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Review: Pepperpot. Best New Stories From the Caribbean. NY: Peekash Press (Akashic), 2014. ISBN: 9781617752711 e-ISBN: 9781617752834

Michael Sedano

Peekash Press started out to be not a role model for U.S. publishers but the antidote. “we acknowledged that writers based in the Caribbean are less likely to be published than those living in the British or North American diasporas.” In Pepperpot. Best New Stories From the Caribbean,  the publisher does both. Clearly, one  answer to exclusion and lack of diversity is publish it yourself. Now readers need  to discover and prove there's a market.

The thirteen stories collected in Pepperpot come from six island nations, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Belize, Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Bahamas. The editors chose for quality not token inclusiveness from Caribbean-region entries to the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

Readers want consequential characters in diverse roles and authenticity of everyday life. Good writing that sets stories off with compelling plots and rewarding insights make or break any collection of short fiction, no matter how inclusive. Most stories in Pepperpot: Best New Stories From the Caribbean make it. Readers will enjoy the characters' interesting awareness of dialect and ways the writers use their Antillean setting.

Irony happens irrespective of location. So do coming out, murder, incest, redemption, perversity. In some ways, everyday sins and what they look like here. One character laments how completely a father can disappear on a small island. Another gets insulted for being called an up island snob. Anarchy arisen from gang-dominance makes up the daily fabric of some neighborhoods of walled-in homes.

Island food and smells play key roles in other stories. The soup of the title raza will recognize as cocido. What makes jam heavier coming out than the fruit going into the mass murder's neighborhood stove? Readers will be glad to see the perverts get their just desserts, like the creep who liked to suck soft fruits and his sleeping mother’s nipple,  who “was particular to fleshy, squishy fruits where juices dripped—sweetsops, custard apples, melons, hog plums, star apples, mangoes, and so on.”

In “A Good Friday”, beguiling aromas rising from a woman’s waist capture a man's attention. “She not so cool, after all. She not so cool." He could smell the fragrances of her, her skin, her breath, her hair—cinnamon, coconut, peppermint, vetiver, and oh, Y’boy KarlLee can’t tell which is which, only it warm and nice and sweet”

Readers new to Caribbean literature will find dialect among the most notable elements of the genre; nearly every story contains moments where characters, even narrators, relax into everyday speech.

Bilingual readers will appreciate the way these writers handle dialect and code-switching. For the most part they don’t. The writers adopt standard orthography and grammar, using dialectal variation and local knowledge to inform an ethos and otherwise make a tactical point.

Kimmisha Thomas’ characters use a code-alternating style during intimacy that reflects their relationship. Jackie yields to constraints of straight society while Berry looks to free her lover from being uptight:
“Is like I could feel you coming,” she said, squeezing me tightly.
“Okay, I’m happy to see you too. Don’t squeeze the life out of me.
“All right, man. You too soft and dainty.”
Once free, I looked around. Nobody was watching us. Maybe they were just pretending.
“Stop it,” Berry said, tapping my chin, “nobody nah pree we.”

I suppose a non-dialect reader like me doesn’t need to know for sure what that all means word for word. Jackie found Berry’s words reassuring, and that’s where it matters, and what it sounds like, in Jackie’s life.

Kevin Baldeosingh’s Sukiya is comparing her one-percenter world to a minimum-wage bank teller when a surprising error shakes her enough that years of dialect discipline nearly slip away. “Except, now, Sukiya was facing one of these very tellers and feeling a flutter in her stomach. She said, “What you mean—“ then stopped. She took a breath to make sure her voice was steady and, making sure to pronounce each word properly, said, “I don’t undertand what you mean. That cheque is for five million dollars.”

Sukiya will be among a reader's favorite characters in the collection. She’s an up-from-nowhere girl writing contracts and moving money around the world for oil and mineral exploration interests, contracts, bribes. A crook. Her boss intended the erroneous five million bucks to finger Sukiya for all the fraud and let him walk away rich and clean, while she rots in jail minding her accent.

For me, the best dialect usage is something not used--appositional translation. When a character uses a word like “rassclaat,” or “pickney,” the discourse flows along without accounting the language switch. It’s the nature of multicultural expression, text selects its readership. Tipos who resent being left out by diversity can Google the terms, join the audience.

“Bomborassclaat! Me dead to rass! Me’s the Queen of England, me’s royally and unmentionably verbed!”

Most often, context is sufficient to fill in the gaps, and after a few paragraphs sprinkled with dialect a reader catches the regularities of style and readily grasps the story, enriched by the lives and sounds of these characters and stories. The Caribbean ambiente adds its own unique pleasures that can be discovered for the first time only once. Pepperpot. Best New Stories From the Caribbean will make a grand first impression, then lead into deeper exploration.

