May 5, 2010

Tweet This: The Caribbean Review of Books is Back!



For those book lovers who used to wait anxiously for the footsteps of the mail carrier to deliver the latest issue of The Caribbean Review of Books, those days are over! The Caribbean Review of Books, edited by Nicholas Laughlin, is back in a new style and fashion. The CRB has changed its format and is now online with a promise of “the same intelligent, incisive coverage of Caribbean literature, art, and culture.”

In Note to the Reader, Laughlin acknowledges some of the difficulties of publishing in the Caribbean, yet his statement regarding the previous incarnation of the CRB is worth quoting in its entirety:

When we revived the CRB in May 2004, it was with the conviction that “a periodical devoted to discussing Caribbean books and writing is a vital necessity.” It is necessary for writers, publishers, and readers, and practical matters of spreading the word about new books. But we also believe a magazine like the CRB plays a necessary role in instigating a wider conversation about literature and art and their relations with Caribbean society — which is also a debate about how to understand the Caribbean’s past, define its present, and imagine its future.

From the current issue:

Curating memory
Brendan de Caires on Exhibiting Slavery: The Caribbean Postmodern Novel as Museum, by Vivian Nun Halloran

Arrival poems
F.S.J. Ledgister on Picasso, I Want My Face Back, by Grace Nichols


Greener pastures
Lisa Allen-Agostini on Who’s Your Daddy? And Other Stories, by Geoffrey Philp


NOTEBOOK
Questions of approach
Vahni Capildeo begins her first visit to India. The first installment in a longer essay about the writer’s trip to Delhi and Mumbai.



There are those who still cower in the face of globalization and still yearn for the Luddite vision of a time that has long gone. Globalization in the form of the internet is here to stay. And if publications intend to survive in the era of Gutenberg 2.0, when every relationship in publishing is up for grabs, they will have to change their business model. In a region known for adaptability—we created music from ole pan—the new and improved CRB offers us a glimpse of the remarkable results that can happen when passion is wedded to fierce intelligence.

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