Books about Antiguan and Barbudan Writers and Artists

You can thank Frank Walter for this latest archive. Quite a bit has been written about the Antiguan and Barbudan artist, obscure in life, since he died. Usually reviews end up in the Antigua & Barbuda Works Reviewed series. But what if there’s a book dedicated to discourse about that person’s oeuvre? Well, though there have been books about other Antiguan and Barbudan writers/artists, it was a collection on Walter’s works that finally prompted me to consider taking on another archive. The R & D link shows that there are a number of them and they are a lot of work. So make suggestions but bear with me as I try to keep up with the content. This is a work in progress. – JCH, blogger

Subject: The Hart Sisters (Anne and Elizabeth)

This Moira Ferguson edited book is
a collection of the writings of the Hart sisters.

Books:

The Colour Box. Written by Barbara Anne Waite. Palomar Mountain Bookworks. 2021.

About the Books:

The Colour Box – Born in the 1700s on the British island of Antigua in the Caribbean, sisters Anne and Elizabeth Hart struggle against the injustice of slavery and inequality marking their world. Their free mulatto father inherits a working sugar cane plantation and slaves. The island does not know what to make of them. The sisters’ determination to educate the slaves eventually leads them to follow a pattern of teaching school on Sunday, a practice established by a well-known educator of the times, Robert Rakes. Set in St. John’s and then the Dockyard in English Harbour, this story interweaves imagined vignettes with research about Anne and Elizabeth and actual events leading up to the 1834 Emancipation. This vibrant historical retelling reveals a color box of personalities and cultures.

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Subject: Paget Henry

Paget Henry, pictured here, 2015, at a past conference at the Enlightenment Academy is one of the chief organizers of this annual Antigua Conference.

Books:

Journeys in Caribbean Thought: The Paget Henry Reader. Edited by Jane Anna Gordon, Lewis R Gordon, Aaron Kamugisha, and Neil Roberts. Rowman & Littlefield International. Published in partnership with the Caribbean Philosophical Association. USA. 2016.

About the Books:

For the past 30 years, Paget Henry has been one of the most articulate and creative voices in Caribbean scholarship, making seminal contributions to the study of Caribbean political economy, C.L.R. James studies, critical theory, phenomenology, and Africana philosophy. In the case of Afro-Caribbean philosophy, he inaugurated a new philosophical school of inquiry. Journeys in Caribbean Thought: The Paget Henry Reader outlines the trajectory of Henry’s scholarly career, beginning and ending with his most recent work on the distinctive character of Africana and Caribbean philosophy and political and intellectual leadership in his home of Antigua and Barbuda. In between, the book returns to Henry’s early consideration of the relationship of political economy to cultural flourishing or stagnation and how both should be studied, and to the problem with which Henry began his career, of peripheral development through a focus on Caribbean political economy and democratic socialism. Henry’s canonical work in Anglo-Caribbean thought draws upon a heavily creolized canon.

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Subject: Jamaica Kincaid (nee Elaine Potter Richardson)

Jamaica Kincaid at the Virgin Islands Literary Festival, 2015.

Books:

Critical Insights: Jamaica Kincaid. ed. Mildred R. Mickle. Salem Press. 2021.

A Study Guide for Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place. 2021.

Course Hero Study Guide for Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother. 2021.

Study Guide for Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl (Course Hero Study Guides). 2020.

Study Guide for Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy: a Novel (Course Hero Study Guides). 2020.

A Study Guide for Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John (Course Hero Study Guides). 2020.

A Study Guide for Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John. Gale. 2017.

A Study Guide Student Workbook for Annie John: Quick Student Workbooks. Written by John Pennington. 2017.

In Search of Annie Drew: Jamaica Kincaid’s Mother and Muse. Written by Daryl Cumber Dance. University of Virginia Press. 2016.

A Study Guide for Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘Girl’ (Short Stories for Students). Gale. 2016.

A Study Guide for Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘What have I been doing Lately?’. Gale. 2016.

A Study Guide for Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘My Brother’. Gale. 2016.

An Analysis of Jamaica Kincaid‘s A Small Place: Between History and Autobiography, Modernism and Postmodernism. Written by Giorgia Scribellito. 2014.

Making Homes in the West/Indies: Constructions of Subjectivity in the Writings of Michelle Cliff and Jamaica Kincaid (Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory). Written by Antonia McDonald-Smythe. Routledge. 2012.

Jamaica Kincaid: Writing Memory, Writing Back to the Mother. Written by J. Brooks Bouson. SUNY Press. 2012.

BookRags Lesson Plan: Lucy. 2012.

A Character in Transition: The Theme of Reinventing One’s Self in Jamaica Kincaid’s Work Lucy. Written by Nadine Ropke. GRIN Publishing. 2011.

BookRags Summary and Study Guide: Lucy. 2011.

BookRags Summary and Study Guide: A Small Place. 2011.

Jamaica Kincaid: a Bibliography of Dissertations and Theses. Written by Elizabeth J. Hester. 2010.

The Mother Theme in Jamaica Kincaid’s Fiction. Written by Loretta Haas. GRIN Verlag. 2010.

Diasporization and Family Relations: the Construction of Female Identity in Nella Larson’s Quicksand and Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy. Written by Renata Thiago Pontes and Maria Aparecida Salgueiro. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. 2010.

