New West Indian Guide 89 (2015) 69–87
nwig
brill.com/nwig
Bookshelf 2014
Richard Price and Sally Price
Anse Chaudière 97217, Anses d'Arlet, Martinique
[email protected]
Producing over a hundred book reviews a year is more complicated than one
might imagine. It may be of interest to readers of the nwig (especially to
reviewers and the authors of books that are—or should have been—reviewed)
to know how it all plays out, with Rich handling the early stages and Sally taking
over once the reviewers send in their texts.
Scouting for relevant titles used to be facilitated by monthly acquisition
lists from the kitlv library. But since it was integrated into the University of
Leiden Library, we depend instead on the university library and Amazon.com’s
lists of Caribbean books, plus the titles that we notice in the course of our
reading of journals, newspapers, and so forth. We then decide which ones merit
review and which deserve only to be listed (either because their Caribbean
content is restricted to a chapter or two or because they don’t seem sufficiently
compelling, given the competition for space). This year’s non-reviewed books
include fifty-some such titles, listed at the end of this article.
Next comes figuring out an appropriate specialist (sometimes with the assistance of a colleague on our editorial board) who isn’t already in the process of
reviewing a book for us, and soliciting a review. About half of those solicited
agree. Some of the others, after prodding, suggest an alternative reviewer, and
some never reply at all, even after a reminder or two. The search continues,
often with two, three, or four people solicited until, in certain cases (this year,
nearly twenty—see below) we simply give up. Finding a willing reviewer averages three or four email exchanges.
We then send the reviewer style guidelines (including word limit and deadline) and ask the publisher to send the book directly to him/her. Usually this
works smoothly, though in some cases (between twenty and thirty this year, see
below) the publisher, after three or even four requests, never sends the book.
Then the fun begins. Perhaps half of reviewers submit their files within
a month or two of the deadline. The others receive a series of gentle email
reminders, sometimes over a two-year period. Reviewers often cite personal
reasons, from health, childbirth, or divorce to tenure reviews and teaching
© richard price and sally price, 2015 | doi: 10.1163/22134360-08901052
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (cc-by-nc 3.0) License.
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loads, for being late. When these exchanges drag on for a couple of years
after the original due date, we send a final reminder/warning; then we give up
and post the title in our Hall of Shame, partly to let the book’s author know
that we’ve done our best to publish a review. The procedure works well for
getting books reviewed; we’ve had only one complaint about the h-of-s as an
institution (from a person who nevertheless promised to quickly finish his
review—though he never did). The latest note from a reviewer who received
the final warning letter emailed: “ok … I’ll have the review to you by New Years’,
so I can avoid making an appearance on the nwig Naughty List. In an age of
rapidly and ridiculously escalating workloads it is a challenge to keep on top
of everything. I’m on leave and yet I am still in the office! But I’m not trying to
make excuses, and I will write the review before the deadline.” We’re happy to
report that she did.
For nwig’s two 2014 issues, taking care of the tasks so far mentioned has
produced over 2500 emails, sent and received.
Once a review arrives chez nous, sp begins the work of editing, communicating with each reviewer so that decisions about everything regarding both
form and content—including questions of style, the accuracy and relevance of
facts and references, decisions about what is and is not necessary to explain
to Caribbeanist readers, and much more—is mutually acceptable. Submitted
reviews vary tremendously in terms of the time they take; many require a minimal touch-up, others represent a full morning’s work, and a few have involved
several dozen emailed revisions over a period of weeks. Reviewers who are not
native English speakers can present special challenges, in some cases turning
the editing into a process more like translation.
The very great majority of our book reviewers do a terrific job, and we
are immensely grateful to them. But, as noted above, there are always a few
who neither produce the reviews that they promised nor release the book
to another reviewer. Therefore, it is once again our solemn duty to induct
this select group of scholars into the Caribbeanist Hall of Shame. As is our
custom, and in an attempt to exercise discretion and protect the reputation
of innocent Caribbeanists, we follow the eighteenth-century convention in
identifying slack reviewers by first and last initials.
Sex and the Citizen: Interrogating the Caribbean, edited by Faith L. Smith (Charlotte:
University of Virginia Press, 2011, paper us$ 35.00) (J—i S. A—n)
British Diplomacy and us Hegemony in Cuba, 1898–1964, by Christopher Hull (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, cloth us$ 92.00) (R—d G—t)
Sexualidades disidentes en la narrativa cubana contemporánea, by Patricia ValladaresRuiz (Woodbridge, u.k.: Tamesis, 2012, cloth us$ 95.00) (K—y d—l B—o R—z)
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On Captivity: A Spanish Soldier’s Experience in a Havana Prison, 1896–1898, by Manuel
Ciges Aparicio, edited by D.J. Walker (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2012,
cloth us$ 39.95) (D—d A. S—s)
Feminist and Critical Perspectives on Caribbean Mothering, edited by Dorsia Smith Silva
& Simone A. James Alexander (Trenton nj: Africa World Press, 2013, paper 29.95)
(E—e S—y)
Musicalizando la Raza: La racialización en Puerto Rico a través de la música, by
Bárbara I. Abadía-Rexach (San Juan: Ediciones Puerto, 2012, paper n.p.) (H—t
B—n)
Heinrich von Kleists Novelle ‘Die Verlobung in St. Domingo’: Literatur und Politik im
globalen Kontext um 1800, edited by Reinhard Blänker (Wörzburg: Königshausen &
Neumann, 2013, paper € 29.80) (T—s D—g)
Shade Grown Slavery: The Lives of Slaves on Coffee Plantations in Cuba, by William C. Van
Norman Jr. (Nashville tn: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012, paper us$ 29.95) (L—d
B—d)
José Martí: Mentor of the Cuban Revolution, by John M. Kirk (Halifax: Fernwood, 2012,
paper us$ 93.99) and Translating Empire: José Martí, Migrant Latino Subjects, and
American Modernities, by Laura Lomas (Durham nc: Duke University Press, 2009,
paper us$ 26.95) (L—n G—a)
Dreaming in Russian: The Cuban Soviet Imaginary, by Jacqueline Loss (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013, cloth us$ 55.00) and Caviar with Rum: Cuba-ussr and The
Post-Soviet Experience, edited by Jacqueline Loss & José Manuel Prieto (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, paper us$ 30.00) (L—e W—d)
The Artistry of Afro-Cuban Batá Drumming: Aesthetics, Transmission, Bonding, and Creativity, by Kenneth Schweitzer Jackson (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi,
2013, cloth us$ 60.00) (A—n H—n)
