1 Minute Book Review:Connecting the Dots by Eglantine Franco

Name of the Book: Connecting the Dots

Author: Eglantine Franco


Publisher: Xlibris

What's the book about?: Connecting the Dots by Eglantine Franco recounts the traumatic experience in a young woman's life from an initial event caused a physical disability to what would later manifest itself as a personality disorder. Franco chronicles the events that led up to the diagnosis of a girl who now suffers from borderline personality disorder (BPD).

Why am I reading the book?: In our culture, there is so much guilt surrounding mental disorders that I was drawn to this story that sheds light on a subject that is surrounded by unnecessary shame.

Quote from the book: "Unfortunately, there is this unrealistic standard placed on most young people today. Their bodies are not created to fit into "one size fits all." Humans from all over the world come from different races, have different genes, and have differently proportioned and shaped bodies. Yet garments are mass produced, and these young bodies are forced to fit into these clothes" (30).

Where can you buy the book? Amazon.com: Connecting the Dots: From Erb's Palsy to Anorexia Nervosa to Borderline Personality Disorder

Kindle Store http://amzn.to/HgpZMe

***

I've modified this format from One Minute Book Reviews: http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/



***

If you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook.



Thank you!

Consulate General launches Jamaica Independence Essay competition

Hon. Sandra Grant Griffiths

The Consulate General of Jamaica in Miami is now accepting entries for its Annual Essay Competition to mark Jamaica’s Independence Anniversary.


The competition is open to all Jamaican children, first and second generation, residing in Florida State, and forms part of the celebrations to observe the nation’s 50th anniversary of Independence throughout the Florida communities.


There are several topics of choice for the competition, launched this year under the theme of Jamaica’s responsibility, as stated in the National Pledge, of “advancing the welfare of the whole human race” and the merit in this project is to advance Diaspora Community awareness in a state that promotes diversity, while exposing our youth to their Jamaican culture and heritage. 


As they research and prepare compositions, applicants are given the opportunity to reflect on the nation’s history and culture; record how their Jamaican roots have impacted their upbringing; and the positive events that have catapulted the image of Jamaica and her outstanding Diaspora in the global arena. 


According to the Consul General, the Hon. Sandra Grant Griffiths, “Children of the Diaspora are being invited and encouraged to participate in the essay competition, to be inspired by our island’s rich history and cultural heritage and to take pride in the many accomplishments at home and abroad by the people of the island of our origin”.


The deadline for the submission of entries is Friday, July 6, 2012. The winner in each category will be awarded with a plaque by the Consul General on Friday, July 27, 2012.


Eligible students can choose from a selection of topics related to the island’s cultural heritage some of which include community leadership, entertainment, education, history, cultural heritage, geography and national development.


Applicants must be between five and eighteen years of age, normally resident in the State of Florida, and submit entries in one of three age categories - five to eight (5-8); nine to twelve (9-12); and thirteen to eighteen (13-18).


For information on the competition interested persons may contact the Consulate General of Jamaica in Miami located at 25 Southeast Second Avenue, Suite 609, telephone (305-374-8431 ext. 232); email INFO@JAMAICACGMIAMI.ORG or visit the Consulate’s website at WWW.JAMAICACGMIAMI.ORG





***


If you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook.





Thank you!

Living Sculpture II @ Diaspora Vibe Gallery

For more information, please follow this link: http://www.diasporavibe.net/event.php?id=128

***


If you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook.





Thank you!

MDC Honors Professors Kilpatrick and Gallegos

Miami Dade College (MDC) professor and civil rights activist Renee Kilpatrick and 1940s baseball star Luisa Gallegos represent very different cultures and professions. Yet each has made a distinct mark in history and inspired generations of women who followed in their footsteps. Recently, they were both honored at the annual Women’s History Month luncheon at the InterAmerican Campus (IAC). The theme this year was education and empowerment.


Born and raised in Albany, Ga., Prof. Kilpatrick came of age amid segregation and Jim Crow laws in the Deep South. In high school, as the civil rights movement pushed forward, she was part of the first African American class to integrate an all-white high school. She also took a part-time job at a local grocery store, where she became its first black cashier and at first patrons refused to go through her lane. Through college, she participated in marches and lunch sit-ins, some of which resulted in jail time. 


“It was a harsh time, but it was also a learning time,” Prof. Kilpatrick said. “I did not realize at the time that I was making history.”


Prof. Kilpatrick moved to Miami 21 years ago and teaches English at MDC. The “country girl” who dreamed of being a teacher since the first grade said she still cries at every graduation ceremony. 


