Jonelle Isaac – Page 2 – The Caribbean Commons

Book Party Conversation: Elizabeth Nunez with Special Guest Host – Tayari Jones

Elizabeth Nunez has delivered a masterpiece. Join her for a Book Party Conversation with special guest host, Tayari Jones.

SUNDAY 6 APRIL, 2014

Time: 3:00 – 6:00 pm

HARLEM ARTS SALON

1925 Seventh Avenue Apt 7L

(between 116th-117th Streets)

New York, NY 10026

Admission: $25 includes a signed copy of Not For Everyday Use. Food & wine.

RSVP: (212) 749-7771

For tickets click here.

HARLEM ARTS SALON invites you to a book party and talk in celebration of Elizabeth Nunez’s thrilling new memoir Not For Everyday Use. Join the conversation between Elizabeth and Tayari Jones, our special guest host and author of the “compelling” novel (Vogue), Silver Sparrow. Ms.Jones will talk to Nunez about her memoir and masterful storytelling skills. A fun, informative read; a REAL page turner, brutally honest, humorous, Not For Everyday Use is an intimate, fascinating portrait of Nunez’s fascinating life.

ELIZABETH NUNEZ is the award-winning author of eight novels. Both Boundaries and Anna In-Between were New York Times Editors’ Choices. Anna In-Between won the 2010 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award and was long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Nunez also received the 2011 Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers and Barnes & Noble, and a NALIS Lifetime Literary Award from the Trinidad & Tobago National Library. She is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, CUNY, where she teaches fiction writing. She divides her time between Amityville and Brooklyn, New York. Her memoir, Not for Everyday Use, is her latest work.

TAYARI JONES’ first novel, Leaving Atlanta, received several awards and accolades including the Hurston/Wright Award for Debut Fiction. It was named “Novel of the Year” by Atlanta Magazine and “Best Southern Novel of the Year,” by Creative Loafing Atlanta. The Atlanta Journal Constitution and The Washington Post both listed it as one of the best of 2002. Bookpage lists it among the best debuts of the decade.

Message adapted from email announcement.

Indian Women in Caribbean Colonies – CFP

Call for Papers: Re-Memory/Remembering: Indian Women in Caribbean Colonies

Deadline: 300 word abstract by 21 March 2014

Send to Mayuri Deka: mayurideka.deka@cob.edu.bs and Alison Klein: alisonjlklein@gmail.com.

Although Kemla Persad-Bissessar, a woman of Indian descent, was recently elected Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, the role of Indian women in Caribbean history remains largely invisible. However, the last decade has seen a dramatic increase of writers such as Ramabai Espinet, Peggy Mohan, and Gauitra Bahadur pushing against this invisibility. These authors imagine the experiences of the thousands of Indian women who labored under indenture on British plantations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often structuring their stories by overlapping events from the present with memories of the past.

The panel invites papers that examine depictions of Indian women in the indenture period of the Caribbean, considering the ways these texts bring the lives of these women back into public memory. They are especially interested in papers that explore the ways these women negotiated constricting gender roles and life in a new country to construct a sense of home.

Message adapted from email.

Caribbean Studies Syllabi

There is growing global interest in how Caribbean philosophical problems, concepts, and figures are taught. The Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA) are looking to archive and make available their collective syllabi. If you have any of which you are particularly proud or that worked especially well, please send them to CPA at caribphil@gmail.com. These can and should be syllabi from the full range of disciplines within the CPA.

The Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA) are hoping that this can be part of an exchange through which they could receive and share syllabi created at the Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity in Durban, South Africa and by members of the Thinking Africa group at Rhodes in Grahamstown, South Africa.

For more information contact the CPA via their website here.

Message adapted from email.

Coolitude: An Afternoon of Indo-Caribbean Art and Literature

29 March 2014, 4:00pm – 6:00pm

New York City Building
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Queens NY 11368

The term “Coolitude” was originally coined by Mauritian poet Khal Torabully,the aesthetics of which are defined as the articulation of the imaginaries of mosaic India and other human and cultural spaces. Starting from the derogatory word for indentured South Asian laborers, “coolie”, which he revitalized, Torabully extended it to geographical and cultural migrants throughout the world. His poetry voiced the need of relation between the descendants of the emancipated slaves and the indentured, allowing interplay with other cultures, thus clearly constructed far from essentialism or an exclusive “nostalgia of the origins”.

