Edited by Cyril Dabydeen
February 8, 2012
Caribbean literature has always been exciting and diverse, including over the past decades some of the world’s most regarded writers. Beyond Sangre Grande: Caribbean Writing Today brings together a contemporary selection from key poets and fiction writers living in Canada, the US, the UK, as well as various countries of the Caribbean.
Reflecting a changing world, and admitting diverse cultural influences and generational differences, these writers maintain a distinct Caribbean-ness in their acute historical awareness and in the cadences and rhythms of their language. This collection represents a range of voices, from the established and celebrated–Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, Sam Selvon, Austin Clarke, Olive Senior—to the new and no less exciting moi- N Oji Mzilikazi.
Pick Up a copy today.
My contribution is a poem entitled: “Shards of Glass.”
Beyond Sangre Grande: Caribbean Writing Today
Publisher: TSAR Publications
ISBN: 978-1894770668
Beyond Sangre Grande is a seminal work that reflects the high quality of West Indian writing by locals and expatriate writers. The entries span the gamut of writers from the old guard –Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, Edward Baugh, Austin Clarke– and continue through what i will term the middle guard– Nigel Thomas, Olive Senior, Horace I. Goddard, Opal Palmer Adisa, David Dabydeen, Cyril Dabydeen, and new writers Peter Jailall, Joy Mahabir and others. Cyril has produced a fine anthology, but most of all his introduction is riveting, wide-ranging and highly analytical. This book should will become a classic and should be a texbook for West Indian high schools.
Horace i. Goddard.
Horace,
I share in your sentiments about Beyond Sangre Grande: Caribbean Writing Today deserving classic status and being a West Indian High School literature textbook. In addition, it should be one of those “must read” books for West Indians in the diaspora.
Let’s hope Tsar Publications sees it potential and allocate funds for its promotion rather than leave it to languish on the shelf on a bookstore or in its catalogue.
When H Nigel Thomas launched Lives: Whole and Otherwise at Paragraphe in May 2011, Tsar didn’t bother to send a representative. Thomas has quite a few books on their imprint. Airfare and hotel for one wouldn’t exceed $600. To drive from Toronto to Montreal plus hotel could be priced at $300 – and it was beyond them. Time will reveal the quality of their support. Then again, as made clear in the Introduction – Tsar (paternalistically) considers this compilation to be “a community service.”
Tsar is a recipient of funding from both the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
While I totally agree with you that Cyril’s Introduction is riveting, wide-ranging and highly analytical, of the 43 contributors to the project, mines was the only name not mentioned.