C ollins, M erle

Merle Collins's writing affirms the power of an oral tradition – with proverbs, riddles, and folktales interspersed in the French Creole and English spoken in Grenada – to tease out the truths behind that country's post‐independence reality. While living, at different times, between Grenada and the United States, and Grenada and England, Collins continues to write about Grenada, attempting to reimagine the land she first knew as home. Her poems and narratives constitute meditations on history, like “Tout Moun ka Pléwé (Everybody Bawling),” which follows Grenadians' struggles to survive both hurricanes and revolutions not born in nature. The questions Collins seeks to answer – whether some kind of colonialism is inevitable and whether her nation's destiny is necessarily one of dependence – are central to the majority of the world's peoples.