In Your Crib
- Publisher
- Guernica Editions
- Initial publish date
- Apr 2015
- Category
- General, Canadian, Caribbean & Latin American
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781771830201
- Publish Date
- Apr 2015
- List Price
- $20.00
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Description
Two black men: the poet, an elder and veteran of last century's civil rights movement; and a nameless youth, swaggering and beltless, seduced by guns-and-gangs and expensive cars, and perpetually targeted by police. They are brothers by the colour of their skin, neighbours in the same “crib,” yet separated by a lifetime of experience. Invoking memories of his personal encounters with leaders like Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and Amiri Baraka, the poet berates his heir for dropping the torch, and regrets his own failure to protect, inspire and speak out on the young man's behalf. In the tradition of Bob Marley's “Redemption Song,” In Your Crib is a lyrical plea, both indictment and lamentation, and a powerful account of the ongoing struggle for racial equality.
About the author
Culminating with the international success of The Polished Hoe in 2002, Austin Clarke has published ten novels, six short story collections, and three memoirs in the United States, England, Canada, Australia, and Holland. Storm of Fortune, the second novel in his Toronto Trilogy about the lives of Barbadian immigrants, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award in 1973. The Origin of Waves won the Rogers Communications Writers’ Development Trust Prize for Fiction in 1997. In 1999, his ninth novel,The Question, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. In 2003 he had a private audience with Queen Elisabeth in honour of his Commonwealth Prize for his tenth novel, The Polished Hoe. In 1992 Austin Clarke was honored with a Toronto Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, and in 1997, Frontier College granted him a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1998 he was invested with the Order of Canada, and he has received four honorary doctorates. In 1999 he received the Martin Luther King Junior Award for Excellence in Writing.
Excerpt: In Your Crib (by (author) Austin Clarke)
You shall go then, into the storming winter / with no armament of friend nor guide. / The Benz shall, in a miracle of engineering, / drive you clean / into the hands / of the Law.
Other titles by
The Polished Hoe
20th Anniversary Edition
When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks
The Austin Clarke Library
'Membering / The Polished Hoe / Choosing His Coffin
’Membering
More
A Novel
Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack
A Memoir
Where The Sun Shines Best
Collected Poems: Austin Clarke
In This City
