Bookshelf 2020

Abstract

Trinity University Press, 2020, cloth US$ 29.95) Une semaine et un jour, by Marijosé Alie (Paris: HC Editions, 2020, paper € 19.00) Afterlife, by Julia Alvarez (New York: Algonquin Books, 2020, cloth US$25.95) Very Drunk / Borracho: Love Poems & Other Acts of Madness / Poemas de amor y otros actos de locura, by Jesús Papoleto Meléndez (New York: 2Leaf Press, 2020, paper US$18.99) After the Storm, by Tamara Groeneveldt (Philipsburg, St Maarten: House of Nehesi, 2019, n.p.) Quatre-vingt-dix seconds, by Daniel Picouly (Paris: Albin Michel, 2018, paper, € 19.50) Boricua en la luna, edited by Elena M. Aponte (Philadelphia PA: Melville House, 2018, cloth US$27.99) This Thing That Is Not A Thing, by Paulette A. Ramsay (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2020, paper US$30.20) Magdalen: River of Dreams: A Story of Colombia, by Wade Davis (New York: Knopf, 2020, cloth US$ 30.00) Daylight Come, by Diana McCaulay (Leeds, U.K.: Peepal Tree, 2020, paper, £ 9.99) The Sea Needs No Ornament / El mar no necesita ornamento: A Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Caribbean Women Poets, edited by Loretta Collins Klobah & Maria Grau Perejoan (Leeds, U.K.: Peepal Tree, 2020, paper, £14.99) StickNo Bills, Elizabeth Walcott Hackshaw (Leeds, U.K.: Peepal Tree, 2020, paper £9.99) Cuba: Music and Revolution: Original Album Cover Art of CubanMusic: The Record Sleeve Designs of Revolutionary Cuba 1960-85, by Stuart Baker & Gilles Peterson (London: SoulJazz Books, 2021, cloth US$39.90) La isla de lafantasía: Duke University Press, 2017, paper US$24.95) Indigenous Struggles for Autonomy: The Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, edited by Luciano Baracco (LanhamMD: Lexington Books, 2019, cloth US$95.00) Narratives of Obeah in West Indian Literature: Moving through the Margins, by Janelle Rodriques (New York: Routledge, 2019, cloth US$140.00) Santería, Vodou and Resistance in Caribbean Literature: Daughters of the Spirits, by Paul Humphrey (London: Legenda, 2019, cloth US$99.00) We begin our mini-reviews, as is our custom, with fiction. Marketed as a gothic mystery, this confession combines slave narrative, love story, and crime novel, beginning in Jamaica, where "mulatta" Frannie is raised as a house servant and, on a bet, taught to read, write, and assist her partially deranged master/father/rapist in his pseudo-scientific, Mengele-like experiments about racial difference.