Abstract
Introduction
2014 was a truly prolific year for both creative and academic Caribbean writing. A significant number of the works included in this bibliography entry were nominated for, and indeed honoured with, some of the most prestigious literary prizes. An example of this is Kei Miller’s latest collection of poetry, The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, which won the Forward Prize for poetry as well as being shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Costa Book Awards. This fantastic collection illustrates how borders are currently more permeable whilst simultaneously being more impenetrable than ever. Those familiar with Miller’s writing will identify the diversity of topics and mastery of language that typically characterise his texts. Migration, exploitation and colonial behaviour are just some of the topics of the heartfelt poems included in this collection that also features uncanny scenery and humour. Another 2014 collection, Vladimir Lucien’s Sounding Ground, winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for poetry, stands out due to its emotional and stylistic dimensions, as the judges emphasised. His poetry could be compared to the process of architectural construction as the poetic voice describes the process of building a house while he reflects on issues that relate to his family, his culture and his country.
In fiction, too, a few awards need to be noted. 2013 OCM Bocas award-winning author Monique Roffey’s new novel, House of Ashes, was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award in the novel category. The judges praised the tautly-constructed story that takes the reader through the violent outbreak which follows the post-revolutionary turmoil on a fictional Caribbean island. Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings won the OCM Bocas Prize for fiction for his epic account of Jamaican society and politics in the 1970s. Since the focal event of the novel is the failed assassination of “the singer”, presumably, a reference to Bob Marley, violence and corruption are primary motifs in this fictionalisation of the events around the attempt on Marley’s life pieced together from the oral accounts of witnesses and perpetrators.
Some debuts appeared in 2014: Lauren K. Allayne’s poetry collection Difficult Fruit and Katia D. Ulysse’s novel Drifting.
In his new collection, God’s Spider, poet laureate Cyril Dabydeen explores his diasporic experience through the geography of place. Ground Level, by the Casa de las Américas 2010 prize-winner Jennifer Rahim, is inspired by a 2011 event in Trinidad and Tobago when the government, trying to combat the drug trade, declared a curfew aimed to counter the violence and chaos that was ravaging the islands. Jamaican writer and social activist Erna Brodber also published work in 2014. Her latest novel, Nothing’s Mat, recalls the fictional history of a young London-based scholar who researches her family past to find a myriad of stories about her ancestors’ lives. History is also central to Fred D’Aguiar’s new novel, Children of Paradise, based on the Jonestown Massacre of 1978. The collective suicide of this utopian community is revisited in magical-realist storytelling. Deeply influenced by Wilson Harris, D’Aguiar felt that there was still space in which to further explore the Jonestown story, this time told from the children’s point of view. This is where Children of Paradise differs from previous accounts of the massacre regardless of the fictional or historical perspective. Finally, a notable mention goes to Andrea Levy’s Six Stories and an Essay prefaced by a metafictional essay detailing the author’s reflections on her own writing.
Several reprints of some Caribbean classics are also listed in the bibliography. The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013, selected by Glyn Maxwell, covers the sixty-five years of the poet’s career. His debut poem was published in a St Lucian local paper when he was fourteen years old and, from that moment onwards, the themes and topics tackled in his writing have typified the agenda of Caribbean literary production. Walcott’s long and prolific career has covered topics such as realism, surrealism, magical realism, the colonial legacy, history and identity in explorations of the Caribbean and the Western world. Two works by another acclaimed author of Caribbean literature, Wilson Harris, were also reprinted, so now The Sleepers of Roraima and The Age of the Rainmakers can be found in a single volume thanks to the editorial work of Peepal Tree Press. The myths and legends of Amerindian communities are the inspirations for these works. Peepal Tree Press have also reprinted Michael Gilkes’s highly contrasting plays, Couvade and A Pleasant Career, also in a single volume. Finally, Roger Mais’s Black Lightning, originally published in 1955, has also been reprinted and introduced by Jacqueline Bishop.
Other themes and topics can be identified in the poetry, fiction and drama production of the year. As the title itself indicates, Millicent A.A. Graham’s The Way Home is a collection of poems based around the ideas of home and belonging, where the very existence of these ideas, as physical locations and emotional understandings, are questioned. Liminality and the idea of alienation are the main themes in J.L. Torres’s Boricua Passport, a collection of poems exploring the neo-colonial status of Puerto Rico and its political and linguistic implications. Patriarchy, sexual taboos and gender issues are the central focus of both Tanya Shirley’s The Merchant of Feathers and Dorothea Smartt’s Reader, I Married Him & Other Queer Goings-On, two pieces of work that challenge social conventions both in the Caribbean and in its diaspora. Kendel Hippolyte’s Night Vision presents a new challenge for both the poet and the reader. A book where old and new forms of poetry coexist, Another Crossing by Khadijah Ibrahiim, also connects the past and the present of the Caribbean and Britain through diasporic links whilst celebrating cultural activism as a form of resistance for those who inhabit a seemingly multicultural space.
