One of my biggest challenges has been to control what my wife calls my "Jamaican touch." Similar to the "Midas touch" where everything that the king desired turned into gold, everything I touch (people, places or things) begins to speak and act Jamaican.

Anancy weaved his magic at the National Achievers Society's closing ceremony at Florida International University.

Allen’s dark and insightful novel depicts narrator P’s sobering descent into his gambling addiction. P, a Miami native, is a school bus driver and desperate gambler who spends his nights (and many of his days) in South Florida casinos.

Here's another of those sixty word stories. Of course, I don't think I will ever match the brevity of Ernest Hemingway's famous six word short story...

Ever since I learned about these sixty word stories, I've been fascinated by their economy. They are great writing exercises that work almost like haiku, and I've continued to learn compression without sacrificing the essentials. Here's one that I enjoyed writing.

In commemoration of Caribbean-American Heritage Month 2007, award winning author, Geoffrey Philp, will be launching his recently published children's book, Grandpa Sydney's Anancy Stories, on June 30, 2007. The reading which begins at 10: 30 am will be held at Kara's Jamaican & Chinese Restaurant, 8120 Pines Blvd, Hollywood, FL 33024.

Excerpt from an interview @ Global Voices: Over the last year and a half, Geoffrey’s blog has become an important meeting place for Caribbean writers and readers. He posts samples of his own work, short literary essays and meditations, interviews with other writers, news about upcoming literary events, and regular birthday celebrations for major Caribbean authors (most recently, Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite). I chatted with Geoffrey recently about his blog and Caribbean literary blogs in general. Here is an edited version of that conversation. NL: Has the blog pushed your writing in different directions stylistically, or in subject matter? GP: The focus of my blog is pretty narrow: to promote my work and the work of Caribbean and South Florida writers. Now, I started off writing as a poet, and I’ve learned not everything can or should be a poem. As I’ve often said to my students in my creative writing workshops, a poem is that bok! of when the ball meets the bat and it shakes you up. A short story is about bottom of the ninth, the bases are loaded, both teams are tied, and the pitcher begins his motion. A novel is the whole shebang–what Henry James called the “loose, baggy, monster.” A blog comes closest to the feel of a novel–it can be anything. This is why I’ve given myself such strict limits about what my blog should be and what it shouldn’t be. By setting such narrow parameters, my writing doesn’t end up all over the place and I know exactly what my subject matter will be. For more of the interview, head over to Global Voices.

On the night of August 6, 1962 when the Union Jack was lowered and the Jamaican flag was raised, many people woke up the next morning looking at the auction blocks of the slave trade from slightly different perspectives. Not all whites were on the European side, and not all blacks were on the African side. And within the region, the status of so-called “brown” people, who were always held suspect by both sides, brought to the fore the idea of “hybridity.”

As the first New World Africans stood on the auction blocks and watched the slave ships leave the harbor, they realized that the life that they once had was now gone, and whatever new life that awaited them would never be equal to the life that they had lost. Standing on the other side of the auction blocks, the slave owners watched the same ships and knew the life that they had left behind was still out of reach, but if they exploited the land and the Africans, then they could return to the motherland as fine English “gentlemen.” From both sides of the racial divide and coupled with the human belief that life is always better somewhere else, the genesis of original sin and redemption in Jamaican culture was born: escape from the island was the only salvation. Coupled also with the deeply human desire to “make the best of a bad situation,” the two races followed a similar path of estrangement from the land. The New World Africans resisted the claims of their masters to their identity, and the masters used coercion and propaganda to control the minds, hearts, and bodies of their property. Over the next five hundred years as New World Africans and would-be English “gentlemen” eyed each other over the fence, the themes of escape, exploitation, resistance, control, and the relationship between Africans and Europeans were woven into the collective story of the island’s identity. Many of these patterns of behavior still persist and they would become especially troublesome between the decades leading up to independence and in a postcolonial Jamaica.

As I thought about what happened to me at Super Perros and Mikey Jiggs’ questions, I came to this conclusion: Alex exemplifies the 3 O’s for Overcoming: Optimism, Ownership, and Opportunity©.