Charmaine Valere

Second time around: Trinidad and Tobago's Bocas Literary Festival

With the memory of a somewhat irritating time trying to get food between events, and transportation back to my hotel between and after Bocas events, this time around I enquired online about where to eat and how to get around.

Me: @bocaslitfest What's transportation like for the festival? --from airport to hotel? --from hotel to reading post?

Bocaslitfest: @signifyinwoman Most hotels in POS can arrange a taxi for guests, provide contacts for a taxi driver or explain how to use public transport.

Me: @bocaslitfest: And what about refreshments for the long fun-packed days of the festival? Can visitors expect coffee, tea, finger food? Food for purchase (of course)? Or will the hotel / taxi service provide that info as well?

Bocaslitfest: @signifyinwoman There'll be food and drink for sale 11am-4pm each day at the main festival venue, and many restaurants and cafes nearby.

I don't know how assured you would have felt after that exchange, but I certainly wasn't. I was, after all, traveling alone, staying at a hotel alone (last time I had a roommate), and assumed I would be dining alone for the most part, and somewhere at the back of my mind was the not-so-vague memory of Trinidad's crime related state of emergency situation last year. Nevertheless, I headed to the festival determined to maneuver around the mysteries of food, transport, and personalities and have myself a pleasant mini vacation as well. There I was a 3/4 yankee, hair dyed red-brown (almost orange in some parts--a weird attempt at Caribbean camouflage perhaps? Sun-burnt? Blazing hot? Burnt cinnamon?), one dress size slimmer than last year, clothes hugging closer, heels higher, and thanks to months of divorce stress, more in need of a vacation than hours of listening to people read from their books.

And that's probably why I remember the readings for the wrong reasons. 

Imprinted in my mind is the low-cut, v-necked t-shirt worn by the tall storyteller, stubbles of hair visible, voice rising and falling over the descriptions of a man with penis problems. Reading on the same panel with him that day was another storyteller with a too-long, too-straight weave, captivating us with a tale of a young couple straining at middle-class life in Jamaica. Another day, I sat in warm drowsiness stirred briefly by the surprising voice control of a woman whose heaviness suggested she should be breathy or breathless for sure. One night in a crowded cafe, the readings were preceded by brilliant-sounding pan music, for which the crowd was appreciative. And the mood that night was kept enlivened by the sensuality of the pieces read. The sway of a young poet's lean tight body and the swagger of his love lines are particularly memorable from that night. Then there was the man who couldn't stop laughing at the funny moments in the story he was reading--a story one can safely assume he'd read many many times before--and the woman who cried at painful lines in her story, from her second of three books published. They both made me ponder the possibility that a writer can remain in (or get back into) the initial mood that may have inspired something he or she wrote, regardless of how far removed (writing timewise) he or she may be from it.

Another day I was stimulated from sleep by a woman who licked her lips and slapped her thighs as she recited from memory. She was the only writer I heard who recited from memory. (What can I say?) Besides making me a little uncomfortable, it was nice to see a writer who figured out something to do with her hands other than hold her script. Most memorable perhaps, was the slow, measured lifting praise of a female writer (and possibly, simultaneously, a slur at another writer) by one of the Caribbean's literary fathers. He seldom raised his eyes from his script, but you could hear a pin drop as we collectively hung on his every word.

Wrong reasons or not, I found ways to trick my body out of its too-relaxed state, and my eyes from closing shut, and my other senses from developing fierce envy for the people I saw walking by freely outside my enclosures.

I spent much time noticing other aspects of the festival that went well too. You could have picked your focus for the day, or the entire festival for that matter, be it film, beginning writers, poets, women writers, or writers from a particular country--besides Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica was well represented, and I had the immense pleasure of hearing Guyanese writers Fred D'Aguiar and Brendan de Caires read from their work and talk about their lives as writers and more, and though I missed it, I was thrilled that Guyanese filmmaker Clairmont Chung's Walter Rodney documentary was screened during the festival as well. 