Narrating from the Margins: Self-representation of Female and Colonial Subjectivities in
Jean Rhys’s Novels, by Nagihan Haliloglu (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011, cloth us$ 64.00)
(H—n C—r)
Tropic Tendencies: Rhetoric, Popular Culture, and the Anglophone Caribbean, by Kevin
Adonis Browne (Pittsburgh pa: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013, paper us$ 29.95)
(K—h N—e)
Ethnic Interest Groups in u.s. Foreign Policy-Making: A Cuban-American Story of Success
and Failure, by Henriette M. Rytz (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, cloth
us$ 100.00) (M—a A—a L—a)
Oshun’s Daughters: The Search for Womanhood in the Americas, by Vanessa K. Valdés
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014, cloth us$ 75.00) (O—e T—y)
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There is an unfortunately large number of books for which we valiantly tried
to find a reviewer (asking three, four, or sometimes more scholars over a period
of months) but found no takers. We merely list them here:
Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora, by Bénédicte
Boisseron (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014, cloth us$ 75.95)
Plantation Church: How African American Religion was Born in Caribbean Slavery, by
Noel Leo Erskine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, paper us$ 24.95)
Cuban Economists on the Cuban Economy, edited by Al Campbell (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013, cloth us$ 79.95)
Decolonization Models for America’s Last Colony: Puerto Rico: Radio Interviews with
Francisco Catalá-Oliveras and Juan Lara, by Ángel Collado-Schwarz (Syracuse ny:
Syracuse University Press, 2012, paper us$ 29.95)
El Compendio de la historia de Puerto-Rico en verso por Pío del Castillo y los primeros
manuales escolares puertorriqueños sobre historia, 1848–1863, by José G. Rigau Pérez
(San Juan: Editorial Revés, 2012, paper us$ 19.95)
Archipelagos of Sound: Transnational Caribbeanities, Women and Music, edited by
Ifeona Fulani (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2012, paper
us$ 40.00)
Abolition and Plantation Management in Jamaica, 1807–1838, by Dave St Aubyn Gosse
(Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2012, paper us$ 30.00)
Literary Culture in Cuba: Revolution, Nation-Building and the Book, by Par Kumaraswami & Antoni Kapcia (Manchester uk: Manchester University Press, 2012, cloth
us$ 110.00)
Positioning Gender and Race in (Post)colonial Plantation Space: Connecting Ireland and
the Caribbean, by Eve Walsh Stoddard (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, cloth
us$ 85.00)
Gangs in the Caribbean, edited by Randy Seepersad & Ann Marie Bissessar (Newcastle:
Cambridge Scholars, 2013, cloth us$ 84.99)
Treasure, Treason and the Tower: El Dorado and the Murder of Sir Walter Raleigh, by Paul
R. Sellin (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011, cloth us$ 64.95)
Wolf Tracks: Popular Art and Re-Africanization in Twentieth-Century Panama, by Peter
Szok (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012, cloth us$ 55.00)
English-Speaking Caribbean Immigrants: Transnational Identities, edited by Lear Matthews (Lanham md: University Press of America, 2014, cloth us$ 65.00)
Claude McKay’s Liberating Narrative: Russian and Anglophone Caribbean Literary Connections, by Tatiana A. Tagirova-Daley (New York: Peter Lang, 2012, cloth
us$ 70.95)
A Year in Jamaica: Memoirs of a Girl in Arcadia in 1889, by Diana Lewes (London: Eland,
2014, cloth £ 16.99)
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Walter A. Rodney: A Promise of Revolution, edited by Clairmont Chung (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 2012, paper us$ 22.95)
Post-Revolution Nonfiction Film: Building the Soviet and Cuban Nations, by Joshua Malitsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013, paper us$ 28.00)
We simply mention here Queer Narratives of the Caribbean Diaspora: Exploring
Tactics, by Zoran Pecic (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, cloth us$ 90.00),
after our reviewer, a respected authority in the field, wrote: “It is with regret that
I write to convey my inability to review [this book, which] deals substantively
with works that I have not read or am familiar with (Brand’s Another Place,
Not Here, At The Full And Change of the Moon, Thomas’s Spirits in The Dark,
[and] Mootoo’s Valmiki’s Daughter) and I am therefore unable to comment on
the merits of Pecic’s argument. Additionally, the denseness of Pecic’s discourse
does not allow me an easy way into these unfamiliar narratives.” And we note
that illness prevented another reviewer from completing his review of: Global
Reggae, edited by Carolyn Cooper (Kingston: University of the West Indies
Press, 2012, paper us$35.00).
As we have reported in previous editions, publishers are becoming increasingly lackadaisical about fulfilling requests for books to be sent to reviewers.
We list here the titles that we requested, often several times, without success:
The Sleepers of Roraima & the Age of the Rainmakers: Amerindian Fables, by Wilson
Harris (Leeds: Peepal Tree, 2014, paper us$ 19.95)
’Til the Well Runs Dry: A Novel, by Lauren Francis-Sharma (New York: Henry Holt, 2014,
cloth us$ 27.00)
Dancing Lessons, by Olive Senior (Ann Arbor mi: Dzanc Books, 2014, paper us$ 15.95)
The Sea Grape Tree: A Novel, by Gillian Royes (New York: Atria Books, 2014, paper
us$ 16.00)
Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel, by Tiphanie Yanique (New York: Riverhead, 2014,
cloth us$ 27.95)
The Journey of a Caribbean Writer, by Maryse Condé (London: Seagull Books, 2014, cloth
us$ 25.00)
The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948–2013, edited by Glyn Maxwell (New York: Farrar, Straus
& Giroux, paper us$ 22.00)
Children of Paradise, by Fred D’ Aguiar (New York: Harper, 2014, cloth us$ 25.99)
Zora Neale Hurston, Haiti, and Their Eyes were Watching God, edited by La Vinia Delois
Jennings (Evanston il: Northwestern University Press, 2013, paper us$ 50.00)
Centering Animals in Latin American History, edited by Martha Few & Zeb Tortorici
(Durham nc: Duke University Press, 2013, paper us$ 26.95)
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La route de l’ art: Artistes de l’ Ouest guyanais, photos by David Damoison (Cayenne:
Éditions Office National des Forêts, 2014, paper € 24.00)
The Encyclopedia of Caribbean Religions, edited by Patrick Taylor & Frederick I. Case
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013, cloth us$ 250.00)
90 Degrees of Shade: 100 Years of Photography in the Caribbean, edited by Stuart Baker
(New York: Soul Jazz Books, 2014, cloth us$ 49.95)
Caribbean Potluck: Modern Recipes from Our Family Kitchen, by Suzanne Rousseau &
Michelle Rousseau (London: Kyle Books 2014, cloth us$ 24.95)
The Life of Captain Cipriani: An Account of British Government in the West Indies, with
the pamphlet The Case for West-Indian Self Government, by C.L.R. James (Durham
nc: Duke University Press, 2014, paper us$ 23.95)
Higglers in Kingston: Women’s Informal Work in Jamaica, by Winnifred Brown-Glaude
(Nashville tn: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011, cloth us$ 55.00)
Britain’s Oceanic Empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, c. 1550–1850, edited by H.V.
