Sargasso’s editors have just announced the publication of the most recent issue, Cooperation and Solidarity, edited by Katherine Miranda, Grisell Reyes Núñez, and Eva Villalón Soler. The cover art (shown above) is by Ricardo Levins Morales. 

Description: This issue of the journal engages various manifestations of cooperation across the Caribbean, with a particular interest in Puerto Rico. It explores cooperation as an element of culture, as a way of thinking, and as a platform for change that bolsters the well-being of Caribbean people. As signaled in the editors’ introduction, “cooperation and solidarity offer frameworks for ways of operating and being that center sharing, mutual benefit, and mutual support, through self-motivated and voluntary action.”

The volume includes contributions by scholars from various backgrounds and disciplines. The first essay, written by Pablo Guerra, is “On Solidarity in the Economy and the Solidarity Economy.” Translated into English by Katherine Miranda, it provides and space for thinking about the place of solidarity as a traditional humanistic value as well as a call for innovation. Next is Grisell Reyes Núñez and Efraín Rosados Rodriguez’s provocative “Cooperativismo, economía social y solidaria en Puerto Rico: desafíos y estrategias para su desarrollo.” Colleen T. Dwyer’s translation of this work, “Cooperativism and the Social and Solidarity Economy in Puerto Rico: Challenges and Strategies for Its Development,” follows.  The volume also includes Luis N. Rivera Pagán’s “Coloniaje y capitalism en nuestro cooperativismo nacional: Reacción al Manifiesto Castañer” as well as the original manifesto by Grupo de Reflexión y Acción Cooperativa Santiago Andrade (GRACSA). The latter, “El Manifiesto de Castañer,” showcases cooperativism as a vehicle through which social and economic justice can be achieved.

The volume further elaborates its main theme in the special section “Practicing Cooperation.” Here, a wide range of Caribbean contributors share and comment on concrete examples of cooperation with which they have been personally involved. Among these are Ezner Angervil, Daniel Dugger, Sorrah Edwards-Thro, and Abter Sauveur of Haiti with “Lekòl Kominotè Matènwa: Community-Centered Mother Tongue Education,” Adom Philogene Heron and photographer Marica Honeychurch from Dominica with “The Ti Kai Project: Craft, Collaboration, & Care,” Refica Attwood from Antigua and Barbuda with “Wallings Nature Reserve: Community Land Management for Sustainability,” and Isabel Dennis from Jamaica with “Vulnerability: The Essence of Collaborative Communities.”

The special section includes several examples of cooperation from Puerto Rico: Bárbara I. Abadía Rexach, author of “Colectivo Ilé: Afrosororidades solidarias,” Lydia Platòn Lázaro, Mariana Reyes Angleró, and Juan Otero Garabís, authors of “Taller Comunidad la Goyco: Estrategias emergentes de colaboración,” and Natalia Ortiz-Cotto, author of “Cooplibri: La cooperación es la base de todo lo que hacemos.”

Once again Sargasso succeeds in showing readers that poetry, creative writing, and visual art contribute to our understanding of how we can embody and bolster cooperation and solidarity. The volume includes intriguing poems by Mona Clark, Nancy Anne Miller, Schneider K. Rancy, and R. Kipp Miller, as well as Adriana Garriga López’s translation of a poem by Claude McKay. Works of creative writing by Ada M. Patterson and Daizal R. Samad are also included.  In addition, an essay by Eduardo Lalo work is translated into English by Eduardo Rodríguez. Artist Ricardo Levins Morales created the cover art, and the back cover image features Don Rimx’s mural of the late drummer Tito Matos.

The volume also includes reviews of five recent publications in Caribbean studies.

For information about purchasing a hard copy of this exciting volume, email the editors at sargassojournal@gmail.com.

You can also check out its website and visit “Sargasso magazine” on Facebook.

Sargasso, A Journal of Caribbean Literature, Language, and Culture, has been been published at the University of Puerto Rico’s Río Piedras campus since 1984. Based in the Department of English, the journal is committed to publishing work that is by, about, and for Caribbean people.