Fred D'Aguiar

From William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner to Toni Morrison's Beloved, modern American fiction engaged with slavery has provoked fiery controversy. So will The Longest Memory, the powerful, beautifully crafted, internationally acclaimed fictional debut of prizewinning Guyanese poet Fred D'Aguiar. In language extraordinary for its tautness and resonance, The Longest Memory tells the story of a rebellious, fiercely intelligent young slave, who in 1810 attempts to flee a Virginia plantation - and of his father who inadvertently betrays him. The young slave's love for a white girl who slakes his forbidden thirst for learning and his painful relationship with his father are hauntingly evoked in this novel of astonishing lyrical simplicity. It is a measure of D'Aguiar's achievement and bravery that The Longest Memory is informed not only by the complicities between black slave and white master but also by the tensions among slaves themselves - between stoic survivalists and passionate rebels.

The Longest Memory

Feeding the Ghosts

Based on the terrible truths of Jonestown, Jim Jones's utopian commune in Guyana, Children of Paradise is a beautifully imagined novel that interweaves history and fiction to portray a mother and daughter's escape from the rule of a religious madman. Joyce and her young daughter, Trina, have followed a charismatic preacher from California to the wilds of Guyana, where a thousand congregants have cleared a swath of dense jungle and built a utopian society based on a rigid order guarded over by armed men and teenage "prefects." Each day ends with sermons that demonstrate the preacher's capricious violence and his utmost hostility toward even a whisper of skepticism. But try as the preacher may to block out the world, the commune's seclusion is being breached, first by tribal elders complaining of polluted river water downstream, then by an invisible presence that has helped a young boy to disappear, and finally with rumors of the imminent arrival of a congressional delegation on a fact-finding mission. As the camp begins rehearsing an endgame of mass suicide, Joyce and Trina attempt a daring escape, aided by a local boat captain and the most unlikely of prisoners—the extraordinary Adam, the commune's caged gorilla. Told with a sweeping perspective in lush prose, shimmering with magic, and devastating in its clarity, Children of Paradise is a brilliant and evocative exploration of the liberating power of storytelling.

A Novel

Children of Paradise

'The sea is slavery.' Inspired by a true story, this suspenseful and moving book chronicles an incident of courage and rebellion that took place aboard a disease-riddled slave ship, the Zong, returning from Africa. When illness threatens to infect all on board, the ship's captain orders his crew to seize the sick slaves - men, women and children - and throw them into the sea. But one female slave, Mintah, survives drowning and secretly climbs back onto the ship. From her hiding place, she attempts to rouse the remaining captives to rebel against the killings, becoming a dangerous force on the ship. A trial is held upon the ship's arrival to determine liability for the 131 missing slaves. The crew is nearly absolved of responsibility until Mintah's journal is produced, which directly contradicts the crew's accounts. The final words belong to Mintah, whose first-person account of her life after the Zong is troubling and dramatic. D'Aguiar's spare prose starkly reveals the inner lives of First Mate Kelsall, Mintah and the crew members as they face the moral weight of this atrocity. D'Aguiar's imagery is haunting, his characters' thoughts complex and the mood is darkly compelling.

Acclaimed novelist, playwright, and poet Fred D’Aguiar has been short-listed for the T.S. Eliot Prize in poetry for Bill of Rights, his narrative poem about the Jonestown massacre, and won the Whitbread First Novel Award for The Longest Memory. In this beautifully imagined work of literary fiction, he returns to the territory of Jim Jones’s utopian commune, interweaving magical realism and shocking history into a resonant story of love, faith, oppression, and sacrifice in which a mother and daughter attempt to break free with the help of an extraordinary gorilla. Joyce and her young daughter, Trina, are members of a utopian community ruled by a magnetic preacher. When Trina, plays too near to the cage holding the commune’s gorilla, Adam, the ape attacks and kills the child. Or so everyone believes. That night, the preacher dramatically “revives” her—an act that transforms Trina into a symbol of its charismatic leader’s God-like power. Desperate to save her daughter from the preacher’s control, the outspoken Joyce attempts a daring escape, a run for freedom aided by another prisoner—the remarkable Adam. Told with a sweeping perspective in lush prose, shimmering with magic, and devastating in its clarity, Children of Paradise is a brilliant and evocative exploration of oppression—of both mind and body—and of the liberating power of storytelling.