Geopolitics, class, cultural clash, global cultures and ecology are just some of the themes of the fiction output of 2014. Tobias S. Buckell’s Hurricane Fever is a futurist techno-thriller, written in the author’s characteristic science-fiction style. Musical Youth, by Joanne C. Hillhouse could be classified as young-adult writing. The novel follows the lives of the protagonists while their musical taste helps them explore class and race issues in social relationships in Antigua. A similar social concern about life in the Caribbean can be found in Oonya Kempadoo’s All Decent Animals, a tale of sexuality, friendship and cultural differences surrounding a group of Caribbean and European friends in Trinidad. Globalisation, as both culturally and economically problematic, is one of the main interests in Sharon Leach’s Love It When You Come, Hate It When You Go. The black urban Jamaican society that inspires the novel has to contend with the challenges of neo-colonising agents on the island as well as with the dangers of cultural westernisation. Gillian Royes’s novel, The Sea Grape Tree, is also worthy of mention. A new publication set in a paradisiacal location where the island’s housing developments and new wealthy elite are widening the class divisions, tearing society apart.
Inner Yardie: Three Plays by Patricia Cumper, introduced by Kwame Dawes, gathers texts that denounce violence, whether political, institutional, or patriarchal. Cumper uses humour and anti-humour to deal with the visible and invisible violence that surrounds us, since some of the repressive dynamics that rule our society have yet to be unfolded. A new anthology of Haiti Noir, edited once again by Edwidge Danticat, celebrates a new generation of Haitian writing. The short stories included in this collection, among which the readers will find “The Port-au-Prince Marriage Special” by Danticat herself, are inspired by the highs and lows of living in Haiti and in the diaspora. Another new publication included in the Miscellaneous section, The Queer Caribbean Speaks, offers interviews with different Caribbean personalities within the arts where they reflect on gender and sexual issues. Since homosexuality is illegal in most Caribbean countries, this publication works as a liberating and insurgent act for many of these activists. They challenge Eurocentric theories around global queerness that do not assist individuals in non-European or American locations to develop their own practices of resistance and empowerment. It is for this reason that they seek new approaches to the topic from within academia.
In the field of literary criticism, numerous studies were published in 2014 highlighting issues of gender, sexuality, migration and history, among others. The existing synergies between oral and written Caribbean literature are examined in A Poetics of Performance: The Oral-Scribal Aesthetic in Anglophone Caribbean Fiction. The impact of performance, as the title of the monograph suggests, is one of the most important artistic manifestations in the Caribbean, linking, as this study does the different Caribbean regions’ diverse styles of representation. The works of Earl Lovelace, Merle Collins and Marlon James, among others, and genres such as calypso, reggae and oral story-telling are discussed in this collection. Caribbean Literary Discourse: Voice and Cultural Identity in the Anglophone Caribbean focuses on the importance of Creole languages and pidgin dialects, these being the defining characteristics of Caribbean discourse. The analysis of multiculturalism and multilingualism on the islands serves to address the problem of the Caribbean’s (post)colonial legacy whilst featuring the exploration of some of the literary production of Lorna Goodison, Olive Senior, Earl Lovelace and Luise Bennett, amongst others.
Gender issues are explored in many of the academic works gathered in the bibliography below. In Island Bodies: Transgressive Sexualities in the Caribbean Imagination, women’s and sexual minorities’ experiences are located at the heart of the sexual revolution that is challenging Euro-American conceptualisations of sexuality and identity. The book discusses how sexual norms and stereotypes, both in the Caribbean and in its diaspora, are being contested from within the arts through literature, music, film and performance.
Individual studies appeared on the work of Erna Brodber, Opal Palmer Adisa, Edwidge Danticat, Shani Mootoo and Oonya Kempadoo. The dichotomy affection-emotion, epistemological and methodological practices, policies and affective dissidences are some of the concerns that are discussed in the texts by these female authors. Migrant Identities of “Creole Cosmopolitans”: Transcultural Narratives of Contemporary Postcoloniality, edited by Nirmala Menon and Marika Preziuso, gathers a series of essays on the conceptual links and common ground between the “migrant”, the “cosmopolitan” and/or the “hybrid”, as the editors explain in the introduction of this anthology. Here, the “glocal” identity of migrant individuals or communities is analysed in the work of authors such as Aimé Césaire, Julia Alvarez, George Lamming and V.S. Naipaul, among other non-Caribbean writers.
It is interesting to note how some of the best-known Caribbean authors are also contributing academic research. For instance, Olive Senior recalls the lives of Caribbean post-emancipation workers that moved to Panama in the 1850s and assisted the economic revitalisation of the islands with their circular migration. Senior’s Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal pays tribute to those anonymous heroes that sacrificed their lives in the name of progress. Kei Miller, echoing Michelle Cliff’s classic essay “If I Could Write This in Fire I Would Write This in Fire,” published a version of his speech at the Annual Philip Sherlock Lecture entitled “If I Could Write This on Zinc I Would Write This on Zinc”. In it, Miller reflects on his role as a researcher and an author of fiction and poetry while reflecting on his transmigrant experience.
