The SaltReaper Journal

dispatches from offshore editing services

http://www.houseofnehesipublish.com/newsreleases

Brotherhood of the Spurs short stories by Sekou published

again
GREAT BAY, St. Martin (April 12, 2007) —The short stories book Brotherhood of the Spurs
by Lasana M. Sekou was published here this week by House of Nehesi Publishers (HNP) and
is already in Van Dorp, Arnia’s, World of Learning, and Shipwreck bookstores.

The fictions in Spurs span about 300 years of St. Martin’s customs, culture, and
personalities.

“Brotherhood of the Spurs is one of the books and productions planned for 2007 and 2008,
the 25th anniversary of House of Nehesi and the 30th year of books written by Lasana,” said
Jacqueline Sample, HNP president.

The storied images include the tragic arrival of a cherished child in St. Martin in the 1700s,
family and social relations, loyalty and modern romance.

There is also the cross-generational psychological effects of a rape and murder at Galis Bay
Beach, revenge from the grave, friendship across genealogical time, cockfighting mysteries,
Caribbean migration, sci-fi inventions with real word political undertones, a soldier from
Cul-de-Sac in World War II Europe … and a fanciful speculation of who first called St. Martin
the “friendly island.”

In a Guardian review, Andy Gross called the stories “Powerful and unsettling. …
heartbreaking … rife with secrets and passions, betrayal and disappointments.” This is
the second printing of Spurs, said Sample.

One of the stories, “Firespill,” is an experimental futuristic piece about governmental intrigue
and reparation (one part of the island has to buy the other part from a colonial country).

In “Firespill” looms a diamond-crested image overlooking Great Bay Harbor from Pointe
Blanche. Trinidadian author and national library director Eintou Springer called it “the
poignancy of a monument to ancestral memory.”

The late poet Charles Borromeo Hodge had critiqued the first printing of Spurs in Newsday
as, “A commending position among the voices … shaping contemporary Caribbean literature.”

The critic Valerie Combie agreed with him in The Caribbean Writer when she
called Brotherhood of the Spurs, “A rich addition to the canon of Caribbean literature.”

The University of St. Martin lecturer and Language Division head Rhoda Arrindell has in
fact been developing the USM Caribbean literature canon with Spurs as a required reading.

“The 2007 publishing of Spurs is also for a new generation of readers, 10 years after the book
first appeared,” said Sample.

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 The SaltReaper Journal
dispatches from offshore editing services
http://www.houseofnehesipublish.com/newsreleases

In light of more recent reviews and publication of writings by St. Martin authors,
world renown novelist George Lamming might have put a positive “goat mouth”
on the island’s seminal literature, when he wrote 10 years ago that, “Brotherhood of the Spurs
brings a new dimension to the growing stature of Lasana M. Sekou as a St. Martin and
Caribbean writer.”

Get your copy and have a ball living these modern stories. Brotherhood of the Spurs is also
available at Amazon.com and spdbooks.org.

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