Also in the what-went-well category were the varying levels of writing celebrated throughout the festival. From adult literacy program participants to budding teen writers and new adult writers to Earl Lovelace and George Lamming, all, it seemed, were included in the spotlight shone on the hard but rewarding task of writing. This year, there were two notable changes from last year that took the non-reading, non-panel discussing rest of us "audience" folk into consideration. One was the stationing of a food court in a central location where one could eat and not be far away from events. It was also a great place to meet writers and other festival participants and audience members between events. And the fare--bake and shark, corn soup, sandwiches, coffee, fruit drinks--was good!

The other notable change was a free shuttle from hotel to Bocas events and back if you wanted. I used it once I discovered its existence (two days into the festival), but you just can't beat talking and arguing with cab drivers about how much you know they gypping you because you look and sound stupidy and foreign. I had one driver pull out a detailed, laminated list of prices and destinations that I swear he only showed to people like me . . . teach she a lesson about what legitimate and what's not, I could hear him thinking, teeth grinding. Other cab drivers filled me in on the crime statistics in Port of Spain and gave me tips on how to stay safe from the biggest scamps in the city: "Careful what prices they charge you," one nice older man warned, "ask them for the official list."

Aside from discovering the free shuttle service two days late, not too much else went badly. I didn't mind the security bag checks once or twice as I entered the library (for Bocas events), but after the 50th time exposing my pantyliners and lipstick to the same security guard, he finally just waved me through. Hey, Bocas folk, how about a visitor's pass next time? Trust me, I won't be traveling to Trinidad to create a ruckus in the library with my feminine hygiene products and a bag of books. I promise.

What I did travel to Trinidad for, I most certainly got:

--After reading and writing on Loretta Collins Klobah's Twelve Foot Neon Woman, I got to hear her fill up a room with a lyrical Puerto Rico that I've only visited once.

--I saw Godfrey Smith beam with pride as he talked about memorializing the life of a man who served Belize for many years, and whose life he made us believe should not be forgotten.

--I saw George Lamming and heard him give regional, cultural, historical value to the work of a woman writer from the Caribbean!

I won't soon forget...

--the hysterical-sounding voices of Vahni Capildeo's female characters

--the pain in Myriam Chancy's  children's voices

--Nicolette Bethel's grandmother (from her "Lily" poems), who turned her back on a charming but suspicious offer from a man

--Karen Lord's  teasing introduction to her new book

--Kei Miller's genius at delivery

--Andre Bagoo's "How to Put a Cat into a Hypnotic Trance" from his debut collection, Trick Vessels

--The sudden horror of violence and depravity in Sharon Leach's and Sharon Millar's stories

--Stephen Narain's endearing mixed-accented voice of an older Guyanese man

--Fred D'Aguiar's evocative "Hurry the curry"

--And, Earl Lovelace's laughter as he read from the Bocas Lit Prize winner, Is Just a Movie, that last day of the festival (Secret joke or just beside himself with pleasure?)

Of books, of strange and familiar characters, of voices brought to life from still pages, of events that told large and small truths about the Caribbean and its peoples, such was this year's Bocas literary festival. It was a resounding success.

-------------

For more on Trinidad and Tobago's Bocas literary festival read here.

Ping-pong barfing, tail tales, and reincarnation: bedtime stories for kids

When the evening goes well--every little man eats his dinner, shuts off all electronics at 7, takes a bath (with soap), brushes his teeth (with toothpaste), and resists the temptation to engage in a pillow fight with his brothers...all before 8pm--then the final treat for the day is an hour or so of storytelling, when each well-behaved child gets to hear his favorite tale. That happens occasionally. On those occasions, my sons ask for and get the likes of Amber Brown, The Little Island, The Problem with Chickens, a Pooh story, Yes Day, and one or both of Clive Borely’s Tilly the Turtle and Carlton and the Dolphin.