Readers seeking additional Caribbean writing will enjoy Akashic's Caribbean interest catalog and such noir collections as Trinidad Noir, Haiti Noir, Havana Noir, or Kingston Noir.

Order your copy of Pepperpot. Best New Stories From the Caribbean from an independent bookseller in your town and take Pepperpot along on vacation. It’s an ideal summer read and a loud promise from the publisher: If you want diversity and inclusion, keep buying it.


Fútbol On-line Floricanto • A Taco Shop Poet

©2013 michael v sedano

Continuing into the semi-finals, the world stops for 90 minutes hoping to hear the announcer's lusty scream, "¡gggooolll!" Lástima, for the US side, as today's Taco Shop Poet laments "we" lost in many more ways than on the Brazilian grass.

there are no winners tonight
By A Taco Shop Poet

our last hope of america,
the united states lost today.
it lost in more than one way.
it lost by points
but also, by way of a lost
love of america. it lost.
it lost its head, it lost its heart
it lost its word.
it lost its hope.

during the match,
the post from the child
says, “lo que me gusta
de la selección estadounidense
es que nunca se da por vencido”
the u.s. team never, ever
gives up. this, while i look
on and see the failure
of soccer moms. the failure
of status quo. the failure of
signs and of protest.
and truth be told,
there weren’t enough
brown and black faces.
there were not enough
poor faces. faces with legs
willing to run to another
country to win.

such are the days
we live in. we have
never seen war. we’ve
never seen drugs or la bestia.
we don’t know survival.
and we’ve pushed
the border so far south
that central america
is now the beginnings
of the fence.

when i was
thirteen, i recall seeing
a man at plaza bonita
one day. he asked me what direction
and how far los angeles was. see,
he’d just crossed. and i pointed.
north. he’d told me
he’d walked from
guerrero. guerrero.
to los angeles.
from san diego.
from my home.
didn’t seem like
a distance too far
if you’ve traveled.

and two weeks ago,
i didn’t even want
to ponder the depth
of the rabbit hole
children might have traveled.
such are the days
when i try my hardest
to understand a broken
system. it hurt just
to think of children
that have walked
from honduras,
from guatemala,
from el salvador.
and as a parent,
i couldn’t bear it.
the weight of so many
paces. alone.

today, we lost a match
we lost a game.
but life continues on.
the cruel cynicism
slaps me straight in the face.
it slaps me and tells me
i may not be “american”
enough. and yes, i feel anger.
i feel anger for the young
lives turned away.
i feel anger for having protested
and been treated like a criminal
while rights of others
are respected.

today, we lost a match.
there was no fire.
there was no next time.
there were only children.
children held in prisons.
children left alone.
children wondering
when they will see
their mothers again.
children with lives
like my children and
we couldn’t do so much
as offer shelter
or food.

what would’ve jesus
said? i can tell you jesús
believes in america.
in his posts. during the game,
he believes, we should love.
believes that we can
be both mexican and american
and american and mexican.
but he wonders if these are the values
we’ve shared?

the match was too long.
and we lost. we lost our perspective.
we called them wetbacks
we told them that they carry
diseases
gangs
dirtiness
has the story ever changed?

this, this is the jimi hendrix
star spangled banner
crashing. this is the
bald eagle that has died
from DDT. this, this is the
home for refugees
following an armed conflict.
but not one from a conflict
caused by our consumption.
policies. police. drugs.

this is the day that we lost.
we lost our heads.
we lost our hearts.
we lost the game.
we lost the love.
of what it means
to be
american.



Jazz-Inspired Poetry Anthology: Call for Poets


Pick a jazz artist and write three poems. “Jazz” is a big word and that’s what bloguera emerita Lisa Alvarado and Tara Betts intend. Pick your jazz genre and write about 3 songs. As Lisa told La Bloga, the proposed anthology is “looking for the best words about the music.”

LOVE YOU MADLY will be edited by Lisa Alvarado and Tara Betts. They seek poetry for a new anthology - poets write jazz. Each poet picks one jazz artist and writes three poems based on 3 songs.

Here’s a link to the Facebook page that includes all the details and specifications.

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ISBN: 9780385350846 (hardcover : alk. paper).

By Kathy Cano-Murillo

Eloquent melodrama. That is how I describe The Book of Unknown Americans. At first glance, it seems like another novel about the immigrant experience. While that’s the obvious premise, it takes a backseat to the real meat of the book: young love, family drama and friendships.

