Editor's Note

This number of Callaloo is the second in a series of four we are issuing this year to mark the 25th Anniversary of the publication of the journal. This second Anniversary issue of Callaloo contains what I, as Editor, consider to be the best of the prose fiction and nonfiction prose we have published in the journal since its inception in 1976 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Standing here at the beginning of our anniversary celebration, I realize that such a claim as "the best of" is a bold gesture that is not without its own consequences, a few of which might prove to be disturbing. And yet, in spite of those consequences, such a project compels us to make selections, difficult though they may be. Thus, I am prepared not only to issue this number but to create another anniversary issue (Summer 2001) which will focus on "the best poetry" we have published during the last twenty-five years. In the long run, my selecting work for these two issues is a repetition of what I do each quarter: with advice and judgments from a team of screeners and referees from across the United States, I select and publish the best work we receive at a given time. Hence the more than 20,000 published pages of Callaloo from December, 1976, through December, 2000.

We began this 25th Anniversary Year with an issue of Callaloo (Winter 2001) that returned us to the South--a new and troubled South which, on the one hand, is still embroiled in the ideologies of the plantation regime and the Civil War; and a post-Civil Rights South which, on the other hand, is making sincere efforts, here and there, to move its body politic into the 21st century. The 2001 Winter issue of Callaloo focuses on one element of the troubled South and, at the same time, presents a collection of mixed Southern voices which signify the positive possibilities of the region. In the 2001 Winter issue, in other words, we celebrate the founding of the journal by returning it to its original focus: we engaged a number of Southerners who are creative writers, scholars, and other professionals to write about the continuing debate over the Confederate battle flag. African Americans, Asian Americans, European Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans--these Southerners contributed original poetry, nonfiction prose, and prose fiction to the special number of Callaloo. The first issues of Callaloo, those from 1976 to the early 1980s, were not, however, racially inclusive; they were devoted to the voices of Black Southern writers and intellectuals, two generations of African Americans, most of whom had never found a public forum in which to publish their works. As I have stated in my previous Editor's Notes, the first numbers of Callaloo, like the 2001 Winter issue, were publications of necessity--special projects that raised a variety of questions about the American South.

Unlike the issues devoted to the South, those focusing on the "best of Callaloo" tell us about the current location and scope of the journal--its mission, goals, vision, and geographical and cultural concerns. For example, as I assembled this number (Spring 2001), my intent was to consider texts from across the African Diaspora--from the Caribbean, South America, Europe, as well as North America. Readers exploring this issue of Callaloo will get a broad view of the kind and quality of prose, especially prose fiction, that is now being produced by African Americans, for the voices of both established and new prose writers are represented here. In fact, this issue of Callaloo features work by such emerging writers as Brent Edwards, Helen Elaine Lee, Thomas Glave (Jamaica/USA), and Loida Maritza Pérez (Dominican Republic/USA), as well as texts by John Edgar Wideman, Wilson Harris (England/Guyana), Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua/USA), Ralph Ellison, and Maryse Condé (Guadeloupe/USA). The presence of new prose writers underscores one of the continuing goals of the journal: to identify, encourage, nurture, support, and promote new and emerging writers. Through our organized attention to potential...