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

"How important this personal view of the poet, the man, the philosopher, the romantic will be for the Brathwaite scholar! . . . Simply the most riveting, most poetic, most beautifully rendered autobiographical narrative that I've read in a long time. . . .To read Zea is more than simply to peruse a manuscript it is to participate in a ritual." Daryl Cumber Dance, author of "New World Adams: Conversations with Contemporary West Indian Writer" " "[Kamau Brathwaite is] one of the finest living poets of the Western hemisphere." "London Times" " "In this indefinable text, a diary/memoir and them some, West Indian poet and scholar Kamau Brathwaite conjures his wife, Doris, and tells of her death from cancer. Brathwaite can give even the cliches of death and mourning their flat but real weight." "Village Voice Literary Supplement" "

In May of 1986, the poet 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 and spasmodically"" to record her passage in a diary. This is a collection of excerpts from that diary and other notes from this period of the Brathwaite lives. The book is a tribute to Doris Brathwaite and an exploration of the creative potency of love. The title comes from the nickname Brathwaite gave Doris, who was originally from Guyana, of part-Amerindian descent. Exposing the intimacy of his marriage, the 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, it 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.