Milton Drepaul's Blog about Williams' books, his reviews of Caribbean Writing and other related material.
May 29, 2005
No Poet, No Cry
There was a period in the 1970s whenCaribbeanmusic and literature experienced a voltage surge of productivity. For readers of Walcott and Brathwaite there was music counter-influence from reggae and kaiso artists. If you lived inJamaica, for instance, it was exhilarating to switch from the printed word of Kamau Brathwaite to the potent lyrics of Bob Marley. The poems and the lyrics seem to work almost in tandem; they helped you navigate the post-Rodney turmoil inKingston. [Guyana]
Today my friend Wyck Williams sent me a review of Jan Carew's Wild Coast. As I read about the location on the Corentyne my mind wandered back in time to the year 1951.
Today I found web pages about a Caribbean Born Canadian Author Nalo Hopkinson. While I was in the UK in 2003 someone had mentioned that she was the daughter of Caribbean writer and actor Slade Hopkinson.
Recent reports of riots in the Muslim world over the alleged disrespect shown to the Holy Koran by US interrogators in Guantanamo base as reported by Newsweek prompts me to write this piece.
Ah Mikhail brings us into inner city New York in the early nineties.In this immigrant filled world full of uncertainties and shifting loyalties we get a sense of the impending chaos that would come to a climax on Sept. 11,2001.
Through the eyes of a nervous teacher Radix we see the underbelly of the new superpower. The failing public school system is a mirror of the chaos that really exists in this mega city.
N.D. Williams has quietly chronicled the emtional storms of an era in the past in what was seen as a backwater of the empire--the Caribbean as well as contempoary themes like the restlessnes of today's people as they travel back and forth between simple and complex societes
Williams is not afraid to explore different ways of writing. Readers are also struck by his forceful but precise prose.His characters bring wry smiles as they muse or sometimes utter incongruous comments.
The characters in these short stories inhabit a Caribbean they find it impossible to live in, yet impossible to live without. They dream of being inviolable and whole, but live in situations which are invariably on the edge of disorder and personal threat.
Delia gives Mr. Ni Win two bags for safe keeping. In them he finds her story of escape from the suffocations of her father and Caribbean island life into the nightmarish world of an illegal immigrant in America.
Two intriguing novellas. The first one 'Planet of Ras' hauntingly evokes a real life story I read of years after its publication of the mysterious disappearance of a young American woman.
These stories give us insights into the pain and emotional trauma that modern life brings to even the simple and innocent.
