Video: "The Day Jesus Christ Came to Mount Airy"

"The Day Jesus Christ Came to Mount Airy" @ UVU

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Who's Your Daddy? @ Miami Book Fair International: Redux

I’d sent out dozens of invitations via Facebook, but I didn't expect to see so many friends on Saturday at the Weekend Author Sessions, Miami Book Fair International 2009. 

The event got off to a great start after the introduction by Professor McKnight-Samms. I read one of my favorite stories, "My Jamaican Touch,"  which was first published on this blog. The audience loved it and laughed in all the right places. Even my mother-in-law, the antagonist in the story, laughed when I read, “She feels I have led her daughter away from the true Church, which according to her is "Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic!"

Next, Dylan Landis read from Normal People Don't Live Like This, the story of a troubled young girl and her relationship with her equally disturbed companions. Dylan captured all of the Sturm und Drang of a precocious teen growing up on the Upper West Side during the seventies.

We rounded out the event with Marc Fitten’s Valeria’s Last Stand about an elderly Hungarian widow’s attempts to cope with political and romantic changes in her life. If the first chapters are any indication of the rest of the book, then Valeria’s Last Stand will definitely be on my list for Christmas.

Give thanks to the organizers for putting together such an Irie reading for the Weekend Author Sessions. It was a pleasure to meet and read with Marc Fitten and Dylan Landis. But what was really heartwarming was to see all the friends who promised to come to the event and showed up!

So, the Events app. on Facebook works. Hallelujah.

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For more photos of the event, please follow this link: Miami Book Fair International 2009 @ Flickr

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• Who's Your Daddy? @ WPBT (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)
• Interview @ WPBT: Geoffrey Philp (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)
• The "DC Sniper" & Who's Your Daddy? (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)

For I will consider my Cat Buju

He is not supposed to be alive. My daughter heard his cries from inside a dumpster where she found a garbage bag sealed with duct tape. She tore the bag open and he  licked her hand. He barely weighed a pound. And when he curled up between her palms, she remembered a scene from one of her favorite movies, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective: "My little Buju."  He now had a name.

Our family nursed Buju back to health and when he was strong enough, we took him to the Humane Society to be neutered. Since then, Buju, who used to be scared of the slightest sound has grown stronger and bolder to the point where he has become a fixture in our lives: playing tag with my son, nuzzling my daughter, purring in my wife's lap.

Buju and I are the ones who are awake while the world sleeps. When I'm watching TV, he reminds me that I have a bald spot and licks the thinning hair on my crown. And when I'm falling asleep, he nudges me until I awaken and then he pads over to the window where he becomes, like Jeoffry,our guardian: "For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary."

He also thinks that he is a writer.

On most mornings before I go to work, I begin my day by writing. Buju escorts me downstairs to my computer and sits beside me. He plays with my pens, chews on my pencils, and like any good critic, offers commentary at the appropriate time.

And when I refuse to listen to his endless carping or he disapproves  of the text, he slaps his paw against the keyboard and holds down the keys for emphasis: asssssssssssssssssssssdddddddd

And despite my screams, "Buju!' which when he first came would have sent him scurrying under our beds where he would have stayed for days, he has now grown to the point where I don't scare him any more.

He must also think he's one of my children.

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Who's Your Daddy? @ South Florida Caribbean News

MIAMI - Jamaica-born author, Geoffrey Philp will be reading at with Dylan Landis and Marc Fitten the Miami Book Fair International 2009 on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009 at 2:00 p.m. in Room 3410.

More at South Florida Caribbean News 

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Related Post @ Jamaicans.com

Who's Your Daddy @ Nightly Business Report

I'll be appearing on WPBT's Nightly Business Report tonight (7:00 p.m EST) in an interview with Jeff Yastine. We talked about blogging, social media, Kindle, and publishing in the Internet age.

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Update: 11/13/2009:

NBR Transcripts-November 12, 2009 Thursday, November 12, 2009

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The "DC Sniper" & Who's Your Daddy?

I have often been asked if there was a real life story behind “Who’s Your Daddy?”. The inspiration for that story, John Allen Muhammad, was executed last night.

In 2002 when the first “DC Sniper” shootings began, America was gripped with fear. The shootings were so random. No one, it seemed, was safe. People stopped going to gas stations and some began to wonder if malls or supermarkets were safe.