Amber Brown, for those who don’t know, is Paula Danziger's child narrator who faces many real-life challenges--being split between divorced parents is probably the most challenging--with a quirky and engaging attitude towards it all. The one my kids like is a Thanksgiving story, where she has to choose between spending the holiday with her mother and her fiancé or with her father. The story is as full of mischief as it is of angst and dilemma, and my boys especially love the grossness of this moment:

I come out of the bathroom and watch a little kid barf all over Mrs. McDowell’s desk. It’s the same kid who barfed when we had the skunk smell in our school. I watch Kelly watch the kid barf, and then I watch Kelly barf. The kid barfs again . . . . Oh, great . . . . . Ping-Pong barf. The nightmare continues. I, Amber Brown, don’t barf, but this whole scene is making me feel pretty sick.

They laugh and act out the scene every time I read it. But they also appear quite sensitive to other moments when she’s overwhelmed by her Thanksgiving dilemma and says repeatedly, “I, Amber Brown, just don’t know what to do.”


In another of their favorites--Margaret Wise Brown’s classic poem-like, The Little Island--a vacationing kitten comes to an island and after prowling around for a while and noticing that it’s all surrounded by water, the kitten declares, “What a little land. This little Island is as little as Big is Big.” To his amazement, the island retorts, “So are you.” Not to be outdone, the kitten explains the difference, “But I am part of this big world. My feet are on it.”

"So am I,” said the little island.
“No, you’re not,” said the kitten.
“Water is all around you and cuts you off from the land.”
“Ask any fish,” said the island.
So the kitten caught a fish.
“Answer me this or I’ll eat you up,” said the kitten.
“How is an Island a part of the land?”
“Come with me,” said the fish,
“down into the dark secret places of the sea and I will show you.”
“I can’t swim,” said the cat.
“Show me another way or I’ll eat you up.”
“Then you must take it on faith what I tell you,” said the fish.
“What’s that?” said the cat --”Faith.”
“To believe what I tell you about what you don’t know,” said the fish.
And the fish told the kitten how all land is one land under the sea. The cat’s eyes were shining with the secret of it. And because he loved secrets he believed. And he let the fish go.

My children never fail to ask “so mom, what’s the secret?” And depending on how I feel that particular evening, my answer ranges from somewhat philosophical and rambly (which they usually interrupt with their own explanations) to very philosophical and rambly (which they usually interrupt with a pillow fight). They have very assertively and practically concluded that the kitten is silly and that there’s no secret; the island just fooled the kitten into thinking there is one. And my eight-year-old sometimes adds, staring me straight in the eye, “the kitten is like the child and the island is like the grown up who tries to trick the child with lots of big words and long explanations.”

(As the inimitable Erma Bombeck said: And for this, I have stretch marks.)

The problem with chickens is that sometimes they step out of line and have to be coaxed back in place. That’s the gist of Bruce McMillan’s Icelandic tale about chickens and ladies. The ladies, who live in a village, travel to the city to buy chickens, and at first all is well: the chickens are happy laying eggs, the ladies bake cakes with the eggs, everybody is fat and content. But then it appears the chickens become confused about their identity (“role” for those who think “identity” may be too complex for a children’s tale) and begin to
imitate the ladies.  

But the ladies eventually find a way to fix their chicken problem, and (wouldn’t you know it) it involves exercise.

Gunnella’s illustrations truly feed this story.

A few years ago my kids were given the gift of an 18-volume Pooh book collection and each has his favorite Pooh story, but one they all enjoy is Eeyore’s Happy Tail. It begins with the donkey dreaming he’s the life of a party--a funny, singing, dancing jolly sort of donkey. But of course, he awakens from the dream to find he’s still the morose sort of donkey he always is. In trying to figure out why he’s so morose, he observes Tigger’s bouncy tail and compares it with his, which just hangs there, and supposes he’d be a lot happier if he just had a happier tail. He solicits owl’s help to find a happy tail, and after unsuccessfully trying on a few, he comes to realize that (basically) you get the tail that fits you and you have to live with it as best as you can...well sorta. But the beauty of the story is in the trying on of tails, not necessarily in its “reality bites” moral. My kids love Eeyore’s efforts to assume a monkey tail:

Owl flipped through the book once again. “Here’s another happy tail,” he said. “A monkey tail is almost like a hand. The monkey uses it to hang from branches and swing through the trees.” Eeyore imagined himself swinging through the trees by his tail. He almost smiled just thinking about it. Maybe a monkey tail was exactly what he needed. Eeyore wrapped his tail around a tree branch. Then he closed his eyes and concentrated on swinging through the tree like a monkey. After a while Eeyore opened his eyes. “Well, I’ll be,” he said, looking down, “Owl and Pooh look just like ants.” But what Eeyore was seeing were ants, because he had never left the ground.