Caribbean Genesis: Jamaica Kincaid and the Writing of New Worlds. Written by Jana Evans Braziel. SUNY Press. 2009.

Jamaica Kincaid: a Literary Companion. Written by Mary Ellen Snodgrass. McFarland. 2008.

No Motherland, No Fatherland, No Tongue – Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘A Small Place’ and the Quest for Antiguan Identity. Written by Ayla Kiran. GRIN Verlag. 2007.

Understanding Jamaica Kincaid (Understanding Contemporary American Literature). Written by Justin D. Edwards. University of South Carolina Press. 2007.

Mother and Motherland in Jamaica Kincaid. Written by Sabrina Brancato. Peter Lang Publishing. 2005.

Whiteness and Trauma: The Mother-Daughter Knot in the Fiction of Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid and Toni Morrison. Written by Victoria Burraways. Palgrave Macmillan. 2004.

Jamaica Kincaid (Writers and Their Work). Written by Susheila Nasta. Liverpool University Press. 2004.

Jamaica Kincaid’s Prismatic Subjects: Making Sense of Being in the World. Written by Giovanni Covi. Mango Publishing. 2003.

Jamaica Kincaid: a Critical Companion (Critical Companions to Popular Contemporary Writers). Written by Lisa Paravasini-Gebert. Greenwood. 1999.

Understanding Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents (The Greenwood Press ‘Literature in Context’ Series). Written by Deborah Mistron. Greenwood. 1999.

Rewriting history: Alternative versions of the Caribbean past in Michelle Cliff, Rosario Ferr, Jamaica Kincaid, and Daniel Maximin (Austrian studies in English). Written by Barbara Edlmair. Purdue University Press. 1999.

Jamaica Kincaid (Bloom’s Modern Critical Reviews). Chelsea House Pub. 1997.

Jamaica Kincaid: Where the Land meets the Body. Written by Moira Ferguson. University of Virginia Press. 1993.

Colonialism and Gender Relations from Mary Wollstonecraft and Jamaica Kincaid: East Caribbean Connections. Written by Moira Ferguson. Columbia University Press. 1993.

About the Books:

Critical Insights: Jamaica Kincaid – This volume explores the key works of the award-winning Caribbean-American author, Jamaica Kincaid. Originally from St. Johns, Antigua, Kincaid emigrated to America to study, and has published a variety of Caribbean-centered fiction and non-fiction. She explores a number of themes in her work, including colonialism, gender, sexuality, mother-daughter relationships, and racism. Kincaid’s works include See Now Then (2013), Mr. Potter (2002), The Autobiography of My Mother (1996), and Lucy (1990). The authors in this volume discuss the complexities of some of Jamaica Kincaid’s prolific production of prose. As of 2020, Kincaid has published five novels, a collection of short stories, six nonfiction books, two children’s books, and several pieces of short fiction and nonfiction. Arguably her most famous works are Annie John: A Novel (1985) and Lucy: A Novel (1990), fiction that melds elements of autobiography; a reluctant nostalgia for her family and for the familiarity of Antigua; a critique of colonial rule by Great Britain that entrenched patriarchy into Antiguan culture; and a desire to escape the limitations imposed by British rule. These novels have elicited much scholarly discussion, and some of the essays in this book will showcase their impact on African American letters. As well, the essays in this book will also treat some of Kincaid’s nonfiction, compare her fiction and nonfiction with other authors’ works, and make available some of her interviews. The volume starts out with an introductory essay by Editor Mildred R. Mickle, followed by an essay discussion of Kincaid’s success as a writer in the 1980s written by Robert C. Evans. Finally, a biographical essay also by Mickle introduces readers to Kincaid’s early life and work. This is followed by four Critical Context essays: Jamaica Kincaid in the Constellation of Womanist Literature, by Tahirah Joyce Walker Kincaid Speaks: A Series of Interviews and Responses to Audience Questions, by Robert C. Evans The Aesthetics of Postcoloniality, Spirituality, and Diaspora: History, Geography, Memory, and Restoration in The Heart of Redness, Mama Day, Praisesong for the Widow, Beloved and “The Disturbances of the Garden,” by Tomeiko Ashford Carter Critical Essays on Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John and Lucy, 1985-2017, by Kelley Jeans Next comes the Critical Readings section of this book, which contains the following essays: The “Popular” Reception of Jamaica Kincaid’s Writings: 1996-2012, Robert C. Evans Jamaica Kincaid’s Reception in The New York Times: 1990-2013, by Robert C. Evans Comparing Jamaica Kincaid with Other Caribbean Writers, by Martin Kich Jamaica Kincaid’s Talk Stories: Their Own Traits and Their Relevance to Her Fiction, by Robert C. Evans An Outsider-Within Cross-Examines White Liberalism in Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy, by Kirstin Ruth Bratt Who We Are in What They Say: An Exploration of Identity in Memoir Using Jamaica Kincaid’s My Brother, by Abandon GawinWaya Shuman An Expansion of Womanist Literature in Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy and The Autobiography of My Mother, by Tahirah Joyce Walker Re-Examination of Children’s Literature: Do We Keep Histoire De Babar, or Replace It with Party: A Mystery, by Megan Pitz Kincaid’s Resistance to Labels, by Kirstin Ruth Bratt In the final section, Resources, easy-to-follow lists are provided to help guide the reader through important dates and moments in the author’s life. A selection of further reading is then provided. Each essay in Critical Insights: Jamaica Kincaid includes a list of Works Cited and detailed endnotes. Also included in this volume is a Bibliography, biographies of the Editor and Contributors, and alphabetical Index as well as Chronology of Jamaica Kincaid’s Life and Works by Jamaica Kincaid.

