Category Archives: Recommended Reading

Articles or books Rosaliene have read and recommend.

Down Independence Boulevard And Other Stories by Ken Puddicombe

21 Sunday May 2017

Posted by in Guyana, Recommended Reading

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Book Cover - Down Independence Boulevard and Other Stories by Ken Puddicombe

On May 26, Guyana celebrates 51 years as an independent nation. Independence did not come easy. Worker strikes, riots, lootings, burnings, beatings, rape, and killings turned the coexistence of the country’s multi-ethnic population into a toxic stew of animosity and mistrust. The so-called “racial disturbances” of the 1960s drove hundreds from their homes. Those who could, fled overseas.

In his collection of sixteen short stories, Down Independence Boulevard And Other Stories, Guyanese-Canadian author Ken Puddicombe, who migrated to Canada in 1971, takes us within the homes of families faced with racial violence and upheaval. With the keen eyes of a master story teller, Puddicombe lays bare their ruptured lives and re-invention as immigrants in a foreign country. Continue reading →

Between Two Fires: A Novel by Toni Williams

07 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by in Recommended Reading

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Cover Between Two Fires by Toni Williams

Front Cover – Between Two Fires by Toni Williams

Between Two Fires by Caribbean author Toni Williams is the first book in his crime noir trilogy, Dread Desires. Williams takes us to the fictitious Elysian Island off the coast of Saint Lucia. Driven by desire for another man’s wife, Rudy Phillips, a struggling black British journalist, pursues her to their exclusive paradise.

Rudy is no stranger to the region. Born in Saint Lucia, he was nine when he migrated to England. Still single at thirty-four, he sports shoulder-length dreadlocks and a pencil mustache and beard. Oozing sexy charm, he’s a success with the ladies. No woman before has captured his mind, heart, and body like Bridget – the beautiful, white American wife of a British aristocrat, Lord Edward Henry Tennyson, thirty-two years her senior.

After meeting the couple in London during an assignment for a local tabloid, Rudy had a two-week-long liaison with Bridget. Believing that he could free Bridget from her unhappy marriage and claim her as his own, Rudy accepts her husband’s invitation to spend two months, all expenses paid, on Elysian Island. Continue reading →

A New Look at Jonestown: Dimensions from a Guyanese Perspective by Eusi Kwayana

22 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by in Guyana, Human Behavior, Recommended Reading

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Cover of A New Look at Jonestown: Dimensions from a Guyanese Perspective
by Eusi Kwayana

November 18 marked the thirty-seventh anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana. On that fatal Saturday in 1978, over nine hundred members of the Peoples Temple died from ingestion of cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid. Their leader, the Reverend Jim Jones, died from gunshot wounds. Seven miles away, American Congressman Leo Ryan and four members of his party lay dead on the Port Kaituma airstrip.

After all these years, several questions about the tragedy remain unanswered. The then Guyanese Prime Minister of the socialist cooperative ruling party, declared the Jonestown Massacre “an American problem.” No Guyanese investigation was ever conducted. To fill this void, A New Look at Jonestown: Dimensions from a Guyanese Perspective by Eusi Kwayana will soon be released (see below for details of ordering copies). Continue reading →

Blue Sky for Black America

18 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by in Education, Recommended Reading, United States

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Book Cover - Blue Sky for Black America by Jesse Rhines

Book Cover: Blue Sky for Black America:
100 Years of Colored People in Western Utopian Literature
by Jesse Rhines Ph.D

The book, Blue Sky for Black America: 100 Years of Colored People in Western Utopian Literature, captured my interest as a lover of science fiction. Based on his early experience as an IBM Systems Engineer Trainee, the author Jesse Rhines applies IBM’s “blue sky” utopian approach to formulating its hundred-year projection in addressing urban hopelessness among underclass Black youth. He argues that hopelessness, a future oriented condition, requires a future oriented solution.

To facilitate this process, Rhines analyzes one hundred years of Western Utopian literature featuring Black Americans. Beginning with the pre-World War II period, he examines two classic futuristic novels by Edward Bellamy and Aldous Huxley. Blacks remain servants and are depicted as backwards, uncivilized, and rapists. Continue reading →

Junta: A Novel by Ken Puddicombe

05 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by in Recommended Reading

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Front Cover of Junta A Novel by Ken Puddicombe

Front Cover of Junta: A Novel by Ken Puddicombe

What can we do when the armed forces seize power from our democratically elected government, however corrupt?