Another of their favorites, Amy Krouse Rosenthal's and Tom Lichtenheld's Yes Day, has them longing for the day when I’ll say yes to everything they ask. (Dream on, little people).

And one of their most recent favorites is from amongst the Caribbean tales I’ve been gathering for their reading pleasure. It’s Clive Borely’s duo, Tillie the Turtle and Carlton and the Dolphin (featured during Trinidad’s Bocas lit fest). Tillie the Turtle has an exciting bit of action between “bad men” and a turtle trying to lay her eggs in peace in an environment which is growing more and more unsafe and unclean. My kids like the action and they like that the good folk defeat those who try to disturb an animal's habitat. (The green folk in the teaching world must be very proud of them...And I am too. I am.)  

I’m even prouder that though they are children who have so far been growing up without supernatural tales, they’ve taken a liking to Carlton and the Dolphin. In the story, a fisherman whose brother was lost at sea is caught in a storm and eventually led to safety by a dolphin who may be a reincarnation of his brother. When I first suggested to my sons that the Dolphin was probably the dead brother in another form of life, two of my sons were skeptical, and still are, but one son understands...

A few days after my sister died, he and I were standing at the window looking out at a tree in our yard when a blue bird lighted on a branch close to the window. The color startled me. I’d never seen a bird that color, except in a zoo maybe. I checked to see if he’d noticed and he appeared to be just as startled. Then he looked at me...wide-eyed
“That’s auntie Gail,” he whispered.
Without hesitation, I nodded, “Yes. It’s auntie Gail.”

My sister was buried in a unique metallic-blue casket--an extravagant, memorable last gift from our parents.

Happy to be beyond Naipaul's sphere of influence

Naipaul may be an ass for several reasons, but not necessarily for his recent comments about women writers; they seem well-supported by the book world. 

According to several reports from this year’s Hay Festival, Naipaul, one of the keynote speakers, was asked if he considered any woman writer his literary match, and he replied, “I don’t think so.” He theorized (among other things) that women’s sentimentality and their narrow view of the world make their writing unequal to his. Now most respectful writers and readers may find no fault with those who’ve rushed to add colorful descriptions to the ones built up over the years of Naipaul, but one may do well to check out the situation for a bit before wasting good cuss on Naipaul.

In a February 2011 Guardian UK article un-mysteriously titled “Research shows male writers still dominate books world,” Vida, an American organization for women in the literary arts, found a bias towards male writers in major publications like the London Review of Books, Granta Magazine, the Times Literary Supplement, and the New York Review of Books. They all feature more works by male writers than female writers. The reason can’t be that there are more male writers than female writers publishing books regularly because that’s not so. Why then are they focusing their review / feature efforts on more male writers than female writers? The situation is far deeper than Naipaul’s narcissism.

For one thing, research consistently shows that more women than men read, especially fiction, and it would appear to follow that the publications featuring / reviewing mostly male writers assume that those are the books readers (majority women) want to read. Sure, writing was once a male-dominated tradition, and many of us women cut our teeth on books written by men. Naipaul was THE most influential writer on me and many of my classmates during our high school years and much of my later education was spent studying the works of mostly male writers. They occupy much of the space in many a canon of literature. But these days, I read differently. And I confess, I haven’t read Naipaul much since high school. I’ve grown beyond the sphere of his influence. That’s my story though. But what is the nature of the book situation today? Do many of us women (Caribbean and otherwise) still read as if we were under the influence of male writers? Have we led the publications mentioned earlier to believe (based on our buying preferences) that books written by men are more worthy of our reading time? Or, are we being encouraged by these major publications to believe that?

Whichever it is, we really can’t place the blame on folks like Naipaul who seem to take pleasure in grinding their gritty heels into soft sore spots. We have to do something about it ourselves. Among other positives in the world of Caribbean books, in the six months that it has been fully online, The CRB has been admirably even-handed in publishing reviews of books by Caribbean men and women, and that should be comforting to Caribbean women writers and readers who may have felt Naipaul’s heel a bit more than others. Geoffrey Philp also consistently showcases the work of women writers, and he has amassed a considerable portfolio of writing by Caribbean women on his blog.

I hope that my Caribbean Women Writers Series, which I’ll run every year, will contribute in some tiny way to highlighting and celebrating the work of women writers from the Caribbean. This year’s series will feature writers like Jean Rhys, Grace Nichols, Lorna Goodison, Jennifer Rahim, Elizabeth Nunez, Marion Bethel, Gisele Isaac, Liane Spicer, Joanne Hillhouse, Debra Providence, Danielle Boodoo-Fortune, Terry-Ann Mahon, Nadine Muschette, Vashti Bowlah, Barbara Jenkins, and more.

See, here’s a fact that may be triggering some of Naipaul’s peevishness: around certain parts we doh have much time to read him any more; we too busy reading other folk . . .women folk, thanks.

Roomy enough for cramped, cranky writing

I recently visited two places which these days (in our world of stay-at-home internet accessibility) are feeling the pressure to be innovative in order to remain competitive: the library and the movie theatre. The roomy, dine-in AMC theatre was a welcome improvement from its cramped predecessor, but the college library I visited, where I still had to press my hip into a turnstile to enter, was as familiar as it had been when I used to spend hours there a decade + ago. For once I saw some benefit in the slow-moving world that is many an educational institution. There in the library I dwelt in the cramped archaic spaces just as happily as I’d welcomed the chance to stretch out my legs in the theatre without feeling the need to become acquainted with the person sitting in front of me. I know. I’m old, cranky, and nostalgic, but I’m comfortable with that.

***

As a college student, if I wanted to know more about a book than I’d read and understood, I always went to the college library’s huge index, where one could find a book’s history of reception, the majority of which were “scholarly” reviews in books and literary journals, with the occasional “lighter” periodical (newspaper or popular magazine) review thrown in for good measure. As a beginning college student, I was never confident in my understanding of a book. I always felt for sure it was limited to my own personal reactions. My lack of knowledge of literary theory (I felt) was always certain to result in a useless narrow view of any book I read. So I would sort through a book’s reviews, being careful to avoid the completely negative ones and the completely positive ones (those, I was warned, were too personal...too biased), to find the objective, passionless ones that were the ideal approach to assessing a book.

Any appreciation for books I’d had prior to attending college was kiddie stuff. After all, I’d come into the American college system (not having gone to high school in America) unprepared for serious reading, having read books--save for Gulliver’s Travels, which I’d read as fantasy fiction, certainly not as satire--that weren’t part of any recognizable canon of great literature. In college, I quickly learned that until I could place a book in its particular genre and approach to writing, and in the world in which the author existed (agreed upon by scholars), I had nothing worthy to say of it.

Eager to be accepted and to attain much-coveted As in my courses, I studied and did what I was told, even when it resulted in cruelty to the text: Toni Cade Bambara’s “The lesson” read as cultural criticism--of American culture--yes, but to approach it as Marxist text almost completely gutted it! Nevertheless, I grew to appreciate the lessons learned from reading a book as part of a whole--whether it was a contribution to or rejection of a particular genre, period, or view of the world. But it wasn’t until I was brave enough to step outside of the teaching machine of reading and become immersed in blogging about books that I was finally able to fully admit and accept the wisdom that most people react personally to what they read, and tend not to be particularly interested in scholarly approaches to a book (even scholars).

My recent visit to the library wasn’t to do research of any kind. In fact, these days I can easily access the index of reviews online. The statement on their opening page is telling of the times:

Book Review Index Online is the database libraries have been requesting for years. We’ve taken our popular print series of the same name and made it accessible online —saving researchers valuable time and libraries valuable shelf space.

