cover image Island People: The Caribbean and the World

Island People: The Caribbean and the World

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro. Knopf, $28.95 (496p) ISBN 978-0-385-34976-5

Jelly-Schapiro (co-editor of Nonstop Metropolis) investigates the Caribbean in this sweeping cultural study that covers the Greater and Lesser Antilles, including Jamaica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, the Cayman Islands, Barbados, Grenada, Antigua, Martinique, and Trinidad. Jelly-Schapiro introduces the region’s intellectual and artistic giants: Antigua’s Jamaica Kincaid, Dominica’s Jean Rhys, Jamaica’s Bob Marley, Martinique’s Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon, and Trinidad’s V.S. Naipaul. He also discusses historical figures, such as Christopher Columbus and Toussaint Louverture, who influenced events throughout the Caribbean, and pays special tribute to Trinidadian C.L.R. James, whose scholarship looms over the book. Though his arguments about the relationship between modernity, tourism, and branding are not always clear, Jelly-Schapiro writes joyfully about music and literature and how these arts reflect the Caribbean’s hybrid and evolving culture. Agency: Zoë Pagnamenta Agency. (Nov.)