Bowen, Elizabeth Mancke & John G. Reid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2012, cloth £ 65.00)
The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World, by Greg
Grandin (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014, cloth us$ 30.00)
The publishers of the following three titles at least had the courtesy to inform
us of their reasons for not sending review copies:
Mira Cuba: The Cuban Poster Art from 1959, by Olivio Martinez, Rafael Morante, Luigino
Bardellotti & Mario Piazza (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2014, paper us$ 40.00). “I am
so sorry but I can’t send you the complimentary press copy of the book you are
interested in, because [sic] is too expensive for us.”
Escape: The Heyday of Caribbean Glamour, by Hermes Mallea (New York: Rizzoli, 2014,
cloth us$ 60.00), for which the publicity states: “Among these idealized settings blossomed the resort lifestyle of international celebrities, from Marjorie Merriweather
Post to Babe Paley, Princess Margaret to David Bowie, whose escapades are spectacularly captured in these pages to make the region’s bygone glamour come alive.” Our
request met with a reply that “Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to send a
hard copy” (or, apparently, any other copy).
Slavery and the Politics of Place: Representing the Colonial Caribbean, 1770–1833, by Elizabeth A. Bohls (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015, cloth us$ 95.00). “Unfortunately Slavery and the Politics of Place no longer has review copies available as all
were sent out within it’s [sic] first year of publication. Therefore I will not be able
to authorise this request.” Note, however, that we requested our review copy several
months before the book’s official publication date—Go figure. (n.b. publicists are
among the worst paid toilers in the publishing industry.)
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The publisher of the following appropriately titled book claims it no longer
sends review copies but does give on-line access for reviewers (though we
found no way to access its books without paying exorbitant on-line fees):
No More Free Lunch: Reflections on the Cuban Economic Reform Process and
Challenges for Transformation, edited by Claes Brundenius & Ricardo Torres
Pérez (New York: Springer, 2013, cloth us$129.00).
We now turn to our annual selective survey of fiction, poetry, and theater—
books that are not given full reviews in the nwig.
Drifting, Katia D. Ulysse’s debut novel (New York: Akashic, 2014, paper
us$15.95) offers sweet, often painful, interlocked stories about rural Haitians
at home and in New York/New Jersey—mainly women and girls but with some
strong (and often ugly) male characters as well, all trying to survive in a challenging and often-surprising world depicted here with honesty and verve.
Bain de lune (Paris: Sabine Wespieser, 2014, paper € 20.00) is veteran novelist
Yanick Lahens’s at once lyrical and heart-wrenching story of life in a seaside
Haitian village set mainly during the early days of Papa Doc. Told from the
perspective of women, the realities of class, rural isolation, and vaudou shine
through this multi-generational tale, which was crowned in France with the
2014 Prix Femina.
Bernardine Evaristo’s Mr. Loverman (New York: Akashic Books, 2014, paper
us$15.95) is this talented British novelist’s latest, a gem of a story that makes
you laugh (frequently) out loud, as you get inside the head of the seventyfour-year-old, Antigua-born, wise-cracking, married Londoner whose family
relationships are at once tender and stormy and whose secret love relationship
with a school-boy friend has lasted into old age. A most engaging and rewarding
read.
Six Stories and an Essay (London: Tinder Press, 2014, cloth € 12.99), a small
book by the prizewinning author of Small Island, reminds us of Andrea Levy’s
gift for evoking the pride and dignity of immigrant West Indians as they coped
with the challenges of life in an England that did not always live up to the image
they had formed back home (see nwig 85:86 [2011]).
Two worthy novels by erstwhile academics. Mary Chamberlain’s The Mighty
Jester (New York: Dr. Cicero’s Books, 2014, us$15.00), the debut novel of this prolific historian of the Anglophone Caribbean, is a page-turning who-done-it rife
with the realities of race, class, and corruption in a postcolonial Barbados-like
isle. It won third prize in the 2013 Literature Works First Page competition and,
in our view, well deserves readers. (But why can’t the publisher spell Colombia, which appears often, correctly?) Uncle Brother (Kingston: University of the
West Indies Press, 2014, paper us$35.00) is former language and literature pro-
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fessor Barbara Lalla’s third novel, an ethnographically rich saga of a close-knit
extended East Indian family in Trinidad spanning the twentieth century. Its
multiple narrators, speaking in vivid vernacular, bring to life a world far from
Port-of-Spain, where Creoles are very much the exception.
Mylene Fernández-Pintado’s A Corner of the World (San Francisco: City
Lights, 2014, paper us$14.95), translated by Dick Cluster, weaves an absorbing
tale of love, literature, and university teaching in which Havana plays the central role, from its dilapidated Moskovitches (just like Nancy Morejón’s real life
model) to the never-ending allure of European or American exile. It’s a view
from the Malecón that rings true.
Go de Rass to Sleep, by Adam Mansbach (New York: Akashic Books, 2014,
cloth us$14.95), is Kwame Dawes & Kellie Magnus’s translation into Jamaican
Patois of what was at the time the New York Times #1 bestseller—an illustrated
children’s book, Go the F*** to Sleep, that had already sold 1.5 million copies in
over thirty languages.
