UPFRONT.

Puzzled Over Bissoondath

Judging by the August 2001 interview in Americas, I must say that a dark streak of cynicism runs in Neil Bissoondath's literary family. In their books, he and his uncle V. S. Naipaul seem to derive a positively passive-aggressive sense of personal power from their "backhanded" nostalgia for Trinidad and sneering treatments of Indians and West Indians. No doubt, Bissoondath is a brave man who left the humble comforts of his island home to pursue the literary craft abroad. He must have faced many a daunting truth in the mighty, blue-eyed north, as did his Uncle Vidia (Naipaul). But it is so clear to me that this author, at the top of his profession, only slinks on the sparsest perimeters of true love-love for ANYTHING. For all their consummate skill with words, Bissoondath and Naipaul leave few people shaken or even moved. Why are the two foremost members of Trinidad's premier literary family so bereft of real human feeling? As a Trinidadian myself, I confess, I am puzzled that an effulgent country like mine could have produced such sticks in the mud!

Prof. Lawrence Waldron Flushing, New York The Other Reality

As a subscriber to Americas Magazine for the past couple of years, I have been most impressed with the variety of informative articles. It had troubled me for some time, however, that little was presented about the life and condition of the vast majority of persons living in Latin America, those living in poverty. An article in the June 2001 issue, "Caribbean Winds. Threats to National Security," being the one exception other than a small number of book reviews.

I would urge you to cover the other side of life also--the sweatshops, the environmental exploitation and degradation, the civil wars, corruption and inefficiency, the struggles of indigenous peoples, the grittiness of making a living on the street, the tenuousness of evolving...