Unknown Histories of the Caribbean

UNKNOWN HISTORIES OF THE CARIBBEAN – This panel will discuss how writers from the Caribbean have attempted to construct alternative images of the present and future from the histories of slavery and colonialism that haunt the Caribbean and its diasporas. In parallel with these invented stories, archival registers give unexpected details of the unknown histories of the Caribbean and allow for scrupulously researched literary works to emerge alongside tales of imagination. 

With Natalie Hopkinson (Guyana), author of A Mouth is Always Muzzled, Patrick Bellegarde-Smith (Haiti), author of In The Shadow of Powers: Dantes Bellegarde in Haitian Social Thought, Michael Barnett (Jamaica), author of The Rastafari Movement: A North American and Caribbean Perspective, and Judy Raymond (Trinidad), author of The Colour of Shadows. Moderated by Donna Aza Weir-Soley, author of Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women’s Writings. Find the full schedule at https://mjfievre.com/readcaribbean-2018/

Miami Book Fair International: #ReadCaribbean

Here are all the #ReadCaribbean events at the Miami Book Fair International. See you soon!

https://www.miamibookfair.com/events/?tribe_paged=1&tribe_event_display=list&tribe-bar-search=Read+Caribbean

Poetry Fundraiser: Franklyn March

A night of poetry, good food and raffle prizes to raise funds for Franklyn March, a sickle cell patient in Jamaica who desperately needs a hip replacement surgery.

Saturday,August 16, 2014

6:00 to 9:00 p.m

Florida international University, 

Biscayne Bay Campus, 

Wolfe University Center 

Room 155, 

3000 NE 151st Street, 

North Miami, Florida

If you cannot attend, please consider a donation to the gofundme campaign:

http://www.gofundme.com/9zwes4

One Heart.

sx salon 16: Online

Giving thanks to Small Axe for publishing poems from my latest collection, LETTER FROM MARCUS GARVEY.

I am also happy to share the creative writing space with my talented sisters, Opal Palmer Adisa and Donna Aza Weir-Soley

Bless.

An Evening With Donna Aza Weir-Soley

Originally from Jamaica, Dr. Weir-Soley is currently an Associate Professor of English, African & African Diaspora Studies and Women's Studies at Florida International University. A Mellon and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Dr. Weir-Soley is the author of a poetry collection, First Rain (Peepal Tree Press, 2006), a scholarly text, Eroticism, Spirituality and Resistance in Black Women's Writings (University Press of Florida, 2009), and co-editor (with Opal Palmer Adisa) of Caribbean Erotic (Peepal Tree Press, 2010), an anthology of poetry, fiction and essays which includes the work of 62 writers from the English-speaking, Spanish-speaking and French-speaking Caribbean. 

An Evening With Donna Aza Weir-Soley

6:00-8:00 p.m.

Room 2151

Miami Dade College, North Campus

Call for Submissions: Tough Times in America

Call for Submissions

There are millions of Americans from all walks of life who are going through a tough time. Many have been severely affected by the economic recession and can neither pay their bills, nor afford the basics such as food and medicine. Our anthology, Tough Times in America, aims to provide a platform for telling these stories. 

We will accept true stories, as well as “fictionalized” versions of real life events.  This collection aims to preserve and document narrative accounts of the anger, fear and frustration that most Americans are feeling due to the recession which has resulted in massive job losses, loss of homes, loss of healthcare, reduced retirement benefits, etc. 

We also hope to document the hope and gratitude that bloom even in the midst of despair—true testaments to the tenacity of the human spirit.  Significantly, we would like this collection to reflect the diversity of America in the 21^st century, and so we welcome submissions from people from all ethnicities, racial, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds.

Submissions for Flash fiction should be between 1200 and 1500 words, and traditional stories must be between 10000 and 15000 words in length, typed, double-spaced, Times New Roman or similar sized font (12 point), and more).

Stories must be previously unpublished in any form, including print, web etc. Each story should be identified within the geographic location/landmark of the city in which it is set. We want to show that these experiences are common to many Americans, regardless of race and ethnicity, so the cultural component is vital. We welcome established as well as unpublished writers who would like to represent their experiences or the experiences of their friends and loved ones. Deadline for submissions is August 29, 2013.

Please send your submissions to: Max Freesney Pierre: (prrmax@yahoo.com) Donna Aza Weir-Soley: (weirsole@yahoo.com) (weirsole@fiu.edu).