There has been an astounding proliferation of what must be hundreds of
mainly self-published instant books (most available as ebooks) that are set
in the Caribbean. Amazon Diet, by Pamela Saraga (Bradenton fl: BookLocker
.com, paper us$13.95), is representative of the genre. The back cover blurb:
“Amazon Diet is a fictional novel about a group of curvy women who decide to
take an adventurous vacation in Suriname to have fun and lose some weight.
The simple plan is complicated by a millionaire ex-husband who wants to
eliminate paying his former wife’s alimony by murdering her. The expedition becomes stranded in the jungle, is joined by a monkey named Elvis and
helped by a tribe of not too primitive natives [“6-foot-tall Matuwari Indians”]
… and they all agree that anaconda tastes just like chicken.” Other recently
self-published works have titles such as Caribbean Love Affair; Virgin Body;
Caribbean Fever; Love for Sail; Curse of the Black Avenger: Blood Sails, Dark
Hearts; Cruel Capers on the Caribbean; Sex and Scrambled Eggs; The Zombie
Chasers #6: Zombies of the Caribbean; and Caribbean Erection.
Peepal Tree Press, in Leeds, u.k., is now halfway through its publication of
thirty-two titles in the Caribbean Modern Classics series, focused on books
published up to the mid-1970s. The 2013 haul includes works by Vic Reid, Roger
Mais, Michael Gilkes, Orlando Patterson, and others. See www.peepaltreepress
.com for the complete listing.
On to poetry and theater...
Peepal Tree Press has brought out eight sparkling collections of poetry
(all paper, £8.99). In Bajan/Afrikan/English Sai Murray’s latest collection, AdLiberation (2013), cultural studies meets poetry in this former ad man’s politi-
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cally committed wordplay, where there’s never a dull moment and the poetic/
comedic critique of contemporary society is merciless yet lighthearted. The
beautiful poems in The Butterfly Hotel (2013), by Roger Robinson (like Murray, a poet/performer), offer sharp pictures of Brixton—its Jamaican girls, its
barbershops, its angry young men—and of Trinidad, from flora and fauna to
aging relatives and limers at a bar. Difficult Fruit (2014) is the début collection
of Trinidadian Lauren K. Alleyne, winner of the 2010 Small Axe Literary Prize;
these urgent poems express beauty in a world filled with death and duress.
Malika Booker’s Pepper Seed (2013), another début collection, is perhaps our
favorite—searing memories from Guyana and Grenada of woman-to-daughter
and man-to-woman violence, as well as sensuality, moving on to Trinidad,
Brixton, and Brooklyn, all expressed in luminous vernacular. Vladimir Lucien’s
debut collection of poetry, Sounding Ground (2014), effectively distills vernacular St. Lucian life into multiple essences; he’s also an actor and screenwriter and
winner of the 2013 Small Axe Literary Prize. The Way Home (2014) is Jamaican
Millicent A.A. Graham’s second collection, marked by surprising (surrealist?)
juxtapositions of images, intimate and interior. Performance Anxiety: New and
Selected Poems (2013) by St. Lucian Jane King is in-your-face honest, funny, and
full of life, both inner and out on the streets of the places she visits. Trinidadborn Vahni Capaldeo’s Utter (2013), her fifth published collection, is inspired by
her time as lexicographer at the oed and is the most cerebral of these books of
poetry, offering a plethora of unexpected, boundary-defying images.
Querencias: Homing Instincts (Chico ca: Cubanabooks, 2014) presents
facing-page Spanish-English versions of the generous, passionate poems of
Nancy Morejón, translated by Pamela Carmell—lyrical words of longing, firmly
anchored in the realities of her beloved Havana.
We welcome the reissue of Césaire’s Cahier in the half-century-old translation by John Berger and Anya Bostock: Return to my Native Land, by Aimé
Césaire (New York: Archipelago, 2014, paper us$ 16.00). As J. Michael Dash
writes on the cover, “this translation preserves [the work’s] poetic force”—but
it should be read alongside A. James Arnold & Clayton Eshleman’s The Original 1939 Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, by Aimé Césaire, which we
discussed in Bookshelf 2013.
During a visit to Havana, we came across a nicely-illustrated biography of
the engagé Suriname nationalist poet Dobru: Robin “Dobru” Ravales: Poeta
nacional de Suriname (1935–1983), by Cynthia Abrahams (Paramaribo: Suriprint,
2014, paper n.p.), the translation from Dutch of a 2010 book(let) published in
Amsterdam. Dobru, who died in Havana, left a collection of woodcarvings,
mostly Saamaka from the 1960s–1970s, to the Casa de las Américas, where we
helped evaluate the collection and were given the book.
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We also note the appearance of Misye Tousen (Montréal: Mémoire d’ encrier,
2014, paper €20.00), a French Creole translation by Rodolf Étienne of Édouard
Glissant’s Monsieur Toussaint, with a foreword by J. Michael Dash.
Vincent Placoly: Un écrivain de la décolonisation, edited by Jean-Georges
Chali & Axel Arthéron (Matoury, Guyane: Ibis Rouge, 2014, paper € 20), should
help raise the visibility of this Martiniquan playwright, novelist, and essayist
whose work spanned the 1970s and 1980s and who represented a broadly Americanist literary vision that surpassed that of the previous Césairien generation
or that of the succeeding generation of créolistes. The essays suggest further
inquiry into Placoly and his work.
A film of note: Aluku Liba: Maroon Again, directed by Nicolas Jolliet (2009,
available from www.africanfilm.com), is a docudrama tracing a year in the life
of Loeti Mais, who flees a goldcamp on the Upper Oyapock that is raided by
the French military and walks across the forest all the way to the Upper Lawa,
where he meets a friend and hunter who takes him back to his native territory.
Much of the film shows scenes from a puu baaka (end of mourning) ceremony,
with communal hunting, prayer, feasting, drums, dancing, and folktales, mainly
in the village of Kotika. Apart from the misstatement that the Aluku were the
first (rather than among the last) of the Maroon peoples to escape slavery in
Suriname, this 90-minute film has a realistic feel to it, better perhaps than any
other we’ve seen on Suriname/Guyanais Maroons for potential classroom use.
