Guanahani, my Love - Marion Bethel

GUANAHANI, MY LOVE
Marion Bethel

POEMS

“Guanahani” is the Amerindian name for The Bahamas, and in a Caribbean country that is uniquely more sea than land, “the water is shamelessly beautiful,” writes Bethel in the poem “In the Shallow Seas.” Rooted in the multiple islands that make up the Bahamas, Bethel’s Guanahani poems are “entries into Caribbean magical realism” says Kamau Brathwaite, celebrated author and literature professor at New York University. Guanahani, my Love has received shining reviews from authors and critics such as Brathwaite, Yolanda Wood, director of the Center for Caribbean Studies at Casa de las Américas, and Guyanese critic Petamber Persaud, who wrote the introduction, among many others.

REVIEWS
“What is interesting about these poems is that they become entries into Caribbean magical realism" —Kamau Brathwaite, New York University

"Sensuous ... poems of honor and touching reverence." —Jacqueline Bishop, Calabash

"Guanahani, My love is the metaphor for a place of more sea than land, of sugar and salt, the Caribbean, a home, … share the profound mystery which blankets them all.”
—Yolanda Wood, Casa de las Américas

AUTHOR
MARION BETHEL is a poet, essayist, filmmaker, human and gender rights activist, and writer from The Bahamas. Her writings have appeared in Lignum Vitae, The Massachusetts Review, Callaloo, and The Caribbean Writer, and anthologized in Junction, From The Shallow Seas, and Moving Beyond Boundaries.  

The James Michener and Harvard University fellow has been a guest writer at Miami International Book Fair, Caribbean Women Writers Series, Duke University, International Poetry Festival of Medellin, International Writers Workshop, Hong Kong, and St. Martin Book Fair. In 1994, Bethel won the prestigious Casa de las Americas Prize, Poetry, for Guanahani, Mi Amor y otros poemas, which was published as a bilingual edition by Casa that same year. In 2009 she published her poetry collection Bougainvillea Ringplay. 

PRODUCT SPECIFICATION
English | paperback | 55 pages | House of Nehesi Publishers | St. Martin | 2009