Mother Poem

Brathwaite, Kamau

Oxford University Press

This volume is the second in a trilogy of which Mother Poem was the first. Edward Kamau Brathwaite's previous trilogy, The Arrivants , involved a search for the poet's African/Caribbean ancestry; the new book is more personal: Sun Poem , leaving the female-dominated Barbadan landscape of Mother Poem , explores the male history of the island as it passes from grandfather to father to son.

Sun Poem

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

The development of Creole society in Jamaica, 1770-1820

History

Americas

Clarendon Press

In May of 1986 Edward Kamau Brathwaite learned that his wife, Doris, was dying of cancer and had only a short time to live. Responding as a poet, he began “helplessly &amp; spasmodically” to record her passage in a diary. Zea Mexican is a collection of excerpts from this diary and other notes from this period of the Brathwaites’ lives, and few who read this book will fail to be caught up in the depth of Edward Brathwaite’s grief. Zea Mexican is a tribute to Doris Brathwaite and an exploration of the creative potency of love. (The title comes from the name Brathwaite gave Doris, who was originally from Guyana of part Amerindian descent.) Exposing the intimacy of his marriage, this book is the closest Brathwaite has ever come to an autobiographical statement. In examining his life with Doris he found the courage to reveal something of his own character. But, more than an autobiography, Zea Mexican is an extraordinary work of literature, much of it written in the expressive “nation language” of Jamaica and the Caribbean. Brathwaite filters his pain through his poetic gift, presenting it to the reader with all the poignancy poetry conveys.

Zea Mexican Diary: 7 September 1926―7 September 1986 (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

University of Wisconsin Press

"[Kamau Brathwaite is] one of the finest living poets of the Western hemisphere. "Ã¢E"London Times "In this indefinable text, a diary/memoir and then some, West Indian poet and scholar Kamau Brathwaite conjures his wife, Doris, and tells of her d

The Zea Mexican Diary: 7 September 1926-7 September 1986 (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography)

A compelling foray into the character of Caribbean literature and the formidable role of African expression in its development.

Roots (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

University of Michigan Press

MiddlePassages is an offshoot of the author's second trilogy, 'a splice of time &amp; space', as he puts it, between his/father's world of Sun Poem and 'the magical irrealism' of X/Self. With his other 'shorter' collections Black + Blues and Third World Poems, MiddlePassages creates a kind of chisel which may well lead us into a projected third trilogy. Here is a political angle to Brathwaite's Caribbean &amp; New World quest, with new notes of protest and lament. It marks a Sisyphean stage of Third World history in which things fall apart and everyone's achievements come tumbling back down upon their heads and into their hearts, like the great stone which King Sisyphus was condemned to keep heaving back up the same hill in hell - a postmodernist implosion already signalled by Baldwin, Patterson, Soyinka and Achebe and more negatively by V.S. Naipaul; but given a new dimension here by Brathwaite's rhythmical and 'video' affirmations. And so MiddlePassages includes poems for those modern heroes who are the pegs by which the mountain must be climbed again: Maroon resistance, the poets Nicolas Guillen, the Cuban revolutionary, and Mikey Smith, stoned to death on Stony Hill; the great musicians (Ellington, Bessie Smith); and Third World leaders Kwame Nkrumah, Walter Rodney and Nelson Mandela.

MiddlePassages: Poetry (New Directions S)

Poetry

New Directions

A collection of poems includes Fetish, Totem, Caliban, Springblade, Bread, Xango, and Koker.

Black + Blues (New Directions Paperbook)

Offers a revised edition of Brathwaite's Mother Poem, Sun Poem, and X/Self poems which explore the author's family and childhood in Barbados and his experiences with slavery and colonialism.

Ancestors

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Brathwaite, Kamau. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Brathwaite, Kamau

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Brathwaite, Kamau. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Mother Poem

Sun Poem

The development of Creole society in Jamaica, 1770-1820

Zea Mexican Diary: 7 September 1926―7 September 1986 (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography)

The Zea Mexican Diary: 7 September 1926-7 September 1986 (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography)

Roots (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

Roots (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

MiddlePassages: Poetry (New Directions S)

Black + Blues (New Directions Paperbook)

Ancestors