Gossip - long derided and dismissed by writers and intellectuals - is far from frivolous. In Idle Talk, Deadly Talk, Ana Rodriguez Navas reveals gossip to be an urgent, utilitarian, and deeply political practice - a means of staging the narrative tensions, and waging the narrative battles, that mark Caribbean politics and culture.

Gossip - long derided and dismissed by writers and intellectuals - is far from frivolous. In Idle Talk, Deadly Talk, Ana Rodriguez Navas reveals gossip to be an urgent, utilitarian, and deeply political practice - a means of staging the narrative tensions, and waging the narrative battles, that mark Caribbean politics and culture.