Caribbean Books

I found this book by accident and I'm thoroughly surprised that this incredible text isn't getting more publicity and circulation. It has a nice cover and some really interesting chapters. I liked this book much better than Guttman's "Changing Men." A Puerto Rican press with ties to AIDS funding published this book. I wonder if not having a mainland distributor somehow limited the publisher's reach. !Que lastima!

The book is subtitled "Working Papers." This practically sounds like a professor xeroxed students' term papers and just threw them in a binder after putting punchholes in each page. This book is for the most part quite polished. It has a nice mix of contributors: male and female; Caribbean and American; graduate students and full professors. The contributors look at song lyrics, elections, prison inmates, and nomenclature to discuss masculinity in this region. The chapters vary widely in terms of length and complexity. Perhaps this is why the anthology is humbly presented as just "working papers."

A good portion of this book is simply how to conduct men's studies research in the Caribbean, period. The authors are very conscious of this as a new terrain. Upon reading the table of contents, one would think only the last chapter deals with gay men in this area. However, gay relations, gay identity (or lack thereof), and homophobia are themes constantly presented in this book. This book is sufficiently representative of the Caribbean, covering the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking, machos and non-machos, as aforementioned men of various sexualities, etc. However, there is nothing on Cuba. I wonder if its status as a Communisti country somehow makes it unique in terms of gender, or doing research period. Richard Parker's chapter was unnecessary as it dealt exclusively with Brazil and not the Caribbean. I wonder if they included him just for the name recognition. Commentators on the Caribbean in other books have strongly stated that issues of gender cannot be separated from race and class matters. However, in this book, only one or two chapters bring those matters up. That is a bit of a letdown.

I truly applaud this book, wish the best for its contributors, and encourage all to read it.

"Caribbean New Wave: Contemporary Short Stories" brings together 23 tales, selected by Stewart Brown. The authors here represent a number of English-speaking Caribbean nations: Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, Belize, Antigua, and St. Lucia. These stories capture the linguistic, religious, racial, and political complexity of this region.

Some of the most memorable selections include the following: Opal Palmer Adisa's "Duppy Get Her," which makes use of local supernatural beliefs and vernacular language; Neil Bissoondath's "Insecurity," an ironic tale about the international economic intrigues of a Hindu businessman in the Caribbean; and Rooplall Monar's "Bahadur," a humorous tale written all in vernacular. But my favorite in the collection is Ian McDonald's "The Duel in Mercy Ward," a funny and moving tale about the relationship between two elderly men--one a Christian of black African heritage, the other a Hindu of Asian Indian ancestry--in a hospital ward.

The brief author biographies at the end of the book include some bibliographical resources for interested readers. Overall, "Caribbean New Wave" is a good book for those who are interested in exploring the fiction that has come out of the English-speaking Caribbean.

I am in the process of writing my second book: "How to Effectively Market to the Caribbean Community." I find the references to the Caribbean Educational Standard as a point of debate. I do not agree that the smaller Islands,the lower classes are more educated than the larger islands' lower classes. This is a mistaken conclusion. Economics controls your education. For the most part, the larger islands are better off than the smaller. In fact the smaller more co-dependent. One of the principal reasons for the break-up of the Caribbean federation was this fear that the smaller Islands would leech on the larger ones' and drop the standard of education and economy. Granted, over the past decade, many large island have under gone set backs. But, if a better comparative analysis is done on large to small, the author should conclude differently. No adequate explanation was given for the author's conclusion, only assertions. I suggests a more indepth look at the Caribbean in his next book on the community. The inward conflict between the Caribbean nations was accurate. More, however, needed to be said on the reasons for the conflicts. Overall, an admirable job for a non-Caribbean. The Book's topic was appropriate and very topical. In the future, I hope Amazon takes more books written by Caribbean Nationals and immigrants. Keep up the good work Mr. Phillip Kasinitz. From: Chyrel Hall: Miss Caribbean-USA 1995-1996; Founding member, New York Caribbean Students Coalition; and, Author, Living as a Caribbean in New York

Caribbean Paleodemography: Population, Culture History, And Sociopolitical Processes In Ancient Puerto Rico is a scholarly assessment of the ancient human population of Puerto Rico, migration patterns, cultural changes, population trends, and unexplained mysteries of the region's paleodemography. Extensively researched by adjunct assistant professor of anthropology L. Antonio Curet, Caribbean Paleodemography stresses the importance of scientific rigor when analyzing demographic factors and proposes more rigorous and exacting ways of modeling past human behavior and population trends. A critical-minded, succinctly written scholarly account, enthusiastically recommended to students and professionals in the fields of archaeology and paleology.

