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Thicker Than Water: New Writing From The Caribbean
Par Funso Aiyejina. 2021
The latest release from Caribbean publisher Peekash Press celebrates some of the major new voices in Anglophone Caribbean literature. Difficult…
parents and lost children, unfaithful spouses and spectral lovers, mysterious ancestors and fierce bloodlines--the stories, poems, and memoirs in this new anthology tackle everything that’s most complicated and thrilling about family and history in the Caribbean. Collecting new writing by finalists for the Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize, a groundbreaking award administered by the Bocas Lit Fest, Thicker Than Water shows us how a new generation of Caribbean authors address perennial questions of love, betrayal, and memory in small places where personal and collective histories are often troublingly intertwined. From the Introduction by Funso Aiyejina: "Thicker Than Water confirms that the Caribbean is blessed with quietly penetrating, effortlessly urbane, and socially committed prose writers; environmentally passionate and historically anchored creative nonfiction writers; and thematically courageous and stylistically daring poets who manipulate language to create poetry that is daring, engaging, fluent, and confident. These are writers who are emotionally complex and critically engaged. They are the heirs to a multistoried and multifaceted Caribbean literary tradition that is as multichromatic and multilayered as its complicated history. These writers boldly engage with a Caribbean that is not constrained by its clichéd images of sea, sun, and sand. They are products of their history but they are not hog-tied by it. Here are writers who see what many do not see and dare to speak what many fear to think.” Featuring brand-new writing from: Lisa Allen-Agostini, Nicolette Bethel, Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné, Vashti Bowlah, Richard Georges, Zahra Gordon, Barbara Jenkins, Lelawatee Manoo-Rahming, Ira Mathur, Diana McCaulay, Sharon Millar, Monica Minott, Philip Nanton, Xavier Navarro Aquino, Shivanee Ramlochan, Judy Raymond, Hazel Simmons-McDonald, Lynn Sweeting, and Peta-Gaye V. Williams.The Tower of the Antilles: Short Stories
Par Achy Obejas. 2017
Finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction!Longlisted for the 2018 PEN Open Book Award and The Story Prize!Included in The…
Rumpus's "What to Read When You've Made it More Than Halfway Through 2017"Selected as one of Rigoberto Gonzalez's Favorite Books of 2017/Critics Pick, LA Times Jacket CopyOne of Electric Literature's Best Short Story Collections of 2017"Questions of personal and national identity percolate through the stories in Obejas's memorable short fiction collection, most of which is set in Cuba, the author's birthplace...These 10 stories show Obejas's talent, illuminating Cuban culture and the innermost lives of her characters."--Publishers Weekly"By turns searing and subtly magical, the stories in Obejas' vividly imagined collection are propelled by her characters' contradictory feelings about and unnerving experiences in Cuba...For all the human tumult and deftly sketched and reverberating historical and cultural contexts that Obejas incisively creates in these poignant, alarming tales, she also offers lyrical musings on the mysteries of the sea and the vulnerability of islands and the body. Obejas' plots are ambushing, her characters startling, her metaphors fresh, her humor caustic, and her compassion potent in these intricate and haunting stories of displacement, loss, stoicism, and realization."--Booklist"Obejas's stories demonstrate an acute understanding of being caught between two places and cultures as different as America and Cuba."--Library Journal"Achy Obejas's collection is about fictional Cuban migrants who never quite escape the land they've left."--Electric Literature"Obejas writes with gentleness, without flashy wording or gimmicks, about people trying to figure out where they belong...The language we use and the stories we tell impact the futures we can imagine, but they are also restricted by what has come before. Obejas's Cuban characters, like most Americans, have limited access to the resources they need. One gets the sense that Obejas, like the Maldivian president, thinks it is time that the world takes these systemic problems on."--Los Angeles Review of Books"Achy Obejas' superb story collection The Tower of Antilles deals with the conflicted relationships Cubans, exiles and Cuban Americans have with their homeland."--LA Times Jacket CopyThe Cubans in Achy Obejas's story collection are haunted by islands: the island they fled, the island they've created, the island they were taken to or forced from, the island they long for, the island they return to, and the island that can never be home again.In "Superman," several possible story lines emerge about a 1950s Havana sex-show superstar who disappeared as soon as the revolution triumphed. "North/South" portrays a migrant family trying to cope with separation, lives on different hemispheres, and the eventual disintegration of blood ties. "The Cola of Oblivion" follows the path of a young woman who returns to Cuba, and who inadvertently uncorks a history of accommodation and betrayal among the family members who stayed behind during the revolution. In the title story, "The Tower of the Antilles," an interrogation reveals a series of fantasies about escape and a history of futility.With language that is both generous and sensual, Obejas writes about existences beset by events beyond individual control, and poignantly captures how history and fate intrude on even the most ordinary of lives.Drifting
Par Katia D. Ulysse. 2014
"An arresting account of the contemporary Haitian-American experience."--Publishers Weekly"This novel in short stories will appeal to readers of literary and…
