The Signifyin' Woman (Charmaine Valere)

My apologies

I had hoped to post the winners of Signifyin' Guyana's first writing competition by today (the latest), but unfortunately I underestimated the time it takes to make a thorough decision in such competitions.  I've been assured however, that the decision process is near its end, and I'll have the results soon.

Once the winners have been notified, I'll post their names and the titles of their stories.  Those stories will then go through rigorous preparations for publication both locally (in Guyana) and in Caribbean journals (to be named later).  I anticipate an exciting journey for the winning writers. 

But don't be discouraged if your story doesn't win this time. They'll be many opportunities for you to try again in this annual competition and all the other competitions I hope will spread from this one. 

I apologize for any inconveniences this delay may cause, and I promise to update you as soon as I can.

Thanks for your patience.

c.d.valere

Writers on writing

Charlie Rose: Do you read reviews?

Salman Rushdie: I speed read them.

Rushdie on reflecting both reality and fantasy in his novels: ...The actual history, what happened, the politics and so on, that's relatively easy to get.  What you need as a writer is ordinary life.  You need to know if people get angry, what terms of abuse do they use?  If people are having a wedding feast, what's actually on the table?...

__________

Margaret Atwood on her short stories: It's an intermediate form.  It's not a book of great short stories that are all different from one another.  It's not the box of assorted chocolates.

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Charlie Rose: What's the hardest part for you?

John Grisham: ...I don't enjoy the outlining and making myself go through this process of laying out the whole book.  Sometimes that'll take a year or two...

Grisham on stealing: Writers steal everything. There's nothing original here.

__________

Charlie Rose (quoting a reviewer): A tour de force . . . masterpiece. . .Do you find that these people who are so gifted in their powers of analysis also tell you things about your novel you hadn't thought about?

Ian McEwan: Noooo . . . sometimes people order their thoughts in ways which I find that I can take something from . . . the publishing world is a world much like the film world in which intensifiers need to be used . . .masterpiece just means someone liked it a whole lot . . . one should not be too taken in by this...

__________

David Foster Wallace on writing for publication: Writing for publication is a very weird thing because part of you is a nerd and you want to sit in libraries and you don't want to be bothered and you're very shy.  And another part of you is the worst ham of all time: look at me, look at me, look at me, and you have fantasies about writing something that makes everybody drop to one knee . . .

[More interesting soundbites from the series of interviews here]

The seawall sunset pics did it for me

Whatever does it for you, Imran Khan invites you to share the old, the new, the beauty of his childhood village Vergenoegen.  As I watched, read, and learned, it occurred to me Khan's photoblog tribute to Vergenoegen was probably what Martin Carter meant when he wrote meditatively about the green sky, the green earth, the green, green love... 

Enjoy Vergenoegen here.

The Seeker

I'm still mostly supportive of anonymous bloggers in the GYblogosphere though I'm becoming more and more wary (and certainly savvy) of their intent. 

But, when they can write like this, they'll get me every time.  Enjoy!

To Guyana, with love

On the occasion of the 43rd year since Guyana gained its independence, I pledge my love (from afar) with the help of these lines from Martin Carter's "Unwritten Histories of Human Hearts":

I will always be speaking with you.  And if I falter,
and if I stop, I will still be speaking with you, in
words that are not uttered, are never uttered, never
made into the green sky, the green earth, the
green, green love ...

On the public's right to know

From Kaieteur News (05/18/09):

Chairman of the Alliance for Change Khemraj Ramjattan says that more information should be revealed about PNCR leader Robert Corbin’s medical expenses, since over $10M in taxpayers’ dollars have already been spent.  Ramjattan conceded that the nature of Corbin’s ailment deserves some amount of confidentiality.  But he said that there must be a balance between that and accountability.  According to Ramjattan, while Corbin does hold an important office in Guyana, it is taxpayers’ money that is been used and it is strange that, to date, there has been no specific pronouncement on the Opposition Leader’s condition since he took ill on April 25 and was flown to the US to undergo surgery.  More Here.

