sx salon 8

February 2012

Haiti: Living In-Between

Welcome to sx salon’s first issue of 2012. As we have in past issues, here we offer you a variety of writings: reviews, interviews, poetry, and prose. Our discussion in this issue is perhaps even more varied than usual, bringing together a collection of pieces that consider the in-betweenity of Haitian identity. Of course, the mention of Haiti since 12 January 2010 is often, if not always, associated with the devastation of the earthquake, and our first two pieces address the then/now split created by that tectonic shift. First, Martin Munro discusses the first post-earthquake Haitian novel and includes a short interview with its author, Marvin Victor. The interview is also available in the original French. In the second discussion piece, Colin Dayan writes evocatively of the impossibility of return as she navigates between the shadows of remembered geographies (her mother’s and her own) and the new landscape of Haiti in the summer of 2011. Our second two pieces in this issue’s discussion explore the complexity of Haitian identity beyond the earthquake. In our third piece, Edwidge Danticat, with her characteristic lyricism, considers the “fellow urban nomads, reciters, and ambient voyagers” she encounters in the liminal world of cab rides, perhaps the most paradigmatic in-between space. Our fourth discussion piece is a short story from Roxane Gay exploring how personal trauma can shift identity as completely as national events. The title of Gay’s story, “What After Looks Like,” could perhaps be the title of the entire discussion.

In our interview section of this issue we publish part 2 of an interview with Caryl Phillips, along with the first of a series of interviews with female scholars of Caribbean literature. The series, conducted by Sheryl Gifford, will consist of four interviews exploring the contributions of these scholars to work on Caribbean writers, particularly Caribbean women writers.

We also have a mix of reviews in this issue, with essays on Rahul Bhattacharya’s The Sly Company of People Who Care, Colin Grant’s The Natural Mystics: Marley, Tosh, and Wailer, Christopher Schmidt-Nowara’s Slavery, Freedom, and Abolition in Latin America and the Atlantic World, and Louis Parascondola’s recent edited collection of Eric Walrond’s later writings. In Prose and Poetry we have new poems from Cynthia James, Nicholas Alexander, and Soyini Forde, as well as a stirring preview of Diana McCaulay’s upcoming novel, Huracan, in the excerpt “Zachary’s Arrival, Part I.”

This issue marks our shift to quarterly publication, so our next issue will be in May. We hope you enjoy sx salon 8 (table of contents below).

Kelly Baker Josephs
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Table of Contents

Introduction and Table of Contents —Kelly Baker Josephs

Reviews

The Sly Company of People Who Care by Rahul Bhattacharya—Charles V. Carnegie
In Search of Asylum: The Later Writings of Eric Walrond, edited by Louis Parascondola—James Davis
Slavery, Freedom, and Abolition in Latin America and the Atlantic World by Christopher Schmidt-Nowara—Marcela Echeverri
The Natural Mystics: Marley, Tosh, and Wailer by Colin Grant—Anthony Bogues

Discussion – Haiti: Living In-Between

Living Nowhere, Writing Disaster: Marvin Victor and Corps mêlés—Martin Munro
In Haiti, August 2011—Colin Dayan
One Heart—Edwidge Danticat
What After Looks Like—Roxane Gay

Poetry

Cynthia James
Nicholas Alexander
Soyini Forde

Prose

Zachary’s Arrival, Part I— Diana McCaulay