Overview

In Elektrik, eight women writers from Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe come together to explore, in poetry and prose, the complex nature of Caribbean existence. A single mother has an intimate encounter with a migrant worker; a teenager discovers her sexuality in the shadow of her twin sister; a poet summons a chorus of sirens, only to warn them: ""Keep your voices' beauty from waylaying sailors."" Through glittering translations from French, Elektrik sings the experience of Franco-Caribbean identity today. These writers communicate through the silence of the past to the unknowability of the future--forever in the rare language of literature.

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9781949641509

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Reviews

"""These extraordinary translations of Caribbean voices surge with defiance and music. Each 'I' asserts itself among the topography of memory and inhabiting, navigating the presence of the past within homelands and female bodies...radical and reclamatory."" --Alina Stefanescu Praise for the Calico Series ""By turns cryptic and revealing, phantasmagorical and straightforward, these tales balance reality and fantasy on the edge of a knife."" --Publishers Weekly, *starred review* of That We May Live: Speculative Chinese Fiction ""Unbelievably exciting...These are poems to read and reread, repeating the lines as though they were a secret between yourself and the page."" --The Paris Review on Home: New Arabic Poems""Essential, a gift that opens up the pleasures of new worlds."" --Hugh Raffles on Elemental: Earth Stories""This eclectic bilingual anthology from queer Brazilian writers, both living and dead, is as expansive and full of life as the country itself...enticing and poignant."" --Publishers Weekly on Cuíer: Queer Brazil""Visible approaches translation as an act that occurs not only between languages but also between media and disciplines...Thoughtfully curated...Past and present come together in a refreshingly collaborative spirit."" --Brooklyn Rail on Visible ""An absorbing sampler of the literary feast available in Africa's most widely-spoken language, No Edges should leave readers eager to discover more Swahili writers."" --Shailja Patel, author of Migritude, on No Edges"

""These extraordinary translations of Caribbean voices surge with defiance and music. Each 'I' asserts itself among the topography of memory and inhabiting, navigating the presence of the past within homelands and female bodies...radical and reclamatory."" --Alina Stefanescu ""The Caribbean depicted in this anthology is one envisioned and defined by its authors, carrying with it a bright future simply through the act of feminine production....For the women highlighted in this collection, the act of writing is one of critical defiance that gives voice to voiceless women and, further, engages in the creation of a redefined Caribbean femininity that defies patriarchal or colonial coercion....Elektrik is translation operating as good translation should: as a megaphone for writers who might otherwise remain unheard in the Western canon. To answer Jean-Gilles' question, the poetry and stories within Elektrik give space for Caribbean women to define, to 'shore up, ' the borders of their own world."" --Barrelhouse ""The latest volume in the brilliant Calico Series honors and highlights Caribbean identity, life and writing with these powerfully evocative pieces by women from Haiti, Martinique and Guadeloupe."" --Ms. Magazine Praise for the Calico Series ""By turns cryptic and revealing, phantasmagorical and straightforward, these tales balance reality and fantasy on the edge of a knife."" --Publishers Weekly, *starred review* of That We May Live: Speculative Chinese Fiction ""Unbelievably exciting...These are poems to read and reread, repeating the lines as though they were a secret between yourself and the page."" --The Paris Review on Home: New Arabic Poems ""Essential, a gift that opens up the pleasures of new worlds."" --Hugh Raffles on Elemental: Earth Stories ""This eclectic bilingual anthology from queer Brazilian writers, both living and dead, is as expansive and full of life as the country itself...enticing and poignant."" --Publishers Weekly on Cuíer: Queer Brazil Visible approaches translation as an act that occurs not only between languages but also between media and disciplines...Thoughtfully curated...Past and present come together in a refreshingly collaborative spirit."" --Brooklyn Rail on Visible ""An absorbing sampler of the literary feast available in Africa's most widely-spoken language, No Edges should leave readers eager to discover more Swahili writers."" --Shailja Patel, author of Migritude, on No Edges

