Caribbean Books

I was raised in Santo domingo and was 11 years old at the time of the revolution. We were also some of those "evacuated" by the U.S. Navy from the hotel. We lived at Avenida Independencia, esquina Wenceslao Alvarez avenue he speaks of in page #207 in the paperback book. We were also there when Trujillo was killed and we spent the following school year in San juan while things settled down. Dad of course stayed with house and business. The names and memories all cascade through my mind. My dad was the Volkswagen and Studebaker dealer in Santo Domingo, and he had to sell the dreaded black VW Beetles the secret police drove, which for a good period of time cost him a lot of business with the locals for obvious reasons. Sadly that same 1965 revolution took my father's life later that year from the stress of remaining in the island to guard house and business, while his wife and four children were away in Puerto Rico. He was only 46 years old. The book is written very well, and do not let him fool you, his spanish had to be good as he described the island and people expertly. It was hard for me to read as you might imagine. After 5-10 pages I would have to stop and let all the memories pass. I was last there three years ago, and much has changed, from the incredibly horrible traffic to the tall sky scrapers that dot the Capital city. One thing has not changed however, and that is the pervasive poverty and same crooked governments who line their and their friends pockets as the country continues to suffer. I have always been asked what it was like to grow there, so I am ordering 4-5 additional copies to give as gifts to those so inclined to read it, I will also send a copy to my extended "family" in Santo Domingo. These are friends I grew up with, and to this day I call them the brothers and sisters that they are to us.

This book is incredible. MacKinnon follows family history in this incredible piece of literary nonfiction. His uncle was a Catholic priest, murdered by police officers in the Dominican Republic in the 60s. The police were immediately shot by an army officer. Forty years later he tries to unravel what actually happened.

The thing that blew me away most was that I could feel him struggle with a foreign language in a different country. I have lived overseas as well, and his writing took me right back to the feeling of pressure inside my head, as I tried to understand. As the book progresses, the pressure diminishes. Truly spectacular writing.

I tried to take it slow, to savour the book, but I finally gave up and tore through it in a day and a half. I am going to reread it this winter.

The truth and beauty of these poems is unrivaled. The imagery, whether melancholy or humorous, captivates the reader. I bought the book because I read a review and went to high school with the author, not realizing my dog-eared copy would be filed firmly between Cisneros, Hass, Neruda and Snyder in my library. Exquisito. Read these poems.

Bear Star Press publishes the best poetry it can attract from the Mountain and Pacific time zones, as well as Alaska and Hawaii. Each year, the press awards the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize ($1,000 and publication) to a writer from the region.

This year, the winner is Manuel Paul López of the border town of El Centro, Calif., for his debut collection, "Death of a Mexican and Other Poems" ($16 paperback).

And no wonder: López surprises and moves the reader with poems that are filled with great humor and playful imagery. All the while, he displays a deep understanding of our never-ending quest for self-invention.

López offers a prologue with "The Poet and the Tía," which sets the tone for the collection:

That boy of yours, Consuelo,
he sure is sensitive.
What's wrong with him?
Every time he leaves the house
he comes back wet:
puddles on the floor,
clothes a sopping mess,
tosiendo como un burro enfermo.
We live in a desert for godsakes!
How does he get so wet?
Where does he find
such sad-looking rain?

Many of the pieces that follow are prose poems, mini-stories with protagonists, no matter how silly and self-absorbed, fighting to assert themselves culturally, artistically and emotionally.

In "Mi Cantito," the teenage narrator suffers taunts from his peers because he cannot speak Spanish as well as they do. Even his family is embarrassed by this boy's tongue-tied attempts to articulate the simplest of Spanish phrases:

My nana used to massage my sluggish tongue with warm hands,
thumbing, pulling, wringing out the Spanish.
It was the antidote, she'd say, for Parkinson's, cancer, and
Tío Chuy's twelve-pack-a-day drinking problem.

López fearlessly plays with poetic form to tell his stories. For example, "Tres Generaciónes" begins with a section called "Discography of a Brown Boy" that delineates the music that made the narrator's heart sing: Abbey Road / Thriller / Bach / José Alfredo Jiménez / Marvin Gaye / Stevie Wonder / José Feliciano.

The poem's next section, "An Incomplete Chronology," covers the period of 1975 to 2002, and is a lament for his grandmother's ill health. Unable to relieve her suffering, he turns to the work of the late author of the classic "The Iceworker Sings and Other Poems" (Bilingual Press): I read Andrés Montoya's poems as if / his words from the other side could somehow soothe her pain like the nopal she used on my / childhood knee-scrape. From art comes comfort and maybe even healing.

López possesses an uncanny ability to create absurd characters who, nonetheless, invite us to share and even sympathize with their angst. In "Go, Nijinsky, Go," the narrator introduces us to his Tío Rally, a temperamental choreographer whose wife has abandoned him and their daughter, Lola. Tío Rally focuses on shaping Lola into a true dancer, an artist, frantically training both her body and mind:

'Así, así, así!' Tío spit out, as he rehearsed with his daughter, his movements a moving origami of limbs.

