Caribbean Books

As usual, the Lonely Planet book delivers tons of information for travelers of all incomes. Especially helpful are tips on where to go to avoid cruise ship crowds. However, I had to skip the chapter on Cuba, because of the US travel ban. And the chapters on Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic should probably only be used to decide whether or not you want to go to those places. If so, you should probably buy the Lonely Planet books dedicated exclusively to them.

At 800+ pages, this is too heavy to lug around, but it's perfect for planning a trip and deciding where to visit. After you've planned your itinerary, I suggest buying a more specialized LP (Lonely Planet) guide to take with you - a small price to pay for a successful vacation.

Cuba gets the longest chapter (a whopping 59pp), followed by the Dominican Republic (48pp), Trinidad & Tobago (47pp), Bahamas (43pp), and Jamaica (42pp). However, the book's warnings about Jamaican crime will cause most travellers to rethink their itinerary. Haiti receives a token 18 pages due to the turmoil there. At the other end of the spectrum, the shortest chapters are on Saba and St. Eustatius (10pp each).

I enjoy the LP writing style, and I like their emphasis on practical tidbits. For example, don't fly directly from Aruba to the U.S. because you'll be in line for two hours at the Aruba airport due to understaffing by U.S. customs officers (yes, U.S.) who handle pre-clearance procedures. This is the kind of nuts-and-bolts information for which LP is famous, and enables visitors to avoid vacation hell.

Pet peeves: The chapters covering the 26 jurisdictions seem to be in random order - why not alphabetical? LP has always been famous for their maps, but lately their maps have been using one shade of gray for water and a slightly different shade of gray for land, which is tough on the eyes.

Perhaps the most stiking feature about Don. D. Marshall's book is its positive optimism in the absence of idealism. As the title suggests, the bleak apocalyptic picture so commonly forcasted of the Caribbean future, is not presented. Instead OPTION is the key part of the narrative of his argument. The precise aim of his argument was to not only identify the problems of Caribbean economy but also to present economic-political prescriptions that go beyond the rhetoric of common literature. Theoretically, the argument presents itself within the more eclectic framework of neo-structuralism. This theoretical framework is influenced by traditioal theories based on the Marxist type historical materialism found in world systems theory and dependency schools. However the emphasis is not on how the Structure affects the world's actors (primarily the state) but how the actors do and can indeed effect change on and exploit the structure. As he defines it neo-structuralism encompasses structuralist economics and concepts of conjuncture and geopolitics.(1998, p.9) This inturn informs his interpretation of the global challenges of today, to which some have attached the term Globalization. Central to the issue of response to global challenges, is the role of the State. Contrasting with Strange's(1996) argument about the decline of the role and autonomy of the state, Marshall's emphasis is that state role is underscored by the global challenges not minimized by it. However the concept of the state as traditionallly understood within populist or welfare typologies must be transformed. This echoes Ian Clark's (1999)work. Much like Marshall he recognises that states are not merely products of the global structure but they also create the structure by their own actions.

'. . . globalization becomes a phase in the continuing historical adaptation of the state, and not. . . its impending demise.'

