sx salon 27 is now available!

This issue includes, “The Brathwaite Effect,” a special discussion section of interviews with writers about Kamau Brathwaite’s impact on the paths their academic and creative works have taken. The conversations with these five poets and scholars—Vladimir Lucien, John Robert Lee, Anthony Joseph, Pamela Mordecai, and Elaine Savory—began in 2016 and were, in true Brathwaitian style, multiply revisited and revised over the past year. It seems timely that we publish this special section now, just after Brathwaite has been awarded the lifetime achievement 2018 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. Along with four interviews we publish a massive Kamau Brathwaite bibliography, with more than 750 entries, which began as a collaborative researchathon in December 2014.

Brathwaite is also present in our review and poetry sections this issue. Wilfredo J. Burgos Matos reviews Brathwaite’s latest collection of poetry, Liviticus, and Gina Athena Ulysse’s poem, “Ogu’s Sword & Brathwaite’s Pen,” honors his legacy. Also included in this issue are a review by Andre Bagoo of Martín Espada’s poetry collection Vivas to Those Who Have Failed, and a review by Nathan H. Dize of Jacques Stephen Alexis’s posthumously published novel, L’étoile absinthe. In Poetry, we offer new work by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor and Chris Astwood as well as a translation of Monchoachi’s poetry by Chris Monier.

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Table of Contents

Introduction and Table of Contents—Kelly Baker Josephs

 Reviews

 His Father’s Disciple—Andre Bagoo

Martín Espada, Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016); 96 pages; ISBN 978-0393353952 (paperback)

 Taking One Last Breath, Catching One Last Glimpse—Nathan H. Dize

Jacques Stephen Alexis, L’étoile absinthe (Paris: Zulma, 2017) 155 pages; ISBN 978-2843047886 (paperback)

 Offerings to Eternity, Longing of Remembrance—Wilfredo J. Burgos Matos

Kamau Brathwaite, Liviticus (Phillipsburg, St. Martin: House of Nehesi, 2017); 30 pages; ISBN 978-09962243239 (paperback)

 Discussion—The Brathwaite Effect: Poets and Scholars on the Influence of Kamau Brathwaite

 “Kamau’s Children”: John Robert Lee and Vladimir Lucien Discuss the Influence of Kamau Brathwaite

 Brathwaitian Engines of Expression: Anthony Joseph on the Influence of Kamau Brathwaite—Kelly Baker Josephs

 Poetic Prisms: Pamela Mordecai on the Influence of Kamau Brathwaite—Kelly Baker Josephs

 “He Changes Your Imagining”: Elaine Savory on the Influence of Kamau Brathwaite—Kelly Baker Josephs

 The Kamau Brathwaite Bibliography—Kelly Baker Josephs and Teanu Reid

Poetry

Gina Athena Ulysse
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor
Monchoachi, translated by Chris Monier
Chris Astwood

The Afro-Latinx Futures series is committed to publishing scholarly monographs and edited collections that center Blackness and Afrolatinidad from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives in the humanities and social sciences. Taking a hemispheric approach, we seek work that foregrounds the lives and contributions of Afro-Latinx peoples across Latin America, the Caribbean, and the diasporic U.S. and Canada. We welcome projects that introduce new historical figures and archival findings, focus on understudied regions and communities, establish innovative interdisciplinary frameworks, and challenge conventional canonical formations. Topics may include but are by no means limited to: afro-indigeneity, migration and exile, marronage/cimarronaje/quilombismo, literature, intellectual history, ethnography, geography, philosophy, performance and visual arts, and gender and sexuality. Above all, by centering Blackness and Afrolatinidad, this series aims to challenge the racial and ethnic frameworks, national imaginaries, and disciplinary constraints that continue to dominate study of the Americas and Caribbean and, more ambitiously, to help shape the future of such fields as Latin American Studies, African American Studies, Black Studies, Latinx Studies, Chicanx Studies, and American Studies.

23 March 2018. Film screening and panel discussion with Patricia Rodney, Robert A. Hill, and Robin "Jerry" Small on the legacy of Walter Rodney. Symposium will be held at the Wright Museum in Detroit, MI.

More information may be found here: https://thewright.org/index.php/explore/events/upcoming-events. 

14 March 2018. Profs. María Fernández aka Mariposa (Black Studies Program), Kaliris Salas-Ramírez (CUNY School of Medicine), and Vanessa K. Valdés (Dept. of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures) spoke on the current state of Puerto Rico after the hurricane. Issues included a historical background to this present moment (how did we get here?), disaster relief efforts, the privatization of schools, and what we can do moving forward. This conversation was inspired by the Puerto Rico Syllabus (puertoricosyllabus.com).