Bibliography
Poetry
Allayne, Lauren K. Difficult Fruit 76pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Dabydeen, Cyril God’s Spider 112pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Graham, Millicent A. A. The Way Home 56pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Hippolyte, Kendel Night Vision 80pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Ibrahiim, Khadijah Another Crossing 64pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Lucien, Vladimir Sounding Ground 78pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Miller, Kei The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion 80pp Carcanet (Manchester) £9.95.
Rahim, Jennifer Ground Level 100pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Shirley, Tanya The Merchant of Feathers 72pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Smartt, Dorothea Reader, I Married Him & Other Queer Goings-On 32pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £4.99.
Torres, J. L. Boricua Passport 116pp 2LeafPress (New York) $16.99.
Walcott, Derek and Glyn Maxwell The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948–2013 640pp Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York) $40.00.
Drama
Cumper, Patricia Inner Yardie: Three Plays 196pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £9.99.
Gilkes, Michael Two Plays: Couvade & A Pleasant Career 142pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £9.99 [first pub 1974].
Fiction
Brodber, Erna Nothing’s Mat 128pp U of the West Indies P (Kingston) $22.00.
Buckell, Tobias S. Hurricane Fever 272pp Tor Books (New York) $24.99.
D’Aguiar, Fred Children of Paradise 384pp Harper Collins (New York) $25.99.
Harris, Wilson The Sleepers of Roraima & The Age of the Rainmakers 200pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £9.99 [first pub 1970 and 1971].
Hillhouse, Joanne C. Musical Youth 280pp Caribbean Reads (Basseterre, St. Kitts) $11.30.
James, Marlon A Brief History of Seven Killings 704pp Riverhead (New York) $28.95.
Kempadoo, Oonya All Decent Animals Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York) $15.00.
Lalla, Barbara Uncle Brother 160pp U of the West Indies P (Kingston) $35.00.
Leach, Sharon Love It When You Come, Hate It When You Go 162pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99.
Levy, Andrea Six Stories and an Essay 128pp Tinder Press (London) £7.99.
Mais, Roger Black Lightning 164pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £8.99 [first pub 1955].
Roffey, Monique House of Ashes 368pp Simon & Schuster (London) £14.99.
Royes, Gillian The Sea Grape Tree 368pp Simon & Schuster (London) £16.00.
Sánchez González, Lisa Puerto Rican Folktales / Cuentos folclóricos puertorriqueños 194pp 2LeafPress (New York) $29.99.
Ulysse, Katia D. Drifting 224pp Akashic (New York) $15.95.
Walkott-Hackshaw, Elizabeth Mrs. B 236pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £9.99.
Yanique, Tiphanie Land of Love and Drowning 368pp Penguin Random House (New York) $27.95.
Miscellaneous
Campbell, Kofi O.S. The Queer Caribbean Speaks: Interviews with Writers, Artists, and Activists 220pp Palgrave (London & New York) £55.00.
Anthologies
A Bloom of Stones ed Kwame Dawes 224pp Peepal Tree (Leeds) £19.99.
Haiti Noir 2: The Classics ed Edwidge Danticat 320pp Akashic (New York) $15.95.
A Letter for My Mother ed Nia Foxx 240pp Simon & Schuster (London) £15.00.
Pepperpot Various Authors 224pp Peekash Press (Leeds) £7.99.
Criticism
African Diasporic Women’s Narratives: Politics of Resistance, Survival, and Citizenship Simone A. James Alexander 252pp UP of Florida (Gainesville) $74.95.
After Love: Queer Intimacy and Erotic Economies in Post-Soviet Cuba Noelle Stout 248pp Duke UP (Durham, NC) $23.95.
Amistad a Hidden Network of Slavers and Merchants Zeuske Michael 286pp Markus Wiener (New Jersey) $68.95.
Border Crossings: A Trilingual Anthology of Caribbean Women Writers eds Nicole Roberts & Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw 292pp U of the West Indies P (Kingston) $42.00.
Cannibal Writes: Eating Others in Caribbean and Indian Ocean Women’s Writing Njeri Githire 264pp U of Illinois P (Champaign) $55.00.
Caribbean Literary Discourse: Voice and Cultural Identity in the Anglophone Caribbean Barbara Lalla, Jean D’Costa, Velma Pollard 296pp U of Alabama P (Alabama) $49.95.
Citizenship under Pressure: The 1970s in Jamaican Literature and Culture Rachel L. Mordecai 292pp U of the West Indies P (Kingston) $40.00.
Coloniality of Diasporas: Rethinking Intra-colonial Migrations in a Pan-Caribbean Context Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel 292pp Palgrave (London & New York) £57.50.
Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora Bénédicte Boisseron 240pp UP of Florida (Gainesville) $74.95.
Dimensions of Africa and Other Diasporas eds Franklin W. Knight & Ruth Iyob 332pp U of the West Indies P (Kingston) $45.00.
Dream Nation: Puerto Rican Culture and the Fictions of Independence María Acosta Cruz 222pp Rutgers UP (New Jersey) $80.00.
Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal Olive Senior 440pp U of the West Indies P (Kingston) $40.00.
State of Ambiguity: Civic Life and Culture in Cuba’s First Republic eds Steven Palmer, José Antonio Piqueras & Amparo Sánchez Cobos 376pp Duke UP (Durham, NC) $26.95.
Imagining the Great Puerto Rican Family: Framing Nation, Race and Gender during the American Century Hilda Lloréns 290pp Lexington Books (New York) $95.00.
In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam Urayoán Noel 230pp U of Iowa P (Iowa City) $49.95.
Island Bodies: Transgressive Sexualities in the Caribbean Imagination Rosamond S. King 272pp UP of Florida (Gainesville) $74.95.
Masculinity after Trujillo: The Poetics of Gender in Dominican Literature Maja Horn 220pp UP of Florida (Gainesville) $69.95.
Migrant Identities of “Creole Cosmopolitans”. Transcultural Narratives of Contemporary Postcoloniality eds Nirmala Menon & Marika Preziuso 187pp PeterLang (Berlin & New York) €70.20.
Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice David Scott 232pp Duke UP (Durham, NC) $23.95.
Our Nuyorican Thing: The Birth of a Self-Made Identity Samuel Diaz Carrion 132pp 2LeafPress (New York) $16.99.
Postscripts: Caribbean Perspectives on the British Canon from Shakespeare to Dickens eds Giselle Rampaul & Barbara Lalla 188pp U of the West Indies P (Kingston) $35.00.
Scars of Partition: Postcolonial Legacies in French and British Borderlands William F.S. Miles 386pp U of Nebraska P (Lincoln, NE) $35.00.
Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing through Affect Elina Valovirta 217pp Rodopi (Amsterdam) €48.00.
Telling West Indian Lives: Life Narrative and the Reform of Plantation Slavery Cultures 1804–1834 Sue Thomas 256pp Palgrave (London & New York) £57.50.
The Colonial Art of Demonizing Others: A Global Perspective Esther Lezra 152pp Routledge (London & New York) £140.00.
The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present: Operation Urgent Memory Shalini Puri 360pp Palgrave (London & New York) £55.00.
The Haitian Revolution in the Literary Imagination: Radical Horizons, Conservative Constraints Philip Kaisary 256pp U of Virginia P (Charlottesville) $29.50.
The Politics of Race in Panama: Afro-Hispanic and West Indian Literary Discourses of Contention Sonja Stephenson Watson 200pp UP of Florida (Gainesville) $74.95.
The Post-Columbus Syndrome: Identities, Cultural Nationalism, and Commemorations in the Caribbean Fabienne Viala 296pp Palgrave (London & New York) £56.50.
The Terror and the Time: Banal Violence and Trauma in Caribbean Discourse Paula Morgan 260pp U of the West Indies P (Kingston) $30.00.
“‘All O’ We Is One’? Migration, Citizenship, and Black Nativism in the Postcolonial Era” Laura Barrio-Vilar Callaloo 37(1) pp89–111.
A Poetics of Performance: The Oral-Scribal Aesthetic in Anglophone Caribbean Fiction Carol Bailey 240pp U of the West Indies P (Kingston) $35.00.
“‘Prophet of a Coming New World’: Eric Walrond and the Crossroads of Pan-Caribbean, Pan-American, and Pan-African Literary Studies” Raj Chetty Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 11(1) Article 9.
“‘Re-membering Our Scattered Skeletons’: Literary Representations of the Zong Massacre” Paula Morgan The Terror and the Time: Banal Violence and Trauma in Caribbean Discourse pp27–48 [see
“‘The Womb of My Otherness’: Creolization in ‘The View from the Terrace’ and ‘Barbados’” Paula Morgan The Terror and the Time: Banal Violence and Trauma in Caribbean Discourse pp49–66 [see
“A Newer Noir: Bringing a Classic Genre to the Caribbean” Carolina Villalba Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 11(1) Article 15.
“Between Virtuosity and Despair: Formal Experimentation in Diaspora Tales” Simona Bertacco Journal of Postcolonial Writing 50(6) pp648–663.
“Borderlands and Border Crossers: Migrants and Boundaries in the Greater Caribbean, 1840-1940” Lara Putnam Small Axe 18(1) pp7–21.
“The Caribbean Diaspora and Black Internationalism” Winston James Dimensions of Africa and Other Diasporas pp254–274 [see
“Caribbean Identities, Dance Constructions and ‘Crossroading’” Yvonne Daniel Dimensions of Africa and Other Diasporas pp149–179 [see
“Caribbean Postscripting of the British Canon” Giselle Rampaul and Barbara Lalla Postscripts: Caribbean Perspectives on the British Canon from Shakespeare to Dickens pp1–7 [see
“Caribbean-Latin@s: A Crisscrossing and Dislocating Narrative” Nadia V. Celis Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 11(1) Article 10.
“Christopher Columbus in the English Caribbean: Commemoration and Performance in Jamaica” Fabienne Viala The Post-Columbus Syndrome: Identities, Cultural Nationalism, and Commemorations in the Caribbean pp153–174 [see
“Dark Horse Poetics: Lévi-Strauss, Benítez-Rojo, and Caribbean Epistemology” Rose Réjouis Small Axe 18(1) pp103–113.