(In our view, Ben Russell’s prize-winning feature-length 2009 experimental film
shot in Saamaka, Let Each One Go Where He May—a real work of art—stands
alone as the best film ever made with and about Maroons.)
In the realm of photography and art …
Creole World: Photographs of New Orleans and the Latin Caribbean Sphere, by
Richard Sexton, Jay D. Edwards, John H. Lawrence, Molly Reid, Sarah R. Doerries & Alison Cody (New Orleans: The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2014,
cloth us$49.95), presents brief essays—the most important by Jay D. Edwards
(on the historical uses of “Creole” and its application to architectural forms)—
along with scores of stunning, sumptuous color photos of vernacular architecture from New Orleans and particular cities in Haiti, Cuba, Panama, Ecuador,
Colombia, and Argentina, tracing the colonial connections responsible for creating a creole world that spans wide swaths of the Americas.
The Spaces Between: Contemporary Art from Havana, curated by Antonio
Eligio (Tonel) & Keith Wallace (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2014, paper
us$24.95), accompanied an exhibition at the University of British Columbia’s
Belkin Art Gallery. It presents fourteen young Cuban artists (producing work in
mixed media, installation, acrylic, vinyl, oil-and-varnish, but especially photog-
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raphy and video) with essays arguing for the relationship between art, politics,
and society in Cuba of the 1990s and the early twenty-first century.
Life Streams: Alberto Rey’s Cuban and American Art, edited by Lunettte M.F.
Bosch & Mark Denaci (Albany ny: suny Press, 2014, paper us$ 24.95), is a
multi-authored catalogue for an exhibition entitled Biological Regionalism at
the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo ny. Alberto Rey (b. 1960), a CubanAmerican painter whose work also includes sculpture, video, and installations,
is a community activist and conservationist whose interest in fish and fishing
(especially trout) inspires his combined role as artist and environmentalist.
On the Greater Antilles …
The Dominican Republic Reader: History, Culture, Politics, edited by Eric Paul
Roorda, Lauren H. Derby & Raymundo Gonzalez (Durham nc: Duke University Press, 2014, paper us$27.95) contains rp’s endorsement on the back cover:
“A splendid introduction to an often-misrepresented nation, tracing its history from the pre-Columbus era through the Trujillo dictatorship to the everincreasing influence—demographic, musical, literary, and sporting—of contemporary Dominicans in u.s. life. An excellent choice of brief texts makes this
an attractive reader for undergraduate courses on the Caribbean.”
The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History, edited and with translations by David Geggus (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2014, paper us$ 15.00),
prompted the following comments from Sue Peabody, a frequent nwig reviewer: “College instructors very much need a documentary collection on the
Haitian Revolution such as this one. There is, for the moment, no such collection on the market, yet there is strong momentum among historians for the
inclusion of the Haitian Revolution as a key event in understanding the Atlantic
Age of Revolution … The selection of documents clearly reflects a deep knowledge of the available source materials … [Its] level of detail will be ideal for
use in an upper division course or seminar on comparative revolutions, Latin
America, Atlantic history, or slavery and abolition … [and it] will be useful to a
wide range of undergraduate courses.”
We have received the Handbook on Cuban History, Literature, and the Arts:
New Perspectives on Historical and Contemporary Social Change, edited by Mauricio A. Font & Araceli Tinajero (Boulder co: Paradigm Publishers, 2014, cloth
us$195.00), but not its accompanying Handbook of Contemporary Cuba: Economy, Politics, Civil Society, and Globalization, edited by Mauricio A. Font & Carlos Riobó (Boulder co: Paradigm Publishers, 2013, cloth us$ 185.00), both resulting from a series of conferences at the cuny Graduate Center, but particularly
from a large international gathering held there in 2011. Varied themes, interesting papers.
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Miscellaneous Caribbean books:
El Caribe: Sus intelectuales, sus culturas, sus artistas, su historia, sus tradiciones populares, by Pedro Ureña Rib & Jean-Paul Duviols (Santo Domingo:
Santuario, 2014, paper n.p.), is the Spanish edition of Dictionnaire culturelle
des Caraïbes, published in 2009. The detailed criticisms of the French original
that we expressed in Bookshelf 2009 have not been taken into account in this
new edition; to cite just two examples: Puerto Rico’s Antonio Martorell receives
no entry nor does “Saamaka,” though the much smaller (French) Boni/Aluku
Maroons are given their due.
The journal Gradhiva has published a special issue, “L’ Atlantique noire” de
Nancy Cunard: Negro Anthology 1931–1934, edited by Sarah Frioux-Salgas (Paris:
Musée du quai Branly, 2014, paper €20.00) in connection with an exhibition of
the same name at that museum. It recounts the life of this Anglo-American
heiress who was an active, flamboyant member of the Parisian avant-garde
in the interwar years. Essays on her poetry, her antifascism, her ties with the
Surrealists, and her publishing activities (including Negro Anthology in 1931)
are complemented by others on Black activism in the United States, Zora
Neale Hurston, “black music,” and Paul Robeson as well as chapters on her
relationships with Jacques Roumain and Claude MacKay.
And the journal Revue des Sciences Humaines has published a special issue
edited by Valérie Loichot entitled Entours d’Édouard Glissant, which features
seventeen often-intriguing essays on aspects of Glissantian thought, from its
relationship to anthropology (by Dominque Chancé) and Nick Nesbitt’s
thoughts on Glissant’s politics and poetics to Kathleen Gyssels’s comparison of
the significance of “diaspora(s)” in the writings of Glissant and André SchwarzBart as well as her understanding of the personal relationship between the
“nègre marron” and the “juif marrane.”
At the Point of a Cutlass: The Pirate Capture, Bold Escape, and Lonely Exile of
Philip Ashton, by Gregory N. Flemming (Lebanon nh: ForeEdge Books, 2014,
cloth us$29.95), retells, with scholarly additions, the story in Ashton’s 1725
“as told to” Memorial of his sixteen months of forced life as a pirate of the
Caribbean.