Bruce Smith

Bianca Stone

Bruce Bond

Carolyn Finney

Colum McCann

Philip Metres

Kazim Ali

Diana Whitney

Ru Freeman

Jerome Rothenberg

Jeff Talarigo

Sheryl St. Germain

William Heyen

Cynthia Hogue

Arthur Sze

Nin Andrews

Dominique Christina

Kristina Marie Darling

Remica Bingham-Risher

Shara McCallum

Shin Yu Pai

Mihaela Moscaliuc

Tanure Ojaide

Carol Moldaw

Michael Waters

Angelique Palmer

Rita Banerjee

Tim Seibles

Haleh Liza Gafori

Morowa Yejide

Christal Brown

Dante DiStefano

Claire Bateman

Nell-Lynn Perera

D. M. Aderibigbe

Christine Gelineau

H.L. Hix

Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees

Felice Belle

Alycia D. Jenkins

Diane Raptosh

Lynn Kozak

Steven Reese

Jeff Diteman

Damon Honeycutt

Rashidah Ismaili Abu-Baker

Sign & Breath is a new critical anthology that takes a different approach to exploring these questions: What is poetry? What defines voice? Featuring a range of contemporary artists, many of whom work across different mediums and genres, Sign & Breath introduces the reader to one page that sings in any genre – prose, fiction, poetry, spoken word, hybrid forms, and song – across diverse traditions. Rather than define poetry as a genre with conventions, traditions, codes, and modalities, this book features poetry as a faculty that thrums in all written and spoken art. Readers are introduced to a text followed by a discussion with the author about creating the piece, ties to creative lineage, and the definition of voice through their practice. This anthology contributes to the dialogue among genres which will reframe understanding of poetry as an aesthetic experience of language. With one page that sings in any genre, Sign & Breath presents a new, inclusive perspective on poetry while two questions remain: Do we have a clearer understanding of what defines poetry? Do we have a clearer understanding of voice?

Sign & Breath

From memories of a childhood in Guyana through an elegiac exploration of the shootings at Virginia Tech University in 2006, this poetry collection journeys from youth to maturing and from continent to continent. Celebrating individuals and the histories embedded in places, this compilation recollects the smell of bitumen, the local hero who came in last in the National Cycle Championship, and the 33 unique individuals who perished in Virginia. Powerful and intimate, this examination argues that alongside grief there is still delight in the world.

Continental Shelf

For the Unnamed was originally entitled 'For the Unnamed Black Jockey Who Rode the Winning Steed in the Race Between Pico's Sarco and Sepulveda's Black Swan in Los Angeles, in 1852'. That title provided the full narrative in a nutshell: we know the names of the owners of the two horses, we know the horses' names, the place and date of the race. But apart from his colour, and his victory, we know nothing about the jockey who made the whole thing happen. Fred D'Aguiar's new book recovers and re-imagines his story. It was the most publicised race of its era with numerous press notices but he remained unnamed. We are given several perspectives on the action – owner's, trainer's, the horse Black Swan's, the jockey's lover, the jockey himself. But one crucial element of identity is forgotten, and that forgetfulness speaks eloquently about the time and the freed man's circumstances in the mid-nineteenth century. Fred D'Aguiar's previous collection, Letters to America (2020), was a Poetry Book Society Winter Choice and a White Review Book of the Year.

For the Unnamed

A New Statesman Book of the Year 2021 In this piercing and unforgettable memoir, the award-winning poet reflects on a year of turbulence, fear and hope. For acclaimed British-Guyanese writer Fred D'Aguiar, 2020 was a year of personal and global crisis. The world around him was shattered by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the United States, California burned, and D'Aguiar was diagnosed with stage-4 cancer. Year of Plagues is an intimate, multifaceted exploration of these seismic events, which trouble and alienate D'Aguiar from community, place and body. Combining personal reminiscence and philosophy, drawing on music and on poetry, D'Aguiar confronts profound questions about the purpose of pursuing a life of writing and teaching in the face of overwhelming upheavals; the imaginative and artistic strategies a writer can bring to bear as his sense of self and community are severely tested; and the quest for strength and solace necessary to help forge a better future. Drawn from distinct cultural perspectives - his Caribbean upbringing, London youth and American lifestyle - D'Aguiar's beautiful and challenging memoir is a paean of resistance to despotic authority and life-threatening disease. In his first work of non-fiction, D'Aguiar subverts the traditional memoir with highly charged language that shifts from the quotidian to the lyrical, from the personal to the metaphysical. Both tender and ferocious, Year of Plagues is a harrowing yet uplifting genre-bending memoir of existence, protest, and survival.

