Customer Reviews

The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories

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This is the book which truly gives the reader a feeling of the "cricket playing Caribbean" a term the editors borrowed from Guyanese-born professor Gordon Rohlehr. Editors Stewart Brown and John Wickham have expanded the borders the Caribbean by including two writers from Suriname, a writer from Panama and Gabriel Garcia Marquez from Colombia. Marquez described himself as a Caribbean writer in a collection of interviews he did for a book entitled The Fragrance of Guava. There are also stories from Cuba, and Puerto Rico. The book begins with a wonderfully symbolic story by Barbadian writer Frank Collymore entitled "Some People Were Meant to Live Alone." In this story, a young man visits his eccentric uncle who may have been a murderer. In the end, the young man becomes a recluse himself. The philosophical question of whether or not we are meant to be alone or in the company of others applies, in many ways, to the individual islands of the Caribbean. The editors say they purposely began their anthology with the story because Collymore is considered by many to be the father of modern Caribbean literature. The book ends with "Nineteen Thirty-Seven", a story by young Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat. This story of a daughter visiting her mother who has been imprisoned wrongfully by the Haitian government because traitors have named her as a practitioner of voodoo, is also symbolic because it shows us how superstition often rules these islands. It also shows us how the literary torch is being passed on to a new generation of writers. In between these two stories are a delightful offering of stories which capture the fine nuances of life in the Caribbean. No other book I've read so far, deals better with the relationship between males and females, a giddy game of posturing and submission which is sometimes tragic and sometimes humourous.

Sadly, this was to be John Wickham's last contribution to West Indian literature, as one of the region's finest writers and editors died in 2000. Indeed, the reader owes a debt of gratitude to Wickham for his discerning eye and vast knowledge of Caribbean writers and writing shine through in this book. But we have this fine gift to cherish in his memory and in honour of the rich and diverse tradition and innovation that is Caribbean writing. As much as are Wickham's own short stories, this anthology is striking in its range, readability and resonance. And as the Caribbean consciousness has transcended cultural and strict geopolitical lines over the last century, the range of offerings in this book has also grown from what it would have delivered had it come out a few decades earlier. This book embraces Haiti, Colombia as much as the Anglophone Caribbean. An essential collection of short story writing in English and as delicious a slice of the West Indian civilization as you're likely to find anywhere.

I took a Caribbean lit. class at Broward college. I bought this book on a whim and loved it. The stories are eclectic and lead you into the world of the Caribbean you never knew...

1. The Colombian writer and Nobel Prize Gabriel García Márquez is repeatedly called along the book as Márquez. His family name as the authors should know is García Márquez.

2. In the same way the authors use Columbia, or Columbian when speaking of Colombia.