Words Need Love Too by Kamau Brathwaite, one of the fathers of Caribbean literature, and The Salt Reaper – Poems from the flats by the St. Martin author Lasana M. Sekou will be taught at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) this semester, said Jacqueline Sample, president of House of Nehesi Publishers (HNP).
"I have included The Salt Reaper and Words Need Love in my Caribbean Poetry and Drama Class," said Dr. Dannabang Kuwabong last week. "This is a graduate class," said the professor, who teaches at UPR English Department-Humanities—and will be lecturing here at USM on Saturday.
In January the St. Martin press was notified that its book Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems by Amiri Baraka would be taught at the State University of New York at Fredonia.
Assistant Professor Natalie Gerber told HNP that she would be using Baraka’s collection, with its controversial title poem, "in an ENGL 211: World Poetry course that enrolls up to 30 students in Spring 2009." Dr. Gerber lectures at the Department of English, SUNY Fredonia.
Baraka had lost no less than 10% of his annual income due to cancellation of appearances and speaking engagements in the USA because of "the poem that mattered," said Sekou, who is also HNP’s projects director.
"In ‘Somebody Blew Up America’ the iconic US author relates the New York twin towers bombing to a history of international oppression and violence and railed against the US-led war in Iraq," said Sekou, himself a former pupil of Baraka.
"Since its publication in St. Martin in 2003, and as the war in Iraq become more unpopular in the States, a number of US universities have used Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems as course material."
"At home the University of St. Martin has included at least two House of Nehesi books in its current semester," said Sample.
According to USM lecturer Rhoda Arrindell, her literature class has two HNP titles among the required reading texts.
Sekou’s Brotherhood of the Spurs, a collection of short stories spanning over 200 years of St. Martin people’s experiences, is one of the books. The other is the essential monographs by noted Caribbean novelist and scholar George Lamming, Conversations II – Western Education and the Caribbean Intellectual, said Arrindell.
"This is a good start for 2009," said Sample. "We ended 2008 with a review for Debbie Jack’s Skin in The Jamaica Gleaner; and Brathwaite’s Words Need Love Too received an extensive review essay in the Harvard University journal Transition."
Howard Fergus’s first book with HNP was scooped up immediately upon its publication here last June by a UWI-Trinidad literature course. The author, who hails from Montserrat, was invited to recite and discuss his works with the university students in the latter part of 2008.