Monthly Archives: March 2023

Alfrena Jamie Pierre’s Twitter residency on George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin (March 27-April 3, 2023)

This year marks seventy years since the 1953 publication of George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin. In our March 27-April 3, 2023 Twitter residency, Alfrena Jamie Pierre (@AlfrenaJamiePi) reflects on Lamming’s classic novel, described by Bruce King and others as one of the foundational texts of anglophone Caribbean Literature. In her praise of Lamming’s work at his memorial service on July 1, 2022, Mia Amor Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados, argued that “In the Castle of My Skin said so much for each and every Barbadian and Caribbean person.” In this residency, Pierre reexamines this novel for the issues it addresses regarding notions of Caribbean being. She explores “The God Question” as presented by Lamming and broaches the topic of Christianity’s relevance for examining Caribbean lived reality. Pierre frames her interrogations of the novel through the theorizations of various scholars, including those of Lamming himself.

Bio

Alfrena Jamie Pierre ( @AlfrenaJamiePi ) is a PhD Candidate in Literatures in English at The University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad and Tobago. Her research interests include representations of Christianity in literature, the work of George Lamming, Caribbean poetics, identity and trauma. She has presented academic papers on Lamming’s oeuvre at local, regional and international conferences and has also published on Lamming’s work.

Her tribute to Lamming appears in the UWI, Cave Hill Campus’s CHILL News 60th Anniversary edition (March 2023). https://sta.uwi.edu/uwitoday/archive/july_2022/article2.asp

You can also read tributes to George Lamming by Aaron Kamugisha, Curdella Forbes and Honor Ford Smith in the most recent issue of JWIL (Vol. 31 No. 1). https://www.jwilonline.org/current-issue/

JWIL mourns the passing of Prof. Jennifer Rahim (1963-2023)

We at JWIL mourn the premature passing of Professor Jennifer Rahim (UWI – St. Augustine). Her work is part of a rich tradition of gifted Caribbean writers who were also brilliant scholars. Her commitment to teaching and mentorship of Caribbean students and newer writers continues to bear fruit. A poet as well as writer of fiction and criticism, she was the winner of the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for her 2017 fiction collection, Curfew Chronicles. A prolific writer, her poetry collections were Between the Fence and the Forest (2007), Approaching Sabbaths (2009) which was awarded a Casa de las Américas Prize, Redemption Rain (2011), Ground Level (2014) and Sanctuaries of Invention (2021). Her short story collection Songster and Other Stories was published in 2007.

Her scholarly work appeared in many key Caribbean publications including Anthurium, Small Axe, Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, and JWIL. Her article on poetry as an enterprise of recovery in the work of Olive Senior and Lorna Goodison was published in JWIL‘s April 1999 issue. Her essay on the challenges to heteronormativity posed by Alfred Mendes’ Black Fauns (1935) and Jamaica Kincaid’s My Brother (1995) appeared in JWIL‘s April 2005 issue.

Peepal Tree Press founder and managing editor, Jeremy Poynting, who was working closely with Rahim on her forthcoming novel, Goodbye Bay, marks her invaluable contribution to Caribbean letters movingly here.

Call for Papers – 41st Annual West Indian Literature Conference

Hosted by the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus (Kingston, Jamaica), the 41st Annual West Indian Literature Conference invites papers and panel proposals that explore the critical connections in Caribbean literary and cultural studies. With this year’s focus on connections, the conference seeks to bring together academics, postgraduate students, creative practitioners, secondary school educators, and the general public to both critically assess the literature and celebrate the scholarly analysis of West Indian (Caribbean) literary artists. This gathering also takes the opportunity to recognize the connections between West Indian music and West Indian writing. It will honor the life and brilliant cultural criticism of the late Professor Emeritus Gordon Rohlehr (UWI, St Augustine). It will also celebrate the 30th anniversary of the publication of Noises in the Blood by Professor Emerita Carolyn Cooper (UWI, Mona) and Woman Version by Professor Emerita Evelyn O’Callaghan (UWI, Cave Hill). These two texts continue to inspire scholars to make new critical connections among gender, music, orality and literature. See full call here – WILC 2023 CFP