“The Ghost of Annie Palmer: Giving Voice to Jamaica’s ‘White Witch of Rose Hall’” Jennifer Donahue The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 49(2) pp243–256.
“Hispaniola’s Environmental Story: Challenging an Iconic Image” Sherrie Baver Callaloo 37(3) pp648–661.
“If I could write this on zinc, I would write it on zinc” Kei Miller The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 49(3) pp333–341.
“Incommensurable Epistemologies? The Atlantic Geography of Healing in Early Modern Caribbean” Pablo F. Gómez Small Axe 18(2) pp95–107.
“Invoking the Evident: Self-Globalization and the Irrefutability of the Modern Image in Trujillo’s Disaster Diplomacy” Mark D. Anderson Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings 14(2) pp61–81.
“Maroons in the Mountains: The Creole Multiracial Subject and the Problem of Blackmess” Rachel L. Mondecai Citizenship Under Pressure: The 1970s in Jamaican Literature and Culture pp103–138 [see
“The Maroon’s Moment, 1856–1861” Martha Schoolman Abolitionist Geographies U of Minnesota P (Minneapolis) pp161–188.
“The Myth of the Monolingual Haitian Reader: Linguistic Rights and Choices in the Haitian Literary Context” Nadève Ménard Small Axe 18(3) pp52–63.
“Memorializing Empire, Producing Global Citizens: The British Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (2007)” April Biccum Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 16(2): 215–232.
“Own People: Race, ‘Altered Solidarities,’ and the Limits of Culture in Trinidad” J. Brent Crosson Small Axe 18(3) pp18–34.
“Policing Violent Homophobia in the Caribbean and the British Caribbean Diaspora: Postcolonial Discourses and the Limits of Postmodernity” Perry Stanislas Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 16(1): 135–156.
“Portuguese Jews, Amerindians, and the Frontiers of Encounter in Colonial Suriname” Jessica Vance Roitman New West Indian Guide 88(1–2) pp18–52.
“Race, Family, and the Plantation Legacy in United States and Caribbean Writers” Taylor Hagood Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 11(1) Article 6.
“Sexuality and the Jamaican Citizen” Rachel L. Mondecai Citizenship under Pressure: The 1970s in Jamaican Literature and Culture pp178–224 [see
“Tasks without Solutions: Why Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams Matters to Translation Culture and Caribbean Poetics” Rose Réjouis Small Axe 18(3) pp78–89.
“Texts and Contexts: Uncovering the Complexities of Afro-Atlantic Responses to the Haitian Revolution” Elizabeth E. Kelly Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 11(1) Article 12.
“The ‘Two Placed Gaze’ of Diasporic Caribbean Literature” Ann Marie Alfonso-Forero Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 11(1) Article 8.
“The Tragicomedy of Anticolonial Overcoming: Toussaint Louverture and The Black Jacobins on Stage” Raj G. Chetty Callaloo 37(1) pp69–88.
“War Politics and War Games in Puerto Rico” Juan A. Guisti-Cordero New West Indian Guide 88(1–2) pp53–61.
“Why Noir, Why Now? Conversations on Haiti Noir with M.J. Fievre and Marie Ketsia Theodore-Pharel” Carolina Villalba Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 11(1) Article 5.
Alvarez, Julia “Postcolonial Textualities and Diasporic Imagination: Reading Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies (1994) through Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Teheran (2003)” Marika Preziuso Migrant Identities of “Creole Cosmopolitans”: Transcultural Narratives of Contemporary pp49–59 [see
Benítez Rojo, Antonio “Anamnesis, Chaos, and Columbus: Antonio Benítez Rojo and the Caribbean Feedback-Machine” Fabienne Viala The Post-Columbus Syndrome: Identities, Cultural Nationalism, and Commemorations in the Caribbean pp85–106 [see
Bennett, Louise “Louise Bennett’s Dialect Poetry: Language Variation in a Literary Text” Jean D’Costa Caribbean Literary Discourse: Voice and Cultural Identity in the Anglophone Caribbean pp157–190 [see
—– Miss Lou: Louise Bennett and Jamaican Culture Mervyn Morris 116pp Ian Randle (Kingston) $12.95.
Brathwaite, Kamau “Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s Transnational Anamnesis: Creolizing Columbus in the English Caribbean Collective Memory” Fabienne Viala The Post-Columbus Syndrome: Identities, Cultural Nationalism, and Commemorations in the Caribbean pp41–64 [see
—– “The Black Atlantic Meets the Black Pacific: Multimodality in Kamau Brathwaite and Wayde Compton” Heather Smyth Callaloo 37(2) pp389–403.
—– “Time and Tidalectics Wait for No Nam: Catastrophe and Creativity in the Work of Kamau Brathwaite” Michael Niblett Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings 14(2) pp108–125.
