Abstract
Introduction
The Caribbean, sadly, lost some of its most influential literary figures in 2016. Renowned author and literary critic Michelle Cliff as well as the two prolific writers Austin Clarke and E. R. Braithwaite passed away over the course of the last year. All three of them were living outside the Caribbean, in North America, where they developed their successful careers. Clarke even saw his last two books, a collection of poems entitled In Your Crib and a memoir called ’Membering, published in the year prior to his death.
The influence of Derek Walcott, who also left us in early 2017, can be felt throughout the latest award-winning poetry book by Ishion Hutchinson. House of Lords and Commons was the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, honouring one of Jamaica’s newest lyrical voices. Hutchinson, who has been described as a post-post-colonial poet, approaches his home country with an ironic gaze while using intertextuality to deal with issues relating to past, memory and landscape. His verse, which mixes alliteration with more innovative forms of rhyming, provides a thought-provoking challenge for new readers of Caribbean poetry.
2016 was also notable for being a truly productive year for both the Caribbean creative and academic scenes. Trinidad-born, UK-based poet Vahni Capildeo’s latest book of poetry, Measures of Expatriation, was awarded the prestigious Forward Prize for best poetry collection. This award is not only a major recognition for Capildeo, but also for Caribbean poetry since she is the third Caribbean poet in a row, after Kei Miller and Claudia Rankine, to win this prize. Through the poems and prose-poems that shape Measures of Expatriation, the poetic voice explores gender and racial conundrums while reflecting on the author’s exile in the United Kingdom. The judges praised her masterful use of language as well as the precise construction of a rhetoric around the concepts of borders and homeland. The book provides an interesting example of how migrant identities are reconfigured through poetry. In the same vein, debut poetry book Cannibal, by Safiya Sinclair, was shortlisted for the 2017 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in the poetry category. The poet’s diasporic experience should also be taken into consideration when approaching this text. Within it, Sinclair offers a new re-reading of The Tempest by juxtaposing images and words when dealing with the figure of Caliban. Her native Jamaica is paramount to understanding the importance given to issues related to history and gender in the text since the poetic voice evokes, from the diaspora, a time from the past which is brought into the present.
In fiction, award-winning novels by Kei Miller and Jacob Ross need to be noted. Miller’s new publication Augustown, a modern fable on Jamaica’s recent history, was the recipient of the 2017 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. The text has a clear connection to the Latin American literary tradition. In Augustown the author explores the legacy of Jamaican folklore through the use of magical realism, placing well-developed and captivating female characters centre-stage. Questions related to race, class and memory are explored in the novel, where metafiction and storytelling play a fundamental role in building up the tension towards the vivid denouement which engages the reader. Another Caribbean novel, The Bone Readers by Jacob Ross, was the winner of the inaugural Jhalak Prize, for black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) writers. This crime novel, the first in the Camaho Quartet, evokes Caribbean history and the way in which it has influenced contemporary politics in the region. Individual and collective memory and the legacy of colonialism are some of the topics explored here. Articulated around rich characters, the novel has been referred to as a page-turner due to the clever plotting of the events and the powerful descriptions that complement the noir aesthetics of the main plot.
A number of Caribbean classics were reprinted in 2016 and are also included in the bibliography below. Papillote released a new edition of P. S. Allfrey’s The Orchid House, with an introduction by Schuyler Esprit, an eye-opening autobiographical novel that explores the colonial past of Dominica. Following its long-lasting literary project, Peepal Tree Press also re-published four influential Caribbean modern classics. New Day, published for the first time in 1949 by Jamaican author V. S. Reid, is considered to be the first novel using patois in its retelling of the Morant Bay Rebellion and its political implications. Colonial politics is at the centre of George Lamming’s Water with Berries, a novel published in 1971, now reprinted alongside Garth St Omer’s J-, Black Bam and the Masqueraders and James Carnegie’s Wages Paid, two texts which explore the slavery and independence periods in Jamaica and St Lucia.
Among the non-fiction publications, the miscellaneous collection edited by Jesmyn Ward, The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race, stands out for its detailed analysis of racial issues. Caribbean authors Edwidge Danticat and Claudia Rankine contribute to this anthology of essays, poems and memoirs on the politics of race and its continuing effect on the daily lives of people of colour in the United States. Another anthology, New World, Old Ways, edited by Karen Lord, is a collection of speculative short stories that aim to give voice to a new generation of Caribbean authors. With a clear eco-critical perspective, deeply rooted in the Caribbean, the texts included in this anthology use science fiction and fantasy to deal with family relationships, romance and the passing of time.
Focusing on the academic publications, several studies appeared in 2016 exploring the works, above all, by female authors including Sylvia Wynter, Andrea Levy, Zadie Smith, Jamaica Kincaid and Oonya Kempadoo, among others (see
Another book of note listed under
Calypso Jews: Jewishness in the Caribbean Literary Imagination by Sarah Phillips Casteel deals with a topic that has not seen a lot of critical attention. The contribution of this book to the area of Caribbean Studies is of great importance. Phillips Casteel follows the fate of those Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities that arrived in the Caribbean and the way in which they are represented in the works of Derek Walcott, Maryse Condé, Michelle Cliff, Jamaica Kincaid, Caryl Phillips, and David Dabydeen, among others. Jews reportedly arrived to the Caribbean at the end of the fifteenth century, the time of the early colonization of the islands and the expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. The number of Jews in the Caribbean increased significantly during World War II. These are the two main historical periods analysed in Calypso Jews, an accurate and well-needed study on the contribution of Jews to the Caribbean multicultural identity.
Another important work of criticism (see