Thursday, June 12th, 2008 - 6.30pm - 8.30pm
Venue: Caribbean Cultural Center, African Diaspora Institute
408 W.58th St New York NY 10019 bet 9th and 10th Ave
Free Admission: Limited Capacity
please rsvp or for more information please contact Monthina Williams mwilliams@cccadi.or or 212-307-7420 ext 3006
For Immediate Release
Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles
Edited by THOMAS GLAVE
416 pages, $24.95/£13.99 trade paperback, ISBN: 978-0-8223-4226-7
$89.95/£54.00 library cloth, ISBN 978-0-8223-4208-3
Publication Date: June 2008
“Our Caribbean is a superb anthology. Thomas Glave does not exaggerate when he writes that this is ‘a book that I and others have been waiting for and have wanted for all our lives.’ Here we have a book that makes literal the ongoing necessity to write ‘against silence.’”—Elizabeth Alexander, author of American Blue: Selected Poems
The first book of its kind, Our Caribbean is an anthology of lesbian and gay writing from across the Antilles. The author and activist Thomas Glave has gathered outstanding fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and poetry by little-known writers along with selections by internationally celebrated figures such as Reinaldo Arenas, Audre Lorde, Achy Obejas, Assotto Saint, José Alcántara Almánzar, Michelle Cliff, and Dionne Brand. The result is an unprecedented literary conversation on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered experiences throughout the Caribbean and its far-flung diaspora. Many selections were originally published in Spanish, Dutch, or creole languages; some are translated into English here for the first time.
The thirty-seven authors hail from the Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Puerto Rico, St. Vincent, St. Kitts, Suriname, and Trinidad. Many have lived outside the Caribbean, and their writing depicts histories of voluntary migration as well as exile from repressive governments, communities, and families. Many pieces have a political urgency that reflects their authors’ work as activists, teachers, community organizers, and performers. Desire commingles with ostracism and alienation throughout: in the evocative portrayals of same-sex love and longing, and in the selections addressing religion, family, race, and class. From the poem “Saturday Night in San Juan with the Right Sailors” to the poignant narrative “We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?” to an eloquent call for the embrace of difference that appeared in the Nassau Daily Tribune on the eve of an anti-gay protest, Our Caribbean is a brave and necessary book.
Thomas Glave is the author of Whose Song? and Other Stories; the essay collection Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent, winner of a Lambda Literary Award; and a forthcoming short fiction collection, The Torturer’s Wife. Born to Jamaican parents in the Bronx and raised there and in Jamaica, Glave is a founding member of the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG). He teaches in the English department at the State University of New York, Binghamton.
Publicity Contact: Laura Sell, lsell@dukeupress.edu, 919-687-3639
