Creole Composition

Book excerpt: Creole Composition is a collection featuring essays by scholars and teachers-researchers working with students in/from the Anglophone Caribbean. Arising from a need to define what writing instruction in the Caribbean means, Creole Composition expands the existing body of research literature about the teaching of writing at the postsecondary level in the Caribbean region. To this end, it speaks to critical disciplinary conversations of rhetoric and composition and academic literacies while addressing specific issues with teaching academic writing to Anglophone Caribbean students. It features chapters addressing language, approaches to teaching, assessing writing, administration, and research in postsecondary education as well as professionalization of writing instructors in the region. Some chapters reflect traditional Caribbean attitudes to postsecondary writing instruction; other chapters seek to reform these traditional practices. Some chapters’ interventions emerge from discussions in writing studies while other chapters reflect their authors’ primary training in other fields, such as applied linguistics, education, and literary studies. Additionally, the chapters use a variety of styles and methods, ranging from highly personal reflective essays to theoretical pieces and empirical studies following IMRaD format. Creole Composition, the first of its kind in the region, provides much-needed knowledge to the community of teacher-researchers in the Anglophone Caribbean and elsewhere in the fields of rhetoric and composition, writing studies, and academic literacies. In suggesting frameworks around which to build and further institutionalize and professionalize writing studies in the region, the collection advances the broader field of writing studies beyond national boundaries. Contributors include Tyrone Ali, Annife Campbell, Tresecka Campbell-Dawes, Valerie Combie, Jacob Dyer Spiegel, Brianne Jaquette, Carmeneta Jones, Clover Jones McKenzie, Beverley Josephs, Christine E. Kozikowski, Vivette Milson-Whyte, Kendra L. Mitchell, Raymond Oenbring, Heather M. Robinson, Daidrah Smith, and Michelle Stewart-McKoy.