angie cruz in conversation with nelly rosario.pdf

Angie Cruz in Conversation with Nelly RosarioAuthor(s): Angie Cruz and Nelly RosarioSource: Callaloo, Vol. 30, No. 3, Prose Fiction and Non-Fiction Prose: A Thirtieth AnniversaryIssue (Summer, 2007), pp. 743-753Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30139270 .Accessed: 08/05/2014 17:24

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A C

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by Paolo

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by Jerry

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ANGIE CRUZ IN CONVERSATION WITH NELLY ROSARIO

The following conversation took place in real and constructed time.

ANGIE CRUZ: What is your first experience with Callaloo; when was the first time you heard about it?

NELLY ROSARIO: All hearsay, calls for submissions.

CRUZ: This was when you were at Columbia or MIT?

ROSARIO: [R.U.E. -Resist the Urge to Explain. When writing dialogue in fiction, resist delib- erate exposition.]

CRUZ: ["I will tell the truth because writing dies when we lie" (I am paraphrasing Gabriel Garcia Marquez, via the playwright, Jose Rivera.] Confession: I admit it . . . the fact that you went to MIT blows my mind. I'm sorry, no matter how much you play it down, it's still a big deal. You can use both sides of the brain, moving in and out of the left and right in ways that astonish me.

ROSARIO: Thanks, but it's not playing down-I just never bought into this idea of the brain being split in two. I just follow what interests me. But about Callaloo . . . I rarely submitted because a novel in progress isn't portable. Publishing seemed light years away at the time. I'd flip through Callaloo back issues and liked that there were so many different voices, a nice cross-section, and of course, the themes. And you, Lwhen were you Callaloo-deflowered?

CRUZ: I remember seeing Callaloo when I was at Binghamton, an undergrad. It was on the shelf of one of my professors. I loved the spine, its white with black lettering, and when I pulled it out, there was always that beautiful artwork on the cover, and you're like, "iSo this is where black writers get published!" I never sent anything to them-it was too early on for me; it was intimidating.

* * *

CRUZ: Many of the writers I was reading in school were also writing for the journal, and I enjoyed the interviews, which reminded me that authors were human. But the first connection I had with Callaloo aside from just reading the journal was when Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert and Consuelo LOpez-Springfield edited the Dominican Issue.

Callaloo 30.3 (2007) 743-753


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ROSARIO: Yeah, I remember that, Summer 2000. I was excited that it was so hefty. Not just some little Brugal tourist pamphlet or something. I still have the issue, still going through it because there's so much material.

CRUZ: Even because to me that issue was radical. Callaloo, being dedicated to the African Diaspora, including Dominicans, was a reality check for all those Dominicans out there calling themselves Indios or white. Or on a more positive note, the Dominican issue was like a homecoming. Callaloo offered us, black-identified Dominicans, a place to connect/ dialogue with our extended family throughout the Americas. Being a light-skinned Latina, it's always been like, "You're not black; you're white." And then you have this journal for African-American writers, you think "I belong in this world. And I've always known I belong in it, in the African Diasporic world, but in the literary world it's not so clear, especially when you're published and they're trying to market you, and marketing people are asking you questions like "Are Dominicans black? What shelf do we put you on?"

ROSARIO: zBlack? Of course not. Why would anyone think such a lovely thing when we've got Sammy Sosa, Loida Maritza Perez, Jose Francisco Petia GOmez, Josefina Baez, Silvio Torres-Saillant, Aida Cartagena Portalatin, Pedro Martinez, Jacqueline Polanco, Sergio Vargas, Manny Ramirez...

CRUZ: I also got to know some of the Dominican writers abroad. Callaloo is really good about linking the here and there.

ROSARIO: It wouldn't stay relevant otherwise. The world changes. Labels change. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, black simply meant African American. Today, "black" is a more expansive label-as is "African American." Increased immigration of the Dias- pora to the U.S. is teaching this country to reconsider its rigid definitions of race. In turn, immigrants are learning to redefine blackness as having just as well to do with political consciousness.