“As educators, we are empowered to make a change, not just in the lives of our students, but also the lives of each other,” she said.


Decades earlier, Gallegos was paving the way for women in sports. The Havana native began playing street baseball with men when she was 12 years old. She got the attention of a local scout who put her on his team.


In 1943, as many young men headed to war, the All American Girls Professional Baseball League was founded in the U.S. Gallegos was among a group of Cuban women picked to play in the League. She played for the Peoria Redwings and the South Bend Blue Sox.


“The newspapers said she was a great outfielder, fast around the bases and had a powerful arm,” said Marino Martinez, an El Nuevo Herald sports writer who recently chronicled her story.


Gallegos is in the Cuban Sports Hall of Fame and is among the female baseball players honored at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, NY. In 1992, the film A League of Their Own also paid tribute to the women.

***

4th Annual Haiti Fundraiser @ FIU

***


If you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook.


 


Thank you!

Trayvon Martin's Killing Comes Home

When my children were growing up, they'd ask me if they could watch films like Dumbo. I'd let them watch the movie, but I'd interrupt their watching during scenes that were based on racist stereotypes. I didn't want to spoil the movie for them, but I didn't want my children to grow up unaware of the insidious nature of racism.

I wanted them to stay alive.


Maybe I've come close, but I don't think I've never given any of my children the kind of explicit advice that Jonathan Capehart's mother gave him:


"Don’t run in public.” Lest someone think you’re suspicious.
“Don’t run while carrying anything in your hands.” Lest someone think you stole something.
“Don’t talk back to the police.” Lest you give them a reason to take you to jail or worse.


As a father, I have tried to protect as best as I could from the evils of racism.

Sometimes, I know they thought that I was overdoing it. Maybe I did.


But now the killing of Trayvon Martin has brought racism home. Trayvon went to the same school as my children and my "adopted" children: Dr. Michael Krop Senior High School.


Trayvon Martin could have been one of my children. He could have been one of the young men in my neighborhood who play along with the deejays on "Power 96's “Black, White, Hispanic or Other” where the DJ’s will read out the details of a stupid criminal act and the caller will then guess the nationality of the criminal."

Trayvon could be one of the young men at the college where I work.


Trayvon was killed and his only "crime" was being black in America.


My heart goes out to Trayvon's parents. And there is nothing more that I can say. I can only grieve.





***

Why Do I Write About Mona Heights?

Once upon a time, there was a place called Mona Heights…


In her review of Dub Wise, Mary Hanna called the collection "a gift." If she meant “a gift” in the way that Lewis Hyde in The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World defined it as an "act of gratitude," then all of my books have been gifts because they attempt to return to the source the sensory impressions that have affected my life's work.


And certainly, Mona Heights has been a source. My earliest memories of Mona Heights are of growing up with my sister, Judith, my brother, Ansel, and a house full of cousins. Down the street, my childhood friends, Paul Chin, David Griffith, and Paul Smith and always trying to keep out of trouble with our parents and extended "uncles" and "aunts": Uncle Danny and Aunty Joan Morrison, Uncle Welly Chin, Uncle Michael Witter, Uncle Michael "Jah Mick" and Aunty Ann-Marie Mowatt. The happier days of our childhood were filled with playing cricket, exploring the "open lands, of Hope Pastures, and skylarking at the annual Christmas fair.


It was an idyllic time. Even the streets had paradisiacal names: Garden Boulevard, Anthurium Drive, Daisy Avenue, and Plumbago Path,  where I grew up and which I’ve used as the setting for many of the short stories in Uncle Obadiah and the Alien.


This is not to say that there weren't problems associated with race and class. But our parents did what all parents should do--they protected us from the harsher aspects of life. They realized that Mona Heights was the beginning of a civil society in pre-independence Jamaica, and, as one of the first attempts to create an open middle class enclave in St. Andrews, Mona became a microcosm of Jamaican society with all its dreams, fears, and conflicts.


As we grew older, however, we began to become aware of the divisions, but we didn't care who was black, white, Chinese, East Indian, or browning. We belonged to a community.


We were friends and continued to be friends during the so-called communist threat of the 70's and long after the undeclared civil war broke out...

II

So why do I write about Mona Heights?



I’m a wild golden apple
that will burst with love
of you and your men,
those I never told enough
with my young poet’s eyes
crazy with the country,
generations going,
generations gone,
moi c’est gens Ste. Lucie.
C’est la moi sorti;
is there that I born.


