Guest edited by Leniqueca Welcome

In this issue of PREE, we looked for explorations of what ecocide – crimes against nature — means to the Caribbean, including its non-human inhabitants. Must ecocide be permanent? Vast? If a waterfall dries up, does it matter, once the rain starts again one day? What value is created by natural places that arouse joy and awe in people and is that value confined to those who see them? Or are such locations merely commodities to be assessed by the entrance cashier? What about hidden things – like coral reefs? If they become rubble, will that matter if the sea remains those multitudinous colours of blue, providing a suitable background for selfies? What about the reptiles most of us hate? 

Does ecocide require human intent or is the damage done to a reef by dredging for a cruise ship pier no different to that wrought by a hurricane? Are our island homes going to remain habitable long into the future or will the names of hurricanes become the same kind of marker as wars in our history books – the Hundred Year Hurricane, perhaps? Are there places we remember, already lost, and do we mourn? We have conferred legal rights on our own non-living creations – corporations – why not on rivers or beaches or mountain ranges? 

Send us your anger, your grief, your indifference, your uncertainty, your memories, your argument and your elegies for the Caribbean, now, in the era of the climate crisis.  As always, we seek fiction, non-fiction, poetry, images and new narrative approaches.

Anchor image: Sheena Rose – “The Hurricane” ( 42 inches x 48 inches, acrylic on canvas), 2019.

EDITORIAL NOTES

Ecocide
Leniqueca Welcome
Amanda Choo Quan
Annie Paul

FICTION

All That Would Be
Lise Ragbir

Crocodile Tears
Roland Watson Grant

When We Die
Sara Bastian

Daylight Come
Diana McCaulay

NON-FICTION

Bullshit, Sweet-talk, and Hindu Nationalism
Kris Singh

El Dorado, City of Black Gold
Aliyah Khan

Jewellery for Re-membering in the Afterlife of Slavery: A View From the Disappearing Beach
Maziki Thame

POETRY

Teach yi How ta Swim
Tanicia Pratt

Buchibushi and The Whole World is Turning
Adam Patterson

Huracanna
Amanda T. McIntyre

La Tormenta and 20 de Septiembre
Jacqueline Jiang

Reclamation by Water and Resurrection Morning
Ide Amari Thompson

Shinkolobwe, Belgian Congo
Lauren Delapenha

Wild Thing
Elizabeth Jaikaran

Morvant Landing and Swam Beauty
Kwasi Shade

Amnesia
Essah Cozett

ART-ICLES

Beach as Plot? 
Annalee Davis

RE-VISIT

On Hidden Scars and the Passive Voice
Nahir I. Otaño Gracia

When the Apocalypse is Now: Climate Crisis, Small Island Disasters and Migration in the Aftermath of Hurricane Dorian
Angelique V. Nixon

BRAWTA

Shells and shores: Wendy Nanan and Andre Bagoo

Circa no future: Nadia Huggins

Bodies of water: recent work by Andrae Green

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