A Memoir of 2020

Year of Plagues

In the opening pages of this novel, an accident brings a young girl to the attention of the Preacher, the all-powerful leader of a religious cult secluded in the jungle. Trina has only dim memories of the life she lived with her mother before they joined the community and the closed, close society is all she knows. When she is singled out for special favour, it becomes clear that the gaze of the Preacher can be a dangerous thing. As the Preacher's behaviour and the demands he places on his followers become more extreme, Trina's mother begins to question her faith in the charismatic but fatally flawed leader and to dream of an escape from his control.

Home is 'always elsewhere' for Fred D'Aguiar: born in Britain, brought up in Guyana, and now living in London and America. In his previous two books, Mama Dot and Airy Hall, he caught up with his past by writing about his upbringing in Guyana. Now his focus is Britain: being and feeling British, feeling at home but not being made to feel at home. Confronted by the Customs men at Heathrow, his passport stamp 'British Citizen not bold enough for my liking and too much for theirs'.Fred D'Aguiar maps out new poetic territory in British Subjects, re-discovering a sense of belonging in poems charting landmarks in his life: the return to Guyana with exiled writer Wilson Harris; ﬁnding the grave of an unknown African slave in Bristol; an unsettling visit to Germany; living by the Thames at Greenwich, and then by the sea at Whitley Bay. Always searching, always on edge, D'Aguiar can only lose himself when all the barriers come down, as in poems celebrating love, the body, and the fusing spirit of Notting Hill Carnival. Behind all these poems is his personal talisman, the River Thames, the Sweet Thames of his recent ﬁlm, a great watery snake entering his dreams like a fertility god, transplanted from Britain to the rainforest of Guyana.

British Subjects

Ever since Red Head had been hit in the head by an ax at age nine, he has experienced terrifying visions of the future, and his magically inclined family members help him accept the strangeness and wonder of his life, but the possible reelection of a cruel president could shatter his family's delicate peace. Reprint. K.

Dear Future

In this piercing and unforgettable memoir, the award-winning poet reflects on a year of turbulence, fear, and hope. For acclaimed British-Guyanese writer Fred D’Aguiar, 2020 was a year of personal and global crisis. The world around him was shattered by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the United States, California burned, and D’Aguiar was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Year of Plagues is an intimate, multifaceted exploration of these seismic events. Combining personal reminiscence and philosophy, D’Aguiar confronts profound questions about the purpose of pursuing a life of writing and teaching in the face of overwhelming upheavals; the imaginative and artistic strategies a writer can bring to bear as his sense of self and community are severely tested; and the quest for strength and solace necessary to help forge a better future. Drawn from two cultural perspectives—his Caribbean upbringing and his American lifestyle—D’Aguiar’s beautiful and challenging memoir is a paean of resistance to despotic authority and life-threatening disease. In his first work of nonfiction, D’Aguiar subverts the traditional memoir with highly charged language that shifts from the lyrical to the quotidian, from the metaphysical to the personal. While his experience could not be darker, its rendering is tinged with light and joy, captured in prose that unfolds in wonderful, unexpected ways. Both tender and ferocious, Year of Plagues is a harrowing yet uplifting genre-bending memoir of existence, protest, and survival.

The Poetry Book Society Winter 2020 Choice In Letters to Americathe Guyanese-British poet, novelist and playwright Fred D'Aguiar has some difficult things to say. The twenty-two poems are full of lived tales and memories - of Britain, the Caribbean and the United States - and of specific and shared memory. He supplies some of the difficult detail he has omitted from earlier poems. The modern mid-city Los Angeles sun-rise we experience is a cacophony, violent and memorable music rendered in prose. The poems weave in and out of familiar forms, including terza rima, casting and breaking spells. There is peril at every turn, and opportunity. D'Aguiar is now Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, a wry perspective from which to survey a nation enduring a dismal present, and also the years that shaped him. It is the variety of lives, his own among them, that provide the changing illumination of his writing, and he has developed a mimetic language that takes its bearings from Derek Walcott and from Kamau Brathwaite whose 'Barbados shines/Back at Africa'. Like his chosen forebears, he risks longer forms as well as lyrics, most notably in the fragmented 'Burning Paradise', in 'Call & Response', an impassioned exchange with Martin Luther King, and in the extended title poem. This is Fred D'Aguiar's fourth Carcanet collection, and his most ambitious.

Letters to America

Fred D'Aguiar

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