In this issue of sx salon, we celebrate the life and legacy of the Guyanese scholar and teacher Gordon Rohlehr (20 February 1942–29 January 2023); this month marks the eighty-fourth anniversary of his birth. In the two years since his passing, tributes and memorial essays have been plentiful, but—as our guest editor Elaine Savory notes—much yet remains to be done in taking full account of Rohlehr’s impact on the field of Caribbean studies. The writers that Savory has gathered in our discussion section are, she says, inspired by “a profound grief but an equally profound desire” to share their unique experiences of and perspectives on the man and his work. I will leave it to Savory’s excellent introduction, with its lucid and expansive assessment of Rohlehr, to frame the essays presented in the discussion section. For my part, I want to express my gratitude to the writers for their poignant, sometimes intimate, and always generative essays, and to Professor Savory for offering this section to sx salon and shepherding it with such care through the editorial process. Finally, a word of posthumous thanks to Rohlehr himself for his work, which I encountered first as an MA student at the University of the West Indies, Mona. The capacious vision and careful attention that he brought to so many aspects of Caribbean culture, and particularly to our popular culture, constitute a model that I continue to be inspired by.

In our reviews section are assessments of three recent books in Caribbean and Black diaspora studies: Warren Harding reviews Matthew Chin’s Fractal Repair: Queer Histories of Modern Jamaica; Maja Horn reviews Sophie Maríñez’s Spirals in the Caribbean: Representing Violence and Connection in Haiti and the Dominican Republic; and Oliver Ortega reviews Borders, Human Itineraries, and All Our Relation by Dele Adeyemo, Natalie Diaz, Nadia Yala Kisukidi and Rinaldo Walcott. And finally, our poetry and prose section gathers poems by Juleus Ghunta and Elizabeth Shanaz, as well as a suite of poems by the Cuban poet Soleida Ríos and their translations by Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann, Barbara Jamison, and Ezequiel Zaidenwerg-Dib.

In community, and with gratitude for you all,

Rachel L. Mordecai

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Table of Contents

Reviews

“Mobilizing a Mathematics of Disturbance”—Warren Harding
Review of Matthew Chin. Fractal Repair: Queer Histories of Modern Jamaica (Duke University Press, 2024)

“Spirals in the Caribbean”—Maja Horn
Review of Sophie Maríñez, Spirals in the Caribbean: Representing Violence and Connection in Haiti and the Dominican Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

“Rethinking Epistemologies of Modernity and Migration in Black Studies”—Oliver Ortega
Review of Dele Adeyemo, Natalie Diaz, Nadia Yala Kisukidi, and Rinaldo Walcott, Borders, Human Itineraries, and All Our Relation (Duke University Press, 2024)

Discussion

“Meditations on the Work of Gordon Rohlehr”—Elaine Savory, guest editor

“Rohlehr: Playing in the Eshu Paradigm”—Rawle Gibbons 

“Gordon: The Doorway, the Crossroads”—Anu Lakhan 

“Correspondences and Epitaphs”—John Robert Lee 

“Salute to Bookman Gordon Rohlehr: March on Gord Brudder! In Solidarity!”—Leslie R. James 

“Song for Gordon”—Kenneth Ramchand 

Poetry & Prose

Poems—Soleida Ríos, with translations by Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann, Barbara Jamison, and Ezequiel Zaidenwerg-Dib

Poems—Juleus Ghunta 

Poems—Elizabeth Shanaz