Angel Creek: Where the River Meets the Sea (Kingston: University of the West
Indies Press, 2014, paper us$35.00) is Gail Porter Mandell’s well-meant but
woodenly written memoir about her year volunteering for a Roman Catholic
organization as a teacher in Belize, a half century ago. A white mid-Westerner
just out of college, ill-prepared for life in a Garifuna village, she coped with
much that is unfamiliar—but this earnest look backwards fails to excite.
In Reize naar Surinamen: Dagboek van John Gabriël Stedman, 1772–1777 (Zutphen: WalburgPers, 2014, paper €24.95), editor Michaël Ietswaart, who is not
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an academic, has produced a mishmash of a book, mixing pieces of old Dutch
translations (here reworked), his own translations from the 1796 edition, and
his own translations of our own 1988 critical edition of Stedman’s 1790 text—
without distinguishing or identifying any of it. The (selected) illustrations,
which are reproduced from the 1796 first (English) edition (rather than from
Dutch editions) are presented out of sequence. The chapter numbering does
not correspond to any previous Stedman edition. What we have is a rewrite in
Dutch of Stedman’s book, without clues as to how editorial choices were made,
produced by a self-described Dutch “lover of historical stories” who has spent
some time in Suriname.
Scars of Partition: Postcolonial Legacies in French and British Borderlands,
by William F.S. Miles (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014, paper us$
35.00), largely devoted to non-Caribbean spaces from Africa to the Pacific,
nevertheless provides food for thought about the region.
After reading Islands at Risk?: Environments, Economies and Contemporary
Change, by John Connell (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2013, cloth us$ 145.00),
our reviewer wrote “I find no reason why your readership would be at all
interested [since the book is mainly about the Pacific and includes] a number
of topical chapters that discuss economic development, migration, urbanism,
etc. that anyone could find in an encyclopedia.”
The Versailles Restaurant Cookbook, by Ana Quincoces & Nicole Valls
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014, cloth us$ 30.00), serves up seventeen pages of over-the-top praise of this iconic restaurant in Miami’s Little
Havana (as well as its anti-Castro politics); the recipes that follow are more
interesting, providing a pretty fair introduction to the foods that have made
the place a landmark.
For those readers unfamiliar with it, we note the availability of the Caribbean
Digital Newspaper Library, a growing resource for periodicals from the Caribbean, including Cuba’s El Diario de la Marina (with issues from 1899) and Haiti’s
literary journals La ronde and La nouvelle ronde (with issues dating from 1901):
http://dloc.com/cndl.
Once again, Rosemarijn Hoefte has kindly written several paragraphs to
bring to our readers’ attention a number of recent (mainly) Dutch-language
works on Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles:
August Kappler’s classic Zes jaren in Suriname: Schetsen en tafereelen uit
het maatschappelijke en militaire leven in deze kolonie, has been (re)translated
from the German by Michaël Ietswaart as Zes Jaren in Suriname: Een Duitser in
Suriname, 1836–1842 (Zutphen: WalburgPers, 2014, paper € 19.95).
Two small publications on slavery and its aftermath. 20 Questions and Answers about Dutch Slavery and its Legacy, by Stephen Small & Sandew Hira
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(The Hague: Amrit, 2014, paper €7.50), is the first book in Decolonizing the
Mind, a series “devoted to the development of both critique of and alternatives to Eurocentric knowledge production.” Gids slavernijverleden Amsterdam,
by Dienke Hondius, Nancy Jouwe, Dineke Stam, Jennifer Tosch & Annemarie
de Wildt (Arnhem: lm Publishers, 2014, paper € 12.50), is a bilingual slavery
heritage guide to Amsterdam, covering more than one hundred sites, starting
with the Royal Palace, formerly the Town Hall, where the Suriname Society
met.
On East Indians or Hindustani: Resistance and Indian Indenture Experience:
Comparative Perspectives (New Delhi: Manohar, 2014, cloth Rs 1,095.00), edited
by Maurits S. Hassankhan, Brij V. Lal & Doug Munro, includes nine articles plus
an introduction and conclusion on worker agency and resistance in India, Mauritius, Natal, Fiji, British Guiana, Trinidad, and Suriname. Chan E.S. Choenni
extols the success of Hindustani migrants in the Netherlands in Hindostaanse
Surinamers in Nederland 1973–2013 (Arnhem: lm Publishers, 2014, cloth € 24.50),
a rather prosaic study, chock full of statistical data. Vervoering (Breda: De Geus,
2014, cloth €19.95), a well-written novel by Shantie Singh, chronicles the lives of
an extended Hindustani family in Suriname, India, and the Netherlands—an
enjoyable read.
Two publications on related hot topics in Suriname: “Grondenrechten in
Suriname,” a special issue of the Surinamese history journal His/her Tori (May
2014) edited by Eric Jagdew & Helmut Gezius, features eight articles on the
history of Amerindian and Maroon legal rights in general and land rights in
particular. In Doe wat goed is voor de hele natie (Paramaribo: Ralicon, 2014, paper
n.p.), Ariëlle Delprado gives an introduction to the sketchy environmental laws
in Suriname in an international context.
E. de Haan’s Zoeken naar Slory: Een reis door verrassend Suriname (Haarlem: In de Knipscheer, 2014, paper €19.50) is yet another travel account by a
first-time visitor (it’s hot!), albeit a well-written one. De Haan is on a search
for the poet Slory and once he finally meets him, the end is poignant. Finally
on Suriname, Sherwood Feliksdal’s Sranan Odo’s (Paramaribo: Vaco, 2014, cloth
€16.50) is an illustrated, fairly random selection of 170 Suriname proverbs.
On to Curaçao and the Antilles: Yubi Kirindongo: Rebel in de kunst, also
published as Yubi Kirindongo: Rebel in Art and Soul, by Thomas Meijer zu
Schlochtern (Arnhem: lm Publishers, 2014, cloth € 24.94), is a beautifully produced overview of the oeuvre of this Curaçaoan artist, whose sculptures are
made from trash. Mr. Dr. Moises Da Costa Gomez: Voorvechter van de politieke
emancipatie van de Nederlandse Antillen (Santa Barbara ca: Publishing by the
Seas, 2014, paper us$14.95), by R.D. (Eugène) Boeldak, highlights the role of
Dòktor in the political emancipation of the Netherlands Antilles and Curaçao
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in particular. Jos Rozenburg’s De Antillen in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Voorburg:
u2pi, 2014, paper €19.95) provides a straightforward military history of World
War ii on the Dutch Caribbean islands.