CRUZ: Also, the interconnectedness that we have with each other and the multiplicity of our identities. I think about writers who are in Latin America, who are extremely urban, and their work identifies culture to hip-hop or a cityscape in ways that . . . and you juxta- pose them with Latin-American writers-they feel very far away from us, so the way they identify is with African-American writers. And in some ways we are mixing and sharing and developing works that are highly influenced from each other.

ROSARIO: We, meaning...

CRUZ: We as Latinas living in these urban landscapes. Especially because we are both from New York City. Now that we are in Texas, it feels very different, but being from New York City, I feel like I grew up in a black context. I was in a Dominican community but before us there were African Americans, and right across the street from my house is where Malcolm X got shot, and that history is there and present. So, there is all this

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interconnectedness that Callaloo is now, and has been for a while in Central America, with the Mexico issues and the Peruvian issue, they are showing how we can't talk about one thing without the other.

ROSARIO: One of my favorite units in grade-school math was set theory, with its Venn diagrams (which I've been recently revisiting through my eight-year-old's homework). These diagrams articulate how I envision myself in relation to the world. zWhere do A and B intersect? zWhat's similar / dissimilar about A, B, and C? So we're all walking through a whole bunch of circles, and the sets are always changing, depending on boundary definitions. In (T)exas, I'm now a part of the (Y)ankee circle, in addition to already belonging to (B)lack, (M)other, (W)riter, (F)aculty, etc. circles.

CRUZ: In Texas, it seems New Yorker trumps everything. At the supermarket the cashier will ask me, "Say water." And when I do, they giggle as if I had said the funniest thing. Had I been younger, I would've gotten annoyed, but in some ways it's liberating. Being Dominican is totally irrelevant in Texas. Unless someone has done mission work there, they don't even know where DR is. I find myself saying, "It's an island in the Caribbean." But in New York, everyone knows what Dominican is, for the good and bad of it. Here, to be Dominican is not something you have to defend or talk about or bring up. In my writing, in particular, I've let go of the need to represent. I have been moving around way too much in the past six years to feel tied to a fixed place. Moving around a lot liberates the writer and liberates the characters. Not that I feel less Dominican or less whatever, but it changes, because different things become more relevant in different contexts. And being Latina, whatever that means...

ROSARIO: You can forever keep messing with groups and circles (and messin' with Texas). They say we Dominicans are fixated on hybridity. Race complex aside, maybe that doesn't have to be such a bad thing. My parents say that Dominican and Chinese folks are like white rice, able to live everywhere. So I notice groups with layered commonalities. Dominican is not my capital-letter definition as a person; I also capitalize name, month I was born in. Whatever set defines me, wonderful, I'm down. Labels are elastic-which is why I'm allergic to flag-waving, which to me sometimes smells like throwing up gang signs (and, at its most demonic, fascism). Shit, I'm even starting to question the notion of countries, constructions based on war spoils and geopolitics, with ever-shifting boundar- ies. So if you look at Callaloo and try to map its set, it can only be as far-reaching as the African Diaspora allows for. Should the worldview of what it is to be of the Diaspora shift, then too should Callaloo, if it's true to its mission. And that ability to flow is what I find exciting, invigorating. If Callaloo stays within too narrow a circle, it'll lose relevance. That it's survived three decades speaks for itself.

CRUZ: The great thing about Callaloo is that they don't expect a certain kind of writing from you. They're actually happy to see writers from the Diaspora writing what they want to write. It's a free space, which is really great. There's a lot of experimental writing.

* * *

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ROSARIO: So Angie, querida water sign, if you had to burn a book, zwhich would it be and why and where?

