General Issue
General Issue
And if we give you Poetry we give it not as an opiate that you may forget your wretchedness; but as an elixir by whose aid you may gather strength sufficient to win from out the nightmare pit of your present existence.
— J. E. Clare McFarlane, “The Challenge of Our Time” (1935)
With this, our twenty-fifth issue, sx salon welcomes Rosamond S. King as our creative editor. As a scholar, creative writer, activist, and performing artist, Rosamond brings a wealth of experience in Caribbean cultural production to sx salon and, as you will read in her “Statement on Digital Literature” included in this issue, she is particularly interested in fostering the growth of Caribbean digital literature:
This purpose statement is an encouragement for and a provocation to Caribbean writers to experiment with hyperlinks, animation, and so on, with a purpose not to embellish or to illustrate the text but to make the digital an integral part of the literature, inseparable from it. In other words, I seek to share literature that not only incorporates digital elements but does so with a profound or innovative intent, as any great literature does. sx salon will provide a space for this work to live and will provide readers for it.
In this way, digital literature is a natural development not only of the sx salon platform but of Caribbean literature itself, with roots in earlier experimental forms and engagements with new technologies. To begin, we include here Rosamond’s own digital poem, “Bring Back.”
Alongside Rosamond’s statement and poem, in Poetry + Prose this issue we publish Patrick Chamoiseau’s poetic tribute to Derek Walcott, translated by Charly Verstraet and Jeffrey Landon Allen; a hauntingly short poem by Anu Lakhan; and original prose fiction by Katherine Atkinson and Cynthia James.
Our reviews this issue include Warren Harding’s review of Shalini Puri’s monograph on the Grenada Revolution; Kristina Huang’s review of Elizabeth Nunez’s latest novel; and Sophie Harris’s review of Lawrence Scott’s recent short story collection. We also publish reviews of two ambitiously comprehensive studies of representations of the Haitian Revolution: Megan Jeanette Myers reviews Víctor Figueroa’s Prophetic Visions of the Past: Pan-Caribbean Representations of the Haitian Revolution and Erin Zavitz reviews Marlene Daut’s Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789–1865.
Twenty-five issues. Don’t they go by in a blink. We look forward to continuing to bring you new work on words from and about the Caribbean.
Kelly Baker Josephs
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Table of Contents
Introduction and Table of Contents—Kelly Baker Josephs
Reviews
The Silences, too, Deserve a Place—Warren Harding
A review of The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present: Operation Urgent Memory, by Shalini Puri
On Inheritance and Reinvention—Kristina Huang
A review of Even in Paradise, by Elizabeth Nunez
A Question of Home—Sophie Harris
A review of Leaving by Plane, Swimming Back Underwater, and Other Stories, by Lawrence Scott
The Haitian Revolution in Caribbean Literature: A Synechdochal Study—Megan Jeanette Myers
A review of Prophetic Visions of the Past: Pan-Caribbean Representations of the Haitian Revolution, by Víctor Figueroa
Representing the Unthinkable: The Haitian Revolution in Print—Erin Zavitz
A review of Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789–1865, by Marlene Daut
Prose
Statement on Digital Literature—Rosamond S. King
The Man Who Took Up All The Space—Katherine Atkinson
In the Laundry Room—Cynthia James
Poetry
Patrick Chamoiseau, translated by Charly Verstraet and Jeffrey Landon Allen