Fidela Corbin responds to Ramjattan in a letter to Stabroek News (05/21/09):

I will state categorically that I personally have no objection to ‘freedom of information’ as regards public expenses, and specifically no objection to the cost of medical treatment for Mr Corbin being disclosed when it becomes available. In fact, I wish Mr Ramjattan was as strong a proponent of this issue when he was a member of the PPP and will maintain this view should he ever ascend to higher public office. Mr Ramjattan, however, with his new penchant for Freedom of Information and its application to the cost of medical treatment at taxpayers’ expense, should apply an equitable principle and call for the entire list of beneficiaries that Dr Luncheon announced had been treated similarly in the past . . . I am sure that Mr Ramjattan is aware that lawyer/client confidentiality applies equally to a doctor/patient. These duties of confidentiality should be paramount, with limited exceptions.  The public disclosure of this information is purely at the client/patient’s discretion. I strongly disagree that the right to privacy of medical records is outweighed by pure curiosity or in Guyanese parlance ‘fastness’.  More Here.

First the obvious...

Why is Ramjattan calling for disclosure of Corbin's medical condition, and not for a general disclosure of the medical records of public officials whose bills are paid by Guyanese taxpayers?  Is Corbin the only public official who should be accountable to taxpayers in this regard?  Or, are we to assume that the money spent on Corbin's care was so astronomically unprecedented, that the public has the right to know what on earth is so wrong with him that so much money had to be spent? 

And, if the huge expenditure is the basis for Ramjattan's call (he can't possibly have a politically motivated ulterior motive, can he?), does the amount spent on his medical care outweigh Corbin's (or any public official's for that matter) right to privacy?

I personally think any public official who cares about his or her constituency or potential voters should be forthright about his or her capacity to lead, and as such should disclose any medical problems he or she might have.  But, it should be his or her choice to do so.

I further believe the public has a right to know, but not simply because they're footing the bill.  Health matters concern the public as well.  And since public officials have a wide platform, it would be great for them to enlighten the public about health issues resulting from their own problems.  Aging males and females (like Corbin) may be more interested in learning about any medical condition that could afflict them, and about how to guard against it, rather than how much the government of Guyana (so honourably disclosed) spent on his care.  That's what I consider paramount to anything else.  But, this one's up to you Mr. Corbin.

In support of Global Voices Advocacy (GVA)

Georgia Popplewell asks, "In Trinidad and Tobago, has truth become trouble?"

I reach!

[The funniest commenter around the GYblogosphere has finally commented on my blog.  I consider this a true honor!]

Hello Girls,

This is old Lucinda here, and in my day, there were a lot of single women, whom, for the most part stayed single, and kept quiet, because as you know most Guyanese, and yes this is a generalisation, do not react rationally to alternative lifestyles. In Guyana everything is yes or no, bad or good.

In those days we had to know our place, and if if we tried to break out, we were deemed annoying or mad, send her to Canje they would say, so can you imagine a female going around stating she is gay, oh my, they would have thought she was proccessed by the devil, and begin calling on all sorts of preachers and church people to lay hands on the girl.

Girls I am a supporter of SASOD, the Lord works in myetrious ways. Have a nice night, let me get back to GY911 and see what mischief he is creating over there. Bye Love and God Bless Lucinda.

*****

Good Morning CD, Thank you for thanking me. Here is an example of how Guyanese were in the day. In those days we had one pair of BATA shoes for church and one pair of BATA shoes for school and one pair of BATA shoes for walking around GT, well, my walking around GT pair of shoes were laced up oxford style shoes, well here I am cutting across GT to go in the market in my lace up shoes, and all of sudden a man riding a bike comes alongside me and says to me "yuh wearin man shoe, why yuh wearin man shoes" I kept walking and he just kept riding besides me and uttering that foolishness, well finally, I noticed that he was riding a ladies cycle, so I just shouted out "And yuh riding a lady bike" and he just rode on quickly.