CRUZ: I wouldn't burn it. I would pulp it and use it for insulation, which I am told is a new trend with books that don't sell. They line up the walls with books, then put sheetrock over them. Crazy, zno? The book that comes to mind, is the The Bell Curve. (Can't believe I even remember the title, but there you go.) Came out in the mid-nineties, where Hernstein & Murray write about the connections between race and intelligence. Ridiculous. zAnd you? You must have a book in mind.

ROSARIO: Actually, no. The idea's appalling to me. I asked only because it's one of those mundane questions I've been wanting to ask someone for some time. And I'm glad you'd prefer to put the book to more practical uses. Burning a book just brings to mind so much ugly history, which is why I dig German poet Heinrich Heine's inscription on a concentra- tion-camp memorial: Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

* * *

ROSARIO: You mention Callaloo's openness to experimentation. Yeah, Callaloo's a conversation, our very own Babel, where we all speak different genres: fiction, poetry, screenwriting, art, and yes, criticism and academic writing.

CRUZ: Well you wrote that fantastic piece on sancocho recently for Callaloo. I think that's probably one of your most academic works . . . and your fiction is so controlled, even though it seems completely playful.

ROSARIO: Soup is so not academic. That's why I stewed it in that pot. That's why the MLA style tastes funny. I like both formulas and upsetting forms.

CRUZ: When you visited Texas A&M to do a talk, I revisited your work, especially Song of the Water Saints, and thought, "My goodness, the way she constructs her sentences, it's almost like . . . science!" As if you made up a new language, the way you write in English but the poetic is in Spanish, so hard to do. And it's consistent.

ROSARIO: But everyone does make up language when they speak-children do it, and you and I do it all the time when we hang. I like to see how people work language. When I was looking at your manuscript for Soledad, we constantly talked about this issue of code- switching: when to use Spanish, when to use English. At the same time, that question does make you incredibly well-equipped, with a wider palette at your fingertips.

CRUZ: Recently I was looking at some old work, especially because I've been spending all this time in Europe, and the new cities seep into you; you don't want it, you are resist- ing because you want to stay true, whatever true is. But, of course, you are changing in

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ways that are terrifying. A whole new set of identity issues to grapple with. I was looking at some of the work that I produced in France and Italy, and I was like, what have I done this year, what did I do last year, and I realized I did all this writing in Italy but I shelved it. And it was work that "didn't count." A year later, when I reread it, I thought, "zWho was this person who wrote this work, and why did I trash it so easily?" I threw it away, because I thought, "This isn't what Angie Cruz is supposed to be doing." I know that I should be free to write any which way I want-tone, story, etc.-because if not, we're lying to ourselves. At the same time, when I was reading it, I said, "This feels like it was written by a white man, or an Italian man, or perhaps a French woman, but not a Dominicana from the Heights." And then I'm thinking, zWhy do I still have that censorship problem? If it's coming naturally from me, then it's exactly what I should be doing. That was a wake-up call. Or a maturity call.

then i awoke and dug that if i dreamed natural dreams of being a natural woman doing what a woman does when she's natural i would have a revolution

-Nikki Giovanni, from "Revolutionary Dreams"

ROSARIO: Who yuh playin' Mas for? as the Trinis say. Writing's all carnival anyway, dress- up and nudity all in one. I like that you're not afraid to figuratively do both in your work, how you allow yourself to "blow out" pages first and get out ideas. It's been an amazing and inspiring process to watch your progress in the ten-plus years I've known you, how we've grown as writers y hermanas in that time. So, then, zwhat exactly is "Angie Cruz supposed to be doing" now that the alarm clock's gone off? zWhat's her ideal voice?

CRUZ: That's just the problem, Nelly: there is no ideal voice. There's so much, obviously once you're published, for me at least. I wrote Soledad, and people wanted more Soledad, and they would say, "zWhy don't you have more Flaca?" and "zwhy don't you do more of this?" When I wrote Let it Rain Coffee, they were like, "This is so heavy, compared to Soledad." The reaction I get is "you should write more like this" and "you should do more of this," and you keep thinking, "Well, no. I can't write that book again. Or maybe I can, but I'm not interested in writing that book again, I'm interested in writing other things."

