Duke University Press Log

Books Inspire Art

We're very pleased that two of our books have recently inspired exciting artistic projects. 

If you're in New York City next Friday, June 8, you can catch a staged reading of The Hopefulness of Esperanza, a play by Raquel Almazán which was inspired by Denise Brennan's 2004 book What's Love Got to Do with It?: Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic. The play is about two Dominican sisters, sex workers, who stow away on a cargo ship from the Dominican Republic to France. It transpires entirely inside a storage container in which they are slowly suffocating to death. After the reading there will be a Q&A with Almazán and Brennan. Click here to make reservations for free tickets to the show at the Studio Theater on 42nd Street.

 

Enda Duffy's book The Speed Handbook: Velocity, Pleasure, Modernism (2009) recently inspired an art installation by Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec entitled "City Velocities-Body Speeds." The project involved measuring velocities of several trams in Amsterdam, streaming the data to the exhibition space in real time, and recreating them by several powerful fans. Visitors stood among the fans and experienced the feeling of the trams' actual speed. The exhbition was part of the Dutch arts festival Sonic Arts, and Duffy was pleased to give a talk during the festival. He noted that the tram operators, initially skeptical about the project, were invited to the exhibition and found it quite interesting.

 

Classic Book Explains Cricket to Mystified Americans

Cricket has been in the international news lately because of a game-fixing scandal featuring the Pakistani team. Three Pakistani players have been suspended from the team for participating in an illegal betting scheme. International Olympic Committe president Jacques Rogge said yesterday that he believes illegal betting is a worldwide problem for sport, of similar magnitude to recent doping scandals. While British and South Asian cricket fans follow the scandal eagerly, many Americans are completely mystified by the sport of cricket. Those who want to understand it better should turn to the classic work on the sport by C. L. R. James, Beyond a Boundary. Reviewing the book when it first came out in the U.S. in 1983, the Utne Reader said, "If you want to look deeper into cricket’s intriguing history, check out Beyond a Boundary by C.L.R. James. First published in 1963, this modern cricket classic is both a tribute to the game that James grew up playing in his native Trinidad and a memoir of his years in England as a radical writer leading the crusade for West Indian independence." Nearly sixty years after it was first published, the book still resonates.

Is Travel from the US to Cuba About to Get Easier?

The New York Times reports today that the Obama administration plans to lift some restrictions on Americans' ability to travel to Cuba. Academic, religious, and cultural groups may soon be able to travel directly to Cuba to facilitate "people-to-people" cultural exchange. If you plan to take advantage of the loosened restrictions, you'll want to read The Cuba Reader before you go. It's the perfect guide to the history, culture, and politics of the island. A reviewer in the Miami Herald said, "What The Cuba Reader does extraordinarily well is to reveal the nuances and complexity of the Cuban experience. All shades of politics are here, and they infuse Cuban dance, music, film and religion." The book is edited by Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, and Pamela Maria Smorkaloff. And look for The Havana Reader sometime in the next couple of years!

Japanese Reggae Comes of Age

The New York Times features Marvin Sterling's new book Babylon East: Performing Dancehall, Roots Reggae, and Rastafari in Japan today. Reporter Jonathan L. Fischer notes that, "The Japanese have been making reggae almost as long as Jamaicans have been exporting it," but that finally artists are singing in Japanese. "Japanese dancehall is becoming more and more Japanese," says Sterling, a professor of anthropology at Indiana University. Dancehall predominates in the Japanese reggae club scene, but, says Sterling, "within reason, anything goes."

In Praise of Backlist

This terrific LA Weekly article asks, why are we "sold books the same way we are sold cell phones, as if the latest models deserve the most attention"? Reviews, interviews, publicity hype is all reserved only for the lastest books. And says, Nathan Ihara, "the book they are hyping probably is not the book you ought to read, not even the book you would most enjoy reading. That book lies hidden in the back of the bookstore, or perhaps not even there. It is 10-, 20-, 35-years-old." At Duke Press, our backlist supports us. We always hope each new book is one that will still be selling in a decade. In praise of our backlist, might we suggest three older titles that are currently on our in-house bestsellers list? First is Carla Freeman's High Tech and High Heels: Women, Work, and Pink-Collar Identities in the Caribbean (1999). This ethnography of women working in the informatics industry in Barbados is a perennial bestseller for us, used in courses all around the country. Our editors often cite it to new authors as a way to write important scholarship that is also engaging to students. Another book currently selling well is The Cuba Reader (2003). Our Latin America and World Readers series offer the student or traveler a way to get an overview of a country's history, politics, and culture through primary documents like songs, paintings, photographs, poems, short stories, speeches, cartoons, government reports, and reportage. All the titles in the two series are  steady backlist seller for us. The third backlist title we offer you today is Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation by Brian Massumi (2002). Massumi's book was an early title in a the now burgeoning field of affect studies and is a good example of how many of our bestselling books will never see a non-academic review or spend much time on a Barnes and Noble shelf. Instead we are known for cutting-edge theory that may be difficult, but that academics in many fields need to confront. Take some time to browse our other backlist on our website. Unlike a cell phone, a truly excellent book will not become obsolete in just a year or two.