Converging on the point of state transformation vis-a-vis the new global challenges, Clark (1999, p.103) says that state transformation involves the imperatives of change in state identity and that this change is linked to the evolving and unfolding of broader systemic changes. Marshall's historical illustrations in Chapter 2 elucidate the inadequacy of the concept and function of Caribbean states' role which contribute to the 'structural weakness of the Caribbean sub-region', which help perpetuate patterns of peripheralization. It is true that exogenous factors present difficulties in development but the role of the state is crucial to overcome these hurdles impeding advancement. Paraphrasing from Serbin, the Caribbean is a product of deliberate political acts but to rise successfully, the region must acquire a substance that trancends the origins of its birth.(Serbin, 1998, p. 10 quoting Giacalone 19956, p.5) The other aspect of the theoretical framework defined by Marshall was the importance of conjuncture and geopolitics. Structural opportunites arise at sensitive moments in history (conjuncture) and this in addition to the existence of the developmental state explain ascent. Empirically this was illustrated with his example of the ascent of Malaysia. Chapter 5 presented an interesting proposal of NAFTA/FTAA as an example of the link between structural opportunity and the developmental state. Mexico with a similar economic history to Caribbean states (IMF and World Bank interludes for example) and similar challenges of liberalization, provided a basis for Marshall to further deploy his argument. Despite the problems of debt and the exogenos pressures of liberalization, Mexico was able to secure for itself through politically and economicallly strategic negotiations and geopolitcal initiatives via the NAFTA/FTAA aggreement, the space for its paticualr sectors and industries. The point here for the Caribbean, is that an export-oriented economy driven by market forces but guided by a developmental state can be the answer to Caribbean ascent. Cognisance of the other limitations that impede Caribbean global competitiveness,like limited bureaucratic capactiites, is important. Marshall suggests that regional integration is essential to counter this. Unlike the rhetoric of functional integration perspectives that present integration as the cure-all prescription for Caribbean economic pathology, for Marsahll integration is only a tool to correct the structural weaknesses of the Caribbean region. As he pointed out, the national option and self-determination have desolved into archaisms. The requirements of global competitiveness - a vigourous entrepreneurial class and the capacity to negotiate an intensive neo-liberal course of action - are not possibly attainable by the indidvidual economies. It is the congruency of industrial and development policies that integration offers, that can allow the Caribbean to harness the structural opportunity that is to be found within NAFTA/FTAA. Marshall outlined extensively the technicalities of political and institutional reform and industrial policies that must occur in Chapter 6. Despite the clarity of his argument and the inclusion of sound empirical evidence, his argument fails to incorporate an in depth analysis of the kind of social transformation that his prescriptions entail. Considering the inextricable linkage of the social with the political, Marshall's casually borrowed prescription (p. 193) from Sir Arthur Lewis, recommending education campaigns and effective public relations to transform attitudes, seems altogether too flippantly dismissive of the weight of the social as an impedement to Caribbean ascent. The fragmenting power of the heterogenous social character of the Caribbean region aptly described by Serbin (1998, p. 108)must be dealt with in any discussion of the road to ascent and global competitiveness of the Caribbean. The logic of an export-oriented economy entails the attraction of foreign direct investment, of which Marshall is supportive. The dangers of increasing unchecked capital flows in an economy are ilustrated grimly by crises like the East Asian crisis of 1997. To guard against such vulneralbiltiies, Marshall advocates the 'disciplining' of capital. The feasibility of this for the Caribbean developmental state was not however convincingly argued by his vague allusions to the imposition of high taxation.(p.198) However, the surprisingly easy narrative of this book, general clarity and ingenuity of its theoretical progression and its sound empirical grounding make this book not only refreshing but useful for policy makers and all concerned abut the future of the Caribbean political economy.

Notes See Ian Clark (1999), Globalization and International Relations Theory, p. 91

References Clark, I. (1999), Globalization and International Realtions Theory, New York: Oxford University Press. Serbin, A. (1998), Sunset Over the Islands, London: Macmillan Educated Ltd. Strange, S. (1996), The Retreat of the State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

I have just read Marshall's book explaining the source of the development crisis facing the Anglophone Caribbean. It is a text rich in analytical insight and valuable nuggets of empirical information. We learn here of the stymied role merchant capital in these parts, helped none by populist-driven politicians.

I was particularly excited about the theoretical framework in the book as it sought to go past global-centric and state-centric models for explaining underdevelopment in the Caribbean. Neostructuralism, as he explains, seeks to look at development opportunities that arise at historical moments and the catalytic role state and culture can play in producing successful development outcomes. Of course the record of the Caribbean has been about missed opportunities and he spends some time in Chapter 2 addressing these. More could have been said about the structure/agency debate and the kinds of institutional changes needed to improve Caribbean competitiveness, although both his opening chapter and Chapter 6 raise related issues. The Chapter on the Free Trade Area of the Americas was especially sharp about the importance of bargaining. The evidence brought to bear explaining how Mexico and Canada came to steer the NAFTA formation process in ways the US never imagined, make for interesting reading. It certainly exposes the lie which holds that countries of the South are always disadvantaged in North-South trade deals.

The final chapter features a discussion on the need to `reconstitute state power at the regional level'. It usefully combines earlier debates on the role of the state, synthesises old arguments about the problems shackling Caribbean integration, and open eyes as to the myriad possibilities that can flow provided politics is brought back to the centre of the integration process.