ROSARIO: I feel less loyalty to readers than to the integrity of the story, above expectation. When the writing gets too easy, I don't trust it, lose interest. It's good to be brave and try putting out a different beat. So you're right: you don't want to keep writing the same story keep writing the same story keep writing the same story keep writing the same story.

CRUZ: I hear you about staying fresh, but mujer, when one is exposing oneself, trying something new for the first time, the second-guessing hits me like a truck. I've written tons and tons of pages of all sorts of things, but when I'm about to show someone what I'm doing, I'm like, "i0h no! zIs this even good? zAm I allowed to write this way?" zWhy

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am I having that thought? Of course, when I'm writing I'm free, it's just me and the page and nobody has to see it; but when you get out there, even if we don't want to, at least with me, I feel that I'm always asked to represent in some way. Or I am asking myself.

ROSARIO: [Apassive construction occurs when the one performing the action is not the grammati- cal subject of the sentence.] Funny that you should say "I'm allowed" or "I'm being asked" in the passive voice. It's a formless drooling blob, then, that makes demands on the writer. And there's something to be said about the legacy of dictatorship in all of this personal censorship. About my writing, my father often cautioned me with tales of journalists who got in trouble for what they wrote: "The fish dies by its mouth."

CRUZ: That's what's so fun about writing fiction. Thinking about it, sometimes I watch the news and say, "zWhat kind of world do we live in? Who are these people making these crazy decisions and why are we living in it? LAnd what can we do?" Fiction is one of those last places where the world is bound between these pages, and you can sit with it for a while and imagine humanity in a completely different way. Without all the gloss of image . . . It's a place to dream and it's a place to look at yourself through the characters; again, it's like the person you are connecting with, it's connecting with the issues that you have within yourself. This idea of permission and working, I think about it, and I say "eyou know what? Of course, I want to write without censoring myself." We're lucky: If you look at a lot of '80s Chicano writers, you can tell that there was a burden or need to write certain stories.

ROSARIO: All stories have been written, sure, but it's just the angle. I don't want to shoot from the top-down anymore; I want to shoot from the bottom-up, which is why I've been trying to write in first-person or what Emily Raboteau called "narrowing." I want to give voice to characters who see the world a little skewed, who see the world in a way their bios don't let on. That makes for a lot of fun, because with people, I'm always finding exceptions. I like the unlikely partnerships, the unlikely thoughts.

* * *

ROSARIO: Angie, zwhat's been your favorite color 'n book recently?

CRUZ: Green. But I wasn't even aware of it until I looked around and everything was green. The landscape, my house, the sheets on the bed. As for books: Half Of Yellow Sun by Adiche, The Inheritance of Loss by Desai, and Cristina Garcia's most recent book was a great read, Handbook of Luck.

* * *

CRUZ: I don't want to write the war in my next novel. I want to imagine peace.

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ROSARIO: Impossible, Angie. Mujer, you're Dominican.

CRUZ: Unlearn the violence in my language in my actions. My Italian husband tells me that I am violent when I speak because English is violent. We use words like "investment" when we talk about love. Or "work" when we discuss passion. Maybe it's in code-switching that we can invent a language for peace. LYou're writing about war, no?

ROSARIO: Virtual war. The way the world seems to be doing things more and more virtu- ally is both interesting and disturbing to me, how it's severing relationships, accountability, courage, sincerity, um, sex, and a host of other matters of the human heart. I mean, even this conversation is happening in fractured time, through phone and e-mail. I wish we could've transcribed the real face-to-face conversations you and I've had throughout the years, say, eating your hubby's amazing food at your house or sitting in the park while my daughter runs around. The unreal conversation we recorded in real time over the phone was way too lecture-voiced for me. zWhat's a conversation without shared food, without the rest of the senses?