In Junta: A Novel, set in 1979 on the Caribbean Island of Saint Anglia, Ken Puddicombe explores this question. Taking us within the inner circle of the Junta, he introduces us to General Marks, chief of the armed forces, and his second-in-command, Colonel Stevenson. On a tranquil Sunday morning, while their Prime Minister is away in Barbados attending a conference of Caribbean leaders, the general executes his meticulously planned and bloodless coup.

Opposition to the military takeover comes from Melanie Sanderson, a university student in her twenties who calls on students, faculty members, and the people of Saint Anglia to join her and her friends on a peaceful, protest march to the legislative center.

History Professor Marcus Jacobson, whom she admires, rejects her plan of action, viewing her as naïve: “What chance do you think you really have against them? They haven’t come this far to allow anyone to stop them, much less a band of idealistic students who don’t have any idea of the concept of power and how it’s exercised.”

As Melanie and her supporters set out on their unauthorized protest march, she sets into motion events that will force Marcus to reconsider his position and bring them closer together.

Joining the ranks of the dissidents are Father Bert and Clarence Baptiste, important voices among the people of Saint Anglia. Father Bert, who runs an orphanage in the city’s poor district, is a thorn in the side of the church’s hierarchy for his socialist ideals and his struggle for the rights of the poor that he serves.

As editor and owner of a local newspaper, Clarence Baptiste is not a man easily muzzled. His failure to comply with directives to desist from criticizing the Junta—“that the media gives [them] a chance to fix the problems created by the last [corrupt] government”—results in an anonymous bomb threat.

Puddicombe weaves an action-packed plot heightened by the undercover activities of a criminal gang, led by The Reverend, recruited by Colonel Stevenson to foment unrest and silence the opposition. A self-proclaimed religious leader, The Reverend invokes God’s name while selling his soul to the Junta.

Kentish, Marcus’ driver, gives voice to the hopelessness of the working people: “Nothing ever change. At the end of the day, I still have to work for a living. Voting don’t put food on me table or put clothes on me back. It don’t send me children to school or buy schoolbooks. All them people you vote for, they all just looking out for themselves.”

Are we powerless against military might? Can we make a difference? Melanie Sanderson is hopeful: “Maybe we don’t stand much of a chance. Maybe we will make a big difference. I don’t exactly know, Professor [Jacobson]. But I do know that doing nothing is just as bad as if we were supporting them.”

Our struggle against oppression goes on.

Ken Puddicombe

Ken Puddicombe, a Guyanese-Canadian, was an accountant by profession before retiring to pursue his love of writing. His work has since appeared in newspapers and literary journals. His first novel, Racing With The Rain, was published in 2012.

The Haiku Master by Takiko Morimoto

04 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by in Recommended Reading

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The Haiku Master by Takiko MorimotoBook Cover of The Haiku Master by Takiko Morimoto

 

Some books touch our lives in unexpected ways, changing the way we look at life. The Haiku Master by Japanese American author, Takiko Morimoto, is one such book. Based on the life of Japan’s most famous poet in the Edo Period, Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), Morimoto’s historical novel brings to life the unrecorded early years that shaped his emergence as a haikai poet.

When we first meet Kinsaku (Basho’s birth name), he is thirteen years old with dreams of becoming a samurai warrior. In seventeenth-century Japan, with its strict class structure under the feudal lords, the young Kinsaku could never realize his dream. He’s the son of a poor farmer and former gunnery soldier.

On his father’s death, Kinsaku obtains work in the kitchen of the Iga Castle. Given the new name, Hanhichi (seven and half), his main duties are fetching water from the well, cleaning the kitchen, and serving meals to the room of the Head Samurai. After three years of faithful service, he is transferred to the Head Samurai’s residence to serve as page to the lord’s young son, Sengin, two years his senior.

As page and companion to the samurai prince, Hanhichi trains in martial arts, studies classical literature, and learns to compose haikai no renga, a form of collaborative poetry composition that his master enjoyed. Sengin calls him Sobo, his pen name as a new haikai poet.

When his master and companion dies, Sobo’s life is turned upside-down. He not only loses his closest friend, but also his chances of developing as a haikai poet.

Haikai was introduced to him almost accidentally, but now it is part of him. Without it, he cannot live. After his inner world welcomed him as a young Haikai poet, Sobo has found Haikai to be his most important resource for dealing with life. Haikai offers humor and freedom from restrictive traditional values. When linking his Haikai verses with verses by others, he feels connected, sharing the sweetness and sourness of their lives. (The Haiku Master, p.79)

While showing Sobo’s struggles to achieve his new dream of becoming a haikai poet and master, Morimoto also explores the bisexual poet’s intimate and adventurous relationships with the men and women he loved and lost.

In linking some of Sobo’s haikai to events in his life, Morimoto gives new meaning to his poetry. His grief in losing Sengin is expressed in the following poem (p.84):

The autumn wind howls
through the open sliding door
with a piercing voice.