We end by listing information on a number of titles, arranged roughly by geography and themes, that we have noticed but neither examined nor requested
for review—in some cases because their Caribbean content is restricted to a
chapter or two, in others because they didn’t seem sufficiently compelling given
nwig space limitations, or for a variety of diverse reasons. Together, they testify to the large number of books being published that at least touch on the
Caribbean.
A Contemporary Cuba Reader: The Revolution under Raúl Castro, edited by Philip Brenner, Marguerite Rose Jiménez, John M. Kirk & William M. LeoGrande (Lanham md:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, paper us$ 39.95) [second edition, revised]
La Belle Créole: The Cuban Countess Who Captivated Havana, Madrid, and Paris, by Alina
García-Lapuerta (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2014, cloth us$ 29.95)
A History of Cuban Baseball, 1864–2006, by Peter C. Bjarkman (Jefferson nc: McFarland,
2014, paper us$ 35.00)
Florida and the Mariel Boatlift of 1980: The First Twenty Days, by Kathleen Dupes Hawk,
Ron Villella & Adolfo Leyva de Varona (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press,
2014, cloth us$ 34.95)
Shadow of a Myth: The Story of Che’s Nephew in Cuba, by Martin Guevara (n.p: Wisdom
Moon, 2014, paper us$ 19.00)
Cuba, the Media, and the Challenge of Impartiality, by Salim Lamrani (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2014, paper us$ 16.00)
Cuba Then: Rare and Classic Images from the Ramiro A. Fernández Collection. (New York:
The Monacelli Press, 2013, cloth us$ 40.00)
Dialogic Aspects of the Cuban Novel of the 1990s, by Angela Dorado-Otero (Woodbridge,
u.k.: Tamesis, 2014, cloth us$ 90.00)
Cubanisimo!: Una antología de la literatura cubana contemporáneo, by Cristina García
(New York: Vintage, 2014, paper us$ 14.00)
The Life and Poems of a Cuban Slave, by Juan Francisco Manzano, edited by Edward
J. Mullen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, cloth us$ 105.00) [revised second
edition of a 1981 book]
Haitian Modernity and Liberative Interruptions: Discourse on Race, Religion, and Freedom, by Celucien L. Joseph (Lanham md: University Press of America, 2014, paper
us$ 29.99)
The Memoir of General Toussaint Louverture, translated and edited by Philippe R. Girard
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, cloth us$ 55.00)
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Kafou: Haiti, Art and Vodou, edited by Alex Farquharson & Leah Gordon (Nottingham:
Nottingham Contemporary, 2012, cloth us$ 75.00)
Haiti: Conditions and Reconstruction, edited by Jerald Wetzel (New York: Nova Science,
2014, cloth us$ 110.00)
The History and Lives of Notorious Pirates and Their Crews, by Captain Charles Johnson
(New York: Skyhorse Publishing, paper us$ 14.95). [originally published in 1735, this
book is sometimes attributed to Daniel Defoe, writing under a pseudonym]
British Captives from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1563–1760, by Nabil Matar (Leiden: Brill, 2014, cloth us$ 149.00)
Women and English Piracy, 1540–1720: Partners and Victims of Crime, by John C. Appleby
(Martlesham, u.k.: Boydell, 2013, cloth us$ 95.00)
Falmouth, Jamaica: Architecture as History, edited by Louis P. Nelson & Edward A. Chappell with Brian Cofrancesco & Emilie Johnson (Kingston: University of the West
Indies Press, 2014, paper us$ 40.00)
Facing the Challenge of Emancipation: A Study of the Ministry of William Hart Coleridge,
First Bishop of Barbados, 1824–1842, by Sehon S. Goodridge, edited by Anthony De
Vere Phillips (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2014, paper us$ 24.00)
[Goodridge’s book was apparently first published in 1981.]
A Global History of Trade and Conflict Since 1500, edited by Lucia Coppolaro & Francine
McKenzie (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, cloth us$ 95.00) [there’s one chapter
on the role of the Haitian Revolution]
Dimensions of African and Other Diasporas, edited by Franklin W. Knight & Ruth Iyob
(Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2014, paper us$ 45.00)
Caribbean Empire: The Impact of Culture, Literature and History, by Jerome Teelucksingh
(Palo Alto ca: Academica Press, 2013, cloth us$ 72.95)
Color of Citizenship: Race, Modernity and Latin American/Hispanic Political Thought, by
Diego A. Von Vacano (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, paper us$ 29.95)
Synchronized Factories: Latin America and the Caribbean in the Era of Global Value
Chains, by Juan S. Blyde (New York: Springer, 2014, paper us$ 59.99)
Macroeconomics in Small Island States: The Dutch Caribbean Islands, by Macklenan
F. Hasham (Bloomington in: Authorhouse, 2014, cloth us$ 31.00)
Informal Commercial Importers in caricom, by Roger Hosein & Martin Franklin (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2014, paper us$ 35.00)
Immigration and the Making of Modern Britain, by Laurence Brown (London: Routledge, 2014, paper us$ 36.95)
Narco-Cults: Understanding the Use of Afro-Caribbean and Mexican Religious Cultures
in the Drug Wars, by Tony M. Kail (Boca Raton fl: crc Press, 2015, paper us$ 59.95)
[intended as “a practical guide for law enforcement and forensic professionals
in properly identifying tools and shrines discovered in the course of investigations”]
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Freedom and Constraint in Caribbean Migration and Diaspora, edited by Elizabeth
Thomas-Hope (Kingston: Ian Randle, 2014, Kindle, us$ 9.99) [Papers from the 2006
conference “Caribbean Migration: Forced and Free”]
The Indentured Servants: From Bengal to Bush Lot to Belize, by Karan Chand
(CreateSpace [“an amazon company”], 2014, paper us$ 15.00)
Business Renewal and Performance in Jamaica, by William W. Lawrence (Kingston:
University of the West Indies Press, 2014, paper us$ 25.00)
From Oil to Gas and Beyond: A Review of the Trinidad and Tobago Model and Analysis of
Future Challenges, edited by Trevor M. Boopsingh & Gregory McGuire (Lanham md:
University Press of America, 2014, cloth us$ 95.00)