The Queens Museum is proud to explore current Indo-Caribbean writers and artists who are turning to the history of indenture as muse and subject for interrogation in their own work. The multi-media event combines a reading from Gaiutra Bahadur’s book Coolie Woman, sculptural performance by artist Andil Gosine, performance poetry by Rajiv Mohabir, and a screening of Ian Harnarine’s short film “Doubles with Slight Pepper.” The presentations will culminate in a panel discussion with the artists moderated by Lisa Outar, a scholar of post-colonial literature focused on Indo-Caribbean representation.

About the Presentations Continue reading Coolitude: An Afternoon of Indo-Caribbean Art and Literature

Afro-Latinos in Movement

Call for Papers – Afro-Latinos in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas

Submission deadline: by 11:59pm EST on 1 June 2014

Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) invites complete manuscripts from all disciplines for inclusion in this volume, including relevant creative works. All submissions (creative or scholarly) must be original. Manuscripts may be from historical or contemporary perspectives and address topics including, but not limited to, the following:

The role of social media and the internet in shaping afrolatinidad
Afro-Latino cultural and political movements
The impact of migration on understandings of afrolatinidad
Representations of afrolatinidad in media (e.g. newspapers, magazines, digital media)
Theoretical interventions on diaspora and transnationalism in the Americas

Proposals should include: Continue reading Afro-Latinos in Movement

Critical Caribbean Studies @Rutgers presents a Lecture by Anthony Bogues

Wednesday 12 March, 4:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m.

Rutgers University

302 Murray Hall (Plangere Annex) CAC

510 George Street

New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Critical Caribbean Studies will present Professor Anthony Bogues, from Brown University, to give a public lecture titled:“Freedom, Emancipation and the Human: the Radical Caribbean Intellectual Tradition—From Toussaint L’Ouverture to Sylvia Wynter”

Reception to follow.

For more information, go to http://criticalcaribbean.rutgers.edu/

Organized by Carter Mathes and the Critical Caribbean Studies, Theory, and the Disciplines cluster.

Event co-sponsored by Critical Caribbean Studies (CCS), the Office of the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of English.

Event adapted from email.

Caribbean Cultural Theatre presents: Pantomime by Derek Walcott

The Caribbean Cultural Theatre Friends Recognition Reception presents Pantomime by Derek Walcott.

Thursday 27 March, 2014 7:30 p.m.

Actors Fund Actors Center

160 Schermerhorn Street (between Hoyt and Smith)

Brooklyn, NY 11201 map

Contribution: $100 $150 $250 $500

Click here for ticketing.

Additional Dates:

Friday 21 and 28 March at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday 22 and 29 March at 3:30p.m. and 8.00 p.m.

Sunday 23 and 30 March at 6:30 p.m.

For more information: info@caribbeantheatre.org 718-270-6218 / 718-783-8345

Patrons : Hon. Una Clarke, Board Chair, Caribbean Research Center

Hon. Julian Du Bois, Consul General, St. Lucia

Hon. N. Nick Perry, Deputy Majority Leader, New York State Assembly

Honorees : Rennie Bishop – broadcaster, WWRL

Kinton Kirby – editor, Caribbean Life Newspaper

Vinette Pryce – journalist, Caribbean Life Newspaper

Honorary Friends Co-Chairs : Dr. Julius Garvey and Dr. Elizabeth Nunez

Friends Host Commitee : Hazra Ali, Colene Cox, Beverly DeSouza, Dr. J. A. George Irish, Zenobia McNally, Claire Patterson, Sandie Webster; Arlene White

Board : Malcolm Hall (Chairman), Sylvia Cowie, Maxine Hamilton-Alexander, Dorette Headley, Jessica Odle-Baril; Yvette Rennie

Reception By : Bacardi and Super Wings.

THE PLAY
What happens when two middle-aged guys flee the worlds they have always known and wind up on the same tropical island, one as the owner of a hotel, the other as his servant? And what if they looked at a role-reversal play as part of the hotel’s entertainment? That is the thread that weaves the storyline of this fast-paced comedy together and gives audiences a non-stop romp through cliché, humour, drama, societal roles and most interestingly, self image.
Pantomime by Derek Walcott embraces several issues of racial and cultural equality, of colonial history, and powerfully explores and subsequently deconstructs Caribbean identity as fabricated by the white European colonizer.