Sad and true.

These days, I approach reviewing with a mixture of my past and my present: I try to “place” or “situate” a book in relation to other books like it from more or less the same period or genre--that’s very generally speaking, I know, but that’s as much as I confess to as someone taught to read that way--and, I always give a healthy dose of my own personal reaction to it. Of course, that “personal reaction” comes loaded with many biases (as I mentioned here before), but I feel much more willing to commit to my own personal reactions than I do to scholarly approaches. It took a while getting here, but I’m happy where I am.

And yes, I have also enjoyed writing for established publications like the CRB and Caribbean Beat, where I have to be mindful of their philosophical approaches to reviewing. (Luckily for me, my biggest challenge to date has been working within a given word count.) And I also like reading the reviews in Calabash and SX Salon. Anyone who reads reviews regularly will recognize (as I do) that reviewers are not equal--some obviously know more than others and are more practiced at analysis--but I don’t necessarily believe in a hierarchy of reviews purely based on the publication in which they appear (can you spot the error in the first paragraph of this NYT review?) So I was thrilled to see my blog review of Mark McWatt’s Suspended Sentences alongside other scholarly ones on his Peepal Tree Press author page.

In my little cranky corner here where I continue to stretch my thoughts as far as I can, and then some more, and where I feel comfortable being in public to some degree, I’m nevertheless always conscious of the unbalanced nature of the world of books and writers, and as my readership grows, I am becoming less willing to completely slam a book written by a Caribbean writer. But I intend to continue to balance that consciousness with my passionate heartfelt honest view of what I see. I couldn’t do it otherwise.

***

Related links:

--Publishers Weekly [Interview, May 2011]: Indian author and critic Nilanjana Roy’s responds to “what, if any, are the critics’ responsibilities?”: Be honest, be merciless, be humble, and when you do offer praise, be generous. None of this matters unless you’re honest, and the honesty won’t matter much unless you’re a relentlessly curious reader. Read a lot; read with discrimination, but read voraciously; develop your own tastes and be open about them, own your opinions, and be prepared to change them as your reading changes. And quit if reading ever becomes a chore.

--WhereRU [Video, October 2009]: “Rutgers University Libraries Adapt to Students’ Needs.”

--The Daily Beast [Blog, May 2011]: "The Future of Book Reviews: Critics vs. Amazon Reviewers."

 

Trinidad and Tobago's first Bocas Literary Festival: One down, many to go...

“You come to Trinidad for what?” she said, looking at me askant, and I could see the narrative about me (who these people had never seen before) becoming even more funny, starting with what had happened when they went to pick me up at the airport...

After an uneventful flight from JFK, I arrived at Piarco hours ahead of my hotel’s check-in time. I’d arranged beforehand for relatives to pick me up, and planned to do a little sight-seeing and what not of Trinidad. But went I stepped outside in the heat dragging my two bags behind me, I didn’t see anybody who look like they come for me. So I stood there looking lost, attracting the attention of several cab drivers who offered to take me where I was going. I tried to ignore them, but after about 15 minutes went by and I still didn’t see anybody who look like they come for me, I said yes to one of the more persistent offers to take me to my hotel and handed him my bags.

As we were walking off, I heard my name call with a question mark at the end, and there he was, grinning at me with a big sign with my name on it--handsome young relative I’d never see before. He relieved the man of my bags and we were soon on our way. About three minutes into the ride, he turned to me (still grinning) and asked, “but is where you were heading?” I was puzzled, after all wasn’t it clear I was heading to my hotel to wait for about seven hours until I could check in...duh! I said so (without the duh) and the boy continued to grin, “but you know the man you was walking off with?” he asked. Then it suddenly dawned on me...what if the man wasn’t a real taxi driver...what if I had been calmly walking off into some sort of danger... Oh lord! How embarrassing! I quickly changed the subject, but the boy wouldn’t stop grinning. When he finally dropped me off at another relative’s home (the one who was now questioning what I said I’d come to Trinidad for), he gave one last grinning shot, “be safe eh.” 