Course Hero Study Guide for The Autobiography of My Mother includes:
An infographic depicting the plot and main characters
A chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis
Key quotes
An overview, context, plot summary, characters, symbols, themes, and bio of Jamaica Kincaid

A Study Guide for Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place includes:
An infographic depicting the plot and main characters
A chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis
Key quotes
An overview, context, plot summary, characters, symbols, themes, and bio of Jamaica Kincaid

Course Hero Study Guide for Girl includes:
An infographic depicting the plot and main characters
A chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis
Key quotes
An overview, context, plot summary, characters, symbols, themes, and bio of Jamaica Kincaid

Course Hero Study Guide for Lucy: A Novel includes:
An infographic depicting the plot and main characters
A chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis
Key quotes
An overview, context, plot summary, characters, symbols, themes, and bio of Jamaica Kincaid

Course Hero Study Guide for Annie John includes:
An infographic depicting the plot and main characters
A chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis
Key quotes
An overview, context, plot summary, characters, symbols, themes, and bio of Jamaica Kincaid

A Study Guide for Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John, excerpted from Gale’s acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more.

A Study Guide for Annie John – The Quick Student Workbooks are designed to get students thinking critically about the text they read and providing a guided study format to facilitate in improved learning and retention.

In Search of Annie Drew offers an alternate reading of Kincaid’s work that expands our understanding of the object of such passionate love and such ferocious hatred, an ordinary woman who became an unforgettable literary figure through her talented daughter’s renderings.

A Study Guide for Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘Girl’, excerpted from Gale’s acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more.

A Study Guide for Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘What Have I Been Doing Lately’, excerpted from Gale’s acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more.

A Study Guide for Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘My Brother’, excerpted from Gale’s acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more.

An Analysis of Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place – This book critically analyses Jamaica Kincaid’s book A Small Place. It considers the biography of the author, the history of Antigua and literature by Caribbean women. It also analyses the themes of the book and it situates them in the context of Caribbean and postcolonial literature. It also analyses the Language used by Kincaid and its meaning. It is really an analysis of Kincaid’s book and of its importance for postcolonial, Caribbean and women’s studies literature. The main themes of the book are Caribbean women, history, colonialism, and postcolonialism.

Making Homes – This study focuses on the ways in which two of the most prominent Caribbean women writers residing in the United States, Michelle Cliff and Jamaica Kincaid, have made themselves at home within Caribbean poetics, even as their migration to the United States affords them participation and acceptance within its literary space.

Writing Memory – Drawing heavily on Kincaid’s many remarks on the autobiographical sources of her writings, J. Brooks Bouson investigates the ongoing construction of Kincaid’s autobiographical and political identities. She focuses attention on what many critics find so enigmatic and what lies at the heart of Kincaid’s fiction and nonfiction work: the “mother mystery.” Bouson demonstrates, through careful readings, how Kincaid uses her writing to transform her feelings of shame into pride as she wins the praise of an admiring critical establishment and an ever-growing reading public.

BookRags Lesson Plan: Lucy – The Lucy lesson plan contains a variety of teaching materials that cater to all learning styles. Inside you’ll find 30 Daily Lessons, 20 Fun Activities, 180 Multiple Choice Questions, 60 Short Essay Questions, 20 Essay Questions, Quizzes/Homework Assignments, Tests, and more.

A Character in Transition – Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies – Literature, grade: 2,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Amerikanistisches Institut), course: HS: Postcolonial Theory, Literature and Gender.

BookRags Summary and Study Guide: Lucy – This study guide includes the following sections: Plot Summary, Chapter Summaries & Analysis, Characters, Objects/Places, Themes, Style, Quotes, and Topics for Discussion.

BookRags Summary and Study Guide: A Small Place – This study guide includes the following sections: Plot Summary, Chapter Summaries & Analysis, Characters, Objects/Places, Themes, Style, Quotes, and Topics for Discussion.

Jamaica Kincaid: a Bibliography of Dissertation and Theses – Jamaica Kincaid has been described as a writer and a gardener, and her writing reflects both of these passions. In this volume Elizabeth J. Hester provides a comprehensive listing of doctoral dissertations, and master’s and bachelor’s theses that deal primarily with the life and work of Jamaica Kincaid. The volume also includes studies that indirectly contain references to the writer. Arranged chronologically, the text lists over 155 papers (1990-2009)from students representing over 100 colleges and universities from around the world. Author and University indexes are included. Jamaica Kincaid is an America-based novelist from Ovals, Antigua. Her publications include Annie John, At the Bottom of the River, The Autobiography of My Mother, Lucy, My Brother, and A Small Place.

The Mother Theme – Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies – Literature, grade: 2, University of Education Ludwigsburg.

