Search results for ""Author N. D. Williams""

Delia Mohammed gives Mr. Ni Win two bags for safe keeping. In them he finds her story of escape from the suffocations of her father and Caribbean island life into the nightmarish world of an illegal immigrant in America. Abandoned at customs by her lover, Trinidad, who turns out to be not at all what he seems, Delia is forced to fend for herself. She brings to the task both an acute intelligence and a naievety born of her greater familiarity with literature than with life. But if literature is no guide to the hazards of migrant life, it provides Delia with meaning and psychic protection, and the resonances, with King Lear for instance, give the novel a wholly convincing depth.When Delia fails to return for her bags, Mr Ni Win becomes the editor of her story. As editor he is moved by her refusal to be a victim and her determination to recreate herself in a hazardous and unfamiliar environment. Stalled in his own life, he is re-energised by her intense involvement with life and with literature, and his reflections on his role create a further important dimension with relation to the connections between writing and gender.N.D. Williams is Guyanese and lives in New York. In 1976 his novel Ikael Torass won the prestigious Casa de las Americas prize.

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Disparate worlds collide in Williams's two novellas. In My Planet of Ras a young German woman joins a Rastafarian commune in Jamaica. Under the guidance of Selassie, reader and healer with herbs, Ikael, artist-painter, and Kilmanjaro, master drummer, and under the healing influence of 'the herb of nations' she learns to marvel, and to understand the true nature of community ('You and I talking, one and one - that is community! Hardest thing to build these days. Not enough empty reflecting silence, like mortar, to build with'). Williams' portrayal of the rootedness, the inner calm and visionary enlightment of the group is movingly convincing, not least because the novella realistically conveys the group's vulnerability, temptations and the costs of their denials. In their rejection of materialism and competition, they indeed have to live as if they are on another planet, constantly threatened by the surrounding Babylon.What Happening There, Prash, is a contrary and equally convincing portrayal of the magnetic pull of North America and its offer of the possibilities of individual recognition, competitive edge and material success. Prash and his wife Sookmoon abandon the decaying 'socialist' republic of Guyana for New York and for Sookmoon, at least, there is the chance, eagerly seized, to remake her life as a liberated woman. But when Prash gets mixed up in some serious drugs business, he discovers that the freedom of the market has its price.N.D. Williams is Guyanese and lives in New York. In 1976 his novel Ikael Torass won the prestigious Casa de las Americas prize.

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N.D. Williams' characters - who often address us direct, each in a uniquely distinctive voice - are invariably in motion or grappling with its temptations. They are returning to the Caribbean after long absences abroad, on the verge of leaving to make new lives or struggling to contain the frustrations of island life within their decisions to stay put. Though several of the stories focus with satirical sharpness on the pretensions of 'The Republic' (Guyana in its most self-consciously socialist imposture), Williams' stage is the wider Caribbean diaspora, in the UK, Brooklyn or Toronto: the Caribbean that never leaves his characters' heads. His characters' perspectives are often from the margins, anxious not to be swept away into the anonymous mass, though this stance is not unproblematic: the narrator of 'Batty Bwoy, Divert', for instance, has to deal with the contradictions between his attractions to Rastafarianism and his discomfort, as a gay man, over Rasta homophobia. What Williams's characters want is the space to cultivate their sense of individual worth, though this can sometimes involve becoming trapped in an absurd or confining persona. At the heart of all the stories is the plea for a humane tolerance.N.D. Williams is Guyanese and lives in New York. In 1976 his novel Ikael Torass won the prestigious Casa de las Americas prize.

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Torn between despair over 'the rancid taste of life on the island' and attachment to the 'irresistible, green island days', the characters in these short stories inhabit a Caribbean they find it impossible to live in, yet impossible to live without. They dream of being inviolable and whole, but live in situations which are frequently on the edge of disorder and personal threat. Yet there is nothing wearily pessimistic about the tone of this collection. Williams's stories, like his characters, are intensely alive. Their individual voices button-hole us and won't let us go. Their tales are sad, but what passion they have in their pursuit of meaning!"In Williams' brilliant final story... the urge to find release and return is given mystical and memorable expression..." LiberationN.D. Williams is Guyanese and lives in New York. In 1976 his novel Ikael Torass won the prestigious Casa de las Americas prize.

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