Some weeks ago, I shared my recs for summer reading from Wadadli. Here are some Caribbean picks – the poetry, fiction, and non-fiction finalists for the 2016 Bocas Prize (no, sadly, I haven’t read any of them yet but I’d say being Bocas finalists stands them in good stead. What you say?)
Wife by Tiphanie Yanique (poetry): “These spare, elegant poems are not only intensely body focused and attentive to the minutiae of domestic space, but that they make connections to the worlds of family, church, village and nation – and even, in a poem the references the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, to the soul. Their context is a Virgin Islands’ past, a Black American present, and an enlarged human future.” More at Peepal Tree Press
The Gymnast and Other Positions by Jacqueline Bishop (non-fiction): “The stories, none more than a few pages long, can be read at several levels. The mentor who teaches the child gymnast a contortionist’s erotic positions, the adoptive mother who shoots down ex-partner and adopted child when the former debauches the latter as the subject of pornographic photographs; the relationship between tattooist and the woman who offers her naked body for decoration are all sharply and persuasively realized as short fictions, but they also hint at a writer’s interior dialogue and can be read as parables about the relationship between the free imagination and the controlling and even potentially betraying power of art.” More at Peepal Tree Press
The Pain Tree by Olive Senior (fiction): “Olive Senior’s new collection of stories, The Pain Tree, is wide-ranging in scope, time period, theme, locale, and voice. There is — along with her characteristic ‘gossipy voice’ — reverence, wit and wisdom, satire, humour, and even farce. The stories range over at most a hundred years, from around the time of the second world war to the present. Like her earlier stories, Jamaica is the setting but the range of characters presented are universally recognisable as people in crisis or on the cusp of transformation.” More at Cormorant Books
p.s. Did you hear about the CaribbeanReads Summer Sale – that means you can get one of the books on the Wadadli List, my Musical Youth, at a discounted rate.
As with all content on wadadlipen.wordpress.com, except otherwise noted, this is written by Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, Musical Youth, Fish Outta Water, and Oh Gad!). All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed it, check out my page on WordPress and/or Facebook, and help spread the word about Wadadli Pen, my books and writing, and/or my writing-and-editing services. You can also subscribe to the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks.
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