THE WRITER
Derek Alton Walcott, is a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. In addition to having won the Nobel, Walcott has won many literary awards over the course of his career including an Obie Award in 1971 for his play ream on Monkey Mountain, a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen’s Medal for Poetry, and the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize for his book of poetry, White Egrets.

Message adapted from flyer.

IRAAS and Affiliates Present: “Gender and Justice”

Thursday 6 March, 2014 at 4:30 p.m.

Institute for Research on Women and Gender

763 Schermerhorn Extension

1200 Amsterdam Avenue

New York, NY 10027

The Columbia Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality presents: Gender and Justice. IRWGS visiting scholar, Tami Navarro will present, “Easy Money and Respectable Girls:Neoliberalism and Expectation in the US Virgin Islands.” Followed by a discussion led by Vanessa Agard-Jones.

Message adapted from email announcement.

Caribbean Epistemologies Seminar-“Tainted Regret: The Cold War and Caribbean Solidarity Post-1983″

Laurie Lambert: Tainted Regret: The Cold War and Caribbean Solidarity Post-1983

Wednesday 5 March, 1:00pm- 3:00pm

The Graduate Center, CUNY

365 Fifth Ave btwn 34th & 35th

Room 9205

Free and open to the public. The building and the venues are fully accessible. For more information please visit http://centerforthehumanities.org/ or call 212.817.2005 or e-mail ch@gc.cuny.edu

Join Laurie Lambert, Assistant Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of California, Davis for a session that explores how the collective memory of the Grenada Revolution’s participants and regional observers is tainted by the mass violence that marked the collapse of the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) and the American invasion of Grenada. In Chronicles of the Hostile Sun (1984), Trinidadian-Canadian writer Dionne Brand uses her poems to discredit U.S. imperialist rhetoric and policy in the Caribbean. St. Lucian author Derek Walcott, on the other hand, critiques the U.S. invasion of Grenada while expressing deep skepticism about the revolution in the unpublished essay “Good Old Heart of Darkness” (1984). Read together Brand and Walcott recount the revolution as a complex example of transnational resistance to U.S. imperialism in the midst of the Cold War.

You can access the reading at http://centerforthehumanities.org/seminars/caribbean-epistemologies-0#meeting-id-6043

Event adapted from email announcement.

The Spaces between Words – Latest Podcasts

Announcing the latest podcast interviews from The Spaces between Words (previous interviews available at www.spaceswords.com)

Geraldine Skeete speaks with Oonya Kempadoo : http://www.spaceswords.com/?page_id=1714

Paula Morgan speaks with Olive Senior : http://www.spaceswords.com/?page_id=1732

Tyrone Ali speaks with Colin Grant : http://www.spaceswords.com/?page_id=1758

Shivanee Ramlochan speaks with Irvine Welsh : http://www.spaceswords.com/?page_id=1775

Karen Sanderson-Cole speaks with Andrea Stuart : http://www.spaceswords.com/?page_id=1815

Ryan Durgasingh speaks with Ifeona Fulani : http://www.spaceswords.com/?page_id=1838

Adapted from email announcement.

YURUMEIN (Homeland)

YURUMEIN (Homeland)

Resistance, Rupture & Repair: The Story of the Caribs of St. Vincent in the Caribbean

Produced and directed by Andrea E. Leland

50 minute documentary / DVD format

HELP GET THE WORD OUT ABOUT THIS FILM! Host a screening of the film, review the film on your website, blog and / or newsletter, purchase the film for your library or personal use, your mention the film in your social networking.

Press kit, photos, and video trailer here: http://www.yurumeinproject.com

YURUMEIN (your-o-main) is an important UNTOLD STORY of Carib / Garifuna resistance against slavery that deserves its place in the annals of the African Diaspora. The film recounts the painful past of the Caribs on St Vincent and the extermination of scores of their ancestors at the hands of the British, while building an intimate portrait of Garifuna culture in-transition today. We are given firsthand accounts from both Carib descendants who remain on the island of St Vincent and voices of returning descendants whose ancestors were exiled to Central America—where Garifuna traditional culture was able to survive and flourish.