Diasporization – The main aim of this book is to investigate and analyze how diasporic movements and family relations exert influence on the construction of women’s identities in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy. The author’s hypothesis is that in the selected works we will find two journeys, which have both similar and distinct aspects, and begin with the main characters’ desire to escape oppression. Given these facts, the protagonists go through a period of many discoveries about themselves and the societies with which they have to deal, which unfolds into two products: the building of Lucy’s autonomous hybrid identities in her loneliness in Kincaid’s work, and the building of Helga’s hybrid identities overshadowed by religion, patriarchy, and family relations in Larsen’s work.

Caribbean Genesis – By exploring the breadth of Jamaica Kincaid’s writings, this book reveals her work’s transmutations of genre, specifically those of autobiography, biography, and history in relation to the forces of creation and destruction in the Caribbean. Jana Evans Braziel examines Kincaid’s preoccupation with genealogy, genesis, and genocide in the Caribbean; her adaptations of biblical texts for her literary oeuvre; and her authorial deployments of the diabolic as frames for both rethinking the boundaries of genre and altering notions of subjectivity, objectivity, self, and other.

Jamaica Kincaid (Writers and Their Work) – A volume in the Writers and Their Work series, which draws upon recent thinking in English studies to introduce writers and their contexts. Each volume includes biographical material, an examination of recent criticism, a bibliography and a reappraisal of a major work by the writer.

Jamaica Kincaid’s Prismatic Subjects – Nonfiction. Literary Criticism. Women’s Studies. African American Studies. Jamaica Kincaid’s polyphonic narratives, at once locational, relational and intercultural, speak lyrically to the widest constituency. They also might be said to provide the cognitive tools through which the reader makes sense of being in the contemporary world. Covi’s book proposes a fresh reading of Kincaid’s lyrical and political storytelling as a central contribution to materially-grounded feminist and postcolonial theories over the past twenty years. Covi foregrounds the relevance of Kincaid’s articulation of such a discourse and shows just how it is capable of accounting for contemporary socio-cultural complexity and of pointing the way towards a politics of collective justice.

Jamaica Kincaid: a Literary Companion – This book offers an introduction and guided overview of her characters, plots, humor, symbols, and classic themes. Designed for students, fans, librarians, and teachers, the 84 A-to-Z entries combine commentary from interviewers, feminist historians, and book critics with numerous citations from primary and secondary sources and comparative literature. The companion features a chronology of Kincaid’s life, West Indies heritage and works, and includes a character name chart.

No Motherland – Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies – Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Hamburg (Insitut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: “I Could Tell You Stories” American Autobiography 1960 to the Present.

Understanding Jamaica Kincaid introduces readers to the prizewinning author best known for the novels Annie John, Lucy, and The Autobiography of My Mother. Justin D. Edwards surveys Jamaica Kincaid’s life, career, and major works of fiction and nonfiction to identify and discuss her recurring interests in familial relations, Caribbean culture, and the aftermath of colonialism and exploitation. In addition to examining the haunting prose, rich detail, and personal insight that have brought Kincaid widespread praise, Edwards also identifies and analyzes the novelist’s primary thematic concerns―the flow of power and the injustices faced by people undergoing social, economic, and political change.

Mother and Motherland in Jamaica Kincaid – This book introduces students to the work of the Caribbean writer Jamaica Kincaid. The author offers a close analysis of six of Kincaid’s works, reading the central theme of the love-hate relationship between mother and daughter as a metaphor for the dialectic of power and powerlessness governing nature and history. Placed in the specific context of the Caribbean in colonial times, the mother-daughter plot reads as an allegory of the conflict between the motherland and the colony. The association is played out at two levels, with the nurturing figure of childhood embodying the African-rooted Caribbean world, and the scornful mother of adolescence evoking the subjugating colonial power. Two conflicting worlds, the African and the European, meet in the duplicitous figure of the mother.

Whiteness and Trauma – This original and incisive study of the fiction of Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid, and Toni Morrison uses cutting edge cultural and literary theory to examine the ‘knotted’ mother-daughter relations that form the thematic basis of the texts examined. Using both close reading and contextualization, the analyses are focused through issues of race and contemporary theorizing of whiteness and trauma. Remarkably eloquent, scholarly and thought-provoking, this book contributes strongly to the broad fields of literary criticism, feminist theory and whiteness studies.

Jamaica Kincaid: a Critical Companion – With the publication of her novel Annie John in 1985, Jamaica Kincaid entered the ranks of the best novelists of her generation. Her three autobiographical novels, Annie John, Lucy, and Autobiography of My Mother, and collection of short stories, At the Bottom of the River, touch on the universal theme of coming-of-age and the female adolescent’s need to sever her ties to her mother. This angst is couched in the social landscape of post-colonial Antigua, a small Caribbean island whose legacy of racism affects Kincaid’s protagonists. Her fiction rewrites the history of the Caribbean from a West Indies perspective and this milieu colors the experiences of her characters. Following a biographical chapter, Paravisini-Gebert traces the development of Kincaid’s craft as a writer. Each of the novels and the collection of short stories is discussed in a separate chapter that includes sections on plot, character, theme, and an alternate critical approach from which to read the novel, such as feminist. A complete primary and secondary bibliography and lists of selected reviews of Kincaid’s work complete the study.rly and thought-provoking, this book contributes strongly to the broad fields of literary criticism, feminist theory and whiteness studies.