Well, add his story to the one she was forming about me claiming to be in Trinidad for a literary festival that nobody seemed to know about, and you see my problem, right?

So as the woman watched on with tattle-tale interest, I dove into my bag, spilling contents left and right in search of the schedule I had printed of the entire festival. She took it, examined it up and down and said (with lots of doubt in her voice), “Oh. Nice.”

The next day, when I was (safe) in my hotel room preparing to head out to the festival, I got a call from the same questioning woman who told me to tune into some morning program. Two UWI professors were talking about the festival, and if I didn’t mind she wanted to know what time the films were showing. She wanted to go.

Uh-huh. Vindication.

. . .

Trinidad and Tobago’s first Bocas Literary Festival was a definite hit. It was well-planned, smoothly orchestrated with thought-provoking, themed readings, lively panel discussions and debates, and the settings were intimate enough to encourage people to get acquainted. I didn’t attend any of the workshops, so I can’t comment on those, and I left a day before the festival ended, so I missed all of the last day’s events, but I was able to jot down a few observations from the events I attended to share with you.


THE SUBJECT FINDS THE WRITER:

At the opening event, which was also a tribute to the late Trinidadian journalist, Keith Smith (see CRB tribute to him here), writer / columnist B.C. Pires remarked that more often than not, the subject finds the writer, rather than the other way around. A genus of that idea--that subject finds writer--appeared to be the motive behind the scheduled readings by writers during the festival. They were all grouped by subject and by genre (in some cases). Groupings included writers of memoir--Lorna Goodison and Charlotte Williams; writers of biography--Patrick French, Arnold Rampersad, Judy Raymond, and Edward Baugh; writers who have addressed memory loss and dementia--David Chariandy and Barbara Lalla; and writers who celebrate the lives of “ordinary people”--Tanya Shirley and Jane King.   

What folks said:
--David Chariandy, reading from Soucouyant, described the book (in part) as confronting the frightening circumstance of a person’s life “unbecoming” due to dementia: “Memory was a carpet stain that nobody wanted to confess to.”
--Barbara Lalla, reading from Cascade, talked about using humor to embrace what is often a new personality that emerges as a result of memory loss or dementia: “She doan mean to rude, but nutten stay in ar head.”
--Hinting at the creative liberties even biographers enjoy, Peepal Tree Press founder Jeremy Poynting asked Arnold Rampersad how he knew Ralph Ellison and his wife drove “slowly” away from the site of their destroyed home.


WORKS IN PROGRESS:

From all appearances, the Caribbean “arts scene” is still rather tentative about publishing online, but some are definitely embracing the concept of easy accessibility which online publication promises. Relative newcomers Arcthemagazine and Sx Salon are up and running online, and Poui is considering following suit. The role of the ebook or the ereader may be less apparent in the Caribbean world of arts, but, as Global Voices Managing Director Georgia Popplewell advised, artists who may be desirous of a media that can accommodate change, would find the ever-changing world of online media a perfect place.


PERSISTENT MEDIA CONCERNS:

While the discussions about online media pointed to a current movement forward in terms of how various art forms are being read and viewed and experienced, a debate on press freedom reminded us of questions which continue to plague Caribbean journalists and those who work in traditional media--questions like, what is the role of the media in a plural society? is there such a thing as a “neutral” press? and, is the tension between politicians and the press a natural, healthy (check-balance) reality, or an impediment to democracy, and as such in need of corrective legislation? The panel included politicians and journalists, and they debated with some gusto, but yielded no answers to any of those questions. It was a predictable tie.



DOES “CARIBBEAN LITERATURE” REALLY EXIST?

As would be expected (since the question is hardly a new one), many of the responses to “does Caribbean literature really exist?” were ones many of us have heard before... yes such a category exists because we need labels for shelving and other practical purposes . . . no I’m not comfortable with it because the term suggests an attempt to narrow . . .