Years later, when the first woman in his life leaves him, he writes his farewell haikai verse (p.113):

Over the high cloud
Far from a friend, a wild goose
Departs forever!

Morimoto’s Basho does not forget his humble origins and his familial obligations. As in his poetry, he gives his all in love and friendship, oftentimes at great cost to himself. His sensibility and tenacity touched my soul.

TAKIKO MORIMOTO

Takiko Morimoto - Japanese American authorBorn and raised in Japan, Takiko Morimoto graduated with a philosophy degree from the Tokyo University of Education, specializing in Japanese thought in the Edo period. After earning a Doctorate in Education from the University of California Los Angeles, she taught Japanese language and literature at universities and colleges for twenty-five years.

The Haiku Master, published in the USA in September 2014, is the result of ten years of research and the author’s actual retracing of Basho’s famous pilgrimage to Japan’s Deep North.

In 2014, Takiko Morimoto’s Japanese language novel about Basho was nominated the finalist of the 14th Historical and Romantic Novel Literary Award in Tokyo.

 

The Truth About Treasure Island by Dan McNay

18 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Recommended Reading

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Cover of The Truth about Treasure IslandTaken from Book Cover of The Truth About Treasure Island by Dan McNay
Original & doctored photos of Robert Louis Stevenson & Joseph Dwight Strong

 

Breaking up can get nasty, more so for the rich and famous. How many of us have not only cut former lovers or partners from our lives, but also from our photos?

The literary acclaimed Scottish writer, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) – who gave us Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde – was not immune to such behavior. He went even further. He obliterated his one-time friend and step-son-in-law, Joseph Dwight Strong (1853-1899), an American artist, from the Stevenson family history.

What crime had Joseph Strong committed to have deserved such wrath?

Dan McNay Book Signing - Books used in research for historical novelResearch Resources: The Truth About Treasure Island by Dan McNay (2013)
Book Launch – 19 October 2013 – Los Angeles, California

With the passion and mastery of a literary detective, Dan McNay unearths the truth about the relationship between Joseph Strong and Robert Louis Stevenson. In Dan McNay’s novel, The Truth About Treasure Island, published in October 2013, Joe Strong tells his side of that breakup. The lives of the two men became entwined through their choice in women. Joe was twenty-six years when he married Isobel “Belle” Osbourne, an American art student. The following year, thirty-year-old Louis, as he was called by his family and friends, married Belle’s mother, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne – a divorcee twelve years his senior with two children, Isobel and Lloyd.

Joseph Dwight Strong - 'Hawaiians at Rest, Waikiki' - oil on canvas, c. 1884Joseph Dwight Strong – Hawaiians at Rest, Waikiki – Oil on Canvas, c. 1884
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Joe begins his story in 1891, during the final three years of Louis’ life. That year, Joe, Belle, and their ten-year-old son, Austin, move to the Stevenson cocoa plantation in Vailima on the Samoan Island of Upolu. Louis, sickly since childhood with tuberculosis, had finally found some relief in the South Pacific climate.

Except for the financial woes of the artistic life, Joe and Belle enjoy a happy and satisfying marital relationship. But Joe is no saint. On arriving at Vailima, he resumes his illicit affair with a native Samoan Sava dancer who he had met on a previous visit. As his marriage unravels, he must come to terms with his deception and his deepening relationship with his young Samoan lover.

Louis is no innocent bystander. With his fame, wealth, affable personality, and physical frailty, he succeeds in captivating the women around him. His step-daughter Belle is no exception. While her mother is busy managing the plantation and household, Belle becomes Louis’ personal assistant and secretary. So taken up with attending to Louis’ demands, she is rarely available for activities with Joe and Austin. When Belle and Louis are together, Joe becomes an outsider.

Fans of Robert Louis Stevenson may object to me taking Joe Strong’s side in their falling out. They may be right in their assessment of Louis’ character. Perhaps I have fallen victim of Joe’s disarming sincerity and honesty in his account of events leading to the breakup with his wife and the Stevenson family, and the loss of his son. Deceitful married men have a way of winning a woman’s sympathy to their side of the story.

Am I wrong in standing by Joe Strong? Hear his side of the story. Judge for yourself.

* * * * * *

Dan McNayWhen American author, Dan McNay, is not working at the University of Southern California, he’s busy writing stories, composing songs, painting, or singing and playing his banjo at a local festival or bar in Los Angeles and neighboring cities.

Before the release of his second novel, The Truth About Treasure Island, in October 2013, he published his first novel, It Knows You By No Other Name, in 2007.