(from Derek Walcott, Collected Poems, 1948 – 1984, Noonday Press, 1986/1993; originally from Sea Grapes, 1976)

It was there on Plumbago Path with Long Mountain to my right, Wareika to my left, and a child's delight in dirt and green things that I first had a feeling of awe, of being part of something larger than myself. It's the place in Jamaica where I first fell in love and where I discovered the work of three artists who would have a profound effect on my life: Bob Marley, Derek Walcott, and Dennis Scott.


Watching the pouis blanket the lawn while listening to the whistle of the peanut man, or waiting for our gardener, Victor, to regale us with his off-color jokes about "toning" as the Nyabinghi brethren called out, "Broom, Broomie," gave me the time to think about what Lorna Goodison, speaking about her childhood in pre-idpendence Jamaica, has called, "a very complicated, complex, rich place."


Later in the interview, Lorna also revealed, "I can be a witness. I can say, ‘In my life I saw this, and I knew this about Jamaica. If it doesn’t exist now, believe me, it used to exist, and hopefully it can exist again."

I feel the same way, Lorna. I haven't given up.

Black Canadian Writers @ CBC Books

 http://www.cbc.ca/books/black-canadian-literature.html 

Throughout February and March, literary journalist, teacher and author Donna Bailey Nurse will be blogging for CBC Books about black Canadian writers and their important works.





***


If you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook.


 


Thank you!

Jamaica Observer: Checking in With…Geoffrey Philp

 
If this Mercury in retrograde stuff doesn't change the plans, on Sunday (3/18/2012), The Jamaica Observer will publish in the Bookends section an interview I did with Sharon Leach and one of my short stories, "The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth," which is set in Mona Heights, Jamaica.


I am also working on "Why I Write About Mona Heights," which I will be posting next week.


Stay tuned!






***


If you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook.





Thank you!

“The Sugar Clock” by Cynthia James

 

This setting back and forwarding
the clock, lengthening and shortening time,
is not in my experience
 
I learned and laboured under one timepiece,
the sugar clock, somewhere near the great house
deep in the crevice of my ear still going strong
 
the wailing ICTA horn blaring at five to seven, five to twelve and five to four;
more than a century of wailing - (1820s to 1921 - estate,
usine - plantation time seems distant!)
 
when to pick up tools, when to lay them down and when to lunch -
I have no picture of this timepiece, no sense of what it was,
but in the bowel of the you-we sugar factory, sure it was!
 
Some say ‘twas pressured steam, but in my mind
it was a round alarm with finger lever, iron, brass or shiny silver,
nippled like the cycle bell Works workers rode out, clicking after it went off.
 
Who pulled it? Or was it automatic?
Did its wail wind round the campus weekends, too, when I was gone?
Or did absentee hands run round its face invisibly
 
like on these fancy modern digitals?
Halfway between a warning and rebellion
sometimes it sounded like a conch! but no, it was no conch,
 
or else I’d seen a Maroon man, built say like the Orisha Andrew,
master drummer, going in and out.
I moved in step with it, shell shocked.
 
Who turned it off? And when?
Did its sly slumbering regime rankle you-we historians?
Who knows the what and why, the grip of memory?
 
Oriens Ex Occidente Lux
Did it shut off on its accord when the steam engine rusted?
When did it cease to be that relic of “the bulwark that we watch” way south?
 
 
 
©Cynthia James 2012

 
 
 
Cynthia James is a Trinidadian, living for the past 3 years in Toronto. She writes poetry and fiction and her work can be found in publications such as Callaloo, Caribbean Writer and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse.

***

If you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook. Thank you!
 

Master Poet: Zandolie

Give thanks to Professor Zero for sharing the work of Zandolie, a master poet in the Kaiso genre. I've been studying Zandolie all week.


Besides the immediately infectious melody, I was impressed by his use of allusions, couplets, and double-entendre to create a plausible narrative with a beginning, middle, and a surprise ending. And it's not a one-time performance. Many younger poets should take note how he demonstrates his skill in other songs such as "Too Much Man Family" and my favorite, "De Iron Man."


Of late, I've been reading many poems that lack this element of surprise. Rhyme is like a springboard where a poet propels her words through time, and we wait in anticipation to see if she will accomplish the complex maneuver.


Zandolie scores a perfect 10 every time.

***

If you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook. Thank you! 

Caribbean InTransit: Live!

