Historically, women have been under-represented in politics. Patriarchal political parties, debilitating customs and discriminatory selection processes, and obstructionist attitudes have generally contributed to the inability of women to enter mainstream political life in a significant way. In Women in Caribbean Politics Cynthia Barrow-Giles and her co-contributors profile 20 of the most influential women in modern Caribbean politics who have struggled and excelled, in spite of the obstacles. Divided into four parts, this volume looks at women who led the struggle for freedom; those who agitated for equal rights and justice in the pre-independence period; postcolonial trailblazers; as well as a group which Cynthia Barrow-Giles refers to as Women CEOs. The profiles cover women from 12 territories, with varying political, ethnic and socio-economic issues. Anyone with an interest in Caribbean Politics or Gender Studies will find Women in Caribbean Politics to be an excellent introduction. For students and teachers, it will be a valuable resource, as it highlights some of the little-known stories of Caribbean women who have set the foundation for, and continue to help to shape the identity of their nations and the region on a whole.
An insightful exploration of the nature of race and ethnicity in colonial and postcolonial Caribbean societies, this tale follows the charismatic Isaac Shepherd, who returns to the island of San Cristobal to lead an independence movement that unites the island’s diverse groups against the colonial establishment. However, mutual suspicions arise as the groups fail to communicate openly about their different perspectives on colonialism, making them all vulnerable. Paralleling the world of political turmoil is the bond between Ma Shepherd, Isaac's mother, and the sons of the sparring politicians, including the white son of a reactionary chief of police. Tense and tragic, this novel delves into the implications of ethnic difference as it investigates the process of perception, communication, and knowledge.
Kamau Brathwaite is a major Caribbean poet of his generation and one of the major world poets of the second half of the twentieth century. Elegguas--a play on "elegy" and "Eleggua," the Yoruba deity of the threshold, doorway, and crossroad--is a collection of poems for the departed. Modernist and post-modernist in inspiration, Elegguas draws together traditions of speaking with the dead, from Rilke's Duino Elegies to the Jamaican kumina practice of bringing down spirits of the dead to briefly inhabit the bodies of the faithful, so that the ancestors may provide spiritual assistance and advice to those here on earth. The book is also profoundly political, including elegies for assassinated revolutionaries like in the masterful "Poem for Walter Rodney."
Throughout his poetry, Brathwaite foregrounds "nation-language," that difference in syntax, in rhythm, and timbre that is most closely allied to the African experience in the Caribbean, using the computer to explore the graphic rendition of nuances of language. Brathwaite experiments using his own Sycorax fonts, as well as deliberate misspellings ("calibanisms") and deviations in punctuation. But this is never simple surface aesthetic, rather an expression of the turbulence (in history, in dream) depicted in the poems. This collection is a stunning follow-up to Brathwaite's Born to Slow Horses (Wesleyan, 2005), winner of the Griffin International Poetry Prize.
