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Books by Drisana Deborah Jack
The Rainy Season /
Skin
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saturday night
By Drisana Deborah Jack he looked like
you
in the dark
so i danced
with him
the scent of the
sea and onions
cornered where
his neck
and shoulder
merged
into a resting
place
for my torn
cheek
he wuking up
wetness
with gentle
gyrations
my pores yawning
to embrace his musk
weeps with
longing
the newness of
him teases
and you sleep
confident that i
actually stay
in my place
where you put me |
Source: skin © 2006
by Drisana Deborah Jack •House
of Nehesi Publishers • Philipsburg, St. Martin Caribbean •
www.houseofnehesipublish.com
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Drisana Deborah Jack was born in Rotterdam,
the Netherlands, in 1970, to Caribbean parents. As a child her
parents brought her to St. Martin, her mother’s home island,
where she was reared in Cole Bay village. Jack graduated from
SUNY at Buffalo with an MFA in 2002 but by then had already
co-founded and acted with the Teenage Acting Company while
attending the MPC high school, and published her first poetry
book, The Rainy Season (1997), in St. Martin.She went on to exhibit her artwork in the
Caribbean, the USA, Europe, and Japan. Jack, A Caribbean artist
by “geography and cultural/spiritual location, constructs …
a personal/cultural history based on ancestral or re-memory
using painting, video, photography, sound art, and poetry.”
Her poetry has appeared in The
Caribbean Writer and Calabash.
Articles citing and reviewing her work have appeared in Today, The St. Maarten Guardian, Beurs- en Nieuwsberichten, Artpapers
Journal, Buffalo News, and in Fabian Badejo’s Salted Tones – Modern Literature in St. Martin (2003).
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Jack has recited her poetry and lectured on
the cultural arts at readings and festivals such as No To The
Franco-Dutch Treaty, CARIFESTA VI, VII, at the Studio Museum of
Harlem, the Miami Bookfair International, Crossing the Seas,
Poetry Africa, and Tradewinds. A leading St. Martin poet and
mother of one daughter, Jack is an assistant art professor at
New Jersey City University.
Awards and honors include a Caribbean Writers
Institute Fellow (UM), Prince Bernhard Culture Fund and New York
Foundation for the Arts grants, SUNY Buffalo Dissertation
Fellowship, Photography Institute fellow, Lightwork
Artist-in-Residence (Syracuse University), CEPA Exhibition
Award, and a US National Endowment for the Arts residency at Big
Orbit Gallery. skin is
Jack’s second book of poems.
Source:
skin © 2006 by Drisana Deborah Jack •House
of Nehesi Publishers • Philipsburg, St. Martin
Caribbean • www.houseofnehesipublish.com
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update
29 February 2012
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