The Zaboca Tree (self-published), the third collection of short stories by Ken Jaikaransingh, set after 1945, continues the Trinidadian author’s trajectory of social and political commentary on T&T’s development. The characters — a motley and occasionally vagabond crew — find themselves thrust into an arena of uncertainty and misrule, as competing factors vie for prominence in a fledgling society. Not shying away from the effects of racism, crime, Americanisation, and corruption in both high and low office, Jaikaransingh’s fiction contains often sinister, bathos-laden circumstances that remain inevitably applicable to T&T in 2023.

You Were Watching from the Sand (Red Hen Press), the debut publication of Haitian author Juliana Lamy, delves into the inner lives of Haitians at home and in the diaspora, exposing characters to the psychological repercussions of bizarre happenings that defy easy explanation. Undercurrents of the supernatural and ritualistic run through these short stories, which see protagonists uncovering closely guarded secrets about each other. Lamy foregrounds the palpable effects of colonialism, xenophobia, and poverty in the setting of her stories, showing how individual agency is corrupted by forces beyond one’s control. 

What Start Bad a Mornin’ (Central Avenue Publishing), the debut adult novel by CaribbeanReads Publishing founder Carol Mitchell, spans locations in Virginia, Washington, DC, Trinidad, and Jamaica, contending with a forty-year-old diaspora Caribbean woman’s quest to heal from the suppressed trauma ingrained in her life. The journeys undertaken by Mitchell’s protagonist, Amaya, are as mental as they are corporeal. Neurodiversity, dementia, and acute cognitive dissonance are all addressed in the novel’s plot, which pinpoints the risks experienced by family members and close-knit communities when reconciliation and justice are not pursued.

For the Unnamed (Carcanet Press) by British-Guyanese writer Fred D’Aguiar presents the reimagined history of a famous Black jockey who won the race of a lifetime, guiding José Sepulveda’s horse Black Swan in a victory against Pio Pico’s horse Sarco on March 20, 1852. While the race itself helped to solidify early Los Angeles adulation for horseracing, little was ever publicised about the trailblazing jockey himself. In these questioning, multilayered poems, D’Aguiar addresses this gap in the archives by conjuring perspectives of a Black freed man’s lot in the mid-nineteenth century.

Whale Aria (Four Way Books), the fourth full-length collection of poems by American-Guyanese writer Rajiv Mohabir, creates parallels between the migratory patterns of humpback whales and the immigrant journeys conducted by brown and queer human travellers. Making a study of the languages used by whales to communicate at submarine depths, Mohabir likens cetacean speech to songs and poetry intrinsic to all cultures. The poems of Whale Aria are deeply attuned to the rhythms and echoes of marine life, and to the ways in which human voices pattern these timeless concerns.