* * *

ROSARIO: I have to say that I admire your energy and how much you advocate for others' work, creating that space wherever you can, nudging open doors a bit more for others. Women in Literature & Letters (WILL) was where I saw your powers in full effect. Most grad students in MFA programs don't do what you did then with the resources you had available at NYU. And (I'll deliberately expose) the organization you co-founded helped bring together amazing women writers of color, both established and aspiring. I think back to my time in grad school and realize that, for me, WILL filled a lot of the cultural voids at Columbia. It was through WILL that I met wonderful Caribbean writers like Lorna Goodison, Edwidge Danticat, and Dolores Prida.

CRUZ: It's not so difficult to open doors or windows for others. Not if you think in abun- dance and believe the universe will take care of you. Think about Charles, who has given his life over to Callaloo. So many writers honor him for opening those doors and even more so for creating community.

ROSARIO: There's a certain generosity that comes with writing-not only in putting out ideas, but also in allowing other people that same forum. You speak of Charles, whose energy always astounds me, but I also remember you on the floor of your apartment in Washington Heights, licking stacks of stamps and envelopes to send out invites to WILL events; organizing workshops with, like, no money but powers of persuasion and faith and connections; a Walking Human-Resources Department, I always joke about how you hook people up, often without thinking twice. You've taught me that activism's also a part of teaching and writing, an obligation to serve in the way so many people have done for me, people who had faith and pushed me forward, when I had dreams but no idea what

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was going on half the time; "OK, talk to this person" or "send this here." Naive altruism, maybe, but I do think "marginalized writers" are as responsible for keeping our literature breathing as the publishing industry is, if not more.

CRUZ: I think that as immigrants we have a very particular psyche, in the way that we came here, or at least the way my family came here-you know, they came here and they felt lucky to be in the U.S. and they worked really hard and tried not to create any prob- lems and they tried to save as much as possible to go back, which they never will, not in the way that they imagined, and in some ways there's this pride in that "we were able to do this on our own, we don't owe anybody anything."

ROSARIO: Claro.

CRUZ: I think as immigrants we do suffer from that a little bit, but it's not necessarily a bad thing, because it gives you an ambition, an independence, a self-initiative that maybe other people might not have because they're still waiting for something to happen or are heavy with disillusionment. As immigrants, we know that we can't wait, because if we don't grab it, it's not going to happen. But then there's this idea that everyone has to be trying to make their own shit happen (that doesn't work, either-not all the time), when really, if you look at the way that a lot of writers have risen in the U.S., it's through their friends / community. If you look at a lot of the writers who are published, they went to the same schools, they went through the same programs, they helped each other; they arrived in a certain way because of each other. It's a club. It's real. It's not that you can't be part of that club through hard work, but there's a club. I've been really blessed in a lot of ways because I got a lot of help in the beginning of my career from fantastic people. I remember when Cristina Garcia was asked to do a book review. She didn't have time-this was way before Soledad was published. So I got the call from the Washington Post. For me, it was huge. I had never done one before. Basically, she taught me that if you can't do it, recommend somebody else: you can open doors that way for writers who don't have access.

ROSARIO: And, of course, there are those who want to pick mangoes too low off the tree.

CRUZ: That's true as well. But really if you're not doing great work, you could recommend everyone until you're blue, and it doesn't mean that they're going to get ahead. Really, I think in the end it's the work that takes you where you need to go.

ROSARIO: I'm 100% with you on that. To be honest, the label "marginalized" gives me pause, because it leans on a hyper-preoccupation with white folks' exclusion. I want to work from a position of strength, not weakness. And leaning on a sense of oppression just doesn't work for me. Of course there will be walls, but I'm trying to choose the path of least resistance to my gifts, the places I feel most nurture and hold dear what I have to offer, the people who elevate rather than lower. The strength that develops from that kind of support becomes part of what changes the world and creates new spaces. And

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you prove that we all have the ability to do that for each other, even in the smallest ways: a forwarded email, a word of encouragement, a look-see at a manuscript, a shout-out.

