Peekash Press

‘’Here in the rocky haunts of the islanders themselves are landscapes where ‘’the rocks are sharper than a coconut vendor’s cutlass, and the waters lash with a vengeance,’’ landscapes of swollen gullies and bush where monkeys can hide, where beauty and violence compete in scorpionfish and stingrays and captured, gutted shark. There are also the landscapes where lash fruit falls to the ground with the ease of summer ripening, where the clash of dominoes in the run shop provides the familiar auditory signal of men at play, and where preachers get the urge to go into the streets and warn of coming tribulations even as gunshots spatter.’’

The Whale House by Sharon Millar (Trinidad & Tobago): A beautiful, sad story about the immense pain of losing a child.

The Science of Salvation by Dwight Thompson (Jamaica): An ex-convict returns and wreaks havoc to a community plagued by gang wars in a haunting, tragic story.

Cheque Mate by Kevin Baldeosingh (Trinidad & Tobago): An affluent woman exacts her revenge on a man who wanted to buy her silence in an almost twisted game of power. Undoubtedly seductive this one…

The Thing We Call Love by Ivory Kelly (Belize): A ten-year-old girl witnesses the love troubles of her community.

A Good Friday by Barbara Jenkins (Trinidad & Tobago): Well, if that isn’t love at first sight…

All the Secret Things No One Ever Knows by Sharon Leach (Jamaica): This story is all kinds of twisted, disturbed and disturbing and haunting. I don’t agree with trigger warnings because we are all intelligent, grown-up readers but this one contains every possible trigger alert you can think of. I loved it.

‘’There’s no such thing as water under the bridge. Forgive and forget is just something pipe-dream losers, helpless victims, hang onto because they’re unable - or unwilling - to do anything else.’’

Amelia at Devil’s Bridge by Joanne C. Hillhouse (Antigua & Barbuda): The spirit of a dead girl screams in desperation in a story that will make you shiver.

Waywardness by Ezekel Alan (Jamaica): The story of a criminal with commentary on sexuality, identity, and violence. This one managed to make me uncomfortable.

And the Virgin’s Name Was Leah by Heather Barker (Barbados): A strange fusion of the Old and New Testament, of the Biblical era and our contemporary times, of Israel and Barbados produce a striking story about mental health, family and hope.

Mango Summer by Janice Lynn Mather (Bahamas): A small community is being plagued by the disappearance of young girls. Seen through the eyes of a girl’s younger sister, this is a haunting, cryptic tale in which the line between reality and myth is heavily blurred.

Berry by Kimmisha Thomas (Jamaica): A tender story of desperate love and the prejudices of a macho community.

The Monkey Trap by Kevin Jared Hosein (Trinidad & Tobago): I am sorry to say that this one was disgusting…

Father, Father by Garfield Ellis (Jamaica): In a bitter story, a boy remembers his father as he’s trying to cope with abuse.

‘’On an island nobody ever really, truly disappears without a trace. No, what we have here are bodies: a woman found in the bushes in All Saints, a tourist slain at Darkwood, a girl washed up at Devil’s Bridge…
They’re few and far between. That’s why they make the news because it always kind of shakes us up that there might be someone among us who could do such a thing.
But there are no places to ide bodies, nowhere where they won’t eventually reveal themselves.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/… (meer)

[Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (cclapcenter.com). I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.]

I have to confess, I would've never thought of picking up anthology of contemporary Caribbean writing on my own, if I hadn't been sent one by our pals at the always excellent Akashic Books; but now that I've read through said volume, Pepperpot: Best New Stories from the Caribbean, I must admit that it's so far been one of my favorite reads of the last few months, a surprisingly sophisticated and engrossing compilation that I tore through in just a couple of days. Not nearly the "singing natives in colorful dresses and their magical-realism adventures" anthology that Americans might expect from the subject (although there are a few stories like that in here), this is the entire point of a Caribbean anthology edited by actual Caribbeans, that it instead veers into tales of wealth and corporate espionage, quiet family dramas, and the other kinds of tropes that rarely get a chance to be showcased when it's white people writing about people of color in exotic lands, an illuminating slice of life that present a full range of experiences of what it must be like to live in this tropical and often troubled part of the world. In fact, about my only complaint is that the stories themselves hail from only six of the thirty nations and sovereign states that make up this region, and it would've been nice to see a wider range of representation; but I gotta say, what did get included is really great stuff, an eye-opening and entertaining read that is well worth your time. A big recommendation today for one and all.

Out of 10: 9.3… (meer)

Any collection of stories from the myriad of cultures that make up the Caribbean is bound to be uneven, and uneven these are; yet, there is in them a life and a warmth that makes them an unusually pleasing collection (perhaps more pleasing, for example, than the annual collection of American stories from the usual magazines that makes its way to the front of every American Barnes & Nobel). The stories begin to get warmed up with "The Whale House", a story of loss and sadness where the people and the Islands seem equally besieged by the sea. The language occasionally rises to the poetic, but struggles in a few places, but the story and the characters carry it forward. From here a world of ghosts and shanties and resorts opens up; always, in each story, within sight of the sea. A number of the good stories in this collection are quite good; perhaps the one thing it lacks is just one truly extraordinary story, just one that might join those few timeless stories we all know. However, it is a successful introduction to a wide range of gifted and promising authors, and it is well worth spending an afternoon by some shore drifting in these pages.… (meer)