) £85.00.
The Tropics Bite Back: Culinary Coups in Caribbean Literature Valérie Loichot 304pp University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis) $25.00.
“Reading Post-Millennial Trinidadian Literature” Jeremy Poynting Wasafiri 28(2) pp75-79.
“Textual Communities in Guyana: A ‘nearly go so’ Literary History” Gemma Robinson The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 48(1) pp77–96.
“Thinking Caribbean Transnational Identity Anew in Contemporary Short Fiction” María Alonso Alonso Migration, Culture and Transnational Identities ed Edwards O Ako L’Harmattan (Paris) pp31–53.
“Washed by the Gulf Stream: The Historic and Geographic Relation of Irish and Caribbean Literature” Lee M. Jenkins The Journal of West Indian Literature 21(1&2) pp209–214.
Individual Studies
Brand, Dionne “The Movements of Dionne Brand” Zoran Pecic Queer Narratives of the Caribbean Diaspora: Exploring Tactics pp102–133 [see
Chamoiseau, Patrick “Essayism and the Multiplication of Possibility in Patrick Chamoiseau’s Biblique des derniers gestes” Christy Wampole Small Axe 17(3) pp35–62.
Channer, Colin “Making Jamaican Love: Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain and Romance-ified Diaspora Identities” Rhonda Frederich Small Axe 17(3) pp63–84.
Cliff, Michelle “Michelle Cliff’s Into the Interior and the Trope of the Solitary Female Immigrant” Lucía Stecher and Elsa Maxwell Callaloo 36(3) pp811–821.
Dabydeen, Cyril “The Trials of Becoming a Man in Cyril Dabydeen’s The Wizard Swami” J. Vijay Maharaj The Journal of West Indian Literature 21(1&2) pp60–82.
Danticat, Edwidge “Empathetic Engagement in Danticat’s ‘Brother, I’m Dying’” Veronica J. Austen ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 44(2-3) pp29-57.
Ferré, Rosario “The Love of Neighbors: Rosario Ferré’s Eccentric Neighborhoods / Vecindarios excéntricos” Keja L. Valens Desire between Women in Caribbean Literature pp131-146 [see
Glissant, Édouard “Édouard Glissant: Creolization and the Event” Lincoln Z. Shlensky Callaloo 36(2) pp353–374.
Hopkinson, Nalo “‘They can fly’: The Postcolonial Black Body in Nalo Hopkinson’s Speculative Short Fiction” Lee Skallerup Bessette The Postcolonial Short Story: Contemporary Essays eds Maggie Awadalla and Paul March-Russell Palgrave (New York) pp167–181.
Kincaid, Jamaica “Plotting Desire between Girls: Jamaica Kincaid’s At the Bottom of the River” Keja L. Valens Desire between Women in Caribbean Literature pp89-110 [see
Lamming, George “Diaspora Space: The Dialects of ‘Longing’ and ‘Belonging’ in George Lamming’s The Emigrants and V.S. Naipaul’s Half a Life” Sarah Anyang Agbor Migration, Culture and Transnational Identities ed Edwards O Ako L’Harmattan (Paris) pp79–98.
McKay, Claude “The Shadow of Intimacy: Male Bonding and Improvised Masculinity in Claude McKay’s Banjo: A Story without a Plot” Jarrett H. Brown The Journal of West Indian Literature 21(1&2) pp1–22.
—– “‘A Woman Is a Conjunction’: The Ends of Improvisation in Claude McKay’s Banjo: A Story without a Plot” Anthony Reed Callaloo 36(3) pp758–772.
Mendes, Alfred H. Selected Writings of Alfred H. Mendes ed Michèle Levy 264pp The University of the West Indies Press (Kingston) $30.00.
Mootoo, Shani “Incestuous Rape, Abjection, and the Colonization of Psychic Space in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night” Emy Koopman Journal of Postcolonial Writing 49(3) pp303–315.
—– “Shani Mootoo’s Diasporas” Zoran Pecic Queer Narratives of the Caribbean Diaspora: Exploring Tactics pp36–101 [see
Naipaul, V.S. “Diaspora Space: The Dialects of ‘Longing’ and ‘Belonging’ in George Lamming’s The Emigrants and V.S. Naipaul’s Half a Life” Sarah Anyang Agbor Migration, Culture and Transnational Identities ed Edwards O Ako L’Harmattan (Paris) pp79–98.
—– “Otherig the Self: The Journey Motif in V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men” Edwin Ntumfon Tangwa Migration, Culture and Transnational Identities ed Edwards O Ako L’Harmattan (Paris) pp135–156.
—– “V. S. Naipaul, a Queer Trinidadian” Alison Donnell Wasafiri 28(2) pp58-65.
—– “Which Other Way? Migration and Ways of Seeing in V.S. Naipaul” Geraldine Sinyuy Migration, Culture and Transnational Identities ed Edwards O Ako L’Harmattan (Paris) pp121–134.
Phillips, Caryl “A State of Independence: Caryl Phillips and the Postwar World Order” J. Dillon Brown ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 44(2-3) pp85-111.
—– “The Caribbean to the Metropolis: Immigration and ‘The High Anxiety of Belonging’ in Caryl Phillips’s In the Falling Snow” Jawhar Ahmed Dhouib Migration, Culture and Transnational Identities ed Edwards O Ako L’Harmattan (Paris) pp17–30.