Praise for the Calico Series By turns cryptic and revealing, phantasmagorical and straightforward, these tales balance reality and fantasy on the edge of a knife. --Publishers Weekly, *starred review* of That We May Live: Speculative Chinese Fiction Unbelievably exciting...These are poems to read and reread, repeating the lines as though they were a secret between yourself and the page. --The Paris Review on Home: New Arabic Poems Essential, a gift that opens up the pleasures of new worlds. --Hugh Raffles on Elemental: Earth Stories This eclectic bilingual anthology from queer Brazilian writers, both living and dead, is as expansive and full of life as the country itself...enticing and poignant. --Publishers Weekly on Cuier: Queer Brazil Visible approaches translation as an act that occurs not only between languages but also between media and disciplines...Thoughtfully curated...Past and present come together in a refreshingly collaborative spirit. --Brooklyn Rail on Visible An absorbing sampler of the literary feast available in Africa's most widely-spoken language, No Edges should leave readers eager to discover more Swahili writers. --Shailja Patel, author of Migritude, on No Edges

Author Information

Mireille Jean-Gilles, born in French Guiana in 1962, is an agro-economist. Wife of the poet Monchoachi, she currently lives in Martinique and works on the financial problems of the French overseas collectivities. She clings to words and numbers with equal passion, always in search of a poem. Her most recent collection tracks the character of the woman in ""Voracious street."" Born and raised in Martinique and now living in Paris, Gaël Octavia writes novels, poetry, theater, and short stories. She also paints and makes short films. Inspired by Martinican society, her texts explore themes of family, identity, and the female condition. Her plays have been read and performed in France, the United States, the Caribbean, Reunion Island, and Africa. Her first novel, La fin de Mame Baby, received the Wepler Jury Special Mention Award in 2017. Born in France to Caribbean parents, Fabienne Kanor is a writer and filmmaker whose novels include D'eaux Douces, Humus, Je ne suis pas un homme qui, and Louisiane. Her works interrogate race and gender in France and the French Antilles, and West African migrations to France. Awarded the Chevalier des Arts & des Lettres and the 2020 Casa de Las Americas Prize, Kanor is a professor of French and Francophone Studies at Penn State. Marie-Célie Agnant was born in 1953 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and has lived in Canada since 1970. Her writings include four novels, two short story collections, and three volumes of poetry. She has also worked as a storyteller, an interpreter, a teacher, and an environmental activist. In her literary works, she offers lyrical explorations of the unsaid, legacies of violence, and loss in families and societies consumed by memories they share in silence. She received the Prix Alain-Grandbois of the Academie des Lettres du Quebec in 2017 for her most recent collection of poetry, Femmes de terres brûlées(2016). In 2023, she was appointed Canada's 10th Parliamentary Poet Laureate. Kettly Mars is an award-winning Francophone writer from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, who has been producing short stories, poems, and novels since the mid-1990s. Her work has been translated into Danish, Dutch, English, German, Italian, and Japanese. Her most recent novel, The Patriarch's Angel, is a thriller about a cursed Haitian family and explores the conflict between vodou culture and Christian culture in modern-day Haiti. Adlyne Bonhomme is a native of Les Palmes in Petit-Goâve, Haiti. In 2017, she edited a collection of poetry in memory of the victims of Hurricane Matthew entitled Écrire pour ne pas oublier. In 2019, she published L'Éternité des cathédrales, a collection of fragmentary and erotic poems, with Éditions de la Rosée. She has participated in various literary festivals in Haiti, such as the Marathon du Livre, and she actively contributes to online literary reviews, including Plimay. Suzanne Dracius, prizewinning author and playwright from Martinique, was hailed by the French Cultural Minister as ""one of the great figures of Antillean letters."" Dracius' work explores Martinique's complex cultural history, as well as the identity of those born in the former French colonies in the Caribbean but raised in mainland France, not feeling at home in either place due to the color of their skin. Her sophisticated language is peppered with Creole, word play, Latin, slang, and neologisms. Gerty Dambury is a noted playwright, novelist, poet, theater director, and performer, as well as a cultural activist. She has lived and worked between Guadeloupe--her home and also an overseas department of France--and France. She has recently moved to Britany, where she is working on establishing an arts complex that will help promote works by Black artists, mostly Caribbean.

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