Brodber, Erna “‘Caribbean Passion’ – The Hypersexual and the Asexual Woman as Reparative Tropes: Opal Palmer Adisa and Erna Brodber” Elina Valovirta Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing through Affect pp163–186 [see
—– “Communities That Heal – Reading Sexual Healing: Edwidge Danticat, Opal Palmer Adisa, Erna Brodber, and Shani Mootoo” Elina Valovirta Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing through Affect pp115–142 [see
—– “Reading the Ambivalence of Sexuality in Transition: Erna Brodber and Oonya Kempadoo” Elina Valovirta Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing through Affect pp41–72 [see
—– “Shadow(ing) Men – Visions of Caring Masculinities: Erna Brodber, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Shani Mootoo” Elina Valovirta Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing through Affect pp143–162 [see
—– “Syncretism and Spirituality in the Literature of the English-Speaking Caribbean: Erna Brodber’s Myal” Kathie Birat Literature and Spirituality in the English-Speaking World eds Kathie Birat and Brigitte Zaugg PeterLang (Berlin & New York) pp205–220.
—– “Ways of Reading Sexual Shame, Violence, and Pain: Edwidge Danticat, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Erna Brodber” Elina Valovirta Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing through Affect pp73–114 [see
Carter, Martin “Conceptual Perspectives on Time and Timelessness in Martin Carter’s ‘University of Hunger’” Barbara Lalla Caribbean Literary Discourse: Voice and Cultural Identity in the Anglophone Caribbean pp191–202 [see
Césaire, Aimé “The Migrant Text: Aimé Césaire’s Hemispheric Gambit and the Editorial Blind-Spot” Alex Gil Migrant Identities of “Creole Cosmopolitans”: Transcultural Narratives of Contemporary Postcoloniality pp3–17 [see
Chariandy, David “‘When Memory Is a Bruise Still Tender’: Ageing and Alzheimer’s in Cascade and Soucouyant” Paula Morgan The Terror and the Time: Banal Violence and Trauma in Caribbean Discourse pp129–145 [see
Chin, Staceyann “Disciplining the Unruly (National) Body in Staceyann Chin’s The Other Side of Paradise” Jocelyn Fenton Stitt Small Axe 18(3) pp1-17.
Collins, Merle “(Re)membering: The Power of Stories in The Colour of Forgetting and Unburnable” Carol Bailey A Poetics of Performance: The Oral-Scribal Aesthetic in Anglophone Caribbean Fiction pp37–74 [see
Condé, Maryse “Maryse Condé’s Histoire de la femme cannibale: Coming out in the French Antilles” Bénédicte Boisseron Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora pp57–89 [see
—– “The Queer Politics of Crossing in Maryse Condé’s Crossing the Mangrove” Christopher Ian Foster Small Axe 18(1) pp114–124.
Cruz, Angie “The Smell of an Impossible Dream: Dallas, Migration, and Creative Failure in Angie Cruz’s Let It Rain Coffee” Elina Valovirta, Lydia Kokkola, and Janne Korkka The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 49(2) pp229–242.
Danticat, Edwidge “Art as Engagement: Violence, Trauma, and the Role of the Reader in Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker” Birgit Spengler Contemporary Women’s Writing 8(2): 189–205.
—– “Communities That Heal – Reading Sexual Healing: Edwidge Danticat, Opal Palmer Adisa, Erna Brodber, and Shani Mootoo” Elina Valovirta Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing through Affect pp115–142 [see
—– “Edwidge Danticat and Dany Laferrière: Parasitic and Remittance Diaspora” Bénédicte Boisseron Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora pp90–129 [see
—– “Mothering the Nation: Women’s Bodies as Nationalist Trope in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory” Simone A. James Alexander African Diasporic Women’s Narratives: Politics of Resistance, Survival, and Citizenship pp96–126 [see
—– “One Day for the Hunter, One Day for the Prey: State Criminality in Danticat’s Fiction” Paula Morgan The Terror And The Time: Banal Violence and Trauma in Caribbean Discourse pp105–128 [see
—– “Ways of Reading Sexual Shame, Violence, and Pain: Edwidge Danticat, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Erna Brodber” Elina Valovirta Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing Through Affect pp73–114 [see
De Burgos, Julia Becoming Julia de Burgos: The Making of a Puerto Rican Icon Vanessa Pérez Rosario 224pp U of Illinois P (Champaign) $85.00.
Espinet, Ramabai “Bridges beyond the Kala Pani: Transgressing Boundaries in Mootoo and Espinet” Johanna Garvey A Caribbean Studies Journal 11(2) Article 6.
—– “Rifts and Riffs, Roots and Routes: Ramabai Espinet’s The Swinging Bridge” Judith Misrahi-Barak Tracing the New Indian Diaspora ed Om Prakash Dwivedi Rodopi (Amsterdam) pp235–251.
Glissant, Edouard “The Snake, the Shore, and Columbus: Edouard Glissant’s Anamnesis of the French Départment d’Outre-Mer” Fabienne Viala The Post-Columbus Syndrome: Identities, Cultural Nationalism, and Commemorations in the Caribbean pp65–84 [see
Goodison, Lorna “Mothertongue Voices in the Writing of Olive Senior and Lorna Goodison” Velma Pollard Caribbean Literary Discourse: Voice and Cultural Identity in the Anglophone Caribbean pp221–231 [see
James, C.L.R. C.L.R. James in Imperial Britain Christian Høgsbjerg 312pp Duke UP (Durham, NC) $24.95.