Many of the profiles from experts in law enforcement suggested that the sniper was a white male and many of us in the black community breathed a sigh of relief. All we needed was another crazy brother with a gun out there for the rest of us to become scapegoats for his crimes.

So you can imagine the shock when it was revealed that the “DC Sniper” was John Muhammad and his young accomplice was a boy named John Malvo. The relief in the black community was now a collective: “WTF?”

The story fascinated me from the start. A young boy effectively abandoned by his parents, but more importantly by his father, who had fallen under the influence of a charismatic older male with a murderous streak. The seeds of tragedy were sown and the bitter harvest was being reaped: “In all, the sniping team would shoot 22 people, murdering 15 of them, in a deadly coast-to-coast spree that stretched from the Northwest to the deep South” (Victim's Brother Says 'Surreal Watching Life Sapped Out' of DC Sniper).

And when Muhammad was arraigned there was even a greater shock. But not with Muhammad. He resembled what I had imagined: a burnt out man who was a cross between a pool hustler and a failed evangelical preacher. But John Malvo? Behind that cherubic face, there was a sinister coldness in his eyes that mortified me. How could a child’s eyes be so deathly cold? How did this young man end up like this?

I began doing the research and it turned out that Malvo’s story is similar to the tale of many fatherless boys growing up in the Caribbean and in Miami—the “barrel” children, the children who have never known the love of a parent or grandparent and are easy prey for the Alpha males with whom they come in contact. These young Malvos are recruited for all kinds of criminality, from selling and transporting ganja, cocaine and heroin to committing murder. And the monetary rewards that they receive are minuscule compared to the risk (Steven Levitt: Crack Economics)—which suggests that the mixture of devotion, admiration and loyalty that these young Malvos have for these older males is something akin to love.

And the strange irony is that these young men grow up to be either Malvos or Obamas.

John Malvo was sentenced to life in prison without parole, and as Grace Nichols, author of "Genesis: The Bullet Was Meant For Me: D.C. Sniper Story Untold" has said, she is at peace with Malvo's sentence of life without parole because "he had the mind of a child who happened to be with a man who became diabolical."

Malvo may still be in prison, but his story is being multiplied in the Caribbean and South Florida. Malvo’s little brothers are still out there playing in the streets of Jamaica and Miami, waiting for another John Muhammad to appear in their lives to train them in the ways of terror.

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Photo: Wikipedia

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Book Review: How to Leave Hialeah by Jennine Capo Crucet

An Open Letter from Marisella Veiga to Jennine Capo Crucet

Dear Jennine,

Initially, because you are a Cuban American woman fiction writer, I was interested in reading your first short story collection, How to Leave Hialeah. Then, your having won the 2009 John Simmons Award for Short Fiction and were the first Latina to win it—these facts were also a draw. When I learned the University of Iowa Press published the collection, I called for a review copy.

I am a Cubana fiction writer too. You were born in Hialeah in 1981. I was born in Havana in 1957 and arrived in Miami at age 3. Much of my childhood was spent in Minnesota, so I know something about learning to be a Cuban by living in the North.

I returned to Miami in 1968. As your book reveals, contrast helps people define themselves. I suspected your work would move me, and I was right. It has not stopped resonating. Your short stories bear witness to the many dynamics present among our exiled people. The characters you depict are on target.

Your last story, from which the collection’s title is taken, has countless examples. “You need more vitamin D than these Viking people, you have no choice,” you write, a tiny illustration of a myriad of differences.

Your well-crafted and written short stories are insightful, a powerful witness to the many dynamics present among our exiled people and within themselves. Your observations about the characters you’ve depicted are on target. I wonder how you, at such a young age, found the courage to depict so many hard truths in your stories?

Let me direct the next few lines to potential readers:  Jennine’s last story, from which the collection’s title is taken, has countless examples. “You need more vitamin D than these Viking people, you have no choice,” she writes as a tiny example of the myriad of differences.

In “The Next Move,” a male first person narrator relates events two years before his wife Nilda, had died. He refused to go back to Cuba, but details her trip there to visit her sisters. His comments on the Tai Chi class he and Nilda took together are hilarious. The decision to enroll in the class was motivated by one of his wife’s sisters in Cuba. The narrator questions the wisdom of someone who hasn’t eaten a steak in years.

