Opal Palmer Adisa @ Informtainment.com

Adisa’s initial interest in writing can probably be traced back to the stories she was told by her Aunt Zilla, who Adisa would visit during the summer. Since she was frequently around storytelling, Adisa reflects on “always writing, or at least making up stories and poems in [her] head" (Agard 43). When she left for Hunter College, she was not aspiring to major in English or Creative Writing, but Mathematics. Adisa made the shift to writing after attending a poetry reading by Sonia Sanchez, and reading the novel Cane by Jean Toomer (Leach). Other influences on her writing include Kamau Brathwaite and Mervyn Morris, both of whom she met and came to know personally when she returned to Jamaica in the mid-seventies. In her interview with Kwame Dawes, she says she had "been influenced a lot more so by fiction or prose than by poetry" (188).

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Permission to Speak: Anton Nimblett

I'll start with one word, "permission". As a good West Indian boy, I learned early -- and perhaps too well -- to ask for permission. Before interrupting a "big-people" conversation, before having a piece of coconut fudge. Permission to ask for permission, sometimes!

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Anton Nimblett’s stories are about characters driven by desire - for dignity and justice for a dead son, for privacy from a neighbour who collects lives, for sexual fulfilment as a gay man, for an old man’s last assertion of love for a dying wife, for a man on the edge trying to block out the destructive voices of past pains. What is so impressive about the stories, beyond Anton Nimblett’s sharp ear for a wide range of distinctive voices, and the ability to create vividly sensual pictures of place, and particularly of erotic encounters, is their facility in inhabiting contrary tendencies without strain.

There is also an expert cinematographer’s sense of when to cut and when to join, and several stories build to powerful dramatic tension through arresting montage. Within the collection there is both fluidity and sharp definition. Characters migrate between stories (just as they migrate between Trinidad and New York), being sometimes at the fringes, sometimes at the centre - Trinidadian lives seen both in motion and at rest. Writing with equal empathy about the lives of gay men, heterosexuals, young and old, country folk and urbanites, Anton Nimblett is a singularly attractive new voice in Caribbean writing.

Anton Nimblett is a Trinidadian living and writing in Brooklyn.

Photo Credit: Signifyin' Guyana

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Praise for Who's Your Daddy? @ Farsighted Fly Girl

If you can't travel to the Caribbean and experience the complexities, the next best thing is to read Caribbean literature that captures the richness of a specific island. Geoffrey Philp's Who's Your Daddy and Other Stories not only conjures up the sounds and images of rural Jamaica, it also reflects the Jamaican community in Miami, which is an element that I've never seen portrayed quite so vividly.

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Mothering and Migration: (Trans)nationalisms, Globalization, and Displacement.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Association for Research on Mothering (ARM) and the University of Puerto Rico are hosting a conference on Mothering and Migration: (Trans)nationalisms, Globalization, and Displacement.

February 18-20, 2010, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico

We welcome submissions from scholars, students, activists, government agencies and workers, artists, mothers, and others who work or research in this area. Cross-cultural, historical and comparative work is encouraged. We encourage a variety of types of submissions including academic papers from all disciplines, workshops, creative submissions, performances, storytelling, visual arts and other alternative formats.

Topics can include (but are not limited to):

Representations/images of mothers and migration and (trans)national issues; globalization of motherhood; empowering migrant mothers; reproduction and movement of mother workers; migrant and (trans)national mothers and capitalism; migrant and (trans)national mothers and activism; public policy and migrant and (trans)national mothers; legal responses to migrant and (trans)national mothers; transnational movement and (anti-) racism in parenting; LBGT migrant and (trans)national mothers and social justice issues; suffering and survival of migrant and (trans)national mothers; impact of globalization on mothering; creating and maintaining family relationships; mothering and immigration policies; resistance of migrant and (trans)national mothers against cultural oppression; migrant and (trans)national mothers and politicians; transnationalism and adoption; migrant and (trans)national mother movements; race and (anti-) racism within the migratory context; theories of mothers who migrate; globalization of reproductive technologies and reproduction; the effects of migration on mothering; communal support for migrant and (trans)national mothers; employment and migrant and (trans)national mothers; raising children and migrant and (trans)national mothers; migrant and (trans)national mothers and the loss of identity; migrant and (trans)national mothers who build communities and networks; climate change and migrant and (trans)national mothers; mothering and cultural globalization; migrant and (trans)national mothers and language; migrant and (trans)national mother activists; migrant and (trans)national mothers and loss; displaced mothers; mothers on the margins; pregnant migrant and (trans)national mothers and heath care; migrant and (trans)national mothers and economic inequality; migrant and (trans)national mothers and homelessness; migrant and (trans)national mothers and education; transnational motherhood; violence against migrant and (trans)national mothers; migrant and (trans)national mothers and mental health issues; migrant and (trans)national mothers and disabilities; mothering and class issues; caregiving and motherhood in global movements; transnational movements; online communities of migrant and (trans)national mothers; ideologies in migrant and transnational communities

If you are interested in being considered as a presenter, please send a 250 word abstract and a 50 word bio by September 1, 2009 to: arm@yorku.ca.

Association for Research on Mothering

726 Atkinson, York University

4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3

Phone: (416) 736-2100 x60366 FAX: (416) 736-5766

Email: arm@yorku.ca

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