Caribbean InTransit is a dynamic, new platform for artists and academics. It is the only open access academic journal focused on the Caribbean Arts. Open access is the concept of making published material available in full via the Internet, by removing the price barrier for readers. With its open access stance and its commitment to the Arts, it is fitting that Caribbean InTransit launches with a focus and dialogue on Art and Access. The notion of open access, however, is not without its challenges. Access is not uncomplicated or easy. If the price barrier is removed then how can the project of gratis availability be sustained? And what of the language barrier? If material is truly accessible then it ought to be so in various languages. Access to information technology is also an issue. The digital divide keeps many offline and therefore without access. Caribbean InTransit is interested in engaging these issues, among others, in relation to art. How can art – broadly defined – have reach or impact on societies? What should impact look like? How might we rethink and employ technologies to make art more available? Can access come without commercial/financial suicide?

Google has partnered with some of the world’s respected museums to bring their artworks online (www.googleartproject.com). Using Street View technology you can get free access inside galleries and can view art in high resolution. The Google Art Project also lets you share the artworks you like across social networks like Facebook and Twitter. In the Caribbean, we can look to Trinidad for examples of efforts to consider art in relation to public access. Alice Yard is the backyard space of a house located in the island’s capital (aliceyard.blogspot.com). This informal space hosts artists, writers and musicians and serves as an alternative arena to the formal art galleries, for making artworks available to people and for fostering art’s impact on the society. During the country’s recent state of emergency with an imposed curfew, the organisers of the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival instituted Curfew Cinema: entire films were available for viewing online during the stipulated period for remaining indoors, free of charge (www.ttfilmfestival.com). And, when local recording artist Isaac Blackman launched his new album in mid-2011, some of his tracks could be freely accessed and downloaded (www.isaacblackman.com). These are but a few illustrations of the dovetailing of art with the matter of accessibility. Join the Caribbean InTransit conversation about “Art, Technology, Availability and Impact” as we set in motion our efforts to foster a community of artistry, research and entrepreneurship through a unique journal format.

Visit us at Caribbean Intransit on Facebook to share your views and kick-start our celebrations and subscribe to access your free e-copies of our journal at www.caribbeanintransit.com

***


If you are searching for posts about Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey, Rastafari, or Dennis Scott, please check the archives.


Also, if you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook. 


Thank you!

Book Review: Island Princess in Brooklyn

As parents, we struggle to instill values in our children that are important to us. We often turn to books as a means of continuing our conversation about values, which we believe will enable them to become successful members of our community. But what happens when a child is uprooted and placed in an unfamiliar setting? What values will they discard or retain? This is the predicament of Princess McQueen in Island Princess in Brooklyn by Diane Browne.


Written in the first-person, Island Princess begins in medias res with Princess McQueen at the JFK terminal. From the opening sentence, we get a glimpse of the estrangement between Princess and her mother: "Would my mother be there? This thought kept bouncing around in my brain like an echo in a cave, over and over again, even though I tried to keep it away" (1). This uneasy prologue is just the start of Princess's yearlong sojourn in Brooklyn where she attempts to reconcile the American Dream with the real issues of trying to fit in to a new neighborhood and school.


Although Princess has difficulty in adapting to a new neighborhood, nothing has prepared her for her schoolyard in Brooklyn where she must reconcile the hard earned wisdom of her grandmother with whom she spent her formative years as one of the many "barrel children" in Jamaica, and the everyday rough and tumble of school in America. Yet, this precocious "Island Princess" as she is called by her classmates, soon makes friends with other children from different ethnic backgrounds: Latoya (African American), Esperanza (Hispanic), Simply Red (Caucasian) and Chunkie Bear (Biracial).


As she learns to negotiate the racial and social differences in the schoolyard, Princess's knowledge comes with a price. Princess is forced to balance her commitment to speaking the truth against loyalty to her friends when her friend Chunkie Bear is tripped while walking across the yard. She must also weigh the value of honesty that she has learned from her grandmother against her mother's practical advice of remaining neutral, "No interfering in what don't concern you. For the last time I am telling you, you are a migrant and a foreigner! Story end right now!" (85).


Her mother's advice, punctuated with the colloquial, "Story end right now!"—a sure sign that their discussion had come to an end--is only one of the many charms of Island Princess in Brooklyn. Throughout the book, Diane Browne conveys the confusion in Princess's mind as copes with the changes that accompany displacement. Princess's bewilderment is captured in her description of the subway:

It was a scary underground place of sudden flashing lights: sometimes narrow, with walls close on either side, looking damp; or wide, where other passing trains rocked thundering by, windows alight, slipping by one after the other, with disappearing ghostly figures inside, all caught up in the wind and noise. The subway was like a large underground nest of moving metal minsters. (38)

In this midst of this turmoil, Princess yearns for the security of home in Jamaica even as she tries to heal the relationship with her mother. Princess makes lists of the things she misses in Jamaica, but as another of her friends, Jamal, reminds her, "your mind is always on what's missing, not what is nice about being here?" (156)


It's those snippets of wisdom from the conflicts between the characters and the realistic treatment of Princess's dilemma that make Island Princess a delightful read. Island Princess in Brooklyn is a welcome addition to the conversation within the diaspora about communal values values and the problems our children face while growing ups as "strangers in a strange land."