Understanding Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John – Since its publication in 1985, Annie John has become one of the most widely taught novels in American high schools. Part of its appeal lies in its unique setting, the island of Antigua. This interdisciplinary collection of 30 primary documents and commentary will enrich the reader’s understanding of the historical, social, and cultural contexts of the novel. Among the topics examined are slavery in the Caribbean, the various religions in the Caribbean islands, the controversy over Christopher Columbus, family life in Antigua, and emigrations from the West Indies to the United States. Sources include newspaper and magazine articles, editorials, first-person narratives and memoirs of life in the Caribbean, letters, and position papers. Most of the documents are not readily available in any other printed form. A literary analysis of Annie John examines the novel in light of its historical, social, and cultural contexts and as a coming-of-age novel. Each chapter concludes with study questions and topics for research papers and class discussion based on the documents in the chapter, and lists of further reading for examining the themes and issues raised by the novel. This casebook is valuable to students and teachers to help them understand the setting of the novel, its themes, and its young heroine.

Jamaica Kincaid (Bloom’s…) – Essays discuss the themes and techniques used by Jamaica Kincaid in her major works.

Jamaica Kincaid: Where the Land Meets the Body – Moira Ferguson examines all of Kincaid’s writing up to 1992, focusing especially on their entwinement of personal and political identity. In doing so, she draws a parallel between the dynamics of the mother-daughter relationship in Kincaid’s fiction and the more political relationship of the colonizer and the colonized. Ferguson calls this effect the “doubled mother”- a conception of motherhood as both colonial and biological.

Colonialism and Gender Relations – Ferguson juxtaposes English and Dominican writers of the 18th, 19th, and 20th century, From Wollstonecraft’s linking of colonialism and women’s oppression, to contemporary women’s views of the British colonial project.

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Subject: Short Shirt (nee Mclean Emanuel)

Books:

Short Shirt doing a little impromptu performance during the 2014 launch of Dorbene O’Marde’s Nobody Go Run Me (File Photo courtesy Colin Cumberbatch)

King Short Shirt: Nobody Go Run Me: The Life and Times of Sir Mclean Emanuel. Written by Dorbrene O’Marde. Hansib. 2014.

About the Books:

This important biography of Antigua’s greatest calypsonian is also an in-depth study of the culture and socio-political history of Antigua and Barbuda, as well as the wider Caribbean. The traditional ‘Caribbean song’ and its creators are treated with dignity and deep appreciation. The result is an essential and long overdue addition to the study of calypso.

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Subject: Frank Walter

Books:

Frank Walter: a Retrospective. Edited by Susanne Pfeffer, Consulting Editor Barbara Paca. Walther Konig/Cornerhouse Publications. 2020.

‘Carnival and Frank Walter’s Universe’ in Find Yourself: Carnival and Resistance. Edited by Barbara Paca. 2019.

Frank Walter: the Last Universal Man. Edited by Barbara Paca. Radius Books. 2017.

Frank Walter. Edited by Barbara Paca. Ingleby Gallery. 2013.

Screen captures of some of Frank Walter’s art.

About the Books:

An exhibition, Frank Walter: A Retrospective was the first to present the oeuvre of the native Antiguan and Barbudan Frank Walter in a museum. The exhibition was curated by Susanne Pfeffer, Anna Sailer, and consulting curator Barbara Paca. The works by John Akomfrah, Khalik Allah, Kader Attia, Marcel Broodthaers, Birgit Hein, Isaac Julien, Julia Phillips, Howardena Pindel, Rosemarie Trockel, and Kathleen, Lady Walter revolve around colonialism in the Caribbean in the past and present as well as the intellectual contexts of colonial and post-colonial thought.

from Find Yourself – Coinciding with Antigua and Barbuda’s National Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, Find Yourself is an exploration of Carnival as an act of resistance. Paying homage to the earliest uprisings in Antigua and Barbuda, art merges with intangible cultural heritage to create contemporary statements on social justice, or the lack thereof. Frank Walter’s painted and sculpted masks, and his photographic documentation of Antiguans, both in daily life and attending Carnival celebrations is presented for the first time to an international audience.

Frank Walter: the Last Universal Man – Coinciding with Antigua and Barbuda’s inaugural National Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2017, The Last Universal Man is the first comprehensive monograph of this important Caribbean artist. Carefully crafted book made in Verona. Distinguished contributors to the book include Rodney Williams, governor general of Antigua and Barbuda; international affairs professor Nina Khrushcheva; Patricia Scotland, secretary-general of the Commonwealth; Antiguan born businessman and philanthropist Mark Moody-Stuart; neurosurgeon Caitlin Hoffman who analyzed his archive and medical condition; Marcus Nakbar Crump who interviewed Walter as a community activist; relation; and former minister of tourism and economic development Selvyn Walter; and Kenneth M. Milton who undertook the arduous task of conserving Walter’s artwork and archive.

Frank Walter – To celebrate Frank Walter’s first solo presentation at Miami Art Basel by Edinburgh’s Ingleby Gallery in 2013, this publication provides an introduction to Frank Walter’s life and work. The slender booklet includes numerous color reproductions of Walter’s paintings and an essay by Barbara Paca, art historian, and friend of Frank Walter who has worked closely with the Walter family and a team of experts since 2003 to protect the integrity of the artist and help to preserve his legacy.