Sujatha Fernandes Quoted in New York Times

Sujatha Fernandes, author of Who Can Stop the Drums? Urban Social Movements in Chávez’s Venezuela and Cuba Represent!Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures, is quoted in today's New York Times. In an article by Simon Romero, Fernandes comments about groups like the Communications Liberation Army and Guerrilla Communications, who create grafiti-based murals in Caracas. "These groups share the objective of reclaiming public space and turning it into a kind of street periodical that can be constantly renewed and painted over to get their message out," says Fernandes. Who Can Stop the Drums? is an ethnography the social movements of Caracas's barrios.

Roundup of Weekend Coverage

Some diverse media coverage of Duke Press books this weekend. First up, a very nice profile of Thomas Glave, editor of Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, in FootNotes. D. Kevin McNeir says, "In one word, Glave is—brilliant." McNeir writes, "Our Caribbean is a unique analysis of how same-gender loving and longing intersects with religion, family, race and class all within the Caribbean context and how ostracism and alienation become the common factor and obstacle that stands in the way of true equality and freedom for far too many men and women."

Meanwhile, in California, Arnold J. Bauer did a reading at the Colusa Business and Visitors Center, and the Colusa Sun-Herald reported on the event. They quote an area librarian praising Bauer's new book The Search for the Codex Cardona. "Catherine Bernard, president of the Friends of the Colusa County Library, said she was fascinated by Bauer's book, which is a mystery that touches on the curious — and often illegal — workings of the rare books and manuscripts trade. 'I wasn't really interested in Mexican history,' Bernard said. 'I'm very Euro-centric. But the book had me booking my flight to Mexico City.'"

And over at the literary blog Beatrice, there's a nice excerpt from Fred Moten's new book of poetry, B Jenkins. Ron Hogan posts Moten's poem "Njeeri Wa Thiong’o."

Duke Authors on Haiti Earthquake

 Two Duke authors with expertise on Haiti and the Caribbean respond to the devastating earthquake. Marc Becker, author of Indians and Leftists in the Making of Ecuador’s Modern Indigenous Movements, visited Haiti just a few days before the quake. Writing for History News Network, he locates Haiti's problems in the international ostracism it experienced after independence. "The solution to Haiti's problems," he writes, "is to allow the country to develop its own economy and political system without constant outside intervention.  Otherwise, Haiti's next natural calamity will be worse than this one, and the country will continue to sink deeper into poverty, inequality, and social exclusion." Speaking to CNN.com, Allen Wells, author of Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosúa, contrasts Haiti's nearly nonexistent tourism industry with the Dominican Republic, where tourism booms. Quoted on Bowdoin College's news site, Wells is hopeful: "The freedom the slaves achieved in Haiti signaled the birth of the modern world. The Haitian people should not be underestimated. They are amazingly resilient. They have overcome so much and they will, with the help of the international community, overcome this."

Resources on Haitian History

If you're looking to learn more about Haiti's history in the wake of Tuesday's horrific earthquake, you should check out Sybille Fischer's multiple-award-winning Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution. Fischer sees the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) as crucial to understanding Western modernity. Here's a great interview with Fischer in Bomb Magazine. When asked about Haiti's modern situation, she believes "Haitian history is characterized by a conflict that originates with the revolution," and that we must also take into account Haiti's isolation from the rest of the world. To learn more about Haiti's colonial past, consider Doris L. Garaway's The Libertine Colony: Creolization in the Early French Caribbean, a literary study which examines how French colonial writers characterized the Caribbean as a space of spiritual, social, and moral depravity. And if you're looking for expert opinion on modern Haiti, please contact Laurent Dubois, Duke professor of romance studies and history, and member of DUP's editorial board.

San Francisco Bay Guardian Reviews Slaves to Fashion, Glave in Out 100

Two nice bits of news today. First, Monica Miller's Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity is reviewed in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Reviewer D. Scott Miller says he will now "direct all queries" regarding black dandies to Miller's book, which demonstrates "uncanny feats of scholarship that illustrate ways in which the figure of the black dandy has been an elephant-in-the-room — albeit a particualrly well-dressed one."

We were also pleased to learn that Thomas Glave, editor of Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, and quite a sharp-dressed man himself, was named one of Out Magazine's Out 100. Glave is praised for his short story collection, The Torturer's Wife, but it should be noted that he won his Lambda Literary Award for Our Caribbean!