This month’s recommended reading from the Caribbean. Review by Shivani Ramlochan of Palmyra, written by Karen Barrow. Resistance, displacement, and revival: Dominican indigenous Kalinagos, by Lennox Honichurch. The House of Plain Truth by Donna Hemans. “West of the Indians” by Lindsay Corridon
palmyra
Written by Karen Barrow (Friesen Publishing, 330 pp, ISBN 9781039195813)
This gorgeous, well-crafted gothic suspense novel by Trinidadian-Canadian Karen Barrow marks her as a remarkable debut author. palmyra The story is told through the eyes of Joe, an ambitious and academic boy living on a cocoa farm in the early 20th century. In that world, people from both the genteel and proletariat classes struggle with rigid social hierarchies, the specter of slavery, and the cruel imposition of respectability on everyone’s wildest dreams. Through intense tableaux interwoven with secret missions and blood-curdling shocks, Barrow manages the prose with a shrewd eye for detail. It’s a discerning perspective that allows readers to immerse themselves in a satisfying story. Conspiracy, scandal, and even grave warnings are built into this satisfyingly paced plot. Joe himself said in a moment of reflection: It was a house where ghosts came and went.
Resistance, displacement, and recovery: Kalinagos, the indigenous people of Dominica.
Written by Lennox Honeychurch (Papilot Publishing, 300 pages, ISBN 9781739130329)
Dominican historian, artist, and anthropologist Lennox Honichurch provides us with a living archive here. Every clear framework for knowing people, from nomenclature to social science, is not only defined in this illustrated book, but carefully explained at the most intense level of detail. Honichurch organizes his 50 years (and continuing) of research and fieldwork into three sections (Resistance, Refuge, and Resurrection), covering the arrival of the Kalinagos, internal governance systems, accommodation with alien Europeans, and It details the practices of cultural evolution over centuries of adaptive survival. The word “resilience” is not enough to describe the enduring presence of Kalinago in Dominica. Honychurch provides an accessible and essential dictionary for understanding why and how these first peoples have persisted into the Anthropocene.
house of obvious truth
Written by Donna Hemans (Zibby Books, 288 pp, ISBN 9781958506073)
For Pearlin, “the rusty lock in the steamer trunk that she thinks holds her family’s secrets” is in danger of being broken. She ends that chapter of her life in Brooklyn to devote herself to caring for her father, but his last request pushes her patience to its limits. In a similar vein to her debut work (seaside tea), the second novel by Jamaican He-Mans. house of obvious truth It stirs the seabed of a story of several psychological mysteries, some family skeletons whose bones rattle with reckless decisions and generational shame. Pearlin fights and jokes with her siblings, cries over what might have happened, and musters all the courage she has to pick her family’s rusty locks. In this touching and moving story, Hemans asks readers: What makes a dying man’s wishes more precious than the hopes of his entire chaotic lineage?
western part of the west indies
Written by Lindsay Corridon (Mawenzi House, 112 pages, ISBN 9781774151525)
I am a vessel of fire / Living wild and dangerous / I make no apologies / A library of expressions lies before me / A forest of calloused hands awaits me. … Nothing without emotion can survive the swirling volcano of Lindsay Corydon’s poetry. western part of the west indiesthe Vincentian-Canadian’s debut collection offers a prism of a queer Caribbean self, perpetually duplicitous between excitement and passion. The narrators of these poems express their love for men but lament their inability to freely pursue that passion in the land of their birth. A memorial to a lost comrade, a bittersweet ode to a less-than-perfectly welcoming Antillean coast. In one powerful poem after another, Corydon reveals the emotional void left by the traumatic aftermath of self-exile. Fascinating and heartbreaking words are at the heart of this book.