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, With Grace, Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure, The Jungle Outside, and Oh Gad!). All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed it, check out my page on Amazon, WordPress, and/or Facebook, and help spread the word about Wadadli Pen and my books. You can also subscribe to the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks.

MAILBOX – National Pavilion of Antigua and Barbuda at the Venice Biennale

Life is funny and art too…because little as Frank Walter’s art is known at home, I’ve come across several instances of him being posthumously feted abroad. The most recent occasion is an email to my inbox from Paolo Meneghetti, an Italian critic of contemporary aesthetics and a curator of contemporary art exhibitions. I learned through this correspondence that Walter’s work was shown at the Venice Biennale between May and November 2017.

Meneghetti wrote about this, reporting that Walter’s art made up the entire Antigua and Barbuda portion of the exhibition.

Wadadli Pen is all about sharing our arts, so if visual arts is your thing, be sure to check out Meneghetti’s review of Walter’s art as presented at the Bienniale – written in his original Italian, but just use the translate button to read.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reading Room and Gallery XVII

This page is for sharing links to things of interest around the internet. It’ll be sporadically updated; so, come back from time to time. For the previous reading rooms (I, II, III, Iv, v, vI , vII, vIII, Ix, x, xI, xII, xIII, xIv, xv, xvI), click the links or use the search feature to the right, to the right.

CREATIVES ON CREATING

“But the story could not be just about the pursuance of futility or the exploration of unfulfilled dreams. It also had to be about the possibility of recognizing those critical life-changing moments, and in recognizing those moments, having the courage to make the decisions that would perhaps minimize the deathbed regrets.” – Garfield Ellis

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“The stories about Africans somehow miraculously have a Western protagonist and I was like wow do we not merit our ability to tell our own stories. So I started to write plays.” – Danai Gurira on her play Eclipsed (yep, Michonne is also a writer #blackgirlsrock #blackgirlmagic #TWD)

WRITERS ON PUBLISHING

“Two of the main things you have to figure out before launching a crowdfunding campaign are:
◾What will your contributors receive (perks)?
◾What is your funding goal?”- Liz Hennessy on crowdfunding her book

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“Is it wise to publish the rough draft of a novel online, either serialized on my own blog or posted to a public critique forum or writing community? Will this deter agents and editors from accepting the manuscript, even if it’s appearing online only as a rough draft that will be rewritten? I have received answers on both ends of the spectrum—mostly from self-published writers—and would like an answer from an agent.” – Agent Barbara Poelle answers.

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“In the meantime, you’re writing and preparing your own book for publication, but you’re also working towards building up a sizable group of reading friends who may very well wish to read what you have written. So, when your book is released, there are people curious enough to take a chance and read it. But, more importantly, you’ve developed a fan base that, if it isn’t disappointed in your book, will become your cheerleaders who then tell their friends, thereby increasing the size of your fan base.” – Susan M. Toy on Looking for Readers in the Right Places…

MISC.

“I am not familiar with Antigua’s capital, St. John’s. How will I find the hotel at night?  The taxi driver soon stops and says I have to get out here.  He parks and helps me with my bags. I breathe lightly as he walks beside me, pulls my bag along in alleys crammed with revelers dancing to blaring calypso.  We finally reach the hotel. I tip him well, grateful that he did not abandon me.  Checked into my room, the boom-boom-boom from bands, shake the room.  I wonder how I will sleep, but at 12:00 midnight the music stops abruptly as if someone had cast a magic wand.” – Althea Romeo Mark, an Antiguan born writer resident in Switzerland, reflecting on her visit home in prose and poetry.

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“The internet isn’t just cat pictures, it’s the nervous system of the world” – caller on this fascinating site, Call Me Ishmael, which challenges readers to share how a book transformed their lives or why a book matters to them in the duration of a phone message

***

“I had a very difficult relationship with my mother, I think most daughter do” – House on Mango Street author Sandra Cisneros reading the visual, evocative, and poignant Have You Seen Marie and speaking at the National Book Festival

FICTION

“The angel was no less standoffish with him than with the other mortals, but he tolerated the most ingenious infamies with the patience of a dog who had no illusions.” – A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

POETRY

“He lights his pipe as they gather round,
Children with hopeful, eager faces
Longing for the old man’s tales
Of myths and legends from forgotten places…” – Song for the Mermen by Geeta Boodansingh

***

“Mexican”

is not

a noun

or an

adjective

“Mexican”

is a life

long

low-paying

job  – from “Mexican” is not a Noun written to forty-six UC Santa Cruz students and seven faculty arrested in Watsonville for showing solidarity with two thousand striking cannery workers who were mostly Mexican women, October 27, 1985 – by Francisco X. Alarcón

***

“And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good
Christmases
and I really hope no white person ever has cause
to write about me
because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy” – from Nikki-Rosa by Nikki Giovanni

NON FICTION

‘I know from experience that this “symbolic annihilation” can have devastating consequences. I attended majority-white schools in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) and never once had a Black-authored book assigned for class, nor did I have a Black educator until my last semester of my last year of university. Like Orville Douglas, I had tastes in clothes, music, and literature that some deemed “white” or at least not “Black enough.” I also struggled to build my self-esteem and rarely saw positive images of Black women on Canadian television. I wanted to become a writer but saw no young Black women publishing novels in Canada; at 19 I discovered the work of Toni Morrison and Jamaica Kincaid but couldn’t find Canadian equivalents.’ – interesting; Zetta Elliott presents a rarely seen perspective. Read Part l here and Part ll here.