And again, the late Andrés Montoya offers solace, a sense of hope. Tío Rally writes a letter to the poet, first singing his praises (buttering him up, one might surmise), and then offering a little postscript revealing his true purpose: "Please pass on to God that Lola needs an extra lift in the second act."

"Death of a Mexican" is filled with sly humor and comes at the reader with a lyrical intensity usually not seen in debut collections. No doubt it is a book that Montoya, López's muse, would have joyously welcomed.

[This review first appeared in the El Paso Times.]

I obtained copy by emailing my order to books@mind.net This is a great book for those wishing to take a sailing charter with or without crew. I ordered copies for all my friends and "crew".

This is an outstanding guide for the novice sailor giving great tips on chartering a boat for the adventure of a lifetime. I wish the publishers would reissue this book. I've been trying to find copies for friends for some time.

"Democracy Delayed" is an excellent comparative study of the political forces that influence transitions in totalitarian societies and a comparison of present day Cuba under Castro and similar scenarios in Eastern Europe. It is a well researched document that is required reading for political science students interested in Cuban politics or transitional forces and their effect on totalitarian systems. Dr. Juan J. Lopez is one of the most intelligent political analists on Cuban affairs, going beyond the "cliche" to well thought out and researched conclusions.

Details of Value, Overview Clear and Cogent, Understanding Complete

This book (Juan Lopez 2002 Democracy Delayed John Hopkins University Press) is a "must read" for one trying understanding the complexities of Cuba.

Too often in books on Cuba, one sees errors of fact, misunderstandings and omissions of history, and above all blindness to what is really happens on that sad island.

You will find none of these illusions and errors in this book. This volume's wealth of details of value, its coherent, cogent and clear overview will lead the careful and discerning reader to a far more complete and greater understanding of Cuba's present and past circumstance than any other academic book I have ever read.

Larry Daley (Garcia-Iñiguez Enamorado)
Corvallis, Oregon
Formerly of Column One (Assault) Company Six M-7-26 (1958)

In this exhaustive and thorough 714page biography, Bruce King sets out the development of Derek Walcott as a poet and dramatist whose ambition and talent led him from the colonial backwaters of the Caribbean of the forties to the Nobel stage in Stockholm in 1992. The reader will not find a gossipy, tell-all chronicle.King follows Walcott from his earliest years as a child prodigy in Saint Lucia through university in Jamaica,life in Trinidad where he formed his Trinidad Theatre Workshop and on to his jet setting years as an international writer whose personal friends were Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, Les Murray, Susan Sontag, Robert Lowell, Paul Simon et al.Through his close detailing of Walcott's relative poverty, his incessant travelling to read his work, his disappointments, his successes,his sheer prolific output of writing and art, King fulfills his goal to demonstrate the effects on a major literary talent of cultural decolonialisation, the recognition of national literatures, the place of the U.S.in encouraging artists like Walcott.Walcott's is a very modern life,an example of the changing face of the once imperial-international literary and artistic scene.Walcott's work, as seen in his most recentTieopolo's Hound (an integration of poetry and art), continues to defy literature boundaries.King's biography will further understanding of the writer, his work, the culture from which he comes, and the larger movements in 20th century arts and letters.A must for general libraries, literary collections, and for readers and students of modern literature. A recommended companion volume is also King's earlier "Derek Walcott and West Indian Drama"(Oxford,1995).

In this exhaustive and thorough 714page biography, Bruce King sets out the development of Derek Walcott as a poet and dramatist whose ambition and talent led him from the colonial backwaters of the Caribbean of the forties to the Nobel stage in Stockholm in 1992. The reader will not find a gossipy, tell-all chronicle.King follows Walcott from his earliest years as a child prodigy in Saint Lucia through university in Jamaica,life in Trinidad where he formed his Trinidad Theatre Workshop and on to his jet setting years as an international writer whose personal friends were Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, Les Murray, Susan Sontag, Robert Lowell, Paul Simon et al.Through his close detailing of Walcott's relative poverty, his incessant travelling to read his work, his disappointments, his successes,his sheer prolific output of writing and art, King fulfills his goal to demonstrate the effects on a major literary talent of cultural decolonialisation, the recognition of national literatures, the place of the U.S.in encouraging artists like Walcott.Walcott's is a very modern life,an example of the changing face of the once imperial-international literary and artistic scene.Walcott's work, as seen in his most recentTieopolo's Hound (an integration of poetry and art), continues to defy literature boundaries.King's biography will further understanding of the writer, his work, the culture from which he comes, and the larger movements in 20th century arts and letters.A must for general libraries, literary collections, and for readers and students of modern literature. A recommended companion volume is also King's earlier "Derek Walcott and West Indian Drama"(Oxford,1995).

I won't write about her life since you can find a lot about that if you just type Gariela Mistral in the search box.

