January 2013


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Across Borders

For too long, language barriers have limited the ways in which the Caribbean is read, perceived and interpreted. Border Crossings removes these barriers by ingeniously presenting all of its stories in English, French and Spanish. In this ground-breaking collection of short stories, the words of celebrated writers of the English-speaking Caribbean – like Trinidad and Tobago’s Shani Mootoo and Jamaica’s Olive Senior – stand side by side with those of storytellers from Guadeloupe, Haiti, Puerto Rico and Cuba.

Edited by Dr Nicole Roberts, a lecturer in Spanish and Hispanic Literature, and Dr Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, a senior lecturer in French and Francophone Literature, from the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (MLL), Faculty of Humanities and Education, UWI, St. Augustine, the anthology’s offerings do not, by and large, have a comforting end. Instead, they suggest the possibilities and complexities of depicting the plurality of the Caribbean, one that is open-ended and without borders.

Dr. Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw has published in Callaloo and Small Axe and has co-edited, with Martin Munro, two books on the Haitian Revolution: Reinterpreting the Haitian Revolution and Its Cultural Aftershocks and Echoes of the Haitian Revolution 1804–2004. Her first collection of short stories, Four Taxis Facing North, was published in 2007. Photo: Abigail Hadeed.
Dr Nicole Roberts has published in Contexto:Revista Anual De Estudios Literarios, Journal of West Indian Literature, Small Axe and Política y Cultura. Her most recent publication is Main Themes in Twentieth Century AfroHispanic Poetry: A Literary Sociology. Photo: Roger McFarlane.