Donna Aza Weir Soley is an Associate Professor of English at Florida International University. Dr. Weir-Soley is the author of First Rain, a poetry collection, Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women’s Writings, and co-editor of Caribbean Erotic. 

Max Freesney Pierre is a former Administrator and College Adjunct Professor of Education at Miami-Dade College. Pierre is a poet/writer/journalist, the author of Tambours de la Mêlée, Fée Caraïbe, Soul Traveler and Le chant de l’apaisement.

An Evening of Music, Poetry & Prose @ MDC, North

In celebration of Black History Month, the English and College Prep Departments, Miami Dade College, North Campus, in association with the Black History Month Committee, present an evening of music poetry and prose at the William Lehman Theater at 6:00—8:00 p. m. on February 28, 2013. The featured performers include Emmanuel Aderele, Preston Allen, Alexis Caputo, Kiki Sanchez, Donna Aza Weir-Soley, Malachi Smith, Joseph McNair, Sound Theory, and Charles Austin.

“It will an evening of celebrating the resilience, beauty, and joy in the contributions of some of the most exciting artists working here in Miami,” said Professor Geoffrey Philp, chair of the College Prep Department. "The concert promises to be one of the most exciting events that we have hosted during Black History Month.”

MDC, North Campus Black History Month Committee presents “An Evening of Music, Poetry and Prose.”

WHEN: Thursday, Feb. 28, 6:00 PM – 8 PM

WHERE:  MDC North Campus – Lehman Theatre, Room 5120 11380 N.W. 27 Ave.

Admission is free.

For more information, please contact Professor Geoffrey Philp at 305.237.1267

4th Annual Haiti Fundraiser @ FIU

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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!

Images from the Miami Book Fair International

Caribbean Lit. Luminaries (L. to R.):Heather Russell. Donna Aza Weir-Soley, 

Gordon Rohlehr, Opal Palmer Adisa, Ramabai Espinet

Wimpy Kid Creator: Jeff Kinney

Book Monster Invades Miami

For more, please follow this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geoffreyphilp/sets/72157628094592643/show/

Caribbean Erotic: Book Launch and Sunday Brunch

A buffet never before experienced in the South Florida community!  Come dine with us. The editors and contributing writers of Caribbean Erotic anthology will be reading and signing books at the Irie Isle Sunday Morning Brunch on Sunday, November 20, 11-1 p.m. 


Come join us for great poetry, delicious Jamaican cuisine, and stimulating conversation!


Featured Writers:  Opal Palmer Adisa and Aza Weir-Soley (co-editors), Jacqueline Bishop, B. Alison Richards, Heather Russell, Malachi Smith, and more...

Irie Isle Jamaican Restaurant

1480 South Palm Avenue.

Pembroke Pines, FL 33025 

Crossing the Sahara and Back: African Feminisms in Dialogue

Caribbean Authors @ Miami Book Fair International

Caribbean Voices in Fiction & Poetry

Angela Barry

Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming

Shara McCallum

Eunice Tate

Caribbean Voices: Generations in Art and Literature

Opal Palmer Adisa

Le Roy Clarke

Ramabai Espinet

Gordon Rohlehr

Donna Aza Weir-Soley

Caribbean Voices: Post-Colonial Themes

Andrew Downes

Brian Meeks

Selwyn Ryan

Verene Shepherd

Brenda Flanagan

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3rd Annual Haiti Poetry Benefit & Concert

3rd Annual Haiti Poetry Benefit & Concert

4 March  2011

18:00 - 22:00

FIU Biscayne Bay Campus - Mary Anne Wolfe Theater (WUC 100)

3000 N.E. 151st Street

North Miami, FL

Keynote Speaker: 

Angel Aloma, Executive Director 

Food for the Poor

Confirmed Poets / Artists:

Empress Addi & Rara Rock 

Jamaica Folk Review

Geoffrey Philp

Andrea Shaw

Malachi Smith

Donna Aza Weir-Soley

Garfield Ellis

Haiti Bluez

Plus OPEN MIC for all FIU students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community.

***

Suggested donation of $5 at the door, includes food and beverage. 100% of all donations will provide direct relief assistance to the impoverished communities of Haiti via Food for the Poor.

