Nonfiction. Language and Literature. Criticism and Interpretation. Caribbean Area Civilisation. The writings of Lasana M. Sekou have been compared to the works of a range of poets, from Aime Cesaire to Oswald Mtshali, from Kamau Brathwaite to Dylan Thomas, from e.e. cummings to Linton Kwesi Johnson, but Fergus insists that "the voice that reaches us is sui generis, unique and Sekouesque." Fergus throws wide ajar the doors to enter into Sekou's poetics with authority and anticipation."
Poetry. African Diaspora Studies. Lasana M. Sekou's 37 POEMS was written in China while the St. Martin poet was a visiting fellow at Asia's first International Writers' Workshop (2004) in Hong Kong and Beijing. Coming from a 37-square-mile Caribbean island, Sekou has been steadily reaching readers in the Caribbean, the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia through his writing and performances. Readers who think they know his poetic style will be pleasantly surprised at his streamlined use of language in 37 POEMS, which makes the collection even more potent than Sekou's previous release, THE SALT REAPER, which predates 37 POEMS by just a few months. "Somewhere between the grace of haiku and the weight of the epic, Sekou has crafted his most elegant work to date. 37 POEMS is both love song and lament"-Drisana Deborah Jack, author of "The Rainy Season."
"Book of the dead risks a new kind of pan-Caribbean poetry. ... Its verse plays with the whole Caribbean language spectrum: here fragments in Spanish, there across the Afro-English spectrum, to scraps of French, Dutch, Haitian, and Papiamento"--
Doit-on considérer la Négritude comme un mouvement ancré dans la fin de la période coloniale et sur lequel il n’y a plus lieu de revenir ? C’est une des questions que le colloque qui s’est tenu à l’Université des West Indies à la Barbade en l’honneur du centenaire de la naissance de Senghor s’efforce d’explorer. Lylian Kesteloot nous rappelle encore récemment dans son étude Césaire et Senghor un pont sur l’Atlantique l’importance de ce mouvement qui entre les années trente et soixante a participé à la naissance de la littérature africaine. La question du particularisme que le mot Négritude implique et de son opposé l’universel sera largement débattue dans les pages de cet ouvrage. Les articles de cet essai discutent les défauts essentialistes de la Négritude senghorienne, mais également le fait que dans les termes de Senghor « la Négritude est un mythe », donc une construction identitaire, l’expression d’une invention. Il envisageait par exemple l’avènement d’un socialisme africain, dans une interprétation unique du marxisme. En tant que mouvement poétique, philosophique, littéraire, ou en tant que réponse idéologique à une oppression, les auteurs africains et antillais étudiés ici et qui traitent de thèmes très contemporains, démontrent la vivacité d’une Négritude toujours d’actualité dans sa présentation des cultures. Il faut bien entendu dépasser la notion raciale contenue dans le terme et insister sur le culturel, le philosophique et l’esthétique, pour accepter que la Négritude ait une pertinence actuelle. Notamment nous verrons que la Négritude s’est métamorphosée aux Antilles où au Brésil en d’originaux projets idéologiques et esthétiques. Should Negritude be seen as a movement that originated at the end of the colonial era and merits no further study in this contemporary world? This is one of the questions explored in the Colloquium held at the University of the West Indies, Barbados, to mark the centenary of the birth of Léopold Sedar Senghor. In a recent study, Césaire et Senghor: Un pont sur l’Atlantique, Lylian Kesteloot reminds her readers of the importance of Negritude which contributed to the emergence of African literature between 1930 and 1960. The idea of essentialism which the word Negritude implies, as well as the opposite idea of universalism, will be widely discussed in the pages of this work. This collection of essays acknowledges the essential shortcomings of Senghor’s Negritude, but, at the same time, underlines the fact that in Senghor’s words, “Negritude is a myth” and therefore has to do with the construction of (an) identity and is the expression of an imaginary creation. It envisaged, for example, the creation of an African form of socialism within a unique interpretation of Marxism. In this volume, African and Caribbean writers who are concerned with contemporary issues, demonstrate the vitality of Negritude as a poetic, philosophical and literary movement and as an ideological response to oppression that is still relevant in its presentation of cultures. Clearly, it is necessary to go beyond the notion of race implied in the term and to focus on the cultural, philosophical and aesthetic elements in order to appreciate the relevance of Negritude today. Most notably in the Caribbean or Brazil, Negritude has been transformed into original ideological and aesthetic projects.
Fiction. Short stories. Lasana M. Sekou is the author of 11 books of poetry, monologues, and short stories. He is the leading writer of St. Martin and is considered one of the prolific Caribbean poets of his generation. His writings are taught in high schools and dramatized on stage and in carnival presentations. Brotherhood of the Spurs is his latest collection of short stories. "Brotherhood of The Spurs brings a new dimension to the growing stature of Lasana M. Sekou as a St. Martin and Caribbean writer"--George Lamming.
For the first time the Dutch-speaking regions of the Caribbean and Suriname are brought into fruitful dialogue with another major American literature, that of the anglophone Caribbean. The results are as stimulating as they are unexpected. The editors have coordinated the work of a distinguished international team of specialists. Read separately or as a set of three volumes, the History of Literature in the Caribbean is designed to serve as the primary reference book in this area. The reader can follow the comparative evolution of a literary genre or plot the development of a set of historical problems under the appropriate heading for the English- or Dutch-speaking region. An extensive index to names and dates of authors and significant historical figures completes the volume. The subeditors bring to their respective specialty areas a wealth of Caribbeanist experience. Vera M. Kutzinski is Professor of English, American, and Afro-American Literature at Yale University. Her book Sugar's Secrets: Race and The Erotics of Cuban Nationalism, 1993, treated a crucial subject in the romance of the Caribbean nation. Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger has been very active in Latin American and Caribbean literary criticism for two decades, first at the Free University in Berlin and later at the University of Maryland. The editor of A History of Literature in the Caribbean, A. James Arnold, is Professor of French at the University of Virginia, where he founded the New World Studies graduate program. Over the past twenty years he has been a pioneer in the historical study of the Négritude movement and its successors in the francophone Caribbean.
Poetry. African American Studies. The author of ten books of poetry, monologues, and short stores, Sekou is a St. Martin writer who has recited his poetry throughout the Carribean and the world. His works are commonly required as university reading, taught in high school, and dramatized on stage and in carnival presentations, and he has been a leading advocate for St. Martin independence. "Sekou has a vast and critical command of Caribbean history and culture, and this helps to define his work...He can sit comfortably with Aime Cesaire"--Howard A. Fergus, in Salted Tongues: Modern Literature in St. Martin.