—– “The Theory of Haiti: The Black Jacobins and the Poetics of Universal History” David Scott Small Axe 18(3) pp35–51.
James, Marlon “Inter-Performance and the Woman-Centred Poetics in The Wine of Astonishment and The Book of Night Women” Carol Bailey A Poetics of Performance: The Oral-Scribal Aesthetic in Anglophone Caribbean Fiction pp75–118 [see
John, Marie-Elena “(Re)membering: The Power of Stories in The Colour of Forgetting and Unburnable” Carol Bailey A Poetics of Performance: The Oral-Scribal Aesthetic in Anglophone Caribbean Fiction pp37–74 [see
Kempadoo, Oonya “Reading the Ambivalence of Sexuality in Transition: Erna Brodber and Oonya Kempadoo” Elina Valovirta Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing through Affect pp41–72 [see
Kincaid, Jamaica “V.S. Naipaul and Jamaica Kincaid: Rhetoric of National Dis-Allegiance” Bénédicte Boisseron Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora pp130–155 [see
Laferrière, Dany “Edwidge Danticat and Dany Laferrière: Parasitic and Remittance Diaspora” Bénédicte Boisseron Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora pp90–129 [see
Lalo, Eduardo “Literatura Nullius: The Untranslatability of Eduardo Lalo and the Multirelation of the Puerto Rican Intellectual” Natalie L. Belisle Small Axe 18(3) pp64–77.
Lamming, George “Lamming vs. Naipaul: Writing Migrants, Writing Islands in the British Literary Field” Malachi McIntosh Migrant Identities of “Creole Cosmopolitans”: Transcultural Narratives of Contemporary pp79–94 [see
—– “The Pleasures of Excerpts: George Lamming, The World Quarterly, and the Novel” Kathleen DeGuzman Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 11(2) Article 2.
Lovelace, Earl “Affirming the Female ‘Subject Person’: Rereading Gender Discourses in The Dragon Can’t Dance” Carol Bailey A Poetics of Performance: The Oral-Scribal Aesthetic in Anglophone Caribbean Fiction pp119–140 [see
—– “Inter-Performance and the Woman-Centred Poetics in The Wine of Astonishment and The Book of Night Women” Carol Bailey A Poetics of Performance: The Oral-Scribal Aesthetic in Anglophone Caribbean Fiction pp75–118 [see
—– “Mixing Codes and Mixing Voices: Language in Earl Lovelance’s Salt” Velma Pollard Caribbean Literary Discourse: Voice and Cultural Identity in the Anglophone Caribbean pp203–212 [see
—– “The Clothing Economy of Earl Lovelace’s The Dragon Can’t Dance” Hella Bloom Cohen The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 49(1) pp81–98.
Manley, Michael “Michael (Manley) Enormous: Race, Gender and Citizenship in 1970s Jamaica” Rachel L. Mordecai Citizenship under Pressure: The 1970s in Jamaican Literature and Culture pp33–65 [see
Marquez Stathis, Sandra “Recovery Foreclosed: History, Landscape, and Personal Intervention in Sandra Marquez Stathis’s Rubble: The Search for a Haitian Boy” Kasia Mika Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings 14(2) pp93–106.
Mars, Kettly “Thirsting to Write: Kettly Mars’s Aus Frontières de la soif and the Haitian Postearthquake Novel” Martin Munro New West Indian Guide 88(1–2) pp1–17.
McKay, Claude “The Perception of Madness; Escapes and Flights of Fancies in Claude McKay’s Banana Bottom” Jarrett Hugh Brown Dimensions of Africa and Other Diasporas pp236–252 [see
Mendes, Alfred H. Selected Writings of Alfred H. Mendes ed Michèle Levy 264pp U of the West Indies P (Kingston) $35.00.
Mittelholzer, Edgar “Specters in the Forest: Gothic Form and World-Ecology in Edgar Mittelholzer’s My Bones and My Flute” Michael Niblett Small Axe 18(2) pp53–68.
Mootoo, Shani “Bridges beyond the Kala Pani: Transgressing Boundaries in Mootoo and Espinet” Johanna Garvey A Caribbean Studies Journal 11(2) Article 6.
—– “Communities that Heal – Reading Sexual Healing: Edwidge Danticat, Opal Palmer Adisa, Erna Brodber, and Shani Mootoo” Elina Valovirta Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing through Affect pp115–142 [see
—– “Shadow(ing) Men – Visions of Caring Masculinities: Erna Brodber, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Shani Mootoo” Elina Valovirta Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing through Affect pp143–162 [see
Naipaul, V.S. “Lament of the Unhomely: Nationhood and Nonbelonging in the Work of V.S. Naipaul” Paula Morgan The Terror and the Time: Banal Violence and Trauma in Caribbean Discourse pp67–82 [see
—– “V.S. Naipaul and Jamaica Kincaid: Rhetoric of National Dis-Allegiance” Bénédicte Boisseron Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora pp130–155 [see
Naipaul, V.S. “Lamming vs. Naipaul: Writing Migrants, Writing Islands in the British Literary Field” Malachi McIntosh Migrant Identities of “Creole Cosmopolitans”: Transcultural Narratives of Contemporary pp79–94 [see
Nourbese Philip, Marlene “The Archive and Affective Memory in M. Nourbese Philip’s Zong!” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 16(4): 465–482.
