Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root. Caribbean Fabulist Fiction

The lushness of language and the landscape, wild contrasts, and pure storytelling magic abound in this anthology of Caribbean writing. Steeped in the tradition of fabulism, where the irrational and inexplicable coexist with the realities of daily life, the stories in this collection are infused with a vitality and freshness that most writing traditions have long ago lost. From spectral slaving ships to women who shed their skin at night to become owls, stories from writers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Marcia Douglas, Ian MacDonald, and Kamau Brathwaite pulse with rhythms, visions, and the tortured history of this spiritually rich region of the world. CONTENTS Introduction by Nalo Hopkinson (xi-xiiipp) 'MEMBAH 1. What the Periwinkle Remember / Marcia Douglas (from Madam Fate, novel) 2. Yurokon / Wilson Harris 3. Spurn Babylon / Tobias S. Buckell SCIENCE 4. Just a Lark (or the Crypt of Matthew Ashdown) / Roger McTair 5. Tears for Érsulie Frèda: Men Without Shadow / Claude-Michel Prévost BLOOD THICKER MORE THAN WATER 6. The Village Cock / H. Nigel Thomas 7. Shadows Move in the Britannia Bar / Ismith Khan 8. My Mother / Jamaica Kincaid THE BROAD DUTTY WATER 9. Mad Fish / Olive Senior 10. Widows' Walk / Opal Palmer Adisa 11. Once on the Shores of the Stream Senegambia / Pamela Mordecai CRICK CRACK 12. In the Beginning / Lillian Allen 13. Uncle Obadiah and the Alien / Geoffrey Philp 14. My Grandmother's Tale of the Buried Treasure and How She Defeated the King of Chacachacari and the Entire American Army with Her Venus-Flytraps / Robert Antoni (from My Grandmother's Erotic Fairytales) 15. Pot O' Rice Horowitz's House of Solace / Ian McDonald DOWN INSIDE THE CHUTE 16. Glass Bottle Trick / Nalo Hopkinson 17. Buried Statues / Antonio Benítez-Rojo 18. Soma / Camille Hernandez-Ramdwar DREAM 19. My Funny Valentine / Kamau Brathwaite 20. Devil Beads / marina ama omowale maxwell Contributors' Notes Acknowledgments * Jacket painting: Mermaid amd Butterflies by Michel Ange Altidort