Michelle Cliff
Born
in Kingston, Jamaica
November 02, 1946
Died
June 12, 2016
Genre
No Telephone to Heaven
12 editions
—
published
1987
—
|
|
|
Abeng
9 editions
—
published
1984
—
|
|
|
Free Enterprise: A Novel of Mary Ellen Pleasant
6 editions
—
published
1993
—
|
|
|
If I Could Write This in Fire
4 editions
—
published
2008
—
|
|
|
Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise
2 editions
—
published
1980
—
|
|
|
Into the Interior
6 editions
—
published
2010
—
|
|
|
Bodies of Water
6 editions
—
published
1990
—
|
|
|
The Store of a Million Items: Stories
—
published
1998
|
|
|
Everything Is Now: New and Collected Stories
4 editions
—
published
2009
—
|
|
|
The Land of Look Behind
2 editions
—
published
1985
—
|
|
“Who can say how many lives have been saved by books?”
― Everything Is Now: New and Collected Stories
― Everything Is Now: New and Collected Stories
“One of the effects of indoctrination, of passing into the anglo-centrism of British West Indian culture, is that you believe absolutely in the hegemony of the King's English and in the proper forms of expression. Or else your writing is not literature; it is folklore, or worse. And folklore can never be art. Read some poetry by West Indian writers--some, not all--and you will see what I mean. The reader has to dissect anglican stanza after anglican stanza for Caribbean truth, and may never find it. The anglican ideal -- Milton, Wordsworth, Keats -- was held before us with an assurance that we were unable, and would never be able, to achieve such excellence. We crouched outside the cave.”
― If I Could Write This in Fire
― If I Could Write This in Fire
“It was never a question of passing. It was a question of hiding. Behind Black and white perceptions of who we were -- who they thought we were. Tropics. Plantations. Calypso. Cricket. We were the people with the musical voices and the coronation mugs on our parlor tables. I would be whatever figurine these foreign imaginations cared for me to be. It would be so simple to let others fill in for me. So easy to startle them with a flash of anger when their visions got out of hand -- but never to sustain the anger for myself. It would be a life lived within myself. A life cut off. I know who I am but you will never know who I am. I may in fact lose touch with who I am.”
― If I Could Write This in Fire
― If I Could Write This in Fire
Topics Mentioning This Author
topics | posts | views | last activity | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Literary Fiction ...: Discussion: This Is How You Lose Her | 213 | 219 | Dec 31, 2012 03:35PM | |
Caribbean Authors: Jamaica - Netherlands Antilles | 3 | 96 | Oct 22, 2013 07:04AM | |
500 Great Books B...: Nonfiction Varieties | 4 | 162 | Sep 20, 2014 08:07PM | |
500 Great Books B...: Decades, Centuries, and Millenia | 8 | 376 | Dec 06, 2014 09:46PM | |
500 Great Books B...: Underread 500 GBBW | 3 | 156 | Dec 10, 2014 01:00PM | |
500 Great Books B...: Daughters of Africa | 1 | 98 | Jul 21, 2015 12:10PM | |
Literary Fiction ...: LGBT lit. by people of color | 92 | 516 | Sep 22, 2015 03:55PM | |
500 Great Books B...: * Women of Color | 4 | 376 | Dec 15, 2015 01:11PM | |
100+ Books in 2024: Aubrey - 2016 - 100+ | 2 | 19 | Feb 26, 2016 07:47PM |