The Zea Mexican Diary: 7 September 1926—7 September 1986

Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography

by Edward Kamau Brathwaite

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.

Genres: Poetry

230 pages, Hardcover

First published July 15, 1993

About the author

Edward Kamau Brathwaite is widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. A professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, Brathwaite is the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses.

Brathwaite held a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex (1968) and was the co-founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). He received both the Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships in 1983, and was a winner of the 1994 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bussa Award, the Casa de las Américas Prize for poetry, and the 1999 Charity Randall Citation for Performance and Written Poetry from the International Poetry Forum.

Brathwaite is noted for his studies of Black cultural life both in Africa and throughout the African diasporas of the world in works such as Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica (1970); The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770 - 1820 (1971); Contradictory Omens (1974); Afternoon of the Status Crow (1982); and History of the Voice (1984), the publication of which established him as the authority of note on nation language.

Reviews

[Jacob Lietz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and sad and chaotic. But that’s your wife dying from cancer, right?

Felt like the whole point was to express a grief in as much detail as possible, but one’s at an awkward place when they haven’t experienced a grief to contextualize the detail.

Maybe it’ll make more sense after something equally as heartbreaking.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

My friend Susan gave me a rare treasure. This book is written from the most profound place of grief for the loss of a love supreme. Poetry in connected text form yields inventive ways of emphasizing words, phrases, and thoughts. Use of Patois evokes the Caribbean. Brilliant.

[Nicole Battaglia]

charade of la mort :(