In many poetry collections of the past decade, the overwhelming mood in these books has been a languid despair bordering on nihilistic obsession. Opal Palmer Adisa's, Caribbean Passion, defies this trend. Indeed, the emotion that shapes every syllable in this collection is a fervent love that celebrates its expansiveness. Throughout the four movements of Caribbean Passion: Mento Ska, Reggae, and Dancehall what emerges is a portrait of a woman and poet who is unabashedly erotic and boldly passionate about her home, life, and culture. And at a time when some Caribbean poets, artists, and intellectuals may be tempted to turn away from the Caribbean and its landscape as a proper subject of artistic or intellectual meditation, Adisa's poems pull our attention back to where it rightly belongs: our homelands in this archipelago of islands.

Torres-Saillant is an intellectual giant in any language. His erudition is carefully measured and presented with superb precision and clarity. Although for me, his scholarship illuminates brilliantly in his Spanish-language masterpiece EL RETORNO DE LAS YOLAS, his lengthy collection of personal essays that ponder the thorny issues of Diaspora and Dominican identity. But here in CARIBBEAN POETICS: TOWARD AN AESTHETIC OF WEST INDIAN LITERATURE, Professor Torres-Saillant departs boldly from a traditionally crowded camp of experts when he undertakes the ambitious task of demonstrating with splendidly relevant and representative literary figures a regionally unified and coherent socioaesthetic literature with is own distinct identity. His theory of Caribbean poetics is undergirded by a systematic examination of recurrent thematic motifs employed by Caribbean writers over decades. The regional exemplars he selects are Edward Kamau Brathwaite, from Barbados; René Depestre, from Haití; and Pedro Mir, from the Dominican Republic.
In my estimation, Torres-Saillant far exceeds expectations in this difficult project. He is tremendously successful in achieving his objective: this work, as far as I am aware, is the first of its kind to date. Our scholar in this instance breaks away from the pack by rightfully transcending nationality, language, and race in accounting for the cultural diversity that undeniably characterizes the region. Normally, when we look at critical commentaries on Caribbean literature, we always see a myoptic concentration on a single linguistic sector --even when the presentation makes the assertion of being inclusive. Torres-Saillant, on the other hand, has an approach that is superior by a long shot in its significant contribution to comparative poetics. He meticulously articulates throughout this study how Caribbean literature has developed along a fascinating route vastly different from those of the literatures of the Western tradition and from the mainland Latin American tradition. I especially applaud the Professor's clear implication of a multicultural approach to the study of world literature. His comprehensive bibliography alone is well worth this exciting reading. But then who would ever guess that the renown and scholarship of Silvio Torres-Saillant is a literary icon around my Dominican household and is absolutely required reading for anyone seriously interested in Dominican culture?
Very Highly Recommended.

Alan Cambeira
Author of AZÚCAR! The Story of Sugar

David V. Moskowitz's CARIBBEAN POPULAR MUSIC: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF REGGAE, MENTO, SKA, ROCK STEADY AND DANCEHALL is perfect for college studies: while plenty of references have been written on the topic, none have embraced the full extent of Caribbean music history with an overall scholarly approach, providing annotations on figures ranging from Bob Marley to the drum and bass movement and the Flying Cymbal drumming technique. While most listings consist of capsule biographies of individuals and companies, CARIBBEAN POPULAR MUSIC includes all the background history necessary to fuel any report on the topic.

This book is the best algae/marine flora book you can get for the Caribbean. I used it in my Marine Botany class and it is filled with spectacular photos and detailed descriptions and defining characteristics for each species. I am never getting rid of my copy!

I'm an avid scuba diver, and I dive mostly in the Caribbean Sea. I love to photograph macro (small) subjects, especially sea slugs. Unfortunately, it's been difficult to find a single book with a comprehensive collection of Caribbean sea slugs. This book, however, does a very good job of presenting dozens of species and variations with color photographs, description, habitat, and range.

My only quibble is that some of the photos are not the best quality, but I know that some of these species have been rarely photographed, so there may not be a big selection available. That's a minor fault, however. Overall, the book is an invaluable addition to my library, and I'm looking forward to using it to help find and identify sea slugs in the Caribbean.

Highly recommended.

Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd have managed to package in one cover many of the definitive sources on the history of Caribbean Slave Society. They take the student researcher from the Amerindian origins of Caribbean society and close by paying close attention to the tensions which arose in the slave societies of the region. As in most sources of this type, the student is not expected to find the last word on the topics presented. However, in the wide sweep of coverage, the authors manage to expose the student to the cutting edge of the research and, indeed, come as close to being the definitive source as one can come. Finally, there is much here for students of North American slavery. Since the Caribbean colonial experience mirrors so much of the colonial experience of the northern neighbours, it is not surprising that the similarities will have relevance there as well.