The Zea Mexican Diary: 7 September 1926-7 September 1986 (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography) - Softcover

Brathwaite, Kamau

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0299136442 ISBN 13: 9780299136444

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003

Synopsis

In May of 1986 Edward Kamau Brathwaite learned that his wife, Doris, was dying of cancer and had only a short time to live.  Responding as a poet, he began “helplessly & spasmodically” to record her passage in a diary.  Zea Mexican is a collection of excerpts from this diary and other notes from this period of the Brathwaites’ lives, and few who read this book will fail to be caught up in the depth of Edward Brathwaite’s grief.
    Zea Mexican is a tribute to Doris Brathwaite and an exploration of the creative potency of love.  (The title comes from the name Brathwaite gave Doris, who was originally from Guyana of part Amerindian descent.)  Exposing the intimacy of his  marriage, this book is the closest Brathwaite has ever come to an autobiographical statement.  In examining his life with Doris he found the courage to reveal something of his own character.  But, more than an autobiography, Zea Mexican is an extraordinary work of literature, much of it written in the expressive “nation language” of Jamaica and the Caribbean.  Brathwaite filters his pain through his poetic gift, presenting it to the reader with all the poignancy poetry conveys.

About this title

From the Publisher:

First Paperback Edition

From the Back Cover:

"In this indefinable text, a diary/memoir and then some, West Indian poet and scholar Kamau Brathwaite conjures his wife, Doris, and tells of her death from cancer. Brathwaite can give even the clichés of death and mourning their flat but real weight."-Village Voice Literary Supplement

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0299136442
• ISBN 13: 9780299136444
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 230