—– “‘The Whole Root Is Somewhere in the Music’: Jazz, Soul, and Literary Influence in James Badwin and Caryl Phillips” Gedard David Naughton ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 44(2-3) pp113-139.
—– “‘They are us’: Caryl Phillips’ A Distant Shore and the British Transnation” David Ellis The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 48(3) pp411–423.
Powell, Patricia “Sexual Alternatives in Patricia Powell’s Me Dying Trial” Keja L. Valens Desire between Women in Caribbean Literature pp111-130 [see
Rhys, Jean “‘Fighting Mad’: Between Sides and Stories in Wide Sargasso Sea” Kelly Baker Josephs Disturbers of the Peace: Representations of Madness in Anglophone Caribbean Literature pp69–92 [see
—– Rhys Matters: New Critical Perspectives eds Mary Wilson and Kerry L. Johnson 290pp Palgrave (Oxford & New York) £55.00.
—– “Stealing Her Song, Not Her Life: The Migrant Experience in Jean Rhys’s ‘Let Them Call It Jazz’” Pamela Wright Essays: Exploring the Global Caribbean pp30–46 [see
Salkey, Andrew “Respite on the Brink-Complicating the Crisis of Caribbean Identity in Andrew Salkey’s Escape to an Autumn Pavement” Spencer Tricker Diasporic Identities and Empire: Cultural Contentions and Literary Landscapes Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Newcastle upon Tyne) pp138–156.
Scott, Lawrence “Reshaping the Past in Lawrence Scott’s Aelred’s Sin” Zoran Pecic Queer Narratives of the Caribbean Diaspora: Exploring Tactics pp158–177 [see
Selvon, Sam “An Unexpected Encounter with Sam Selvon at the National Portrait Gallery” Susheila Nasta Wasafiri 28(2) pp33-35.
—– “Humour in Exile: The Subversive Effects of Laughter in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners and Gisèle Pineau’s L’Exil selon Julia” Rachelle Okawa Journal of Postcolonial Writing 49(1) pp16–27.
—– “Sam Selvon’s Lonely Londoners and Diasporic Caribbean Identity in Literature” Tzu-Yu Lin Diasporic Identities and Empire: Cultural Contentions and Literary Landscapes eds Anastasia Nicéphore and David Brooks Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Newcastle upon Tyne) pp157–176.
Shand Allfrey, Phyllis “Writing Off-Centre: Global Imagination and Modernism in the Short Fiction of Phyllis Shand Allfrey” Sarah Fekadu Cross/Cultures 170: Postcolonial Studies Across the Disciplines eds Jane Gohrisch and Ellen Grünkemeier Ropodi (Amsterdam) pp207–224.
Walcott, Derek Derek Walcott, the Journeyman Years, Volume 1: Culture, Society, Literature, and Art ed Gordon Collier 572pp Rodopi (Amsterdam) €125.00.
—– Derek Walcott, the Journeyman Years, Volume 2: Performing Arts. Occasional Prose 1957-1974 eds Christopher Balme and Gordon Collier 542pp Rodopi (Amsterdam) €120.00.
—– Interlocking Basins of a Globe: Essays on Derek Walcott ed Jean-Antoine-Dunne 224pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £17.99.
—– “Shared Dreams and Collective Delirium in Derek Walcott’s Dream of Monkey Mountain” Kelly Baker Josephs Disturbers of the Peace: Representations of Madness in Anglophone Caribbean Literature pp93–118 [see
—– “The Sea as Place in Derek Walcott’s Poetry” Ben Thomas Jefferson The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 48(2) 287–304.
—– “Walcott’s ‘Blues’ and the Discourse of Black Male Existence” Charleston Alex Thomas The Journal of West Indian Literature 21(1&2) pp23–41.
—– “Walcott’s Sea and Caribbean Geomythography” Lara Cahill-Booth Journal of Postcolonial Writing 49(3) pp347–358.
Wynter, Sylvia “The Necessity for Madness: Negotiating Nation in Sylvia Wynter’s The Hills of Hebron” Kelly Baker Josephs Disturbers of the Peace: Representations of Madness in Anglophone Caribbean Literature pp45–68 [see
Non-fiction
Glave, Thomas Among the Bloodpeople: Politics & Flesh 224pp Akashic (New York) $15.95.
Hopkinson, Nalo “As Magic Does Nalo Hopkinson” Locus: The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field 71(3) pp7, 66-67 $7.50.
Jacobs, Debbie Wishing for Wings 236pp Ian Randle (Kingston) $16.95.
Journals
ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 44(2-3) eds Shaobo Xie and Michael T. Clarke Caribbean Literature Cluster.
Callaloo 36(4) ed Charles Henry Rowell Special Issue: Édouard Glissant.
Journal of Postcolonial Writing 49(2) eds Lorna Burns and Wendy Knepper ‘-Scapes’ of Globality in the Work of Wilson Harris.
Small Axe 17(2) ed David Scott What is Caribbean Studies?
—– 17(3) ed David Scott Translating the Caribbean.
Wasafiri 28(2) ed Stephanie Decouvelaere and Malachi McIntosh Special Issue Brighter Suns: Sixty Years of Literature from Trinidad.