Her poetry sings of a woman with very deep emotions and incredible poetic talent.

For example, Los Sonetos de la Muerte begins as follows:

Del nicho helado en que los hombres te pusieron,
te bajaré a la tierra humilde y soleada
Que he de dormirme en ella los hombres no supieron
y que hemos de soñar sobre la misma almohada.

Here we can see a woman persecuted by men (put onto freezing niches or recesses like in a cave I suppose.)

Gabriela will put the woman (or man, possibly) down on the humble and sunny ground.

She adds: The men didn't know that I have to sleep on the ground
and that we must sleep together on the same pillow.

If she is referring to a man, this is a wonderful romantic image but if she is referring to a woman, it is a beautiful illustration of sisterly love. For that matter, this poem is so universal that it could be talking about a child or even a parent.

The poem (which has 42 lines) ends as follows:

Se detuvo la barca rosa de su vivir...
¿Que no sé del amor, que no tuve piedad?
¡Tú, que vas a juzgarme, lo comprendes, Señor!

It is saying at the end that the ship of your life has stopped, and

It seems to me that then she is protesting something like: You say that I don't know about love; that I never had pity on you or never felt pity in general??!!??

Then she turns to God and adds: Lord, you who will judge me, you understand, my Lord.

Thus she ends up by asking God for His judgment (or even Her judgment) probably, to defeat the lie which said that she couldn't feel mercy or didn't know how to love.

as i was taking a look in the encyclopedia i found the name gabriela mistral.i got excited suddenly and i wanted to see who was her.i found out that she was some kind of alatin writer.but that wasn`t the most exciting thing i found , the most interesting fact was that she won the nobel prize in literature at the very year where the secon world war had eneded.one of the very few women who won this prize.yet i was dissapointed when i found out that her books are neglected .i looked for them everwhere , but i found them not.they were not sold oftenly and so i don`t expect them at all to be translated.what ought people like us do.lovers of literature who want to read to her.i found out that no one has reviewe thiss book. i wanted to be the first one but that seems unlikely right.i foind that quite strange that i couldn`t but say oh GOD

Another excellent book in Macomber's "Honor" Series. Lt Peter Wake is the Horatio Hornblower and Macomber the C.S. Forrester of the US Navy.

"Left bobbing in the wake of another Macomber thriller."
This fourth novel in a series is a historical momentum builder that whets the reader's appetite for more and more like an old steam engine gradually picking up speed then roaring along, the reader can't get off.
Macomber has done it again by enhancing his intrigue delivery system.

This book was "written" after the events that took place in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End from the perspective of the surviving members of the East India Trading Company. It has dossiers on Captain Jack Sparrow, the young Jack Sparrow (from the book series), Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann, etc. It is like a pop-up book in a way as there are letters you can open, a set of pirate flags (from the Pirate Lords), a replica of one of the cursed Aztec gold pieces (not really a coin as it is more like thick cardboard), etc. If you are a fan of the films, you will NOT be disappointed!

My 8 year old nephew couldn't put this book down with all the secret compartments, maps and surprises. Actually my 4 year old daughter couldn't put it down either, I had to tell her it was her cousin's christmas present and she would have to let him show it to her. Great gift for Pirates of the Caribbean lover's.

This series of guides has a well-established format - which, in this instance, has been used to very good effect by an Author who knows what he is doing.

Beginning with an explanation of how the book should be used, there are keys, legends and icons to be understood. These are placed next to each dive site throughout the book as an instant means of identifying the type and standard of diving involved. Not popular with everyone - but very useful for those who like them. Next is an introductory chapter which provides plenty of information vital to anyone contemplating a visit. This is followed by a large section on diving and snorkelling in general, before the book gets down to specifics - all of which provides an excellent "lead-in."

Commencing with the USVI, this section kicks off with an introduction to the country and then goes on to cover 72 specific dive sites throughout St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John. This is followed by similar information on the BVI before tackling 60 dive sites found throughout Tortola, Virgin Gorda and Anegada. The book then concludes with chapters on the marine environment, photography, health & safety and a bibliography.

Lawson Wood is an immensely capable and experienced underwater photographer and author. Altogether, the photography is well above the average standard normally encountered in such guides as this and it says much for Mr Wood's skills that I was unable to find a single poor photograph within the book.

In Summary; an excellent and well-presented book produced by a talented writer and photographer - and one that will not disappoint anyone contemplating a visit to the Virgin Islands.

NM

I really love this book..it is really well written and incredibly informative. I would love to read anything Lawson Wood decided to write next!

Great photos & maps too. I especially like the little tidbits of information set off in blue boxes throughout the book.

Agree with the 1st review. Very well written and clear. Good photos and easy to read layout. A must have for anyone who wants to dive Curacao.

An accurate portrait of the dive sites, with clear descriptions for both the beginner and advanced diver. I highly recommend this book to anyone who plans to scuba dive Curacao.