Paule Marshall, 1929-2019. Photo Copyright © The Associated Press.
“…Thus, a complex body of work was narrowed down to its racial themes, as though a black artist’s work could be seen and appreciated only if it was presented as clearly and recognizably black….” Nell Painter
Heather Barker, second-place winner of the 2017 Frank Collymore Literary Award for The Plundering, a collection of stories. The title story appeared in the anthology So Many Islands, edited by Nicholas Laughlin with Nailah Folami Imoja. Photo Copyright © 2018 by the Central Bank of Barbados.
MAPPING BARBADOS’ LITSCAPE is an ArtsEtc project to track and document Barbados’ very rich and diverse literary tradition. At our house, the need to better connect readers to this landscape and region has taken many forms over the years.
Norma Meek sure knows how to pack a bariffle of pre-teen troubles into 150 pages.
In Watching Out for Mummy, which the author wrote twelve years ago and is still her only novel, we meet 11-year-old Shawn Austin at a moment of transition: he’s about to swap life in Barbados for life in New Jersey in the United States, where his mum lives.
Aboard the Reconnaissance, the vessel where Natives of My Person takes place, a member of the crew, a young and boastful carpenter, banters with a more experienced crewmember who tells the carpenter that he has much to learn. “You are too young to have much history,” he warns the carpenter. The carpenter’s pride is hurt, so he boasts of the skills and achievement of his ancestors, of the lineage of craftsmen to which he was born and he says, “I have a lot history in my hands.”
THE ArtsEtc Independence Reading List is now nine years old!
The IndyList, as we like to call it, is a selection of 12 Barbadian books to make friends with over the coming year.
The list, which first appeared in 2011, is part of the Editors' ongoing "Mapping Our Literature" mission, which promotes awareness of and celebrates Barbadian books and their authors. Each year, we recommend new, classic, and noteworthy titles in fiction and non-fiction, poetry, and children’s literature.
And we encourage you to discover and add your own!
Barbadian writers share their thoughts and feelings on Toni Morrison. ArtsEtc lands the found poem "Truth She Wrote" in the process. Read on or click the writers' images below...
THE TOP SPOT at the Frank Collymore Literary Awards went to Hazel Simmons McDonald on January 5, 2019.
Simmons-McDonald, a retired University of the West Indies professor and poet, took second place in the 2018 competition. She won for her manuscript A Collection of Short Stories.
For the third time in its twenty-one-year history, the committee decided not to award a first prize from the shortlist.
Performer and poet Sonia Williams, for the second year running, took third place with her poetry manuscript On Livity.
Compelling and emphatic language toned down by academic speak. A stitched-together structure that is both focused and diffuse. The folk voices of Philip Nanton’s Frontiers of the Caribbean nevertheless come across, especially the accounts of his fellow Vincentians from interviews—or from personal profiling: “I cannot say that I knew my father well. Perhaps he did not want to be known. What I remember of his characteristics could fit on a postage stamp, but there were identifiable tendencies that were almost archetypal.” The book could have done with more of such illustrative a
In Nicole Blades' second novel, The Thunder Beneath Us, a talented but self-sabotaging writer is forced to grapple with her painful past as years of secrecy and shame come back to haunt her. Best Lightburn is an ingenue making a name for herself in the New York magazine world; she is surrounded by fabulous, fun friends and is dating a handsome movie star. But things take a bad turn when her boyfriend, Grant, has a breakdown and her beloved boss leaves the style magazine where she works.