King's Rock | Salt | Stone is a finalist for a Lambda Literary award. "The Lambda Literary Awards identify and celebrate the best lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender books of the year and affirm that LGBTQ stories are part of the literature of the world. The ‘Lammys,’ which receive national and international media attention, bring together 600 attendees—including nominees, celebrities, sponsors, and publishing executives—to celebrate excellence in LGBTQ publishing. It is the most prestigious and glamorous LGBTQ literary event in the world.”

This gala awards ceremony will take place at NYU on 4 June 2018.

A full list of the Lambda finalists can be found here:
https://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/news/03/06/lambda-literary-award-finalists/

10 March-22 April. Roshini Kempadoo will be exhibiting as an invited artist to the India: Contemporary Photographic and New Media Art exhibition lead curated by Sunil Gupta. FotoFest 2018 speaks to a number of contemporary issues in India including gender and sexuality, land rights conflict, the environment, human settlement and migration, and caste and class divisions. The participating artists are from India and the global Indian diaspora.

Details for the event may be found @ e-flux.com

March 8th @ 7pm @ Strand Books, NYC.

Join some of NYC’s best bad women as they share their incendiary work and instigate further upending of good girl mores. 

Mar 22, 2018 | 6:00pm
James Room, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Co-Sponsors: Barnard Center for Research on Women, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism

Please join us as we host a conversation between authors Erna Brodber (Nothing’s Mat; The Rainmaker’s Mistake, among others)  and Nicole Dennis-Benn (Here Comes the Sun) as the first event in the newly-expanded series, Critical Caribbean Feminisms. These authors will discuss issues including the Caribbean and its diaspora, method, feminism, and gender in their work. The conversation with be followed by a moderated discussion.

RSVP here: http://bcrw.barnard.edu/event/critical-caribbean-feminisms-a-dialogue/

sx archipelagos is now accepting submissions for our upcoming special section "Slavery in the Machine," guest edited by Jessica Marie Johnson. This special section aims to highlight scholarship situated at the intersection of technology and hemispheric American slavery. Topics may include but are not limited to:

• black code studies through a hemispheric lens
• plantation societies and the socio-technics of enslavement
• digital archives of slavery
• representations of slavery on the open web or social media
• cultural analytics and slavery

Deadline for abstracts 16 April
Article submission deadline 16 July

sx archipelagos is a born-digital articulation of the Small Axe Project. It is a peer-reviewed publication platform devoted to creative exploration, debate, and critical thinking about and through digital practices in contemporary scholarly and artistic work in and on the Caribbean. Given the wide implications of the “digital turn” for our very conceptions of knowledge, our mission is to discern the ways in which the digital may enhance and transform our comprehension of the regional and diasporic Caribbean. sx archipelagos responds to this challenge with three distinct dimensions of critical production: scholarly essays; digital scholarship projects; and digital project reviews

Latina Life Stories Speaker Series Presents: 

Date: 27 February 2018

Time: 3:40-5:15pm

Location: Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library 

Frances Negrón-Muntaner is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, curator, scholar and professor at Columbia University, where she is the founding director of the Media and Idea Lab and founding curator of the Latino Arts and Activism Archive at Columbia’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Library. Among her books and publications are: Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture (CHOICE Award, 2004), The Latino Media Gap (2014), and Sovereign Acts: Contesting Colonialism in Native Nations and Latinx America (forthcoming). Her most recent films include Small City, Big Change (2013), War for Guam (2015) and Life Outside (2016).

For her work as a scholar and filmmaker, Negrón-Muntaner has received Ford, Truman, Scripps Howard, Rockefeller, Pew, and Chang-Chavkin fellowships. Major funders such as Social Science Research Council, Andy Warhol Foundation, and Independent Television Service have also supported her work. In 2008, the United Nations' Rapid Response Media Mechanism recognized her as a global expert in the areas of mass media and Latin/o American studies; in 2012, she received the Lenfest Award, one of Columbia University's most prestigious recognitions for excellence in teaching and scholarship. Negrón-Muntaner also served as director of Columbia’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race from 2009-2016. In 2017, she was the recipient of an inaugural OZY Educator Award.

Vanessa Pérez-Rosario is associate professor of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College, CUNY, managing editor of Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, and founder of the Latina Life Stories speaker series. She is the author of Becoming Julia de Burgos: The Making of a Puerto Rican Icon. For her work as a scholar, Pérez-Rosario has received Woodrow Wilson, Mellon, American Association of University Women, and Rockefeller fellowships. 

Latina Life Stories speaker series co-sponsors: 

Small Axe Project

Wolfe Institute for the Humanities, Brooklyn College, CUNY

Office of the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, Brooklyn College, CUNY

Women's and Gender Studies Program, Brooklyn College, CUNY

Department of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies, Brooklyn College, CUNY

American Studies Program, Brooklyn College, CUNY

Organizer: Vanessa Pérez-Rosario, vperezrosario@brooklyn.cuny.edu