Link for online donation: http://support.foodforthepoor.org/site/TR?pg=team&fr_id=1740&team_id=3290

Donna Aza Weir-Soley, Heather Russell & Geoffrey Philp on PULSE

In case you missed the shows or weren't able to watch, here's the link:

http://video.wpbt2.org/video/1645554495

***

Caribbean Writers on PULSE with Jessy Schuster

PULSE with Jessy Schuster

Thursday, November 18 @ 7:30 PM

Sunday, November 21 @ 12:00 PM 

Interview with Donna Aza Weir-Soley
Florida International University associate professor of English, Donna Aza Weir-Soley, joins us on the program to discuss the book she is presenting at the Miami Book Fair International, Eroticism, Spirituality And Resistance In Black Women's Writings.

Interview with Heather Russell
Florida International University associate professor of English, Heather Russell, joins us on the program to discuss her latest book, Legba's Crossing: Narratology In The African Atlantic, which she is presenting at the Miami Book Fair International.

Heather Russell and Donna Aza Weir-Soley will be reading at the Miami Book Fair International

Saturday, November 20 @ 3:30 pm. Room 3315 (Building 3, 3rd Floor)

Interview with Geoffrey Philp


Jamaican author, Geoffrey Philp, joins us on Pulse to discuss his latest poetry collection, Dub Wise, and the criticism and feedback he received from his previous book, Who’s Your Daddy?

Geoffrey Philp will be reading at the Miami Book Fair International

Sunday, November 21 @ 1:00 pm. Room 3410 (Building 3, 4th Floor)

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Book Review: Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women’s Writings

Black women’s bodies have been the site of pornographic scrutiny for almost half a millennium. One of the most notorious examples of this scrutiny was Sara Baartman, better known in Western circles as the “Venus Hottentot,” who was “exhibited around Britain, being forced to entertain people by gyrating her nude buttocks and showing to Europeans what were thought of as highly unusual bodily features” (Wikipedia: Saartjie Bartman). As a result of this objectification, Donna Aza Weir Soley argues in Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women’s Writings, female black writers in the Americas who have grown up in ostensibly Christian cultures have always faced the “issue of how to represent black female characters as both sexual and spiritual beings while working within the constraints of a discursive tradition that historically maligned black women as sexual deviants” (2). In some cases, the implications for black women has been an uneasy relationship with their bodies. This unease has been reflected in the work of Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Edwidge Danticat. Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women’s Writings traces the historical, religious, and philosophical underpinnings of the dilemma facing black female writers and their use of West African religions as an alternative model for liberation from the “objectifying gaze” and the reclamation of Black female subjectivity.

Weir-Soley begins her investigation of black female subjectivity by describing the Western worldview with its patriarchal control of female sexual behavior and the Judaeo-Christian separation of sexuality and spirituality. As a contrast to this paradigm, Weir-Soley offers the example of West African-based spiritual traditions in which “sexual expression is an integral part of the spiritual experience” (2). Placing the issue in an historical context, Weir-Soley examines the effects of slavery on the colonizers and their attempts during the nineteenth century to distance themselves from the Africans by their creation of the so-called “cult of true womanhood” in which “a woman had to pious, (sexually) pure, submissive, and domestic” (15). This development, Weir Soley points out, intensified during the nascent antislavery movement, a period in which “the sexuality of black men and women was already a metonym for sexual deviance” (21).

Ironically, the anti-slavery movement which grew out of fundamentalist Christianity placed many black writers and intellectuals in an untenable situation. On the one hand, as Weir-Soley explains,” Christianity provided black women with an alternative language through which to articulate their claims to good moral character” (121). On the other hand, “Black women who were raised to be “good” Christian girls (like Harriet Jacobs) were especially vulnerable to feelings of shame about their sexuality” (121). Many of the leaders within the early civil rights movements had to suppress or deny any trace of sexuality. In other words, the only “good” Negro was a celibate Negro.