Where the book crosses over to a wider global audience is in its novel treatment of the globalisation phenomenon and the connection made between offshore banking and merchant capital. Pity these two strands were not brought together in his Chapter 3 on global restructuring. We are nonetheless reminded of world historical constants of boom and bust, core-periphery antinomies, inter-state/firm rivalry, and movement in the political economy of the world system. To wit, despite the myriad changes as it relates to computer technology, we should be reminded that the system's logic has not been fundamentally altered. We are back to the role capital plays and has played in human history for many centuries, millennia even (yes Frank and Gill's 1993/4 breakthrough work on world system history is read into his work as well!).

As a graduate student working in the field of Latin American studies, I find this book refreshing in its decomposition of the state, its nuanced reading of the role of capital domestically, and in its critique of neoliberal globalisation discourse. My only wish is that Macmillan Publishing & St. Martin's Press rush to get it in paperback.

This is a truly stunning cookbook. Very colorful with many pictures of the dishes already prepared for your viewing pleasure.
The pages are a nice smooth texture and just thumbing through it will make your mouth water.

If you're into Caribbean cooking, this is THE cookbook.

Get one for yourself, it's a collector's item.

I really can't make up my mind whether it's the best book on Caribbean cooking I've ever seen, or the best book on Caribbean art I've ever seen. With that said, I'll have to state that it's the best book on Caribbean cooking AND Caribbean art I've ever seen!

This book is a new edition of the most beautifully written history of the Caribbean from the European discovery through the ninteenth century.Reviews of the 1946 edition:
"Arciniegas has written a most informative and entertaining book...the student of political and social morals will find in it much to ponder."
~Commonweal

"Senor Arciniegas has a flair for bits of colorful detail and the kind of gossip which makes history come alive. Not the least of the book's virtues are a series of thumbnail biographies of such figures as Amerigo Vespucci, Raleigh, Toussaint, Miranda, Lafitte, William Walker and de Lessep."
~The New Republic

I cannot praise this book enough. The 400+ pages of the paperback version (I'm looking for a good hardcover version to keep as a reference) are eminently readable. The translation of Arciniegas' original Spanish version is almost seamless, only very occasionally using somewhat less than common verbiage. The translation carries forward the color, grace and pure fun of the original work as well if not better than any other translation I have read.

The subject matter begins with a theme that the author carries throughout the book, that of a comparison of the Mediterranean, sea of the old world, with the Caribbean, sea of the new world. Beginning with Columbus and continuing through the revolutionary period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The author focuses on the region enclosed by the northern area of South America, Central America and the southern reaches or North America. He traces the European exploration and settlement of the region, providing insightful views of the characters and motivations behind many of the events and drives. Examples include the search for El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, the buccaneers and pirates, the settlement of Louisiana, the slave revolts, the Darien disaster and eventual drive for independence from European colonialism.

Clearly, with a scope so large the author has not been able to present a deep study of any of the subjects, but the history is written is such an engaging manner that the reader cannot help but feel immersed in the material. The bibliography is a gold mine of sources broken down by chapter as well as period and provides an ample resource for further study. Add to that the fact that this book is indexed and you have a scholarly reference as well as a wonderfully entertaining read.
P-)

This book is written very nicely. The tone is very personnal and to an extent intimate. The difficult subject is treated very well. The painting reproductions are of great quality. The research is very complete.

I had been waiting for years for someone to put together a comprehensive book on the casta painting genre. The book contains many, many beautiful reproductions and there are even ones that I had not seen before. And Katzew's thesis on the subject puts together every other piece of information I have ever been able to find in one place and weaves in her own views. In todays society we can learn a lot about how we work in regards to race politics from casta painting and this book in particular.

When I read "Central America in My Heart", I travel through the mystical landscape of Latin America and instantly feel the author's love for his homeland. The poems, named after all the major cities of Central America, evoke images of Paradise where pure love and time carry the reader to an eternal land of breathtaking beauty. Once settled in the U.S., we feel the author's realization that he can never go back to the daily memories of his childhood in his native land. Finally when he returns home, he describes the political and economical injustices through his political poems, which call on all of us to awaken to the notion of relentless commitment and love to our family, to our immediate community and to the inequities of our world. You will set this book down, inspired and moved to do something that makes a difference in the lives of those less fortunate that you.