Ortiz, Fernando “Transculturation as Commemoration: Fernando Ortiz, the Cuban longue durée, and the Role of Columbus” Fabienne Viala The Post-Columbus Syndrome: Identities, Cultural Nationalism, and Commemorations in the Caribbean pp21–40 [see
Palmer Adisa, Opal “‘Caribbean Passion’ – The Hypersexual and the Asexual Woman as Reparative Tropes: Opal Palmer Adisa and Erna Brodber” Elina Valovirta Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing Through Affect pp163–186 [see
—– “Communities that Heal – Reading Sexual Healing: Edwidge Danticat, Opal Palmer Adisa, Erna Brodber, and Shani Mootoo” Elina Valovirta Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing through Affect pp115–142 [see
—– “Shadow(ing) Men – Visions of Caring Masculinities: Erna Brodber, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Shani Mootoo” Elina Valovirta Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing through Affect pp143–162 [see
—– “Ways of Reading Sexual Shame, Violence, and Pain: Edwidge Danticat, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Erna Brodber” Elina Valovirta Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing through Affect pp73–114 [see
Phillips, Caryl “Estrangement, Empathic Failure, and the Provocation of a Critical Cosmopolitan Vision in Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood” Alan Liam McCluskey The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 49(2) pp215–228.
—– “Signifying (Non)Linguistic and Subliminal Spirituality: Caryl Phillips’s Crossing the River (1993)” Tomeiko Ashford Carter ARIEL 45(1&2) pp247–260.
—– “The Silence of Palestinians in Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood” Ana Miller Journal of Postcolonial Writing 50(5) pp509–521.
Pineau, Gisèle “Trauma Lost in Translation: Teaching Gisèle Pineau’s L’espérance-macadam/Macadam Dreams” Régine Michelle Jean-Charles Callaloo 37(2) pp404–412.
Prince, Mary “The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself” Sue Thomas Telling West Indian Lives: Life Narrative and the Reform of Plantation Slavery Cultures 1804–1834 pp119–165 [see
Rivera, Ismael The People’s Poet: Life and Myth of Ismael Rivera, an Afro-Caribbean Icon Rosa Elena Carrasquillo 260pp Caribbean Studies Press (Florida) $24.50.
Selvon, Sam “Creolization West One: Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners” Bill Schwarz A Caribbean Studies Journal 11(2) Article 3.
Senior, Olive “Mothertongue Voices in the Writing of Olive Senior and Lorna Goodison” Velma Pollard Caribbean Literary Discourse: Voice and Cultural Identity in the Anglophone Caribbean pp221–231 [see
Tosh, Peter “(Counter-)Narratives of Black Citizenship: Peter Tosh and the Sistren Theatre Collective” Rachel L. Mordecai Citizenship under Pressure. The 1970s in Jamaican Literature and Culture pp66–102 [see
Walcott, Derek “‘Something Inside Is Laid Wide like a Wound’: Walcott’s City of Pain and Promise” Paula Morgan The Terror and the Time: Banal Violence and Trauma in Caribbean Discourse pp83–101 [see
—– “Towards ‘that republic in which complexions do not matter’: Derek Walcott’s Drums and Colours Fifty Years On” Harold N. McDermott A Caribbean Studies Journal 11(2) Article 4.
—– “Translative and Opaque: Multilingual Caribbean Writing in Derek Walcott and Monchoachi” Kavita Ashana Singh Small Axe 18(3) pp90–106.
Wynter, Sylvia Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis ed Katherine McKittrick 304pp Duke UP (Durham, NC) $25.95.
Young, Kerry “‘We are Jamaicans. We are Brothers’: History, Brotherhood, and Independence in Kerry Young’s Pao” Tzarina T. Prater A Caribbean Studies Journal 11(2) Article 5.
Non-fiction
Blanco, Richard The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood 272pp Harper Collins (New York) $25.99.
Mandell, Gail P. Angel Creek. Where the River Meets the Sea: A Memoir 396pp U of the West Indies Press (Kingston) $35.00.
Nunez, Elizabeth Not for Everyday Use: A Memoir 256pp Akashic (New York) $15.95.
Journals
Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 11(1) ed Raphael Dalleo New Scholarship on the Caribbean and the United States.
—– 11(2) 31st Annual West Indian Literature Conference ed Raphael Dalleo Imagined Nations: 50 Years Later.
Callaloo 37(3) ed Charles Henry Rowell The Transatlantic, Africa & Its Diaspora. The 2013 Callaloo Conference.
Small Axe: A Caribbean Platform of Criticism 18(1) eds Melanie Newton and Matthew Smith Caribbean Historiography.
—– 18(3) eds Kaiama Glover and Martin Munro Translating the Caribbean.
Wasafiri: International Contemporary Writing 79 ed Susheila Nasta Celebrating Thirty Years.