ABOUT THIS BOOK

The first book of its kind, Our Caribbean is an anthology of lesbian and gay writing from across the Antilles. The author and activist Thomas Glave has gathered outstanding fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and poetry by little-known writers together with selections by internationally celebrated figures such as José Alcántara Almánzar, Reinaldo Arenas, Dionne Brand, Michelle Cliff, Audre Lorde, Achy Obejas, and Assotto Saint. The result is an unprecedented literary conversation on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered experiences throughout the Caribbean and its far-flung diaspora. Many selections were originally published in Spanish, Dutch, or creole languages; some are translated into English here for the first time.

The thirty-seven authors hail from the Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Puerto Rico, St. Vincent, St. Kitts, Suriname, and Trinidad. Many have lived outside the Caribbean, and their writing depicts histories of voluntary migration as well as exile from repressive governments, communities, and families. Many pieces have a political urgency that reflects their authors’ work as activists, teachers, community organizers, and performers. Desire commingles with ostracism and alienation throughout: in the evocative portrayals of same-sex love and longing, and in the selections addressing religion, family, race, and class. From the poem “Saturday Night in San Juan with the Right Sailors” to the poignant narrative “We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?” to an eloquent call for the embrace of difference that appeared in the Nassau Daily Tribune on the eve of an anti-gay protest, Our Caribbean is a brave and necessary book.

Contributors: José Alcántara Almánzar, Aldo Alvarez, Reinaldo Arenas, Rane Arroyo, Jesús J. Barquet, Marilyn Bobes, Dionne Brand, Timothy S. Chin, Michelle Cliff, Wesley E. A. Crichlow,
Mabel Rodríguez Cuesta, Ochy Curiel, Faizal Deen, Pedro de Jesús, R. Erica Doyle, Thomas Glave,
Rosamond S. King, Helen Klonaris, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Audre Lorde, Shani Mootoo,
Anton Nimblett, Achy Obejas, Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Virgilio Piñera, Patricia Powell, Kevin Everod Quashie, Juanita Ramos, Colin Robinson, Assotto Saint, Andrew Salkey, Lawrence Scott,
Makeda Silvera, H. Nigel Thomas, Rinaldo Walcott, Gloria Wekker, Lawson Williams

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Thomas Glave is the author of the short story collections Whose Song? and Other Stories and The Torturer's Wife, and the essay collections Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent (Lambda Literary Award, 2005) and Among the Bloodpeople: Politics and Flesh. A founding member of the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals, and Gays (J-FLAG), Glave has been Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Professor at MIT, a 2012 Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Warwick. He lives in Birmingham (U.K.).

REVIEWS

“With excerpts from the work of luminaries like Audre Lorde, Reinaldo Arenas, Michelle Cliff, Assotto Saint, Achy Obejas, and Aldo Alvarez, there's no question this anthology has serious literary heft, beyond its import as a first-of-a-kind collection. But it's the lesser-known (and, in some cases, never-before translated) contributors who add value. . . . everal contributions are emphatically academic, footnotes and all, but these provide ballast for Glave's authentic, eclectic collection.” - Richard Labonte

“Glave has given us a valuable record of the real beauty and brutality that lurks behind the travel posters.” - Harry E. Baldwin, Frontiers

“Our Caribbean will likely become a classic compilation and a must-read for anyone who wants to learn more about what it means to be from the Antilles region of the world and to find a home in the LGBT community.” - Rachel Pepper, Curve

“You need to take time with this collection. It is a delicious gathering of voices, all different, but with interweaving themes. You cannot rush this experience. From the luscious, sexy racy prose to the cutting edge politics, every line has shape and depth and plays upon you long after the reading. This book will rock you, rock within you, like This Bridge Called My Back, edited by Cherie Moraga, did in the 1970’s”. - Cathie Koa Dunsford, Asia and Pacific Writers Network

“[An] important and amazing collection. . . . All of the essays, fiction, and poems in this collection impress, and with this text, Glave has created a very important addition to the growing shelf of international GLBT literature.” - Michael G. Cornelius, Bloomsbury Review

“You don’t have to be gay, lesbian, or Caribbean . . . to appreciate this anthology, though it is certainly a seminal contribution to the fields of Caribbean literature and gay and lesbian studies. Most of its contents are worth reading for the drama, sensitivity, and complexity required of such identities.” - Emily Raboteau, American Book Review

“Our Caribbean is a superb anthology. Thomas Glave does not exaggerate when he writes that this is ‘a book that I and others have been waiting for and have wanted for all our lives.’ Here we have a book that makes literal the ongoing necessity to write ‘against silence.’”—Elizabeth Alexander, author of American Blue: Selected Poems

“Traversing boundaries of geography, history, language, and desire, Thomas Glave has assembled a poignant testament of how we dare to love differently and yearn for justice in the same breath...Necessary and timely.”—M. Jacqui Alexander, author of Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred

“Our Caribbean will likely become a classic compilation and a must-read for anyone who wants to learn more about what it means to be from the Antilles region of the world and to find a home in the LGBT community.”

-- Rachel Pepper Curve

“[An] important and amazing collection. . . . All of the essays, fiction, and poems in this collection impress, and with this text, Glave has created a very important addition to the growing shelf of international GLBT literature.”

-- Michael G. Cornelius Bloomsbury Review

“Glave has given us a valuable record of the real beauty and brutality that lurks behind the travel posters.”

-- Harry E. Baldwin Frontiers

“With excerpts from the work of luminaries like Audre Lorde, Reinaldo Arenas, Michelle Cliff, Assotto Saint, Achy Obejas, and Aldo Alvarez, there's no question this anthology has serious literary heft, beyond its import as a first-of-a-kind collection. But it's the lesser-known (and, in some cases, never-before translated) contributors who add value. . . . everal contributions are emphatically academic, footnotes and all, but these provide ballast for Glave's authentic, eclectic collection.”

-- Richard Labonte

“You don’t have to be gay, lesbian, or Caribbean . . . to appreciate this anthology, though it is certainly a seminal contribution to the fields of Caribbean literature and gay and lesbian studies. Most of its contents are worth reading for the drama, sensitivity, and complexity required of such identities.”

-- Emily Raboteau American Book Review

“You need to take time with this collection. It is a delicious gathering of voices, all different, but with interweaving themes. You cannot rush this experience. From the luscious, sexy racy prose to the cutting edge politics, every line has shape and depth and plays upon you long after the reading. This book will rock you, rock within you, like This Bridge Called My Back, edited by Cherie Moraga, did in the 1970’s”.

-- Cathie Koa Dunsford Asia and Pacific Writers Network

TABLE OF CONTENTS

REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you with an electronic file for alternative access.

Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.

It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.