***

“Of course we had slaves! You can’t run a plantation without slaves. Everybody found that out at Emancipation. I was 43 when the apprenticeship time started and that was the beginning of the end for us. By then I had nine children, some lighter and some darker, and Mary Ann and me had married. I had a lot of mouths to feed in my family and the freed slaves would not work, no matter how much we paid them. I tell you the truth, I hated them. They belonged in the fields.” – David in 1848 – from Conversations with My Ancestors by Diana McCaulay, part of Annalise Davis’ White Creole Conversations

***

“There is also (and it remains the dominant impulse) a deeply embedded tradition of patient survival, of building from the ground up and a tradition of Creole inventiveness that transforms the world from whatever scraps are available.”  – Peepal Tree

BLOG

“I start the long process of giving up control to the road.
…The idea of train time as found time resonates with me all day. If I were at home, I’d be at work. And then I’d be home after work, doing more work on freelance projects. The dog would need walking, errands would need running, and I’d desperately want to get out and see my friends. My brain would not have any energy for words.” – Marianne Kirby on her residency by train

***

“Case in point. The performances of Maria Callas, the great soprano, sometimes ended with angry operagoers throwing rotten vegetables onto the stage. As legend tells it, the great Callas, with diva-like composure, simply picked them up and threw them back.” – Irene Allison blogging about pushing through self-doubt born of criticism of one’s artistic output

***

“So far there’ve been no murders on board, or mysterious disappearances, which is a tad disappointing. No missing Rembrandt Letters to recover, or Agents of Her Majesty’s Secret Service cleaning compartments of various super villains. I’m beginning to suspect our films haven’t accurately depicted the romance and adventure of train travel. I’m ready to solve though, so maybe soon.” – Bill Willingham blogs his residency by train

VISUAL

Danielle Boodoo Fortune’s Mango Morning

***

“Startlingly clever, infinitely curious, and often somewhat eccentric, Walter is one of the most captivating, and yet largely unknown artists to come out of the Caribbean.” True confessions, I was not familiar with this artist and then I turned up not only that but this and this.

INTERVIEWS

“Fortunately, every time I am about to lose faith in men, God puts a good man in my path to show me that to every negative there is a positive.” – Tameka Jarvis-George talking about her life and art and where they intersect.

***

“…we were shelling down the place with Antiguan music and we were having so much fun. We realize that we have to make sure that we dominate as Antiguans and Barbudans. Because arwe small, arwe small but arwe tallawah, but we can only do it together.” – 9 time Antiguan and Barbudan soca diva Claudette Peters p.s. watching this interview, her discussion re the lack of money and management underscores that if you’re an artiste in Antigua, perhaps true across the Caribbean, you’re essentially an independent artiste – no big record deals, no big advances, no industry intelligence, financing your own recordings etc. etc. stumbling along – driven by passion and not much else.

***

But the only thing, in the end, that protects you is that you did the book the way you wanted to, because then if it succeeds or fails, at least you have that satisfaction. At least you didn’t compromise and then fail. If you compromise and then you succeed, that’s another kind of feeling. But if you compromise and fail, it’s two failures at least. – Alexander Chee on the 15 year gap between the release of his first and second book

***

‘But it’s still Me Before You that draws overwhelming volumes of reader mail. And Moyes—now 46 and living on a farm in Essex with her husband, a writer for The Guardian, and their three children, ages 10, 14 and 17—still personally answers every letter. “Sometimes people are sending you a page of very emotional stuff about their lives, and you can’t just say, ‘Oh, thanks for reading the book!’ You have to answer them properly,” she tells WD. “And I suppose because I was a fairly unsuccessful author for so long, I also feel an obligation because, you know, there’s always a part of me thinking, Thank you for buying my book!”’ – outtakes from Jojo Moyes’ Writer’s Digest interview

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, With Grace, Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure, The Jungle Outside, and Oh Gad!). All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed it, check out my page on Amazon, WordPress, and/or Facebook, and help spread the word about Wadadli Pen and my books. You can also subscribe to the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks.

Antigua and Barbuda Literary Works Reviewed V

This picks up where the previous Antigua and Barbuda Literary Works Reviewed pages left off (use the search feature to the right to dig them up).  As with those earlier pages, it features reviews about A & B writings that I come across as I dig through my archives or surf the web. You’re welcome to send any credible/professional reviews that you come across as well. They’re not in any particular order, I just add them as I add them; some will be old, some will be new. It’s all shared in an effort to underscore Antigua and Barbuda’s presence in the Caribbean literary canon.