Caribbean Renewal: Tackling Fiscal and Debt Challenges, edited by Charles Amo-Yartey
& Therese Turner-Jones (Washington dc: International Monetary Fund, 2014, paper
us$ 25.00)
Medicinal Plants of Barbados for the Treatment of Communicable and Non-communicable Diseases, by Damian Cohall (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2014,
paper us$ 25.00)
Caribbean Volunteers at War: The Forgotten Story of the raf’s ‘Tuskeegee Airmen’, by
Mark Johnson (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2014, cloth us$ 34.95)
Long Night of the Tankers: Hitler’s War against Caribbean Oil, by David J. Bercuson &
Holger H. Herwig (Calgary ab: University of Calgary Press, 2014, paper us$ 41.95)
Beyond the Eagle’s Shadow: New Histories of Latin America’s Cold War, edited by Virginia
Garrard-Burnett, Mark Atwood Lawrence & Julio E. Moreno (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013, cloth us$ 55.00)
The United States and the Armed Forces of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean,
2000–2014, by René De La Pedraja (Jefferson nc: McFarland, 2014, paper us$ 45.00)
It’s the Healing of the Nation: The Case for Reparations in an Era of Recession and ReColonisation, by David A. Comissiong (Christ Church, Barbados: Caribbean Chapters
Publishing, 2013, paper us$ 13.00)
Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States, by Felipe Fernández-Armesto
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2014, cloth us$ 27.95)
Before the Windrush: Race Relations in 20th-Century Liverpool, by John Belchem (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014, paper us$ 39.95)
British West Indies: Postcard Collection, by Nigel Sadler & Sonja Arias (Stroud: Amberley
Publishing, 2014, paper us$ 22.95)
Understanding the Poverty Impact of the Global Financial Crisis in Latin America and the
Caribbean, edited by Margaret Grosh, Maurizio Bussolo & Samuel Freije (Washington dc: World Bank, 2014, paper us$ 39.95)
The Dominican Experiment: A Teacher and His Students Explore a Garbage Dump, a
Sweatshop, and Vodou, by Michael D’ Amato & George Santos (Bloomington in:
iUniverse, 2014, paper us$ 14.95)
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Reimagining the Caribbean: Conversations among the Creole, English, French, and Spanish Caribbean, by Valérie Orlando, Sandra Cypess, Joseph Cantave & Krista Slagle
(Lanham md: Lexington Books, 2014, cloth us$ 80.00)
The Constitutional Systems of the Commonwealth Caribbean: A Contextual Analysis, by
Derek O’Brien (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2014, paper us$ 32.00)
Competition Law in the caricom Single Market and Economy, by Alina KaczorowskaIreland (London: Routledge, 2014, paper us$ 79.95)
The Marcus Garvey and United Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume xii:
The Caribbean Diaspora, 1920–1921, edited by Robert A. Hill, John Dixon, Mariela
Haro Rodriguez & Anthony Yuen (Durham nc: Duke University Press, 2014, cloth
us$ 120.00)
Frantz Fanon, My Brother: Doctor, Playwright, Revolutionary, by Joby Fanon (Lanham
md: Lexington Books, 2014, cloth us$ 70.00)
Dynamiques caribéennes: Pour une histoire des circulations dans l’ espace atlantique
(xviiie–xixe siècles), edited by Éric Dubesset & Jacques de Cauna (Pessac: Presses
Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2014, paper us$ 73.45)
Rencontres Caraïbe-Amazonie: Méthodes et expériences d’inventaire du patrimoine
(Actes des “rencontres Caraïbe-Amazonie de l’ Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel” du 23 au 27 novembre 2011), edited by Céline Frémaux (Matoury, Guyane: Ibis
Rouge, 2014, paper € 30.00)
Du Touloulou au Tololo—Le bal paré-masqué, son évolution, by Aline Belfort (Matoury,
Guyane: Ibis Rouge, 2014, paper € 20.00) [describing how Guyane’s carnival tradition
of full-body female masquerade has spread to men and then to Martinique, Paris,
and beyond]
Remixology: Tracing the Dub Diaspora, by Paul Sullivan (London: Reaktion Books, 2014,
paper us$ 25.00)
Environmental politics in Latin America and the Caribbean. Volume 1: Introduction; Volume 2: Institutions, Policy and Actors, by Gavin O’Tool (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014, each volume is paper us$ 34.95) [intended as course textbooks].
Flooding and Climate Change: Sectorial Impacts and Adaptation Strategies for the Caribbean Region, edited by Dave D. Chadee, Joan M. Sutherland & John B. Agard (New
York: Nova Science, 2014, cloth us$ 170.00)
Sexual Feelings: Reading Anglophone Caribbean Women’s Writing through Affect, by
Elina Valovirta (New York: Rodopi, 2014, paper us$ 67.20)
Colonial Girlhood in Literature, Culture and History, 1840–1950, edited by Kristine Moruzi
& Michelle J. Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, cloth us$ 90.00)
Realism, Form and the Postcolonial Novel, by Nicholas Robinette (New York: Palgrave
Pivot, 2014, cloth us$ 67.50) [88 pages]
The Relationship between Individual and Family in the Caribbean Novel, by Khurshid
Attar (New Delhi: PartridgeIndia [self-publishing], 2014, paper us$ 14.99)
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Journeys of the Slave Narrative in the Early Americas, edited by Nicole N. Aljoe & Ian
Finseth (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014, paper us$ 29.50) [not
much on the Caribbean]
Walcott’s Omeros: A Reader’s Guide, by Don Barnard (Boulder co: FirstForumPress, 2014.
cloth us$ 55.00)
Education in the Commonwealth Caribbean and Netherlands Antilles, edited by Emel
Thomas (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014, cloth us$ 170.00)
English in the Caribbean: Variation, Style and Standards in Jamaica and Trinidad, by
Dagmar Deuber (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014, cloth us$ 99.00)
Creole Languages and Linguistic Typology, edited by Parth Bhatt & Tonjes Veenstra
(Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2013, cloth us$ 143.00)
The Emergence of Creole Syllable Structure: An Empirical Investigation of Six Caribbean
Creoles, by Mareile Schramm (The Hague: Mouton De Gruyter, 2014, cloth us$
140.00)
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