Bibliography

Uncle Brother unfolds a tale of unflinching devotion against a tapestry of neglect and exploitation.

Under the curious eyes of a succession of children glimmer fragments of stories that interlock to produce the saga of Nathan Deoraj  brother, uncle and teacher. The young boy on an early twentieth century cocoa estate in Trinidad begins his own story, and soon the opportunity for education and Nathans own passion for books opens the way to a brilliant future. Then a crippling loss reshapes his path.

But the very limitations that close on him provoke him to unleash his mind into the awakening consciousnesses around him. Others who have taken up the tale reveal how Nathans subsequent choices lead to a recharting of countless lives, and to the forging of connections that cross Caribbean social divides. Yet, running alongside Nathans devotion to family and community are stories of those children who had no Nathan. Resentments arise and smolder, shocking injustice leads to tragedy, and, in old age, Nathan must tap yet deeper reserves of strength and endurance.

Uncle Brother speaks to audiences of all ages in and beyond the Caribbean by exploring bonds between children and older family members, and, uniquely, between a girl growing to awareness in the light and shade of a powerful male relative. Then, threading the tale of the living legend are cries for help from a child who enters the story late in Nathans life, when nothing more should have been required of him.

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Bibliography

Every island of the Caribbean is the site of a deep haunting. Before Columbus, the various indigenous peoples  the Arawaks, the Caribs, the Tainos  lived in relative harmony with the land, the sea and each other. Everything changed in 1492: the Amerindian people quickly were decimated, their presence erased by disease, wars and overwork. These are the Caribbeans oldest ghosts, almost invisible in history yet still present in the form of place names, fragments of language, ancient foods, and pockets of descendants speckling the islands. . . .

Given the history of the Caribbean, it is not surprising that much of the regions literature bears a haunted quality: ghosts are everywhere, be they of the Amerindians, the African ancestors, the slaves, the planters, the indentured workers, the victims of dictatorships, foreign invasions and natural disasters, or the modern exiles. To a large extent, Caribbean fiction in general is a collection of ghost stories, tales of haunted people, memories and places. . . .

This book brings together some of the regions leading contemporary authors, from the anglophone, francophone and hispanophone Caribbean, as well as the United States and Canada, and constitutes a unique, transcultural anthology in which living authors evoke the dead, the undead and the dying, the ghosts that haunt their experiences and their works as modern writers of the Caribbean.From the introduction by Martin Munro