Soundings Over Cultural Shoals

About the Book

Fortunately, the cultural heritage of the Virgin Islands in being preserved in works such as this work Soundings Over Cultural Shoals by esteemed Virgin Islands author/academician Gilbert A. Sprauve.

The reader is led through exciting, fascinating and above all natural variations of the life of Virgin Islanders, life often unobserved and misunderstood from the visitor's point of view. Virgin Islanders will appreciate this work all the more because it portrays life as it is, and is seldom displayed in literature.

About the Author

Gilbert A. Sprauve, a native of the American Virgin Islands and father of four, is a retired university professor Modern Languages. He is co-director, along with Professor Gene Emanuel, of the Summer Institute of Virgin Islands Culture (SIVIC), has traveled, studied, taught and lectured on four continents and has been a cultural consultant and presenter for the Government of the Virgin Islands and the Center for Folklife Studies at the Smithsonian. He has published numerous articles on Virgin Islands English Creole, the Dutch Creole of the Virgin Islands and the Culture and language of his homeland.

His stage credits include principal male role in the dramatic works of the two major diasporic writers of our times (both Nobel laureates), namely Wole Soyinka and Derek Walcott, as he played the major roles of Baroka, in The Lion and the Jewel and Papa Sam in Marie Laveaux.

He has served as senator-at-large (thus, representative for the island of St. John) and vice president in the legislature of the Virgin Islands.

In his retirement, he enjoys tennis, float fishing for yellowtail snappers and trolling aboard his boat, "La Règle de Bronze".

His first published story, "The Queue", appeared in the The Literary Review in 1964.