Book Reviews


 Mommy having baby but
 hospital too fa' way.

 The church bell ring.
 Charlie is a cha-cha balahou
 and he live in Frenchtown too.
 "Christ die for our sins."
 Sister Lucy say.
 The baby die and mango rot.

 Of the five short stories, I was struck particularly
by Sunshine Vinzant's "Brathwaite's Dog" and Gabrielle
DiLorenzo's "Weekend Fantasy." If fiction is not minding
one's own business, then Vinzant's wry allegory on
oppression is the work of someone not afraid to throw
stones. DiLorenzo's "postcard" plea for a womanness other
that "cat," one not de-(w)humanized by place, "sweaty men,"
and ignorance, is charged with irony and resistance.

 With poetry and fiction as its main focus, this first
issue of The Caribbean Writer also contains a photograph
by Tina Henle, reproductions of art work by M. Lisa Etre,
Maria Henle, Andre Normil, and El'Roy Simmonds, reviews
of recent publications from the Virgin Islands, and an
interesting review by Gloria I. Joseph of the Sistren
Collective's Lionheart Gal: Life Stories of Jamaican
Women ed. Honor Ford Smith (London: The Women's Press,
Ltd., 1986). Just as Joseph calls Lionheart Gal a
"brave book," so The Caribbean Writer is a brave exploration
into the Caribbean text. As T. S. Eliot once said, "Fare
forward, voyagers."



 Michael Sharp
 University of Puerto Rico
 Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico