Jamaica collectively held its breath as reports confirmed that Melissa had made landfall. Then a torrent of media: homes washing away in mudslides, death, people clawing at walls, screens from Jamaican, British, American and French news showing floods, people fleeing the sinking homes they had built.
Monumental global efforts were made to decipher the galactic federation’s languages. Human linguists managed to crack a few of them in a year, but problems arose. The xenobiology of the United Empire often didn’t match human physiology. Humans couldn’t mimic the beaked Camecian’s staccato chirping or the gilled Sisarua’s drone. We had the written languages down, but holovisual communication was awkward and fraught with errors.
For us at PREE it was a signal honour to be given such prominent positioning in Bonaventure Ndikung’s ‘radical revamp’ of this venerable German institution. As Siddhartha Mitter put it in his New York Times article on the renowned curator and writer, A New Energy is Vibrating at This House:
It’s a different energy for a German public institution — not necessarily in sync with its counterparts — but Ndikung isn’t worried about that. “We want to build a different world,” he said. “We want to think of the world differently,” he added, “and every step matters. Every drop of water matters. And even if you’re coming with a teaspoon, that’s fine.”
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...
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person writing” is not likely to be a historically accurate representation in every regard, and is not itself a historical document.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”.
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.
NANCY 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...
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.
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.
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.
The 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.