When members of the Diaspora are first reunited and make a collective pilgrimage to the sacred site of Balliceaux (where the genocide occurred) the film reveals the beginnings of a movement among Garifuna people to revitalize traditional language, music, dance, and ritual. This scene features the Garifuna National Folkloric Ballet of Honduras. As Garifuna from around the world come together to remember and celebrate the lives and resilience of their shared ancestors, they also begin to discover possibility and hope for the future of Garifuna culture and a greater worldwide community. Honorary Consul Dr. Cadrin Gill, a Carib from Sandy Bay on St. Vincent and currently practicing medicine in Los Angeles is the primary spokesman in the film. Footage includes a dance performance with members of the Honduran National Garifuna Folkloric . The surround soundtrack includes Garifuna music by Andy Palacio, Rhodel Castillo and music composed by Abuza from St. Vincent. Original artwork by Garifuna artist Greg Palacio.

In 2005, I was invited to screen my film THE GARIFUNA JOURNEY on the island of St. Vincent. The film, which focuses on the Garifuna who now live in Belize played to the local audience who very moved emotionally by the story told in the film. As they watched the descendants of exiled Garifuna onscreen, they realized that Garifuna culture, language and spirituality had flourished in the Diaspora. The Garifuna who had been living on St. Vincent became even more conscious of the disconnect between their own lives and the history and ways of their ancestors. This was a transformative experience for me. I realized then that my film only told half of the story. What was missing were the voices of the descendants of the Caribs who were not exiled and who grew up on St. Vincent. Their ancestors have lived under very repressive British colonial rule for the past 200 years. The story of YURUMEIN began that very day.

Here is what Helen Arzu (Garifuna) says about the film: Nice quality filming and editing as well. Really good work.

1) You let the people of St. Vincent tell the story
2) You showed who they were, how and where they lived – which shows their resilience
3) Without being judgmental or didactic you made it clear what the Caribs want – they want their heritage to be recognized and respected.

Garifuna anthropologist Dr. Joseph Palacio says: The film is most appropriate for a people struggling to throw away a shameful past as they rediscover their true history. This applies to indigenous peoples, afro-descendants, and any other people to whom cultural revitalization is a painful process.. As a region the Caribbean is the crucible par excellence for such experience, for it was here where the identity of the non-colonizers was brutally suppressed and all efforts made to extinguish it permanently.

Contacts for more information :

EMAIL: yurumeinmovie@gmail.com / aeleland@gmail.com

FACEBOOK:https://www.facebook.com/Yurumeinthemovie

WEBSITE: www.yurumeinproject.com / www.andrealeland.com

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/YurumeinFilm

Metanoia: Practices of Exhaustion- Two Day Event

On 7 March, from 6p-8p, ARC Magazine will present an artist talk at 82 Mercer Street, in the Talks Lounge at VOLTA NY‘s location.

The artists include:

Olivia McGilchrist, feature prize winner of the Trinidad & Tobago film festival and ARC Magazine New Media Prize (Jamaica)
John Cox, fine artist represented by Popop Studios, and artistic director of Baha Mar, Nassau (The Bahamas)
Ian Deleon, social activist, educator and artist (Cuba/Brazil/Boston)
Jayson Keeling, artist (Jamaica/USA)
Joiri Minaya, artist (Dominican Republic/USA).

The dialogue generated will explore the ideas of intimacy, collaboration, process, and social accountability.

8 March, 2014

Grace Exhibition Space and Gallery

840 Broadway 2nd Floor

Brooklyn, NY

Beginning at 8pm on 8 March, ARC Magazine will present a one-night exhibition at Grace Exhibition Space under the same title.

The exhibition will support a selection of works by:

Kwesi Abbensetts (Guyana/USA)
Steeve Bauras (Martinique/France)
Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow (Jamaica/USA)
Allana Clarke (Trinidad & Tobago/USA)
Gilles Elie Dit Cosaque (Martinique / France)
Ian Deleón (Cuba / USA)
Jeannette Ehlers (Denmark)
Antoine Hunt (Bermuda)
Jayson Keeling (Jamaica/USA)
Davina Lee (St. Lucia)
Carolyn Lazard (USA/Haiti)
Manuel Mathieu (Haiti)
Olivia McGilchrist (Jamaica)
Michael McIntosh (USA/Jamaica)
Joiri Minaya (Dominican Republic/USA)
Nile Saulter (Jamaica)
Nyugen Smith (Trinidad/Haiti/USA)
Rodell Warner (Trinidad & Tobago)
Antonia Wright (Cuba/USA).