***

I am participating in World Read Aloud Day!

***

If you are searching for posts about Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey, Rastafari, or Dennis Scott, please check the archives.

Also, if you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook. Thank you!

Mr. Poetry Man

Mr. Poetry Man from geoffreyphilp on Vimeo.






I am participating in World Read Aloud Day 2012

***

If you are searching for posts about Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey, Rastafari, or Dennis Scott, please check the archives.

Also, if you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook. Thank you!

Join World Read Aloud Day

Because World Read Aloud Day is an international occasion, we encourage our friends from all over the world to stand up for literacy by joining us in a Global Literacy Rally through Social Media. We at LitWorld recognize the importance that technology plays in connecting us with our brothers and sisters throughout the globe, and sites like Facebook and Twitter has made it possible for us be linked instantly.


Here are some ways you can join the Global Literacy Rally from here on out until March 7, 2012:




1.) If you have a website or blog, you can put up the WRAD logo (on post below) on your blog or website's sidebar as a badge until March 7th, with the image linking back to our WRAD page.


2.) Change your avatars on Facebook to the WRAD logo/image anytime between now or the week before or during WRAD. 


3.) On March 7, 2012, update your Facebook or Twitter status to answer the question, "What would you miss most if you could not read or write?", and make sure to tag/link LitWorld during the post. 
                * For Facebook, can use @litworld to tag and follow us
                * For Twitter, use @litworldsays to tag & follow us, then use hashtag #litworld


4.) Tag/link LitWorld when posting up any status updates on Twitter and Facebook about anything you are doing for the day of WRAD) (ie., how many minutes you have read, what readings and activities you are doing, etc.)






Thank you so much, and we hope to see you joining us on World Read Aloud Day, no matter what part of the world you are in!









***

If you are searching for posts about Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey, Rastafari, or Dennis Scott, please check the archives.

Also, if you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook. Thank you!

LitWorld's World Read Aloud Day 2012: March 7, 2012

Register at litworld.org/wrad to be a part of LitWorld's 3rd annual event on March 7, 2012. Join the Global Movement. [Video Credits: Song - "Give Me a Perfect World," by Sun Palace]

***


If you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook. Thank you!

Call for Entries: The Small Axe Literary Competition

The Small Axe Literary Competition encourages the production and 
publication of Caribbean fiction and poetry. The competition focuses on poetry and short stories from emerging writers whose work centers on regional and diasporic Caribbean themes and concerns. This competition is part of the Small Axe Project's ongoing commitment to Caribbean cultural production and our mission to provide a forum for innovative critical and creative explorations of Caribbean reality. With this competition, we hope to encourage and support the region's rich literary heritage, in the tradition of precursors such as Bim, Kyk-over-al, Focus and Savacou.


The competition consists of two categories: poetry and short fiction. Two winners are chosen from each category by a distinguished panel of judges.
First Prize: $750 Second Prize: $500


2012 Competition submission deadline: 31 May, 2012


Winners of the 2011 competition will be published in
Small Axe 38 - July 2012.


Writers wishing to compete for a Small Axe Literary Prize must submit the following to litcomp@smallaxe.net:


A double-spaced Word document containing: an original, unpublished short story (maximum 7,000 words), or an original selection of poetry (maximum ten poems, not exceeding ten manuscript pages). Manuscripts must be free of any author information.


A separate document with a one-page biography, including previously published works and full contact information (name, email address, mailing address and phone)



For more information, please follow this link: http://smallaxe.net/sxsalon/literarycompetition.php



***

If you are searching for posts about Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey, Rastafari, or Dennis Scott, please check the archives.

Also, if you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook. Thank you!

"It's Time"

It’s time to strip away my fear,

And to live the life of Christ within

Banish all thoughts of living in sin

Abundant life awaits, it’s as near

As breath on my skin.

It’s time to strip away my fear

The Kingdom of God is right here

I will open my heart, let the Spirit in

To my life and watch the miracles begin.

It’s time to strip away my fear.

***

If you are searching for posts about Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey, Rastafari, or Dennis Scott, please check the archives.

Also, if you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook. Thank you!