* * *

CRUZ: zWhat have you been reading, what is on your bed stand that you've been thinking about, that you've been drawn to?

ROSARIO: Student manuscripts.

CRUZ: OK, you've been teaching too much.

ROSARIO: Actually, every nanosecond or so, I'm trying to read Roberto Bolario's Savage Detectives on the recommendation of a poet friend, Sheila Maldonado (who's causing a ripple effect). Totally up my alley, that Bolario: working language and playing and being wicked and going buck-wild. We've been having so much fun with that book, and it's taking me a long time-a book to be devoured but not read quickly. And then there's architect Antoni Gaudis biography by Gijs Van Hensbergen, which is research. CRUZ: Because your new novel has a lot to do with Gaudi, no?

ROSARIO: The setting is. The narrative's a roundabout conversation with his work. The biography might be a total yawner to someone else. But I'm steeped in it because I was able to see Gaudf's work in person this summer, no longer abstraction for me. A lot of it can be overintellectualized, and you can see how in architecture there's a lot of that, just as with writing and literature. I like some theory with my coffee, but also don't like to get so lost in meaning behind meaning behind meaning.

CRUZ: But in the end writing stories is about entertainment. I came to writing through reading because I fell in love with the head trip / adventure where books were able to take me. "kWhy aren't we more passionate when we talk about books?! izWhy don't we just let ourselves go?!"

ROSARIO: Entertainment is great, but-

CRUZ: And not entertainment in the way of pornography. But, you know, igood stories! Especially when I teach I say, "zHow do I get my students to understand what a good story is?" A good story is one that has to stay with you, that you can retell in some way.

ROSARIO: True . . . the HBO Rome series I just finished is totally vile, and I feel toxic watch- ing. First time I got hooked on a telenovela, and it was damn good and about time.

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CRUZ: zHow's that going, you and the page?

ROSARIO: Me and the page are just talking. CRUZ: I know you're having a really good moment, just writing. ROSARIO: Yes, Texas is messin' with me, the first time in a while that I've been able to engage the work without the noise. New York's hyper-stimulating. It's nice, but my mind was cluttered. Also, really interesting moments are happening in my interactions with people here-a lot of the questions in the novel are working their way into my waking life, and some are being answered in their own, strange ways. It's a blessing to be here, to have space, access to land, to breathe, and to be able to sit on my deck(i!) and pump out part of a chapter at six in the morning.

CRUZ: It's so amazing how landscape changes the work.

ROSARIO: Oh, the work has lots of insects in it now.

CRUZ: Well, the schools may not be so diverse, but there's a lot of biodiversity. I find myself more relaxed in Texas and my work slowed down a lot.

ROSARIO: Yeah, you've had triple-whammy life changes in the past two years: marriage, pregnancy, relocation from NY to TX. LHow's that for your writing? You talked about Europe and how it influenced you.

CRUZ: One of the biggest influences is learning Italian. When I'm in Italy, very few people speak English, so I have to speak Italian. And of course that affects your rhythm. And I'd lost a lot of Spanish, so recently when I went to the Dominican Republic, I was mixing my Italian with Spanish. And of course my characters think in Spanish, but now they're sounding a little Italian even though they're in the Dominican Republic. A mess. All these constant changes, they make it a little difficult to find a tone. You were talking about tone and lighting. Really difficult, because I can't find the music in my story, and I'm like "zwhy can't I get it right?" I think there're too many influences now, too many directions. But I think it's good too, because I feel like I'm playing on a wider plane as a writer. I'm growing, but it's going slower. When you're taking on more terrain, and I think this is one of the benefits of reading all the European novels because they are so psychological in ways that other works that I had been reading were more visceral and physical, and sometimes you keep out the psychological or philosophical. More of that is coming in, the internal life of my characters is coming out, and you need to slow down to make that happen. They don't arrive as fast, because you have all that stuff going on, and I think that's great. I'm happy that is happening in my work. But it's also happening because you look out the window and there's something scurrying across the yard. Nature chills. So, I chill.

