You can’t spend time reading, rereading, and then writing on a book without feeling as if you’ve gotten a bit closer to the writer herself. And so I feel as if I’ve gotten to know something more than I initially did about the women whose works I featured this year (and last year as well). In most cases, that something more is very likable, and I heartily recommend their work to readers everywhere: read Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and (my favorite) Good Morning, Midnight for their haunting, memorable female characters; read Myriam Chancy’s Loneliness of Angels, and Lorna Goodison’s By Love Possessed for provocative female perspectives on contemporary Haiti and Jamaica; read the many forms and ways of expressing the erotic in Caribbean Erotic; take along a copy of Liane Spicer’s Café Au Lait to the beach or on your next vacation; celebrate and mourn with Mahadai Das as she describes the enchantment and disenchantment of nationalism, and a nation’s heroes and heroines.
But topping my list of best reads of 2011 are without a doubt the works of five women writers who graciously shared both their writing and a bit about themselves with us this series. They are--from first to most recently featured--Vashti Bowlah (“Catch of the Day”), Debra Providence (“Heart String”), Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné (poems), Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro (“Avalanche”), and Barbara Jenkins (“Monty and Marilyn”). Read them again or anew and enjoy!
Note: I’ll feature one more writer before the year is over, but the Caribbean Women Writers series will resume in full swing next year. Thanks for following and supporting!
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