‘Her work presses all the right buttons in the academic psyche (“postcolonial”, “black”, “gender”, “feminist”, “transcultural”, “postmodern”). But for general readers, her greatest attraction lies in the sheer beauty, the power and intensity, of her writing.’ – from Jamaica Kincaid: Looking Back In Anger in Caribbean Beat Magazine

***

“Walter’s paintings alone comprise eleven categories, including the Alphabet series of small-scale paintings given titles such as A for Ape, Q for Queen, and so on, and which represent ideas and objects from Walter’s world. With its devotion to nature and expressive pictures, this visual lexicon is similar to that of Frederic Bruly Bouabre. Another series, Flora and Fauna, depicts plants, fish, and animals accompanied by their taxonomic names, these reveal his obsession with the mysteries of nature.” – Frank Walter’s work discussed in Raw Vision

***

“The collection’s true beauty is (for me) not necessarily in its images of women / womanhood, but in the lyrical language and in the broader philosophical wisdom it presents.”- Charmaine Valere on Jamaica Kincaid’s At the Bottom of the River

***

“If I had to liken it to another work, Unburnable comes closest to Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, a longtime favourite of mine, and stands upright alongside Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother and Austin Clarke’s The Polished Hoe” – D. Gisele Isaac in Essential, Issue No.5 April/May 2006

***

“An interesting thing about Considering Venus is that Lesley’s sexuality is never defined. It’s just love between two women–with no barriers. Isaac has written a lovely book, with just the right fusion of prose and poetry make it a joy to read.” – Sistahs on the Shelf writing on Considering Venus

***

‘This remarkable book, which elegantly blends commentaries and interpretations of “painterly photographs”, as the authors dub their work, is a feast for the imagination and a fountain of aesthetic thought. The photographs are made and not merely seen. The photographs are not only precise imitations of the real but deep penetrations of it, in search of Truth—the truth of the imitations of imitations.’ – Teodros Kiros at Fusion Magazine writing on The Art of Mali Olatunji: Painterly Photography from Antigua and Barbuda

***

“… it’s also moving to observe Gomez come to other realizations in the process of seeking what are often elusive answers.” – re Melissa Gomez’s Silent Music at straight.com

***

Antigua and Barbuda writers Tammi Browne-Bannister and Joanne C. Hillhouse had their stories from Akashic’s Mondays are Murder online noir series reviewed in the February 28th 2016 edition of Trinidad and Tobago’s Sunday Guardian. Of Barbados-based Browne-Bannister’s portrayal of male rage in Stabs in the Dark, Shivanee Ramlochan writes, “she fully embodies the rage and thwarted virility of the unnamed male narrator, not sparing him from the beast he becomes on the page. The author delivers a portrayal of the murderer in language that is pared down, the better to let the full weight of his brutality weigh in the storytelling.” Of Hillhouse’s The Cat has Claws, she writes, “…Hillhouse keeps the secrecy taut in her storyline, baring just enough suggestion to hold her reader captive…” Read the full reviews here

***

“Connoisseurs will find it delicious, and everyday readers will see it as difficult and always just out of reach.” – at Repeating Islands, re Jamaica Kincaid’s See Now Then

***

“In this young adult novel from Antiguan Joanne C. Hillhouse, second-place winner of the inaugural CODE Burt Award for Caribbean Literature, music is both the food of love and a furnace for self-expression. Hillhouse speaks directly to young readers, but with concerns of colourism, class clashes, and society’s skewed expectations for boys and girls. There are no missteps in this tender coming-of-age romance, only an enthusiasm for love and life that reverberates triumphantly…” – Caribbean Beat, March/April 2016 re Musical Youth

***

“I would want to say that as political and economic history this book by Paget Henry does have its equal and perhaps its betters, but as analysis of cultural development or underdevelopment, it is unsurpassed by any I know.” – Tim Hector on Peripheral Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Antigua by Paget Henry (article: Antiguan makes Great Contribution to Overcoming Underdevelopment: Paget Henry, originally published in the Outlet in 1985, republished in the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books Volume 8 Number 1 Fall 2015)

***

“This is a profound examination of the human condition, as a child, in an island, colony, an independent colony, not as maudlin tale, but as wonderful lyricism.

…

a lyrical prose which uniquely and superbly captures the rhythm, the cadences, the magic, the nuances, the tones and shades of Antiguan English speech.” – Tim Hector on Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John, reprinted in the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books Volume 8 Number 1 Fall 2015

***

“The Star Side of Bird Hill is worth it for Phaedra alone, and for Jackson’s evocative, lyrical writing — she makes Barbados come to life, and she’s comfortable with both humor and pathos.” – NPR re Naomi Jackson’s The Star Side of Bird Hill

***

Shivanee Ramlochan wrote this about Musical Musical Youth (Joanne C. Hillhouse) on the Paper Based blog:

“Brimful with resonant notes on first-time courtships; adolescent discovery; tightly-knit friendships and the rewards of discipline, Musical Youth deserves multiple encores — this is one young adult pick you’ll want to savour several times over.”

***

Hazra Medica wrote this about Unburnable in the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books Volume 8 Number 1 Fall 2015:

“Marie Elena John’s debut novel Unburnable is a tremendous surprise, and a welcomed addition to Antiguan literature, Anglophone Caribbean women’s writing, and Anglophone Caribbean writing in general. It is a surprise because its crafting belies the ‘greenness’ of its author. Its surprise is great because as a debut project, its tackling of massive/significant and underexplored themes and experiences in Antiguan/Caribbean literature is, for the most part, well-executed. Moreover, it is a welcomed addition because, among other reasons, it is a belated yet timely intervention into the conventional neglect and/or mistreatment of a number of Caribbean subjectivities and experiences by West Indian literature and literary criticism as well as West Indian and ‘Western’ historical narratives.”