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ROSARIO: Everything's alive around you. [Daughter screaming in background, a spider eating a fly's leg.]

CRUZ: The air is thick and it's hot and you move slower. People say hello to you on the street. In ways, I felt like when I was working in New York, you're on a train and you're not looking at people sitting next to you all the time. You have to think, "I'm going to look at people sitting next to me today"-you make that conscious choice.

ROSARIO: After I gave birth, in fact, I found myself connecting to people and respect- ing my characters much more. It's easy to write a 2-D villain, not bring out the asshole's humanity. Post-partum, I was like, "Everyone has had someone who went through what I did to have this child." So I'm interested to find out how the experience of giving birth will manifest in your writing.

CRUZ: I already feel a change. I do everything the moment I think of it or else it won't get done. And that has affected my work. If I think I should work on it, then I work on it right away. There's no space for procrastination.

ROSARIO: [Extending talk-show mid] Entonces, Angie, what comes after Let It Rain Cof- fee?

CRUZ: You know writers hate that question. There is so much on my plate. Some short stories, the film adaptation for Soledad, and of course, a new novel. OK, there are two novels I am working on simultaneously, and maybe they will become one. Or neither will make it to the end. I am not worried. The point is I'm working in my green room that I'll soon be sharing with a baby boy. And I might have to start everything from scratch.

-October, 2007

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Issue Table of ContentsCallaloo, Vol. 30, No. 3, Prose Fiction and Non-Fiction Prose: A Thirtieth Anniversary Issue (Summer, 2007), pp. i-iv, 681-958Front MatterOn the Thirtieth Anniversary of "Callaloo" [pp. 681-683]My Uncle and the Fat Lady [pp. 684-695]Ernest J. Gaines: A PortfolioStill Driven by That Louisiana Thing: On the Thirtieth Anniversary of "Callaloo"'s 1978 Special Issue on Ernest J. Gaines [pp. 699-713]

Untitled (From a Novel-in-Progress) [pp. 715-717]From "The Mantra of the Dove" [pp. 718-720]Albino Crow [pp. 721-729]This Road [pp. 730-737]A Bold and Wondrous Thing [pp. 738-739]Angie Cruz & Nelly Rosario. Dominican American Fiction Writers. A Special SectionAngie Cruz in Conversation with Nelly Rosario [pp. 743-753]From "In Search of Caridad" [pp. 754-756]Airman Basic Training [pp. 757-767]

From "Darlene at Last Count" [p. 768-768]Resemblance [pp. 769-787]Dame-Marie: For Gusl Villedrouin [pp. 788-792]The Diaspora's Upper Left-Hand Margin: Octopus and Callaloo [pp. 793-794]David Chariandy. Afro-Canadian Novelist and Essayist. A Special SectionFrom "Soucouyant" [pp. 797-807]Spirits of Elsewhere Past: A Dialogue on Soucouyant [pp. 808-817]"The Fiction of Belonging": On Second-Generation Black Writing in Canada [pp. 818-829]

Lonesome Refugees [pp. 830-846]Black Rome and the Chocolate City: The Race of Place [pp. 847-861]From "In the United States of Africa" [pp. 862-866]From "Turbulent Indigo" [pp. 867-883]Dark Matter [pp. 884-888]Cowboys [pp. 889-905]From "Sweet in the Mouth, but Bitter in the Belly" [pp. 906-920]Last Primer [pp. 921-928]Ditinha [pp. 929-932]ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 933-936]Review: untitled [pp. 936-939]Review: untitled [pp. 939-943]Review: "What Are Little Girls Made of?": Pamela Mordecai's "Pink Icing and Other Stories" [pp. 943-947]Review: untitled [pp. 948-952]

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