Central America in My Heart is a heartfelt and mystical collection of poems that make you feel the brevity of life, the love of the homeland and the intensity of justice and freedom. In a beautiful English translation the poems describe the search for meaning in life and the breathtaking landscapes and culture of Latin America. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book one day at a time and I highly recommend it. It is a great book that can help with daily contemplation. The poetry reminded me of Pablo Neruda.

I discovered the poetry of Jorge Carrerra Andrade about 5 years ago while I rummaged through the books in the Latin American Literature section of the Binghamton University library. It turned out that Jorge Carrerra Andrade was once a professor at the State University of New York, at Stoney Brooke. I found that interesting because Binghamton was a S.U.N.Y. school as well. I found a book titled Selected poems of Jorge Carrera Andrade. This book blew me away. I never read anyone who could describe so much beauty in a few stanzas. I later learned that this was a political person from Ecuador who was once nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature and who was considered the foremost Spanish language writer of his time. Why didn't he get the Nobel...Well, for the same reason Tolstoy, Kafka, and Woolf didn't get one...I guess the judges don't know much...A bunch of Academics...

Steven Ford Brown did an excellent translation. No doubt about it. However, some of these poems can also be found translated in an earlier book titled Selected poems of Jorge Carrera Andrade. It was published by the State University of New York Press in 1972. I forgot who the translator was, but I remember comparing Mr. Browns translation to the 1972 translation and I felt that the latter was a lot better. It flowed better, and was more musical to my mind. The differences were extremely minute. But there is a subtle difference in the translation that makes a noticeable difference to me.

Now, of course the translation-criticism part of this review is simply my opinion. Some people might say Brown did a better translation. Perhaps his English is more poetic to some. The important thing is that the differences are subtle and both translations are great.

Read Jorge Carrerra Andrade. If you like poetry you owe it to yourself! Other books include....Secret Country (1922), Catalogue of the Apple (1935), Hour of the Lighted Windows (1937); and Poetic Eras (1958). Many of the poems in these volumes are contained in Selected poems of Jorge Carrera Andrade. If you are able to get this book in addition to this one, that's a beautiful thing.

Century Of The Death Of The Rose by Jorge Carrera Andrade (a nominee of the 1975 Nobel Prize for Literature), is a work of remarkably impressive poetry, offered in its original Spanish side by side with flawless English translations by Steven Ford Brown. Moving parables of the beauty and frailty of life itself are deftly combined with a heartfelt expression of wonder in the hidden treasures of natural and spiritual existence to make for an emotionally moving collection. Movements of Nature: Tree-bark listens to the rustle of plants and insects / as wind softly ruminates through the field. / The pond takes down a note in its memory / of kinship between the smallest clouds and geese.

In the wake of 9/11 and our military enterprise in Iraq, Americans are asking more informed questions about the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims across the globe. Cervantes in Algiers--a magisterial exploration of the socio-political world of 16th-century North Africa--maps the surprisingly porous frontiers between Muslim and Christian worlds in the early modern period. This pioneering book minutely examines Cervantes's five-year captivity in Algiers and gauges the impact of this traumatic experience on his fiction. As Cervantes himself reminds us in the prologue to Part One of Don Quijote, his great novel was "hatched in a prison." Cervantes in Algiers rethinks the connections between trauma and creativity even as it enlightens the long and vexed history of relations between Islam and the West. A five-judge panel of the Modern Language Association of America awarded this book the 2003 James Russell Lowell Prize for the most outstanding book in Literary Studies.

Cervantes In Algiers: A Captive's Tale is a meticulously researched and scholarly study by Maria Antonia Garces (Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies, Cornell University) of the years that Miguel de Cervantes, the author of the celebrated Hispanic literary masterpiece "Don Quixote", spent as a slave and prisoner of the Muslims in Algiers. Examining how captivity affected Cervantes and his writing, the complex interplay between Christian Spain and Islam, and searching for enduring truths that reflect throughout history and modern times, Cervantes In Algiers is clearly a "must-read" title for any devoted reader or scholar of Cervantes' classic work and enduringly popular work.

While silk-screened images of Che abound on tee shirts around the world, few are aware of the study this leader of the Cuban revolution gave to economics, banking, finance, incentive systems, and, most important, the role of voluntary labor.

