Aime
Cesaire:
The Collected Poetry
by Aime Cesaire,
Translators: Clayton Eshleman, Annette Gail Smith
Published: Reprint edition 1984

Book Description: This edition, containing an extensive introduction, notes, the French original, and a new translation of Csaire's poetrythe complex and challenging later works as well as the famous Notebookwill remain the definitive Csaire in English.

Customer Review: Shining star of surrealism and negritude - First of all this book itself is beautifully designed and oversized, containing selections from five of Cesaire's published books of poety, separated by prints by Wilfredo Lam.

This poetry of Cesaire requires an extensive introduction since it is filled with both politicsl and surrealistic elements. The editor provide a 30 page introduction which was very helpful.

I found that I needed to read these poems outloud in order to fully understand them. I wish that I could also read the French originals that we provided. ... I found many poems to treasure which will remain with me a long while. They make heavy use of Martiniquan flora and fauna, but every poem is about meaninful ways of acheiving power for the Black diaspora which was the heart of Cesaire's negritude

These poems belong in the collection of all who care about poetry. - Reviewer: Robert Rockwell from Brooklyn, NY USA, April 24, 2003

Man-Making
Words:
Selected Poems of Nicolas Guillen
by Nicolas Guillen,
Editor: Roberto Marquez
Preface: David Arthur McMurray
Published: 2nd edition 2003

Book Description: The Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén, who was born in the eastern province of Camagüey in 1902, died in 1989. This new edition of his selected poems, reissued thirty years after its original publication, includes an extensive, new introductory essay by Roberto Márquez, one of the original translators and a leading authority on Caribbean and Latin American literature and culture.

The Poet's
Africa:
Africanness in the Poetry of Nicolas Guillen and Aime Cesaire
(Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies)
by Josaphat B. Kubayanda
Published: 1990

Book Description: This work is the first to study the writings of Nicolas Guillen and Aime Cesaire in a comparative framework, exploring their poetry as the exemplification of Negritude art and Caribbean writing. Using non-canonical theories of literary and cultural analysis, Kubayanda proposes and demonstrates an original Caribbean poetics, anchored in Africa's cultural systems and linked to Afro-American protest thought. Focusing on race, culture, roots, and history, the book discusses the relationships between creative writing, the idea of Africa, and the rediscovery of African values in the Caribbean.

Grace

by Elizabeth Nunez
Published: 2003

Book Description: Justin Peters is a Harvard-educated professor of British and classic literature who reads Shakespeare to his four-year-old daughter, Giselle. A native of Trinidad and the product of a strict, English-style education, Justin and his focus on the works of “Dead White Men” receive little professional respect at the public Brooklyn college where he teaches. But whatever troubles he might have at work are eclipsed when he realizes his wife, Sally, has begun to pull away from him, both physically and emotionally.

Harlem-born Sally Peters, a mother on the verge of turning forty, is a primary school teacher who believes that joy is a learned skill, and that it takes strength to be happy. After a life of tragic losses, Sally thought she had finally found that strength when she met Justin.

But now, Sally wants something more. And Justin is angered by her uncertainty about their life and frightened by the thought that perhaps Sally never stopped loving the ex-boyfriend for whom she wrote fierce poems. Is he, Justin wonders, responsible for helping Sally find meaning in her life—a life that seems to him most fortunate? If Sally and Justin’s union is to survive, both must face the crippling echoes of their own pasts before those memories forever cloud and alter their future.

Set in a snow-covered Brooklyn, Grace is a thoughtful and lovely meditation on trust, redemption, and family. Elizabeth Nunez’s delicate prose brings the struggles, aches, and tender moments of this contemporary urban love story into vivid focus.

Customer Review: EXTRAORDINARY!! - Ms. Nunez paints a vivid picture of a married couple travelling in two different directions. The angst, confusion, doubt, stress and other complex emotions relative to the modern couple, are all resonated PERFECTLY in this piece of work.

The language is smart and sophisticated... the problems? ordinary and all too relatable.

Married individuals will enjoy this one... especially if you cherish your spouse enough to do ANYTHING to make it right when things go soooo wrong! - Reviewer: BKNYavidreader (see more about me) from BlackBooks, USA, July 28, 2003

Discretion

by Elizabeth Nunez
Published: 2003

Book Description: From American Book Award-winning author Elizabeth Nunez, a powerful novel that explores an intricate lovers’ triangle, the human thirst for passion, and the myriad ways desire can betray those who have fallen under its spell.

Descended from warriors and raised by missionaries, Oufoula is a diplomat whose wealth and charm make him both publicly admired and envied. From a tragic childhood he emerged a man who leads a disciplined life of respect, married to Nerida, a woman he did not want to deceive. But the beautiful Marguerite, a Jamaican-born artist living in New York, makes him question what ideals he can live by, and which values he can betray.

For twenty years, Oufoula has carried a secret in his heart, a secret of his love for Marguerite. Though they have been separated for two decades by Marguerite’s call for propriety, Oufoula refuses to let his desire wane. When the lovers are at last reunited, the rekindling of their passion forces Oufoula to come to terms with the core of his character: Is he willing to sacrifice his marriage, his career, and the very foundations of the life he has struggled to create, all for the love of one woman?

Oufoula’s confession is adorned with the literature of his European education, and shrouded by the spirits and responsibilities of Africa. Caught between myth and reason, Oufoula reveals himself to be a soul trapped in every way, who, like Faust, would bargain with the devil for fulfillment . . . but was never offered any choice.

This is the portrait of a man who cannot be forgotten. A gripping, masterfully crafted tale of love, deceit, and the human compulsion for power, Discretion forces us to reconsider that ever-compelling question: At what price passion?