It was within this context that writers such as Zora Neale Hurston began the liberation of black bodies and to “reestablish the interdependence between spirituality and sexuality that is so central to the formation of black women’s identities…by relying on the inscription of a symbolic, discursive, literal and theoretical framework based on the spiritual precepts and epistemology of West African belief systems” (3). Beginning with her work as an anthropologist in Haiti, Hurston found the material she needed in the rich panoply of the lwa of Voudoun, especially Erzulie, and with that knowledge wrote her groundbreaking novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Other writers building on Hurston’s legacy, most notably, Toni Morrison would use Hurston’s insights as a means of understanding the contradictions of slavery and black female subjectivity. In Beloved, Morrison confronts the issue of black female subjectivity by creating a scene which a mother, Sethe, must choose between either killing her child or watching her grow up in slavery. Faced with such limited options, Sethe kills the child. It is a choice that haunts Sethe and her lover, Paul D, until the ghost of the child, Beloved, is exorcised. The exorcism and subsequent healing is precipitated by Paul D’s seduction in by Beloved, whom Weir-Soley links to Erzulie through the ‘red heart” symbolism which runs throughout the novel: “The recurring image of a rusted tobacco-tin that resides in the place where Paul D’s “red heart” should be is prevalent in Beloved” (120). Weir Soley continues, “That the relationship between spirituality and sexuality is crucial to the restoration of a black female subjectivity hinges upon the concept of Erzulie as a restorative, regenerative model for black sexuality in Beloved” (121).

Drawing on the scholarship of Audre Lorde and Joan Dayan, Weir-Soley develops the "restorative" figure of Erzulie and analyzes the fictions of Opal Palmer Adisa and Edwidge Danticat. From the evidence Weir-Soley presents one could infer that the pathway to the reclamation of black female subjectivity as an antidote to the “cult of true womanhood” lies in the recognition on the interrelatedness of sexuality and spirituality in the figure of Erzulie, “the symbol of womanhood and the personification of female beauty” (209).

Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women’s Writings, while relying heavily on the lit-speak of the academy, is an important work because it expands our knowledge of the syncretism in the fictions of Hurston, Morrison, Adisa, and Danticat, and recognizes the vitality of the West African worldview as a means of resisting Western paradigms which are inimical to black female subjectivity. Weir-Soley’s scrupulous deconstruction of the assumptions that surround black female sexuality has many implications not only in literature, but also in how we look at each other and ourselves in the mirror.

***

Related articles by Zemanta

• Manuscripts of Fort Pierce's Zora Neale Hurston almost burned as trash (pbpulse.com)
• Digested classic: Beloved by Toni Morrison (guardian.co.uk)

New Book: Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women's Writings

Western European mythology and history tend to view spirituality and sexuality as opposite extremes. But sex can be more than a function of the body and religion more than a function of the mind, as exemplified in the works and characters of such writers as Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Edwidge Danticat.

Donna Weir-Soley's Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women's Writings builds on the work of previous scholars who have identified the ways that black women's narratives often contain a form of spirituality rooted in African cosmology, which consistently grounds their characters' self-empowerment and quest for autonomy. What she adds to the discussion is an emphasis on the importance of sexuality in the development of black female subjectivity, beginning with Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and continuing into contemporary black women's writings.

Writing in a clear, lucid, and straightforward style, Weir-Soley supports her thesis with close readings of various texts, including Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Morrison's Beloved. She reveals how these writers highlight the interplay between the spiritual and the sexual through religious symbols found in Voudoun, Santeria, Condomble, Kumina, and Hoodoo. Her arguments are particularly persuasive in proposing an alternative model for black female subjectivity.

***

Donna Aza Weir-Soley is associate professor of English at Florida International University. Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women's Writings is available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and at Pyramid Books in Boynton Beach.

Praise for Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women's Writings

Weir-Soley speaks with an authority that comes from real knowledge of, investment in, and attention to the details of the African cosmologies and textual complexities she unearths.
~Carine Mardorossian, SUNY-Buffalo

The most original and significant contributions are the often brilliant readings of Morrison, Adisa, and Danticat. The work is riveting, both methodologically and critically.
~Leslie Sanders, York University

In Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women's Writings, Dr. Weir-Soley successfully undertakes an analysis of how black women writers, beginning with Zora Neale Hurston in her masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God, have used  overlapping narrative depictions of sexuality and spirituality to recast the denigrated black female body and rewrite an empowered and fully actualized black female subject.
~Candice M. Jenkins, Associate Professor of English, Hunter College, City University of New York

Related articles by Zemanta

• "Criolla de Dispossessed Meets the Great Griot From St. Lucia." by Donna Weir-Soley (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)
• Voices of the Floribbean Diaspora (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)
• Introduction to Caribbean Literature: Dr. Heather Russell (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)

"Criolla de Dispossessed Meets the Great Griot From St. Lucia." by Donna Weir-Soley

Donna Weir-Soley was born and grew up in Jamaica. She currently teaches at Florida International University. She is a poet and critic and has been widely published in journals such as Macomere, Caribbean Writer, Sage, The Carrier-Pidgin, Frontiers and in the anthology, Moving Beyond Boundaries. She was recently awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship for career enhancement.

