Category Archives: Americas
Nonsecular: William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison
April 19, 2014 Toni Morrison says in a Paris Review interview: “I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come.” … Continue reading
Stuart Hall and vernacular modernity
February 14, 2014 The passing of Stuart Hall makes me go back to his seminal essay, “Negotiating Caribbean Identities,” where he talks about “vernacular modernity” as the “modernity of the blues, of gospel music, of hybrid black music in its … Continue reading
Equiano’s Turkey
November 28, 2013 Yes, according to Mark Forsyth, the Thanksgiving bird is named after a country 4429 miles away. But not the first to be so named. In fact, the original turkey was a guinea fowl from Madagascar, brought to … Continue reading
Animals in Chicago
November 6, 2013 It seems right that the theme this year for the Chicago Humanities Festival should be “Animals: What Makes us Human.” This city, after all, used to be called (and maybe is still called) hog butcher for … Continue reading
Mama Day: The Tempest in the Global South
October 2, 2014 Her name is Miranda (“Mama”) Day — yes, that Miranda, the one who said, “Oh, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is!” Gloria Naylor is not the first to take on Shakespeare, of course. … Continue reading
Beyond a Boundary: C. L. R. James in Glasgow
May 13, 2013 Scotland and the Caribbean? The architecture of Glasgow tells a dramatic story. Here, in the center of town, is the many-pillared Gallery of Modern Art, monumental even for a museum, which used to be the … Continue reading
Elizabeth Bishop: “Brazil, January 1, 2015” or “Manuelzinho:?
May 1, 2015 The Table of Contents, the print anthology as a finite, bounded object — they loom large. While they do that, though, this blog is going to hold out for a little longer, not going there yet. … Continue reading
Brazil: Karen Tei Yamashita, Elizabeth Bishop
April 24, 2013 Both write about human efforts that come to nothing. Bishop’s Manuelzinho begins bravely, planting gardens that ravish the eye: beds of cabbages edged with red carnations, lettuces with alyssum. But then “silver umbrella ants arrive,/ or it … Continue reading
Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop: Boston Marathons
April 17, 2013 He writes only about the Civil War dead: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the soldiers from the all-black 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, captured in bronze by August Saint-Gaudens. The sculpture isn’t all that close to the finish … Continue reading