Winning Words: How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House 

 


Chapter 4

THEY ARE ADMIRING Baby that night everything changes. They are quietly claiming things about her to the soundtrack of Adan’s cooing—in deference to the mystery of her mother’s name. Lala claims Baby’s nose, the way the little legs turn gently inward at the knees before repelling each other, the elegant triple-jointed toes. Adan claims her long torso, the flat, broad bones beneath her face, the way her upper lip retreats when she smiles.  

“Just like Penny,” says Adan.  “Penny daughter self.”

The 2020 IndyList

THE ArtsEtc Independence Reading List has reached a milestone: it's now in its tenth edition!

The IndyList, as we like to call it, is a selection of 12 Barbadian books to make friends with over the coming year.

Winning Words: Ode to the Bajan Blackbirds

 

BARBADOS' FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY celebrations come and gone and nobody ain’t say yuh cat, yuh dog, ’bout we. Sometimes yuh have to wonder if we is Bajan, too. Gabby had to tell Jack dat the beach belong to he, but it is time that we tell we story.  These fields and skies ’bout here belong to we!  We father get we here. We mother hatch we here. And here belongs to we. 

Winning Words: Taming Dragons in a Soup Bowl

 

A bunch of surfer dudes,
sun-bleached blonde and sun-browned,
inch their way across the rocky shore,
Soup Bowl bound,
tentative as firewalkers
treading unshod on red coals.

Then, with jaws firmly set,
breasts pressed to boards,
these knights of the sea
paddle fearlessly forward, 
to face the fabled dragon waves,
whose lair is the Soup Bowl. 

Winning Words: Home

 

When he comes  
He waits patiently by the door. 
He knocks softly. 
Gently.
He asks,
May I come in? 
Are you at home? 
Is now a good time? 

The 2019 IndyList

THE ArtsEtc Independence Reading List is now nine years old!

The IndyList, as we like to call it, is a selection of 12 Barbadian books to make friends with over the coming year.

The list, which first appeared in 2011, is part of the Editors' ongoing "Mapping Our Literature" mission, which promotes awareness of and celebrates 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 2018 IndyList

 

THE ArtsEtc Independence Reading List is now eight years old!

The IndyList, as we like to call it, is a selection of 12 Barbadian books to make friends with over the coming year.

The list, which first appeared in 2011, is part of the Editors' ongoing "Mapping Our Literature" mission, which promotes awareness of and celebrates 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!

A Review of John Robert Lee's Collected Poems 1975-2015

COLLECTED POEMS 1975-2015 by John Robert Lee represents one man’s spiritual journey meandering through thorny labyrinths of faith, “from inner city provinces to southern islands of Amerika” (“Challenger”). This journey began long before 1975: when a young Lee witnessed his father, Alleyne, relishing a dessert of fresh ripe mangoes on a Sunday afternoon and began to contemplate seriously his romance with the written word.

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