The narrator interacts with his daughter and grandchildren, “animal children” he calls them once. These children don’t speak Spanish as well as they should. They are clueless about what Cuba was or is. As assimilation continues, the inter-generational and cultural rifts grow. And so does lack of time and lack of appreciation for our elders’ stories.

The narrator reveals frustration with both, speaking for so many of our people:  “I stood up from the bed and said, ‘Can’t I just tell a goddamn story!’”

This collection of 11 short stories accomplishes so much. It is a fiction that tells the truth of the lives of your characters, many of whom sprouted in the working class city of Hialeah, a place often sneered at by fellow exiles.

For readers who want to know about what is happening in our South Florida exile community, this book is important. For a closer look at what happens to immigrants and refugees as they begin to assimilate into the U.S. mainstream, it is crucial.

Maybe the book will educate a few people, in particular those who insist on seeing Greater Miami as a glamorous place—(read sexy), all those beautiful Latinos. After their South Florida jaunt, they can return home to their newspapers and televisions where they learn about us from a distance and complain about our ways.

Your book made me conscious of so many conflicts and pains and attitudes and traits that I’d rather ignore. I can easily do this, since I live in St. Augustine, way north of our Mecca. On the other hand, because I needed the confirmation and affirmation, I read on. I have emerged shaken, both sorrowful and joyous. Thank you for writing these stories.

How to Leave Hialeah by Jennine Capo Crucet (University of Iowa Press, paperback, $16.00, 184 pages.)

***

Marisella Veiga was born in Havana, Cuba, and went into exile with her family in 1960.  She was raised both in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Miami, Florida.  She received a B.A. in English from Macalester College and a Master’s in Fine Arts in Poetry from Bowling Green State University.  Her writing has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers and literary anthologies. Veiga has won The Pushcart Prize XX, Best of the Small Presses, Special Mention in Fiction, the Canute A. Brodhurst Prize for Best Short Story in The Caribbean Writer.  She was also given the Evelyn LaPierre Award for Journalism in Alexandria, Virginia.  She is a nationally syndicated columnist with Hispanic Link News Service.  Recently, Veiga released a spoken word recording with Eclipse Recording Studios that has collected a few. The CD is  Square Watermelons:  Ten Essays on Living with Two Cultures. 

Mark Your Calendar: Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009

Miami Book Fair International 2009

Geoffrey Philp on Who's Your Daddy, Dylan Landis on Normal People Don't Live Like This and Marc Fitten on Valeria's Last Stand.

Saturday, Nov. 14, 2:00 p.m., Room 3410 (Building 3, 4th Floor)

Marc Fitten

Marc Fitten was born in Brooklyn in 1974 to Panamanian parents. He’s been published in Prairie Schooner, The Louisville Review and serves as the editor of the Chattahoochee Review in Atlanta. His first novel, Valeria’s Last Stand (Bloomsbury), set in a Hungarian village, is “a promising debut.” – Publishers Weekly.

Dylan Landis

Dylan Landis, author of Normal People Don’t Live Like This (Persea), has published fiction in Tin House, Best American Nonrequired Reading and won the California Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers. “The characters in Dylan Landis's debut story collection, Normal People Don't Live Like This, are blessedly extraordinary.” – Vanity Fair.

Geoffrey Philp

Geoffrey Philp is a writer and poet whose awards include a James Michener Fellowship at the University of Miami. Born in rural Jamaica, he is the author of four collections of poetry, a previous book of short stories, a novel and Who’s Your Daddy and Other Stories (Peepal Tree Press).  He lives in Miami.

Schedule
Saturday, Nov. 14, 2:00 p.m.     Free    

Location

Miami Book Fair International * Miami Dade College
300 NE Second Ave., Miami, FL 33132
Room 3410 (Building 3, 4th Floor)

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Source: Weekend Author Series

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CALL FOR PAPERS: CARIBBEANSCAPES: THE VISTAS OF CARIBBEAN LITERATURE

CALL FOR PAPERS

CARIBBEANSCAPES: THE VISTAS OF CARIBBEAN LITERATURE

The 29th Annual West Indian Literature Conference

Department of Literatures in English

Faculty of Humanities and Education

University of the West Indies, Mona

Kingston, Jamaica

April 29 – May 1, 2010

Special Guests :

Kamau Brathwaite        

Lorna Goodison

Shara McCallum            

David Chariandy

The theme for the 29th Annual West Indian Literature Conference is Caribbeanscapes: The Vistas of Caribbean Literature.

