A travelogue informed by close study of the history of the Caribbean. The author travels from Jamaica to Cuba, Puerto Rico to Trinidad, Haiti to Barbados, with many stops at the islands in between.
Here's what one reviewer has said: “The Caribbean—the supposed ‘American lake’—has always been the sea of stories and of dreams, a phantasmagorical realm of the beautiful, the fantastical, and the not-quite believable. Since Columbus and the Haitian Revolution these scattered lands of miracles and wonders have shaped the history of our world, and for decades they have cried out for a revivified history by a chronicler—in the wake of C.L.R. James and Naipaul and Wolcott—equal to the task. And now here is Island People, precisely that marvel of a book, given to us by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, a superb young writer who brings to this sea of dreams a scholar’s authority, a novelist’s way with character, and an ace reporter’s talent for stumbling into exactly that tale, however improbable and fantastic, that most needs telling.” -- Mark Danner, University of California Berkeley
We have tried before (with limited success!) to read a work that merged travel reportage with detailed historical description--that was John Man's Marco Polo: The Journey That Changed the World--but my hope and expectation is that this effort will be more successful. At the request of some of our regular members, we are moving this meeting to Zoom--which means they can take part from their vacation locations. Please register to ensure that you receive updates about this session.
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