Broadly, the works selected will engage issues of labour, traumatic histories and their revisions, as well as the holistic development of an experiential moment or group of moments that create new narratives, linear and otherwise, through poetics, agency and play.

This exhibition is co-curated by Holly Bynoe and Yasmine Espert with production assistance from Laura Blüer. For more information about ARC Magazine collaborators, please visit the Facebook event pages for the artist talk and the exhibition.

This announcement adapted from email.

CFP: The 2nd Biennial Latina/o Literary Theory and Criticism Conference

Latina/o Utopias: Futures, Forms, and the Will of Literature

John Jay College of Criminal Justice

City University of New York

23-25 April, 2015

Abstracts due: 15 September, 2014

Notification of acceptance: 15 October, 2014

Please send abstracts of 250 words and queries to Professor Belinda Linn Rincón and Professor Richard Perez at latlitconfnyc@gmail.com.

In his most recent work, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009), José Esteban Muñoz proposed queer utopianism as “an idealist mode of critique that reminds us that there is something missing, that the present […] is not enough.” Muñoz’s call to imagine that which is not-yet-conscious compels us to let our dissatisfaction with a corruptive social stasis resharpen our critical endeavors and re-direct our interpretative lenses toward more liberatory and affirming futures. Latina/o Utopias take up Muñoz’s invitation, indeed, his imploration to reconceive the trajectories of Latina/o literary studies by welcoming submissions to the 2015 Latina/o Utopias conference. As a germinative concept, rich in the kind of interdisciplinary and theoretical sophistication that defines Muñoz’s work, queer utopia provides a radical hermeneutic capable of tracking what he called the “anticipatory illumination” that abounds in Latina/o literature. Continue reading CFP: The 2nd Biennial Latina/o Literary Theory and Criticism Conference

WORD! – A Caribbean Book Fest Call for Writers

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WORD! – A Caribbean Book Fest Call for Writers

Sunday 8 June 2014
2:00pm- 8:00pm
Medgar Evers College,
1650 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY

Deadline: 8 March, 2014

Interested writers should contact poets@caribbeantheatre.org with a brief outline of published work and/or work to be presented.

Caribbean Cultural Theatre invites established and emerging writers of published works to participate in the third staging of WORD! – A Caribbean Book Fest at Medgar Evers College -City University of New York on Sunday 8 June, 2014. This coming together of authors and storytellers, readers and literary curious coincides with Caribbean American Heritage Month and is held in Brooklyn, NY – the world’s largest Caribbean meeting place.

Creative writers and poets whose work may include, but not limited to, issues of identities, migration and assimilation, resistance, politics, gender and sexuality, oral narratives and storytelling, language, sports and pastimes in the Caribbean and its Diaspora. Young writers, first-time published writers, and those writing with a youth focus are especially encouraged to respond.

Above adapted from CFP.

CFP-Reworking Freedom: Re-Centering the Enslaved in Histories of the Americas

Reworking Freedom : Graduate Student Workshop on Re-Centering the Enslaved in Histories of the Americas

CFP Deadline: 16 May, 2014

The workshop will be held in mid-to-late October 2014 at Columbia University.

Proposals are welcomed from a variety of disciplines. Papers are invited that discuss themes as diverse as, though not limited to, maroons, rebels, and runaways; botanical, medical, and scientific knowledge of the enslaved; relationships between enslaved Africans and indigenous Americans, indentured Indian, Chinese, and European migrants; religious practices of the enslaved; the enslaved and abolitionism; the enslaved and revolutions in the Americas. Participants are welcome to propose traditional papers, but the program is especially interested in presentations that break with traditional forms, including interdisciplinary and collaborative projects and projects that emphasize community engaged research.

Continue reading CFP-Reworking Freedom: Re-Centering the Enslaved in Histories of the Americas

Author: Jonelle Isaac