Caribbean Books

N.D. Williams has quietly chronicled the emtional storms of an era in the past in what was seen as a backwater of the empire--the Caribbean as well as contempoary themes like the restlessnes of today's people as they travel back and forth between simple and complex societes

Williams is not afraid to explore different ways of writing. Readers are also struck by his forceful but precise prose.His characters bring wry smiles as they muse or sometimes utter incongruous comments.

I particularly enjoyed " Trinculo Walks The Dog" which recreates a colonial city on the verge of independence.Going back to that time/space four decades ago I see how the Colonial power was cleverly subverted through illicit sexual encounters.

Two mysterious stories are " My planet of Ras" and "the Searchers" Williams has a gift for opening layers of feeling and engaging the reader at an intuitive level.

I guess the test for any writer is whether someone will pick up his book and read the stories again. I've gone back to these stories at least three times. Each time I expect to be surprised.

The end of slavery in the French Caribbean is a story that has many facets. This book looks at one of the smaller islands (Guadalupe) and tracks its progress as it tries to free itself from the grips of slavery. Dubios tells a very good story and it is well written. The book focuses on Guadalupe but also gives a sense of what is happening in the entire British and French Caribbean. Dubios in his other books really provides a complete picture of what is occurring in the Caribbean and they are all recommended.

This is a brilliant book with hundreds of color photos (full page and double page). The reproductions are excellent. The text that accompanies the prints is straight-forward, simple, easy to read and succinct.

To cover the scope of the history of Colombia's art (over 400 years) is a formidable and a very applaudable accomplishment. But, Benjamin Villegas, did not stop here. He pushed the scope of art history beyond the colonial and post-colonial period and included the tribal periods prior to the Spaniards! Bravo.

This 400 page coffee-table book comprehends the substance of Colombian Art. "Colombian Art" is organized into four sections: Pre-Colonial, Colonial, 19th Century and 20th Century Art. The gold and ceramic art of eleven pre-conquistador human groups; the religious art of colonial Colombia, painters of independence, travel painting, landscape painting (19th Century), expressionist art, political art, surrealist art and the emergences of abstract art, are all well documented.

There is an introduction to the works of Masters such as: Franciso Cano, Debora Perez, Serio Trujillo M., Gonzolo Ariza, Jose Rodriqiz A., Luis Caballero, Alejandro Oberegon, Enrique Grau and, of course, Fernando Botero (an entire chapter). I was awed at the scope and quality of art that Colombia has, and continues to produce.

I read and reviewed "Colombian Art" while spending a few months in Colombia. While I was there I had the opportunity to visit many museums and art galleries, and "Colombian Art" helped me appreciate even more, the richness of the art and profundity of the artist. This is a stellar book, worthy of purchase by any art connoisseur, Colombian aficionado or student of the indigenous tribes of pre-Colombia. Highly recommended

To my knowledge, this is the most rigorous biography of Columbus so far. It is basically an unknown story, since what they teach us in school is almost all of it lies and myths, for example that Queen Elizabeth sold her jewells to finance the first trip, or that everybody in Columbus' time believed the Earth was flat. By any standard, Columbus was a bit of a lunatic who probably also suffered from what todat we call bipolar disease (for example, he thought that God spoke to him directly). He seems to have been given to theatricality and emotional blackmail, but undoubtedly he was also very intelligent and a great navigator. He also had an urge for social climbing, and he longed for glory and fame more than for money. He was obsessed with finding a way to China, India and Japan by sailing West, which suited the Western European powers's commercial interests. As said before, in his time the great debate among learned people was not over the flatness or roundness of the Earth, but about its size. Columbus, by grossly underestimating it, became convinced that the voyage to Asia was within reach. Had there been no American continent, he would have been murdered or starved to death. But he was also a very courageous and brave man, and so he made possible what seemed impossible. He was a very bad politician, and his emotional diseases made him quarrel with soon former friends, which of course marred his leadership abilities. His life, very well written by Fernandez-Armesto, is a glorious, tragic and incredible epic which reads like the best adventure novels.

It is almost impossible for the reader to miss the central theme of Come Shouting to Zion. The authors made sure that its composite but unifying motif recurs constantly within its pages. Divided into its three thematic parts, the book argues that African-American conversion to Protestantism did not happen in a vacuum; that African religious traditions influenced the new form of Protestantism created among the slaves; and that the role of women, as in African traditions, was vital in the process of conversion and transformation of their form of Protestantism. In a more basic way, the authors convincingly contend that African-Americans, in the South and British Caribbean, were propelled by their own experiences and cultural backgrounds to actively participate in the process of their Christianization.

This book starts with the 16th century Italian Cappuccinos in Africa and ends around the 1830s Antebellum. The purpose of starting in Africa was to draw parallelisms between African religious traditions and African-American religious experiences. The authors also dealt with a plethora of primary sources, beginning with missionary records in African, and ending with American churches' official documents. Probably most importantly is that the authors also considered a large number of recent (and not so recent) scholarly works in related areas. Indeed, we might say that this book is better understood if we consider the scholarly context in which it was conceived. This book, for example, consistently referred to Jon Butler's "Awash in a Sea of Faith." This is so because the authors were concerned with disproving one of Butler's more daring thesis: that the African-American conversion to Protestantism starting with the Great Revival happened because the African slaves experienced a spiritual holocaust. This holocaust, Butler argued, was the annihilation of the African religious cosmology right in the midst of the time when they needed it the most: in their slavery. Consequently, when Methodists and Baptists enthusiastically came to share their religion to the slaves, the spiritually deprived slaves were eager and open to the new message. Frey and Wood asserted that Butler's thesis is without foundation and that African religious traditions resisted and survived despite coercion and the advances of the SPG. The authors show plenty of evidence that African religions were alive and well after the slaves arrival to America. Among their examples are the fearful "Obeah," and the proliferation of women mediums. Following the chronology of the events, the authors move into explaining why the Anglican Church failed to produce inroads among the slaves: "because their version of Christianity found no confirmation in the reality of daily life in the quarters." (80) For example, Anglicanism provided no convincing answer to the question of their suffering. On the other hand, John Wesley, George Whitefield, and many Baptists were able not only to identify themselves with the slaves, but to impart a message of assurance with its emphasis on social justice and hope (i.e., the promise of the millennium, spiritual regeneration and attacks on slavery). Furthermore, the structural flexibility of these dissident religions, the availability for African-American leadership, the attraction of the written word, and the "fact that they revolved around a constant cultural core [that] provided continuity with the African past, [made] the transition to evangelical Protestant Christianity possible." (101)