Introducing this book is a speech by Fidel Castro on the twentieth anniversary of Guevara's assassination. In it, Castro urges the world to take a good look at Guevara's contributions to creating a socialist society in Cuba. In reality, under the impact of opposing views, along with aid, from the then-Soviet Union, many of Guevara's ideas had been left by the wayside.

Castro's speech, given in 1987, was part of broad effort to return to the Guevara course-an effort to completely change society and, in the process, make it possible for human beings to change as well. The speech, and the book, take an honest look at Cuba's errors along the way -and the efforts made to correct them.

The essence of what Che stood for was well put by Castro, who said, "Che believed in man. And if we don't believe in man, if we think that man in an incorrigible little animal, capable of advancing only if you feed him grass or tempt him with a carrot or whip him with a stick--anybody who believes this, anybody convinced of this will never be a revolutionary..."

This is an award-winning book, specially praised by Fidel Castro when it appeared. It charts the revolutionary political and economic strategy that Che Guevara advance in building the Cuba revoltuion. Che besides being a political leader and an internationalist fighter, was one of the leaders of the economic struggle to build a socialist Cuba.

His ideas stand in start contrast to those that were advised by the Soviet Union and Cuban Communist Party members who had looked to the Soviet Union. Rather than the bureacuratic approach of centering on offering material incentives, and increasing social differentiation, Che put forward a strategy remarkably similar to that advanced by Lenin and Trotsky in their struggle with Stalin. Che believed that while economic growth had to be based on realism, science and the limiatations of the Cuban revolution, that the political mobilization of the Cuban masses, their attention to the world revolution, and the struggle against bureaucratic priveledge has to be at the center of the revolutionary Economy.

Tablada gives an excellent description of Che's ideas, not only in theory, but how they were practiced in the first five years of the Cuban revolution.

The publication of this book was a result of a renewed struggle by the Cuban revolutionists to revive Che's ideas and the struggle against buraucratic priviledge in Cuba after Cuba rejected the Soviet model at the end of the 1970s. This is why a Cuban socialist revolution, almost the total opposite of the Stalinist bureaucracies that collapsed in the USSR and Eastern Europe still stand.

Tablada is a clear writer who provides great explanations of complex economic concepts and clear documentation.

While this pamphlet is not always available on Amazon, it is always available from BooksfromPathfinder, an Amazon Z store that you can get to by clicking on New and Used further up this page!

This collection is a substantial contribution to this dynamic and emerging field.

Though this is a splendid academic book is easy to read and understand, Professor Angie Chabram-Dernersesian structured the book into six or seven sections, with cogent introductions for each section, she analyzes in depth such subjects as feminism, sexuality, race, power, politics, music, and culture.

This reader should be in the desks of professors and students in departments of Chicano Studies, American Studies, History, Communications, Ethnic Studies, Anthropology, Sociology and Cultural Studies for years to come.
The Chicana/o Cultural Studies Reader is a collection of works of the best Chicana/o Latina/o contemporary intellectuals.

I also recommended writings by Emma Perez, Cornell West, Larry Grossberg, Ramon Saldivar, Waneema Lubiano, Rosa Linda Fregoso, Ruth Frankenberg, Angela Davis, and Lata Mani among others. See list below:

Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism
White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness
Living Spirit, Living Practice: Poetics, Politics, Epistemology
Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India
Cultural Studies
MediaMaking: Mass Media in a Popular Culture
The House That Race Built: Original Essays by Toni Morrison, Angela Y. Davis, Cornel West, and Others on Bl ack Americans and Politics in America Today
Women, Race, & Class
The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture
The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History (Theories of Representation and Difference)

Kudos to Chabram-Dernersesian. I strongly recommend this book . Definitely a page turner. Splendid alternative to most accounts of American & British cultural studies. First of its kind!

Book offers valuable insights into the field and supplies readers with foundational writings and debates. The multiple introductions are useful and give readers an idea of important sub-fields. The essays are refreshingly passionate and diverse. Over all this is a must for those who want to bridge ethnic, feminist, and cultural studies.

--I would also recommend the special issue of Chicana/o Latina/o Cultural Studies : Transnational and Transdisciplinary Movements (Cultural Studies : Volume 13, Issue 2)