The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive
The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive: being dreamity, algoriddims, chants & riffs (New Directions Publishing) by Marcia Douglas presents Jamaica in non-linear, hybrid and interlocking narrative forms, drawing on myth, dreaming, and history.
The Possibility of Tenderness
The Possibility of Tenderness: A Jamaican Memoir of Plants and Dreams (Hutchinson Heinemann) by Jason Allen-Paisant narrates the author’s personal history with the green landscapes of his homeland Jamaica, enmeshed in the wisdoms of his family’s maternal line.
Three Leaves, Three Roots
Three Leaves, Three Roots: Poems on the Haiti-Congo Story (Beacon Press) by Danielle Legros Georges combines poetry, archival material, letters, and interview excerpts to creatively construct the Haitian migratory movement to Congo from 1960 to 1975.
Lara
Manning
Passiontide
The Railways of Trinidad
Iere
Iere: Living in the Land of the Hummingbird (self-published) by British-born, Trinidad-resident Sarah Beckett combines poems and paintings to represent an immersive, sensory experience of T&T. Particular attention is paid to the vividness and abundance of the islands’ flora and fauna, with the poet remarking on human interconnectedness with the natural world. Accompanying paintings render […]
King of Dead Things
King of Dead Things (Atheneum Books) by Nevin Holness focuses on two Black British teens, Eli and Malcolm, as they navigate the subterranean magical realm of London. This young adult fantasy novel melds Afro-Caribbean worldbuilding with high-action stakes, setting the stage for encounters with a duppy king, and a tussle with ancient powers governing good, […]
Last Reel
Last Reel (Ian Randle Publishers) is the eighth book of poems by Mervyn Morris, former Poet Laureate of Jamaica. Morris, who held the laureateship from 2014 to 2017, is Professor Emeritus at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. The short and tautly-plotted poems in Last Reel adopt various, diverse foci, ranging from the […]
Police Dogs of Trinidad and Tobago
Police Dogs of Trinidad and Tobago (McFarland) by Debbie Jacob presents a comprehensive seventy-year history of the four-legged service animals in our republic. These canine officers have been a part of T&T history since the inception of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service Canine Unit in 1952. Jacob presents the dogs’ work through noteworthy and […]
Two Times Removed Volume III
Two Times Removed Volume III: An Anthology of Indo-Caribbean Futures (Bookworm Publishing), edited by Tiara Jade Chutkhan, assembles diasporic voices to reflect on a centenary of East Indian indenture in the Caribbean. The twenty-two contributors address mental health, intergenerational divides, and the non-linear, complex relationship between honouring the past and safeguarding the future. This ambitious […]
A Trace of Sun
A Trace of Sun (Legend Press) by Pam Williams, longlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction, is a semi-autobiographical novel of mother-son estrangement and reunion, moving between Grenada and England. Williams, of Grenadian parentage, presents Raef and Cilla through compassionate frameworks, involving mental health concerns to tell their story.
Popa Singer
Popa Singer (University of Virginia Press) by Haitian René Depestre, translated from the French by Kaiama L. Glover, renders an account of Haiti’s tumultuous 1950s history, told from the perspective of a resourceful seamstress, Dianira Fontoriol, also known as “Popa Singer”. The work blends satire and fantasy to achieve its portrait of a dissonant time.
Reinbou
Reinbou (Astra House) by Puerto Rican-born, Dominican Republic-based Pedro Cabiya, translated from the Spanish by Jessica Powell, frames the Dominican Civil War of 1965 through a child’s memories and frenetic misadventures. Cabiya portrays a society governed by misrule, punctured by bloody conflict, still in the minds of those who endured this era of political instability.
A Different Energy
From Los Bajos to the World
Writing For Our Lives
By Such a Parting Light
By Such a Parting Light (UWI Press) by Barbara Lalla deftly explores the intergenerational complexities of lockdown-era dynamics, in a novel that sees three children navigating life with their ageing grandparents. Lalla’s prose contemplates cycles of care and responsibility in the face of identity-altering crises, asking what holds us together.
Fractal Repair
Fractal Repair: Queer Histories of Modern Jamaica (Duke University Press) by Matthew Chin uses fractals, a detailed geometric system of patterning, as an allegory for the trajectories of lived Queer experience in Jamaica. Drawing on historical and sociological archives, Chin frames a system of reparations for LGBTQI+ survivors of trauma.
Palmyra
Set in Trinidad, Palmyra (Friesen Press), shortlisted for the 2023 Guernica Prize for Literary Fiction, is Karen Barrow’s debut novel, channelling Caribbean Gothic suspense in the ruins of a former “great house” cocoa estate. Barrow also incorporates coming-of-age elements to the narrative, impressing the importance of place upon the reader.
String Bank
String Bank (Keensdee Productions), by veteran storyteller Paul Keens-Douglas, illustrated by artist-architect Tara Keens-Douglas, brings the tradition of kite-flying to life in vibrant drawings and rhythmic words. Encompassing the joys of Easter kite season, the father-daughter Keens-Douglas duo portray the revelry and commotion of an enterprising, mischievous youth’s flying foray.
West of West Indian
West of West Indian (Mawenzi House), the debut poetry collection by Linzey Corridon, born and raised in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, explores daily LGBTQI+ Caribbean lives, in states of both ordinariness and activism. Notably, Corridon populates the poems with explorations and subversions of common queer Caribbean slurs, challenging biases.
Zo and the Invisible Island
Zo and the Invisible Island (Knights Of Media), the middle-grade (ages 8 to 12) sequel to Alake Pilgrim’s Zo and the Forest of Secrets, reprises the title character’s folkloric quest, setting Zo on a mission to redeem her friends and right the injustices she and her cohort faced in Book One.
Design Social Change
Ocean Stirrings
The Predicament of Or
Opinions in Review 2023
Opinions in Review 2023 (self-published), by Trinidad Express op-ed journalist Jarrel de Matas, compiles the reporter’s newspaper articles of the past year, ranging in topic and theme across a broad spectrum of T&T current affairs. Politics, environmental issues, crime, education, religion, business, and the arts all receive coverage in Opinions in Review 2023, de Matas’s […]
Son of Grace
Son of Grace: Frank Worrell (Fairfield Books) by Vaneisa Baksh presents the remarkable life, on and off the cricket field, of Jamaican all-rounder Frank Worrell. Published a hair’s breadth away from the centenary of Worrell’s birth, Son of Grace tracks the pioneering cricketer’s significant strides made in the game, against jarring social and racial inequities. […]
Tanglewood
Tanglewood (Luna Press Publishing), Knicky L. Abbott’s debut novella, is set in a fictional 1840s Barbados. Incorporating the Barbadian folklore figure of the Steel Donkey into its speculative worldbuilding, Tanglewood presents star-crossed lovers linked by station and circumstance to a stately manor. Envisioned as a response to Beauty and the Beast, the novella develops into […]