Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

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“In Limbo, Esther Figueroa deftly navigates between steamy romance, backdoor deals and dangerous plunges into the inferno of Jamaica’s environmental disasters. But the novel’s other side is its tender and evocative celebration of love, friendship, place and belonging. The author (like her heroine) emerges triumphant at the end of this breathtaking limbo dance. Despite its darker themes, the overriding humor and irreverence make for an enjoyable read. Limbo is a page-turner that will make you want to start all over again when you come to the end. In Esther Figueroa’s skillful hands, the tropical paradise is in Limbo but not yet lost. It should evoke in every reader a passionate desire to redeem what is left clinging to the exposed roots.”

—Olive Senior, author of Dancing Lessons

“More than a novel or rather what a ‘novel’ cd or shd be – an xQuisitely serious nativist imaginary –composed in ‘standard’ narrative & Jamaica speak & angst & hope & vision, wit and an urgent sense of justice – breathing-till-it-burns – but cool knowledge of her crisis country and its people. Limbo is not just word-saying but a world-saving allegiance to what some people call The Green. Her description of the source of the Martha Brae (witch & river), is one of the most lyric & healing moments in Caribbean literature.”

—Kamau Brathwaite, Poet, Professor Emeritus Caribbean Lit/Culture, New York University

ESTHER FIGUEROA PH.D, is a Jamaican independent film maker, writer, educator and linguist with over thirty five years of media productions including television programming, documentaries, educational videos, multimedia and feature film. Her activist film making gives voice to those outside of mainstream media and focuses on the perpetuation of local and indigenous knowledge and cultures, the environment, social injustice, and community empowerment. Figueroa’s films are screened and televised all over the world and taught at numerous universities. They include Jamaica for Sale (2009), the award-winning feature documentary about tourism and unsustainable development. Her latest feature documentary Fly Me To The Moon (2019) is about modernity and the global aluminum industry. She recently created and co-hosted GEFF 2020, the first online film festival focused on global extraction. In 2013, Figueroa was Distinguished Writer in Residence at University of Hawai’i English Department. Her environmental novel Limbo (2013), was a finalist in the 2014 National Indie Excellence Awards for Multi-cultural Fiction.

This event series is sponsored by the Department of English, the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, the Center for Latin American Studies, Jack E. Davis, Rothman Family Chair in the Humanities, Imagining Climate Change and the Graduate Film Studies Group