Robert Antoni Reading - Monday, March 14th, 4pm
Acclaimed author, Robert Antoni, will be reading from his latest novel, Carnival, which explores themes of race and sexuality in a parodic re-casting of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises transported to the West Indies. Antoni's previous novels, Divina Trace and Blessed the Fruit, in addition to his collection My Grandmother's Erotic Folktales, have established him as one of the most innovative and vital voices to emerge from the Caribbean and the Americas. The author was an Associate Professor at the University of Miami, where he taught for nine years. Most recently he taught fiction writing at Columbia University in fall 2004.
The event will take place in the Greenleaf Conference Room, Jones Hall 100A. Reception to follow.
posted by Erica Roggeveen @ 3:37 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
On March 14th, 2005 I attended a book reading by author Robert Antoni. Antoni was born in Detroit, but grew up in Trinidad, where he gained his knowledge of Carribean culture. Unlike many authors, it was a skiing accident that turned Antoni into towards writing. In his junior year of college, he bumped his head while water skiing and ended up unconcious for many days. Upon waking up, he decided he no longer wanted to continue his career in pre-med, but become a writer. Antoni's most renowned work Divina Trace which is told in 7 registers of Carribean speech talks about a Black Madonna, a familiar part of the culture.
Antoni read a short excerpt from Divina Trace where he mocks the 3rd spiritual inward looking eye of the imagination. Then he read from his most recent book Carnival. Carnival, according to the author, "Takes the work of Hemmingway (The Sun Also Rises) and cross-dresses it." The novel deals with the story of three different friends who return home to rediscover their culture. But upon their return they realize that everything has changed and they find themselves in a lot a trouble in a society deeply inbedded with racism and class distinctions.
The most interesting aspect of the reading to me was what drives Antoni to tell the tales he does. According to the author the world no longer has its distinctive traditions or cultures because the world has become so small in the sense that everything is overlapping. The author said, regarding the search for one's cultural identity, "Its a feeling of returning home to a permanent state of homelessness." Antoni addresses this feeling through a play of literary structure and language.
The section Antoni chose to read would not be appropriate for students at the middle school level, but the idea he tries to convey could easily be used within a classroom. You could relate the story of Carnival to the melting pot theme in the United States and how some individuals struggle to try and find an identity among a very integrated and mixed society. This could help ease those students in your class who might come from mixed heritages such as students whose parents are mixed races.
response to Brook:
Great comments! These themes would be useful in a classroom of any ethnic makeup, as the US can be thought of as "a country of immigrants" and each person, no matter how long their family has been here, has a sense of the traditions, etc, of their "home" culture. Antoni's comment about "returning home to a permanent state of homelessness" is a great point of departure. Good job!
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