A selection of author talks at the Harlem Book Fair (Saturday, 18 July 2015) related to Caribbean literature.
12:30pm – 1:30pm – BEING WOMAN IN CONTEMPORARY CARIBBEAN LITERATURE
Countee Cullen Library Auditorium
104 West 136th Street, New York, NY 10030
Panelists: Denecia Green, Sex, Lies and Betrayal (Jamaica); Leslie Saint Julien, More Than Me – Lives in New York (Haiti); Tiphanie Yanique, Land of Love and Drowning, (U.S. Virgin Islands)
‘Being woman’ is a universal idea but what is it to be woman, black and Caribbean? How does this ‘trifecta’ of culture affect and inform the work of these popular writers? What ‘woman’ archetypes and ideas do they project in their work? Are they beneficial or stereotypical? Are they to be embraced or avoided? How does Caribbean writing impact our idea of blackness?
***
1:40 p.m. – 2:40 p.m. – WRITING THE CARIBBEAN
Countee Cullen Library Auditorium
104 West 136th Street, New York, NY 10030
Moderator: Yashika Lopez, Bazba Theatrical Players
Panelists: Basil ‘Ku-Soonogo’ Lopez (Jamaica) Only as the Wind Blows; Dr. Michael Barnett, (Jamaica) Rastafari in the New Millennium; Russell Brooks, (Barbados) The Demeter Code
From expatriate writers to those who found inspiration on the island, the Caribbean has a storied literary past and a promising future. The Jamaican writer, poet Claude McKay, is credited with having inspired the Negritude (“Blackness”) movement in France and was a part of the Harlem Renaissance in the United States. Join these new and established word weavers in a discussion of their work and views on representative writing.
***
2:45pm – 4:00pm – LITERATURE AND DIASPORA
Harlem Hospital’s Mural Pavilion
506 Lenox Avenue (Malcolm X Boulevard) at 136th Street
Moderator: Cheryl Sterling, Professor at CUNY
Panelists: Ifeona Fulani, Ten Days in Jamaica; Gillian Royes, The Rhythm of the August Rain; Tiphanie Yanique, Land of Love and Drowning; Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Daughters of the Stone
Diasporic literature is not simply about exile and return or dislocation and rupture. However, space, as lived reality, remains a recurring theme in the novels, poems, and short stories that form this growing body of work. This literature almost always highlights a specific relationship to a place or culture, but is universal in approach and appeal. But like the Martinican poet and political figure, Aimé Césaire, these writers “have a different idea of the universal. It is of a universal rich with all that is particular, rich with all the particulars there are, the deepening of each particular, the coexistence of them all.”
***
4:00pm – 6:00pm – RACE AND POLITICS IN A TIME OF CRISIS
Schomburg Center for Research In Black Culture
Langston Hughes Auditorium
515 Malcolm X Blvd, New York, NY 10037
Moderator: Imani Perry, More Beautiful, And More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Equality in the
United States
Panelists: Deborah Thomas, Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica; Samuel Roberts, Infectious Fear: Politics, Disease, and the Health Effects of Segregation; Christopher Lebron, The Color of Our Shame: Race and Justice in our Time, Nell I. Painter, The History of White People
This roundtable discussion will range widely across the issues that have brought tens of thousands to the streets in response to the crisis and spectacle of highly publicized black deaths. Panelists will explore questions concerning the rule of law, the state of black politics, the philosophy of race and attempt to chart pathways to fulfilling the promise of democratic American citizenship.
***
Above represents only a selection from talks listed on the Harlem Book Fair 2015 author talks page.