The heart of the story is the incandescent Maribel, the 15-year-old daughter of Arturo and Alma Rivera. It’s an injury of hers that brings her family to the United States during the first half of Obama’s presidency. Her overprotective mother, eager to “fix” her, learns of a special needs school in Delaware that can help. Arturo reluctantly agrees and they follow precise and tedious protocol to enter the United States legally. “Because we are not like the others,” Alma says, pridefully.

They arrive to find that their American dream is more of a nightmare. Everything from the living conditions to the food and weather is a downgrade compared to what they had and loved in Mexico. Their saving grace? The friendships they form with their new (also immigrant) neighbors in the rundown apartment complex. Throughout the book, each of their stories are revealed. They are Mexican, Panamanian, Puerto Rican, Venezuelan just to name a few. Their reasons for moving here are just as varied as their charm. While these passages don’t have a direct influence on Maribel’s story, they do add flavor to the book’s message of giving us insight to these “unknown Americans.” Author Henríquez presents them with a string of small moments that add up to big, unforgettable personalities.

The Rivera family makes progress in their new home and their destiny unfolds. On one end is a racist bully who taunts Maribel. And at the other end is the boy, Mayor, who falls in love with her. The two strike up a quiet, tender friendship that eventually blossoms into first love. But eventually all of the factors collide due to misunderstandings, lies, guilt, and secrets. The drama that had slowly unfolded in previous chapters, explodes all at one time... and subsides just as fast. This is my only complaint with The Book of Unknown Americans. Perhaps its the romantic in me, I wish the post-climax ending had a little more room to settle and exhale. But as we all know, real life doesn’t always work out the way we want.

I honestly didn’t expect to love this book. I expected a heavy, serious tale of struggle and I braced myself for some somber reading. I was pleasantly surprised to find the opposite. It is well-written and is bubbling with emotion. It’s a universal story about families working together for the common goal of creating a better life. Supporting one another when the bottom falls out. It captured me within the first few pages, and I put my life on hold for a weekend while I devoured each chapter!

Henríquez did a brilliant job in sharing a glance inside the lives of those normally overlooked and even ignored. I do hope for a sequel! You know you’ve finished a great book when you put it on the shelf and sigh because you’re wondering about what will become of these characters. That’s what this book did for me. It reminded me that every human being has a story, and every one deserves to be acknowledged.

Crristina Henríquez is also the author of The World in Half and Come Together, Fall Apart.

She has launched The Unknown Americans Project on Tumblr. Visit the site to to read stories or add your own! http://unknownamericans.tumblr.com/ See more about Christina Henríquez at her site, http://www.cristinahenriquez.com/



La Bloga welcomes Kathy Cano-Murillo as our guest reviewer. Kathy first visited La Bloga in Daniel Olivas' Spotlight On back in 2010.
Kathy Cano-Murillo, the Crafty Chica, is an artist and author and third-generation Mexican-American living in Phoenix, Arizona.

She is the author of the novels Waking Up in the Land of Glitter and Miss Scarlet’s School of Patternless Sewing.

You can see more about her at her site, CraftyChica.com.






La Bloga On-line Floricanto: Yago S. Cura


Only the score is even at 91:01:16. Iran outplays, out-thinks a humbled Argentina. Iran’s impenetrable sea of red rejects any challenge to the tie they’ve won today. Univision’s announcers declare Iran the better team, should have won the game. Then a minute and seventeen seconds into stoppage time, Messi gets the ball.


ODE TO LEONEL MESSI
By Yago S. Cura

Oh Messi, the words don’t like to heel;
they rear up like coked-up Clydesdales
to stamp the tales of your devious feet.

It’s just that you’re a meñique Loki—
an algebra prodigy with filthy squaw hair,
a mischief wick, Pre-Cambrian fireworks
display, you’re like nighttime diving from
the Concussion Quarry. Messi, your tech is
so untextbook—I want to stun each cell
of the reel where your feet call the shots.

Faster than fast, surpassing speeding
catalysts of exponential acceleration:

Messi you are like ten ton cubes of pins,
toothpicks, and shattered plate glass
by Tara Donovan.

We expect your currency in malicious slide tackles,
oodles of shin splits, and cleats in muscle’s mignon.

Maybe the growth hormone Barcelona bought for you
held the genetic credit of petite assassin panthers?

Or, the supersonic locura that drives
greyhounds bonkers and makes them chase
lures in fashionable muzzles and pennies.


Read more of Yago S. Cura's fútbol odes in last week's La Bloga-Jueves Thursday, Lydia Gil's Libros sobre fútbol y Fútbol Poems.

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