Donna is the author of First Rain, an amazing and passionate book with poems of nuanced meditation and engaging thought-provoking anecdote. She includes family legends, those of home, immigration, and displacement.

"Where are your monuments

your battles, martyrs?

Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,

in that gray vault. The sea. The sea

has locked them up. The sea is History."

("The Sea is History" by Derek Walcott)

Criolla De Dispossessed Meets the Great Griot from St. Lucia.



A me dis

de illegitimate offspring

of de illicit affair

de outside chile

once remove from both sides

both a dem a try fe deny me

mi double birthright

dis-possession

"I who am poisoned with the blood of both,

Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?

I who have cursed

The drunken officer of British rule, how choose

Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?

Betray them both, or give back what they give?

How can I face such slaughter and be cool?

How can I turn from Africa and live?"

("A Far Cry From Africa" by Derek Walcott)

No one nuh come fe claim I and I

so me climb up inna de cave

curl up with de snakes

and learn to whisper venom

blow me snake-breath into de wind

embitter de firs’ dust of spring pollen

bees come buzzing round me lap

creaming one love into me orifices

me lend dem deceit fe sweeten dem sting.



Me is de outside chile

de illegitimate one

mother declare herself unwilling

unwitting accomplice, declare me bastard

corrupt like me daddy passion

birthed me at de mouth of de cavern

and return to Prosper

unblemished from her nights of sin

"While somewhere, a white horse gallops
with its mane plunging round a field whose sticks are ringed with barbed wire,and men/break stones or bind straws into ricks."

("Elsewhere" by Derek Walcott)

Me deh yah de suck snake venom

while she squeeze out me milk

from outta her breasts

pon de hot fire-hearth stone dem

hear de tortured sizzle

as she drain herself dry like parched corn

(and dem claim dem never learn nuttin from mi granny)

while me de dead fe hungry

But me jus ban mi belly

and swallow bile with de venom

and grow forked tongues

dat stretch the length of fern gully

me grow verdant and supple

like alan bamboo

reaching round worlds

and back to this little piece of rock

where me stretch out, shed me skin

like croakin’ lizard

and wait for de day when me nuh longer wait...



Fadda nuh dare look pon me

him talk to mi wid im back turn:

"They walk, you write; keep to that narrow causeway without looking down

climbing in their footsteps, that slow, ancestral beat

of those used to climbing roads; /your own work owes them

because the couplet of those multiplying feet

made your first rhymes. Look, they climb and no one knows them;

they take their copper pittances, and your duty

. . .is the chance you now have, to give those feet a voice."

(Omeros, 75-6 by Derek Walcott)

And a so fe me fada name de worlds I and I see

and de faces that refuse to see me

me learn de rhythm of him voice

each curve and dip

every swell and whirl

syllable by syllable me swallow

him meaning whole

until me learn to speak in parables

like de river.



Red moon over Lagos

Bleeds fe me name in ochre dust

Ile Ife a call me

Ile Ife a call me

Ile Ife a call me name

"Then suddenly from their rotting logs distracting signs of the faith I betrayed,

or the faith that betrayed me,

yellow butterflies rising on the road to Valencia."

(Midsummer,"LIV" by Derek Walcott)

Street children throng de markets

bellies heavy wid wind.

gods are silent now, yes!

sleeping in de museum

By de Palace gate.



Rent de moon, Iyah!!!!

Let de rain come dung

Sacred blood cleanse even fools!

"Who is that dark child on the parapets

of Europe, watching the evening river mint

its sovereigns stamped with power, not with poets,

the Thames and the Neva rustling like banknotes,

then, black on gold, the Hudson's silhouettes?



From frozen Neva to the Hudson pours,

under the airport domes, the echoing stations,

the tributary of emigrants whom exile

has made as classless as the common cold,

citizens of a language that is now yours."

