JOANNE C. HILLHOUSE In Antigua, “wife” is sex or the female sex organ – you know the one “knuckle” is when your woman gives “wife” to another man “keep woman” is your side piece – you know, the woman you “dey wid” on the side We...
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I loved my father regardless, and I burned with resentment and rage at the unfairness of his kingdom, while I never failed to find comfort in the island he showed me, where nothing was off limits to me, nothing denied.
Just conform, Diana, my mother said to me when I fought with my father. Conform.
An image conjured in 2023 by a text-to image generator of “a 19th-century Caribbean person writing” is not likely to be a historically accurate representation in every regard, and is not itself a historical document. However, it is a prompt for imagination that might get a Caribbean high-schooler thinking more about the life of a dark-skinned ancestor than simply actions relating to the reductive category of “Slave”.
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Whether intentionally or not, Born Ya transcends a straightforward telling of her life story; it is also the staking of a claim to a place that more and more doesn’t want her. It. Embedded within the narrative, by my read, is MacMillan’s attempt to assert her Jamaican identity while also considering, both overtly and implicitly, the challenges of being a white person in a predominantly black country, where racial dynamics are in constant flux.
Read MoreNANCY ANNE MILLER Mad Hatters The Royals wear Saucer Hats to St. Paul’s Service. Thoughts are sky bound as a Queen will soon ascend. In a time of UFOs one wonders about celestial visitors, other planets to reign over as the...
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She holds a smartphone stolen from a band of Yankees that loudly proclaimed themselves as ‘horror tourists’ to the locals. It takes time to familiarize herself with the device and its features, especially when the previous owner keeps calling.
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The denizens of La Malamuerte were accustomed to the occasional wandering tourist. Unsuspecting visitors who strayed within the establishment’s secluded walls usually stayed for a quick drink, so as not to be rude, then left. However, on this particular day, La Malamuerte became host to an group of obnoxious 20-somethings from Georgia who thought it would be fun to mock the locals and cause a scene.
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Dandy dance till him salt-and-pepper mohawk dripping sweat. When him see me, him flash him gold teeth. The Devil’s red mask is back on his face. The day get as hot as hell. Me hands get so sweaty me bible slip. And though I standing in the sanctified body of Jaheim Murray, born-again christian, I am Warwick again, back on the battlefield.
Read MoreThe cup had had no power for eight months after the storm. So that hurricane man climbed until he stood on the tip-top point of that tower, on high steel stilt legs, ready to walk the mountain ridge of Yabucoa like a moko jumbie from islands down the archipelago.
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New mothers check and count toes and fingers, but I am sure that Miss Rosette felt for the hoof. And there it would have been, a teeny ball of flesh like his human foot, except there were no toes and a tiny dent. Over time, that ball would harden into a donkey foot. His little left knee poked out backwards, the small thigh flesh meeting a soft clump of muscle that would become the other half of his bottom. Miss Rosette listened for the sound of his human foot and the clop of his hoof on the wooden floors of the house when he started to walk.
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But the wind always blows from the east in Anguilla, and sometimes we have had to go for weeks on end without the privilege of information, without the relative freedom awarded to us by a change in the course of the sound waves. During these grim weeks of silence we have continued our petty lives outside the boundaries of time – an insignificant group of refugees struggling to stay together beyond the scope of the victorious.
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Every morning and every evening Avó came out of her kitchen, synchronizing her daily rhythm to attend to the needs of the garden. She greeted each plant one by one because who else did she have to talk with these days? The scantily dressed telenovela stars on TV hardly minded what suggestion she had to offer. The radio jockeys powered on with too much reggaeton regardless of her protests.
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