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Booksellers
http://www.nichemarket.com/carib/cnbkstr.html
another enterprise somehow interlocked with amazon.com and "hosted" by a Guyanese woman who has offered up her personal favorites. Her list features the early works of V.S. Naipaul, the novels of Roy Heath, Jamaica Kincaid, and another Caribbean/American author, Paule Marshall. Since I first visited this site they've undergone heavy reconstruction. Now they have most of the dust jackets of the books reproduced here, which, I confess, I like because I still do read some books by their covers.
Editor’s note: The web entrepreneur responsible for this site changed very little over the course of 6 or 7 years. Today dust covers are routinely reproduced by electronic booksellers, but this was the first example I had seen. Here’s a view of its last incarnation before disappearing in 2003.
Publishers
http://www.penguin.com
from this address you can access the catalogues for all the Penguin outfits. I've only looked through the U.S. company. There is surprisingly little from Latin America, although what they do print is generally quite good. Under the main catalogue for fiction you'll find titles by Julia Alvarez and Junot Díaz. In the academic catalogue, under Latin American Studies, they have what look to be several excellent anthologies, and an assortment of individual works by well-known Latin writers.
Editor’s note: In an age of mergers and megastores, this site (now combining all of the subsidiaries and associates) is no longer a place to browse. There’s just too much.
User Groups
http://www.lanic.utexas.edu/la/region/news/arc/lasnet/1997
this address will put you at the 1997 index for the user group associated with the University of Texas Latin American Studies program. As user groups go this one is well-informed and politically active. Among the 1997 topics that interested these people: the closing of the Panamanian branch of School of the Americas and protests at the Ft. Benning campus; representative novels--by female Latin American writers--that would be suitable for an introductory political science class; and the Summit for the Americas. I think there are about 350 messages indexed here. At the regular lanic site you'll find a search engine that allows you the option of searching the messages of this user group (as well as the lanic site itself).
Editor’s note: At present you can browse through the years 1994-1999 at their index.
Literary Journals
at this address you'll find a broad index of the 22 issues of Review Noire. The journal is published in both English and French. Not having seen the actual item itself I don't know if this means that separate editions are printed in each language or what. The web site, however, is. The table of contents located here is in English as are the links to the two issues devoted to the Caribbean--Nos. 6 and 9. There is a more recent issue focused on Brazil (No. 22) but they haven't got it posted yet. Like Review: Latin American Literature and the Arts, this Paris literary magazine is a very, very glossy production--even the web site! The on-line materials are limited to the artwork but the outline of the contents will give you some indication of the international black focus.
Reading List
http://www.salford.ac.uk/telford/TIES/ers/fox.html
Neil Fox is a member of the Remote Sensing Research Group at the Telford Institute of the University of Salford, Manchester, U.K. This address puts you at his home page, where you can read for yourself more about his professional life. From here you can access his reading list: "Neil's African and Caribbean Literature Page." The whole package is quite an English oddity.
Editor’s note: Neil’s African and Caribbean Literature Page, courtesy of The Wayback Machine.
Search Engines
www.albany.net/allinone/all1www.html#WWW
after spending many, many hours trying to group all of Diana Jean Schemo's articles at the Latino Link web site it occurred to me that I know more about these search engines than I want to. Some time ago I took up a suggestion at Zona Latina to try this super-all-in-one search site. This is the last word on the subject. If there's more to learn, or new engines to experiment with, it's not likely to be me charting the future.
Editor’s note: This last pronouncement didn’t exactly prove to be true. Search engines have been one of the most relentless arenas of innovation (and profit) on the internet. Now the web--its text, images and news--are retrieved for us compliments of Google.
-December 26, 1997