Caribbean fiction."--Library Journal"Ulysse displaces and redeems her characters with formidable skill, while her precise cuts through all preconceptions....Intense and necessary."--Booklist"Humanity is lost and found in these stories...Ulysse has created a fascinating world of class and cultural distinctions; her stories are engaging."--Kirkus Reviews"Assimilating qualities of Danticat and Alvarez, Ulysse paints a variegated literary tableau, more sociological than psychological or historical, that translates into fiction the reality, as well as the fragility and vivacity, of life for young Haitian American women of few means."--World Literature Today"A superb novel in the form of interconnected short stories that follow Haitian families as they move between time and place, before and after the devastating earthquake of 2010."--Teaching Tolerance Magazine, Summer 2015 Staff Pick"Powerful, piercing and unforgiving...Drifting transcends escapism, materialism and gaudy promises...Ulysse's prosaic brilliance is unmistakable."--Kaieteur News (Guyana)"Captivating and honest....This novel is a win-win for anyone who enjoys character development just as much as plot."--The Review Lab, Columbia College Chicago"Drifting is an intoxicating account of various short stories by Haitian novelist and literary genius Katia D. Ulysse...highly recommended."--Black Star News"Ulysse paints a vivid picture of customs, culture, and experiences. And like the characters, readers are engulfed in a vast array of emotions."--OOSA Online Book Club"A good, worthwhile read."--Book Lust"Katia D. Ulysse has written an engaging debut novel, Drifting....Drawing on rural Haiti, the class system, Vodou and folklore, Ulysse shows how immigrating to the US, while often seen as the only real option, does not always retain or strengthen families or improve one's economic station."--The World is RobertKatia D. Ulysse's debut provides the rare opportunity to peer into the private lives of four secretive Haitian families. The interwoven narrative spans four decades--from 1970 through 2010--and drifts among various provinces in Haiti, the United States, churches, vodun temples, schools, strip clubs, and the grave. Ulysse introduces us to a childless Haitian American couple risking it all for a baby to call their own; a Florida-based predatory schoolteacher threatening students with deportation if they expose him; and the unforgettable Monsieur Boursicault, whose chain of funeral parlors makes him the wealthiest man in Haiti. This daring work of fiction is a departure from the standard narrative of political unrest on the island. Ulysse's characters are everyday people whose hopes for distant success are constantly challenged--but never totally swayed--by the hard realities accompanying the immigrant's journey.Bivouac
Par Kwame Dawes. 2019
The death of a Jamaican man's father raises questions about the father's political endeavors, and about the plight of 1980s…
Jamaica. Kwame Dawes has been named a 2019 Windham-Campbell Prize Recipient in poetry "Few other novels encapsHadriana in All My Dreams
Par René Depestre. 2017
Included in "10 Best New Books to Read This May," Chicago Review of Books."Originally published in 1988 and written by…
one of Haiti’s seminal authors, still with us at age 90, this vibrant, erotically charged work shows how humans counter fear—particularly the fear of death—in varied more or less magical ways, even as it paints a fresh and enticing picture of Haitian culture. . .Luscious and affirmative reading, this is work both the serious-minded and the lighthearted can enjoy."—Library Journal, Starred review"Depestre presents a rich and nuanced exploration of large and significant themes expertly couched in one fantastical, expertly translated tale."—Booklist, Starred review"One-of-a-kind...[A] ribald, free-wheeling magical-realist novel, first published in 1988 and newly, engagingly translated by Glover. . .An icon of Haitian literature serves up a hotblooded, rib-ticking, warmhearted mélange of ghost story, cultural inquiry, folk art, and véritable l'amour."—Kirkus Reviews, Starred review"The sights and sounds of Haiti’s vibrant carnival season invigorate this tale of vodou and Haitian culture. . .The truth of Hadriana’s fate proves more poignant than horrifying, but in Depestre’s hands, this incident is a touchstone of a culture in which distinctions between the empirical and spiritual are obscured, and whose traditional celebrations and beliefs introduce an element of the mythic into the everyday. Eroticism and humor course through his narrative. Depestre’s intimacy with his subject matter and his familiarity with the people he portrays—the story is set in his hometown, at the time when he was 12 years old—give readers an insider’s look at Jacmelian culture."—Publishers Weekly"For the first time, this slim and beguiling novel about the mysterious death and possible zombification of a young woman on her wedding day has been translated into English...With its lyrical commentary on the origins of myth, this mesmeric and frequently erotic work transcends its focus on a young woman to address the complexities of race, class and religion."—Shelf Awareness for Readers, Starred ReviewWith a foreword by Edwidge Danticat. Translated from the French by Kaiama L. Glover.Hadriana in All My Dreams, winner of the prestigious Prix Renaudot, takes place primarily during Carnival in 1938 in the Haitian village of Jacmel. A beautiful young French woman, Hadriana, is about to marry a Haitian boy from a prominent family. But on the morning of the wedding, Hadriana drinks a mysterious potion and collapses at the altar. Transformed into a zombie, her wedding becomes her funeral. She is buried by the town, revived by an evil sorcerer, and then disappears into popular legend.Set against a backdrop of magic and eroticism, and recounted with delirious humor, the novel raises universal questions about race and sexuality. The reader comes away enchanted by the marvelous reality of Haiti's Vodou culture and convinced of Depestre's lusty claim that all beings—even the undead ones—have a right to happiness and true love.From the introduction by Edwidge Danticat:Despestre offers us the kind of tale we rarely get in the hundreds of zombie stories featuring Haitians, stories set both inside and outside of Haiti. In Hadriana in All My Dreams we get both langaj—the secret language of Haitian Vodou—as well as the type of descriptive, elegiac, erotic, and satirical language, and the artistic license needed to create this most nuanced and powerful novel.Kaiama L. Glover is an associate professor of French and Africana Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon, coeditor of Yale French Studies' Revisiting Marie Vieux-Chauvet: Paradoxes of Postcolonial Feminine (issue no. 128), and translator of Frenkétienne's Ready to Burst and Marie Vieux-Chauvet's Dance on the Volcano. She has received awards from the National Endowm