("Forest of Europe" by Derek Walcott)

Now… dem bound to hear

though dem still don’t see me

mis-naming me daughta of Caliban,

bastard chile of Miranda

when me is none a dat



just me in multiplicity!



me oneness, me own...

although me nuh have nuh face

yet me will roar yuh

thunderous ululations



mock yuh safety

yuh sureness of self.



Till I and I become de bo in bombo!

eloquent and sacrilegious

yuh will love me yet!

Know ME

name me right.



When me upset de table at yuh dinner-party

turn over de dutchie pot

off de pimento wood fire

dumpling turn to ashes

caviar nestling in vomit...



Say yeah, a me rule

fire an’ brimstone a fe rain dung ya so!

A weh oonuu tek dis ting fah?

"The small plough continues on this lined page

beyond the moaning ground, the lynching tree,

the tornado's black vengeance,

and the young ploughman feels the change in his veins, heart, muscles,tendons,

till the land lies open like a flag as dawn's sure light streaks the field

and furrows wait for the sower."

("Forty Acres: A Poem for Barack Obama" by Derek Walcott)

***

In My Own Words: Donna Aza Weir-Soley (2009)

Erotic Caribbean was conceived several years ago on a car-ride to Xunantunich (Lady of the Stone), the ancient Mayan ruin in Belize, close to the border of Guatemala. Opal and I were at a CSA conference in Belize and the discussion turned to the erotic, how there was so little of it in Caribbean poetry and fiction. So after much discussion about how repressed we Anglophone Caribbean folk are in our literature and the irony of that from a people who show so much sexual abandon in our music and other popular cultural forms, we decided that we would edit an erotic anthology of Caribbean writing. It was a very public conception in a car full of other Caribbean women writers.


Now if you have any Caribbean roots, you know that unless you plan on bringing a baby to term, you don’t go around telling people you’re pregnant. So since we had announced it so publicly, we had no choice but to give birth to this vision, though, truth be told, the child was breached for a long time—what with six real-life children between Opal and myself, me trying desperately to finish an academic text at the same time, Caribbean folk too bashful to send us their erotic writings, and others just plain galled that we had defined Caribbean erotic as a synthesis of sexuality and spirituality rather than just good old-fashioned daggering.


But much as we might like to take credit, that definition of the erotic belongs to poet, civil rights warrior, critic, lesbian activist and mother, Audre Lorde. Audre’s definition allowed us to sift the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and to end up with a collection of diverse voices that honors our need to express ourselves as sexual and spiritual beings, without resorting to pornographic representations that often end up devaluing womankind (yes, that was our primary concern, no apologies). We knew we ran the risk of being considered presumptuous for assuming that we had the measure of what would offend or be considered pornographic to others, but it was a risk we were willing to take to achieve that balance between the sexual and the spiritual that we believed would make this collection truly representative of Caribbean eroticism.


It was a long and difficult birthing process. Like all mothers though, we tend to forget the birth pains once the baby is delivered. Thankfully, we are almost there. Erotic Caribbean will be published by Jeremy Poynting at Peepal Tree Press in time for the 2009 Miami Book Fair in November (that is the closest I can come to giving an actual publication date). Jacqueline Bishop, Carole Boyce-Davies, Colin Channer, Edwidge Danticat, Kwame Dawes, Nancy Morejon, Geoffrey Philp, Heather Russell (formerly Heather Andrade), Dorothea Smartt, and other luminaries and emergent writers from the Anglophone, Francophone and Hispanophone Caribbean community at large, have contributed to this project.


We think it will be a good looking baby; either way we plan to spoil and love it and we hope you will indulge us (please buy the book) and say nice things to our faces and especially behind our backs. We are hoping to put a panel together for the Miami Book Fair in November, so please look for us there.

***

"Haiku for the Ancestors" by Donna Weir-Soley

Obama: bright light
Shooting across a dark sky
Ashé, egungun, ashé.

***

Donna Weir-Soley was born and grew up in Jamaica. She currently teaches at Florida International University. She is a poet and critic and has been widely published in journals such as Macomere, Caribbean Writer, Sage, The Carrier-Pidgin, Frontiers and in the anthology, Moving Beyond Boundaries. She was recently awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship for career enhancement.

***

Next week Wednesday (01/28/2009), Monique Roffey, author of The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (Simon and Schuster UK, July 09), kicks off a new series of guest posts on this blog: My Pentateuch

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