Between the Lips of the Waterfall
The clips are unfastened. The wig is removed. The iron-pressed shirt is undone along with the bra and the pants. All limbs buried become released as everything is pulled over. Under. Down.
She stands before the door. Feeling the tremor. Goes forward to the lock with fingertips trembling. Searching. Naked. Vulnerable in this corridor of wall, greyed like the lips of a waterfall.
Wellness & Healing Justice
Dr. Alvis discussed the violence of colonialism and heteronormativity on our bodies as well as surviving “otherwise” as Queeribbean people.
Call for Submissions
This is a crucial period in which Caribbean feminist adherents, emboldened by and spirited with a decolonizing, Queeribbean sensibility, must rise to meet this moment.
A Liberation Delayed
“Black working people did not consistently subvert the control of colonial elites, as becoming free embedded them even more deeply in the structures of colonial domination.”
The Transnational Politics of June Jordan
“June Jordan was uninterested in poetry and writing as a form of escapism; she was using it as a specific political tool — exemplified in ‘Poem about My Rights.’”
Intersectionality in Transnational Contexts
"To treat intersectionality as an account of identity is to shear the framework of its radical potential and make it easily co-optable for neoliberal aims.”
Caribbean Feminist Possibilities
What are the radical possibilities of Caribbean feminisms? Do Caribbean feminisms confront their historical exclusions?
Old Testaments
When I agreed to testify against that man, I did it because Isaiah wanted me to. Because I needed to. Because a little distance lulls you into a false sense of security. Because the silent empty well I’d been falling down for years finally allowed me to scream.
Visions of Kalinago and Garifuna in Peggy Carr’s ‘Shape of a Warrior’: A Review
Shape of a Warrior performs a twofold function, it preserves the past with thoughtful reverence but shows keen awareness that the lives, practices, language, and beliefs of the Kalinago as well as the Garifuna cannot be relegated to relics of history. They literally live among, around, and within us.
Salt
She rose, a surging shadow, glowering. The rust-coloured tinge unfurling across the horizon signalled the disappearing sun. Damian didn’t know what shocked him more, the inordinate eclipse of her presence or the sudden rage of the sea.
Babel and Babylon: Confronting Systems of Silence and Violence represented in novels by Cherie Jones and Kei Miller
There is so much more to say about how these women demonstrate feminist consciousness by fighting for themselves in the worst and most dire situations. There are so many more credits to attribute to the authors of these texts whose use of narratology, both in fiction and nonfiction, activates knowledge and clarifies absences about women which remained hidden historically
Get to Know Our New Artist-in-Residence
Her creative work includes her recently published poetry collection The Mother Island which won 2nd place in the 2021 FCLE competition. The collection deals with matters of identity, motherhood and womanhood in the Caribbean.
Frig It! Screenplay for a not-yet-produced short film by Joanne C. Hillhouse
Irma swings the flashlight toward the gap where the door and window used to be.
Water gushes through both openings. A TEARING metallic sound. Irma swings the flashlight toward the roof. Another part of the GALVANIZE roof rips away. Cresilla’s scream cuts off when she looks up and glimpses a red-chested figure with black cape.
CRESILLA, in wonder, voice carrying in excitement: Frig it!
Caribbean Celluloid: Telling Our Stories on Film
“One Love. That’s right, this session is about film – not just that film though, but Caribbean film more broadly and specifically ones I’ve seen this half year. Twice in the case of Bob Marley: One Love.”
Reconnecting to Caribbean Folklore with ‘When We Were Birds’
This is one such narrative that, for me at least, had lain dormant for too long. It blends the stories from our ancestors — recollections from the enslaved, the indentured, and the colonial masters, as well as remnants of indigenous memory. From the very opening of When We Were Birds, we are reminded of this supernatural heritage that is present in our culture.
Don’t sleep on Caribbean Fantasy and Science Fiction: Caribbean Futurism (A Reflection on 𝑅𝑒𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑖𝑚, 𝑅𝑒𝑠𝘵𝘰𝑟𝑒, 𝑅𝑒𝘵𝑢𝑟𝑛)
My current reading is not by design but it’s a good jumping off point for reflection on how spec fic, or Caribbean futurism, is in many ways the type of fiction we need when the world is at its most volatile or uncertain.
Among Flowers: A Journey with Jamaica Kincaid
Have you ever looked at a book, read its synopsis, and just knew it would be a book that would change your life?
From the moment I began reading Among Flowers, I mourned finishing it.
Object Permanence
On the page, as in life, people (characters) have things that mean something to them; that come to symbolize things in the greater context of the story. For me, the key is not to force it (what a character’s thing is) but to discover it over the course of revisions.
A Psalm for the Living
To whom shall I lift up my prayers
for the children of the living,
whose laughter descends from the clouds?
Empire Studies
Empire is efficient
at greed, at weaponizing belief,
systematic.
It can make you less than human to justify
its brutality towards you.
It can make you less than human to accept its brutality
towards others.