Listen. I had Shadow. our area dresser steal my nice cotton shift from the clothes line. The next thing I know I am in Water Street and who I must see prancing around on the pavement in broad daylight, Shadow, Shadow in my shift, oh Lord girl, there was Shadow wine-ing in my dress on the pavement for stevedores, oh gosh, but I had to keep my tongue between my teeth, as I didn't want trouble on the pave. I use to sell cosmetics from my house, and Shadow was my customers, anyway, I am going to buy the book you have posted here.

In the yards of GT you can hear the lastest news.

Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbain and Gay Writing from the Antilles

From Antilles: The weblog of the CRB (The Caribbean Review of Books):

Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Gay and Lesbian Writing from the Antilles, ed. Thomas Glave (Duke University Press, 2008)
A landmark anthology of fiction, poems, essays, and memoirs by thirty-seven writers, confronting head-on one of the contemporary Caribbean's areas of darkness. Whether telling tender love stories or declaiming fierce polemics, these voices insist that gay and lesbian writers (and readers) have a central place in the Caribbean literary tradition. (Reviewed by Kelly Baker Josephs in the November 2008 CRB.)

[Available here at Amazon for $18.96]

Not denying

Aside from a few of the usual slap fights girls get into from time to time, I've only had one memorable physical fight in my lifetime.

I was about ten when I shoved a tall, heavy-set, slightly older male classmate up against a fence and kicked and punched him, all the while screaming like a banshee.  After about a minute or so of my puny attack, he finally had the presence of mind to push me away.  When I fell to the ground, instead of hitting back, he reached inside his shirt pocket, pulled out a small, flat, sharp-edged stone and threw it at my head.  (If you look closely, you'd see the scar left from the gash the stone opened on my forehead.)

But though I wore the evidence of that fight much longer than he did, the looks and comments I got from other classmates led me to believe that I'd done something remarkable: I'd dared to fight back when the school bully taunted and teased.

What was it that got me so incensed that I was willing to shut him up or die trying?

Every lunch period a group of us girls would go to a classmate's home (she lived near the school) and play a round or two of jacks.  No boys were allowed even though some of them begged to come, the school bully included.  So a slow rumor started that we were lesbians.  I say slow because by the time most of us in the group heard of it, it had a life of its own.  We had been paired off and each "couple" had been given nicknames, and an accompanying love story.  The day of the fight I had finally heard the rumor and decided I wasn't going to our usual lunch spot.  The bully saw me sitting alone and soon drew a crowd with his loud vulgar questions and taunts.  Somehere in-between the taunts and stares, I lost it.

The fight ended the taunting.  But some time later, much too late to do anything about it, I realized I'd never spoken up in denial of the accusation that I was a lesbian.  More likely than not the prospect of an eloquent denial was restricted by fear and rage, and something else... 

There were no openly lesbian women where I lived (several openly gay men though), so there was no substantive visible lesbian lifestyle (good or bad) with which I could identify or completely reject.  I had nothing to argue sensibly against.  So I remained silent, as did the lesbian women who HAD to have existed.

What did it mean that there were no openly lesbian women where I lived in Guyana, a little over 20 years ago?  Was a woman who openly declared that she was not interested in a sexual relationship with a man (20 years or so ago in Guyana) destined to a life worse than a man who was openly gay?

Maybe (I'd like to think so anyway) somewhere in my 10-year-old mind I knew that to deny that I was lesbian was to add one more voice against it...one more voice...complicit...helping to uphold the cruel denying silence. 

For one memorable minute (or thereabouts) I let my fists do the talking.  I quieted one bullying voice which said lesbianism was wrong, and lesbians needed to hide in shame.

[Yesterday was UN-designated International Day Against Homophobia.  In Guyana, the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD) appears to be fighting the good fight against legally entrenched stigmas against homosexuality.]