The Caribbean has been perceived in myriad and often contradictory ways:  as paradisal isles; outposts of innocence offering Edenic beginnings; hedonistic beachscapes of tourist fantasies; the backwaters of civilization, condemned to mimicry and futile posturing; and vital centres of creative cultural hybridity, literally new worlds that prophesy our globalized futures.  

Anglophone Caribbean literature is a rich archive of such perceptions, often articulating them as visual tropes of space and place that conflate geography and history, language and cartography in the attempt to chart the imaginative and literal frontiers of psyche and society.  

To explore this archive of Caribbean literary vistas, the 29th Annual Conference on West Indian Literature invites papers and panel proposals on the following topics:


•    Tropicalized Spaces : The Power of Vistas
•    Home and Garden: Domestic Ecologies
•    Unhomely Spaces
•    Manscape and Womantongue Trees: The Gender of Vistas in Caribbean Literature
•    Rural Pastoral, Urban Dystopia? City and Country in Caribbean Writing
•    Plantation, Yard, Tonelle:  Metaphors of Place and Identity
•    Spectacular Islands: The Visual Politics and Poetics of Caribbean Popular Culture
•    Translocal and Transnational Vistas
•    Travel Writing
•    Bordered Vistas: Border Regimes, Border Clashes, and Border-Crossings
•    Imagining Caribbean Space

Proposals are welcomed on other topics that are relevant to the theme of the Conference.

Abstracts should not exceed 250 words in length, and should include (1) a title, (2) name, status and institutional affiliation of the presenter(s), (3) a contact email address, and (4) a mailing address. Please also let us know if you require any special equipment. Papers will be a maximum of twenty (20) minutes in length.

Abstracts or proposals for panels comprising three papers should be emailed to the following addresses:

liteng@uwimona.edu.jm

litsengmona@gmail.com

The first Call for Papers will close on November 30, 2009

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Dear Reader,

Please help to spread the word via Twitter, Facebook or any other social media .

Peace,

Geoffrey

Interview With Hannah Bannister: Peepal Tree Press

Hannah Bannister, Peepal Tree marketing manager

and managing editor, Jeremie Poynting

Do you think Caribbean writers have reason to be hopeful about the future?

Hannah: I really do think it’s a bright future, and I hope we’ll start to see more entrepreneurs setting up Caribbean publishing companies – there’s room for more, judging by the volume and quality of the submissions we receive.

More @ Caribbean Book Blog

Photo Source: Caribbean Book Blog

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Celebrate National Bookstore Day

Today is Publishers Weekly’s first annual National Bookstore Day, “a day devoted to celebrating bookselling and the vibrant culture of bookstores.”

If you live in Miami, drop by Books & Books, and show them some love.

Of course, readers in Boynton Beach can always visit  Pyramid Books which "celebrates Black History Month 365 days a year to educate all people about the African Diaspora."

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Night of the Indigo Wins Moon Beam Award

This year, Holgate's Night of the Indigo won a silver medal in the category of 'Young Adult Fiction - Religion/Spirituality'. The awards ceremony was held on October 10 as part of the West Virginia Book Festival in Charleston. While Holgate was not able to attend, he was happy to have won. "I'm very pleased with the award. I found it very interesting that the book didn't win in the category of fantasy/sci-fi which is the genre it qualifies for, but won in the religious/spirituality category," he said. "I'm very happy nonetheless. Anyone who reads the novel could easily understand why that happened."

More @  Island Fiction Series Editor

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Who's Your Daddy? endorsement @ Electronic Village

Give thanks to Electronic Village for this endorsement of Who's Your Daddy?:

Philp's imagination flows from a casual game of dominoes that reveals the deep undercurrent of affection between father and son to the laugh-out-loud inventiveness of a dreadlocked vampire. I encourage all villagers to read this book to see a unique view of the lives of Black boys and their (sometimes) absent fathers.

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