Colliding with andconfronting"The Tempest"and postcolonial identity, the poems i
n Safiya Sinclair s "Cannibal" explore Jamaican childhood and history, race rela
tions in America, womanhood, otherness, and exile. She evokes a home no longer a
ccessible and a body at times uninhabitable, often mirrored by a hybrid Eve/Cali
ban figure. Blooming with intense lyricism and fertile imagery, these full-blood
ed poems are elegant, mythic, and intricately woven. Here the female body is a d
ark landscape; the female body is cannibal. Sinclair shocks and delights her rea
ders with her willingness to disorient and provoke, creating a multitextured col
lage of beautiful and explosive poems.
