NO, YOU HAVEN'T missed a thing. We've shifted the presentation of the ArtsEtc Independence Reading List to the top of the upcoming year instead of leaving it at the end of the previous one. So you're in the right place: this is the offering for 2021 moving into 2022. Or, more simply put, for the next twelve months.
To recap, the IndyList, as we like to call it, is a selection of 12 Barbadian books to make friends with over the coming year. This is its eleventh edition.
The list, which first appeared in 2011, is part of the Editors' ongoing "Mapping Our Literature" mission, which promotes awareness of Barbadian books and their authors. Each year, we recommend new, classic, and noteworthy titles in fiction and non-fiction, poetry, and children’s literature.
And we encourage you to discover and add your own!
The mapping includes book reviews and other related links, whether on our site or through our social media platforms. We hope our recognition of Barbadian literature extends into a general celebration of Barbadian arts and culture, making the IndyList and the rest of our site a valuable Caribbean cultural resource.
As we approach Year Three of the COVID-19 pandemic, people continue to look to the arts to help sustain them. It's not just going to the movies, a book launch, art galleries, a concert, or a fashion show we miss, it's the works themselves. And if we can't travel physically to a place or a people, narratives about the place and its people have always made a wonderful vehicle for the armchair or mattress bound. These days, that's still most of us.
The Editors wish to thank the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment and the Bajan Reporter for their ongoing support of the IndyList. We invite schools, reading groups and book clubs interested in learning more about the IndyList to contact us, and to visit our online fiction, poetry and artist's studio galleries.
Happy New Year and happy reading—all year long!
THE 2022 INDYLIST TITLES
The View from Belmont, Kevyn Alan Arthur
Understanding this Caribbean life
Where the Sun Shines Best, Austin Clarke
Another take on imperialism and injustice, this time through the eyes of a poet
Three Meridians, Geoffrey Drayton
And the many ways of seeing & being
Route 10, G. Addinton Forde
Going his way?
How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, Cherie Jones
One answer may be with anger, frustration, and eventually hope
Beyond Coloniality: Citizenship and Freedom in the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition,
Aaron Kamugisha
Shortlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize
Pierrot, John Robert Lee
Still soulful--and playful--after all these years
Reclaim, Restore, Return: Futurist Tales from the Caribbean,
edited by Karen Lord & Tobias Buckell
We are inevitable
Riff: The Shake Keane Story, Philip Nanton
This is how he played it, wrote it, lived it
Love After Love, Ingrid Persaud
With persistence and forgiveness
Attractive Forces, Robert Edison Sandiford
The power of love...?
Eurydice's Song, Ronald A. Williams
Sometimes, we can't help but look back at where we've been
Catch up on your local reading by checking out our previous Lists:
2020: https://artsetcbarbados.com/news/2020-indylist
2019: https://artsetcbarbados.com/news/2019-indylist
2018: http://artsetcbarbados.com/news/2018-indylist
2017: http://artsetcbarbados.com/news/2017-indylist
2016: http://artsetcbarbados.com/news/2016-indylist
2015: http://artsetcbarbados.com/news/2015-indylist
2014: http://artsetcbarbados.com/news/2014-indylist
2013: http://artsetcbarbados.com/news/carrying-our-writers-us-artsetc%E2%80%99...
2012: http://artsetcbarbados.com/news/artsetc-champions-bajan-books
2011: http://aestagerightleft.blogspot.com/2011/