It is nothing new that Evangelicalism provided a platform for the new American identity being formed among the African slaves at the turn of the 19th century. But Frey and Wood made this point pivotal in their quest to prove the Africanization of Protestantism. Among the characteristics that gave African-American Protestantism a tone of its own was their type of worship, and more specifically the shouting for conversion. Furthermore, another of the traits that made African-American Protestantism unique was the important role of women in evangelism and church management. These and other characteristics plus the development of a form of Christianity supportive of slave-owners' ideology, however, served to separate gradually whites from blacks by the Second Great Awakening. Despite its multiple origin, lively worship and shouting became associated with undisciplined and unintelligent African behavior. Already by 1790 and more so by 1830s, African-American Protestantism had developed its own religious identity, which was "both similar to and different from their African past and from evolving white religious culture." (181) This new form of Protestantism contrasted with the individualistic and egocentric message favored by white leaders. Their exuberant and participatory worship also differed from the white Protestant community. In sum, the development of African-American Protestantism came into being upon a "continual negotiation" between black and white church members.

Overall, this book is a marvelous scholarly work. It draws from previous works as Mechal Sobel, John Thornton, and many others, and put in place a picture that was intrinsically previewed by many, namely, that African-Americans were not passive, but active in the formation of their form of Christianity. Its extended perspective, in time and space, was much needed to provide a convincing periodization. However, it is here that the book is more open to criticism.

The intend of providing a comparative approach between the British Caribbean and the North American South, was to trace similarities among closely related patterns. Yet, the way that the book is organized, it does not lend itself to an easy-to-follow comparison. The moving from Antigua, for example, to Georgia, is often made without warning and without enough circumstantial support. The reader might easily think that some of the British islands are brought only to prove a forced parallelism, while their collective experience is being ignored. Furthermore, it is difficult to follow how the chronological patterns are similar in the majority of cases presented.

These, and others, are weak-links common to works that aim to cover such a broad subject without using case studies as anchor examples. Nevertheless, the main achievements of the book are not darkened by these shortcomings. It is very probable that many of the future works in African-American religious history will be motivated by the thesis and arguments that Frey & Wood present in this book.

I believe that historically this is a very important book- since it descibes the author's experiences in leaving her beloved Trinidad as a young child and resettling in England. I will not forget the prejudice and malice the girl suffered in the country she had been brought up to believe was the 'Motherland'. The description of life through a child's eyes in Trinidad is very beautiful and evocative. The account is told very fluently

I purchased this book for my father's 85th birthday. He will love the colorful photos and the descriptions listed by the family of the bird; pelicans, plover, gull etc. Arrived in great, new condition!

Im glad i purchased this copy at the time i did cause i saved a alot of money. I hope the price will come down again as some of my friends want to purchase their copy from amazon.

Luis Camnitzer's "Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation"' is an essential book for anyone interested in understanding the differences in the currents which nourished Conceptual Art in Latin America and in mainstream Conceptual Art in the United States. In it's scope it should take it's place next to "The Dada Painters and Poets", Motherwell's magnificent introduction to early European radicalism. Both books open for us broad areas where writers, artists and poets opened new venues for expression.
Discovering for us the work of Simon Rodriguez (1769-1854) alone is worth the price of admission. By allowing Rodriguez's work to resonate with examples, Camnitzer establishes in my view the most important theme of this book. Conceptualism in Latin America arises out of the immense wealth inherent in language and literature. From Simon Rodriguez to Max Aub, Jorge Luis Borges, Vicente Huidobro to a long list of artists who have enriched this legacy, right up to Leon Ferrari working at maximum intensity in Argentina.
A meticulous analysis of North American conceptualism reveals it's inextricable relation to Capitalism. This raises the question: Up to what point can Democracy and Capitalism coexist. What possibilities are left for art when a booming market swallows anything and everything thus neutering any possibility for subversion. Thus La Monte Youg's chilling phrase: "I am not interested in good: I am interested in new- even if this includes the possibility of it's being evil." To this the author juxtaposes Superbarrio's statement: "One day I left home to go to work and I saw two flashes of lightning, one yellow, one red. I closed my eyes after I was caught in a whirlwind. When the wind passed, I opened my eyes and I was dressed like a wrestler! Exactly as you are seeing me today!"
ARTFORHUM-2008

David Jones has upgraded a work that was already distinguished as a unique contribution to the mariner's understanding of weather conditions in the tropics. It still stands as the clearest and most understandable exposition of the weather patterns that characterize the Caribbean region and the distinct ways in which they differ from those we experience in the higher latitudes. It merits close study by the southbound passage maker, who will find its contents useful on a daily basis while cruising the beautiful but potentially rough Caribbean waters. Short and to the point, it is filled with valuable tips: wind patterns on inter-island passages, barometric differences and likely wind speeds; daily wind and barometer patterns, and the hazards of tropical storms. Deserves space not just on the bookshelf, but handy at the chart desk of any boat cruising the Caribbean.