But what was new about the discussion (at least for me) was where it was taking place: in a Caribbean country. And an issue surfaced that had never been a real consideration in previous discussions I’d been privy to about the term / category Caribbean literature. That issue, as was brought up by Jeremy Poynting, is that what gets defined as “Caribbean literature” in many individual Caribbean countries (at least those who actively buy books from overseas sellers) is decided by the book buyers, and they usually have very specific requests for books they consider “Caribbean.” Poynting isolated Trinidad and Tobago for commendation because a Caribbean literature section was added to school libraries, which allowed him to get many Peepal Tree Press books into those libraries.

Nevertheless, it appears (at least from Poynting’s experiences) a book written by someone from the Caribbean region or one that is about the Caribbean, isn’t enough to get it sold in some places within the region as a “Caribbean” book.

So the question (going on mostly outside the region) about what constitutes a “Caribbean book,” is (apparently) quietly being decided upon (quite narrowly in many cases) by a select few in the region itself.

On a possibly related note, I saw lots of books available for purchase (from sellers who were catering to the Bocas crowd) written by writers who were in attendance at the festival, but except for Myriam Chancy’s The Loneliness of Angels (a Peepal Tree Press book), there were no other books available for purchase by writers on the Bocas prize longlist who were absent from the festival. And I wondered (still wonder) if there’d been a conscious decision to exclude their books?

But though the decision-making of a few about which books should be made available may be an issue, it’s important to remember that a major feature of the festival was a prize for the best in Caribbean literature--an admirable and ambitious prize, which purported to have selected from amongst the best writing in the entire region in 2010. And here’s my small tribute to that prize.

 

BOCAS POEM

First the longlist--

a sampling of Caribbean best in 2010
a geographical mix of men and women
Barbados, Jamaica, St.Lucia,
Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago,
US, USVI, Canada, and The UK
poetry, short story, novel, essay.

Aged, young, celebrated, unknown
gay, straight,
bearing the weight
of letters.
Looking perfect. 
Hand-picked
to settle the question
of the shape, depth and mass of the Caribbean

. . . in English.

Then the shortlist
down to three.
A sudden but expected change of mood--
from loud clamor
to quiet reflection,
from seeming points of everywhere
to pointed view of place,
confrontational and crisp
gliding confident over and under tricky precipice.

One of the three showed up for the prize that night
and the mood was full of what was in sight.
She was the newbie of the lot
a prize of US ten thousand to be got.
Full of expectation and of suspense
the well-dressed gathering sat
sipping wine and looking tense.

But first to the videos we went
To the drawling aaa of the newbie from St. Taa-mas
then respectfully through the mumbling old giant
and to the soft soothe of the one most recognized from Haiti
It was a glass-freshening period well-spent.

Finally came the announcement of the winner.
And sure enough
it was the one who refuses to grow dimmer,
who past 80 still plays a vital part
and who many of us guessed
was a shoo-in from the start.

Collecting on his behalf
was his beaming daughter.
A woman many of us now know as an author.

And so it was.
No group hug
No soca
No moment of hallelu-yah.

Just we and we wine
clinking, smiling,
enjoying the lime.
Old and new acquaintances, enemies and friends,  
we slowly, casually
crossed that final bridge to righteous aaa-mens.



PARTING THOUGHTS:

What folks said (assume paraphrasing where quotation marks are absent):
--Tanya Shirley on Caribbean Literature: The belief that there is an “accurate” dialogue is problematic.
--Marlon James on Caribbean literature: If you’re going to talk about Caribbean literature you have to have a mature idea about what it is, warts and all.
--Annie Paul on Caribbean literature: While there is a recognizable “Caribbean literature” category (recognized internationally, regardless of what gets included or left out), there is no recognizable, all-encompassing category for Caribbean art. Art in the Caribbean is separate (by country) and competitive.
--Carolyn Cooper in the Jamaica Gleamer: "In Trinidad, at the BOCAS lit fest, I kept on thinking about the 'batter-bruising' the Calabash International Literary Festival suffered each year to secure funding; with a lot of bobbing and weaving, the organisers managed to sustain the creative enterprise for an entire decade. As the perceptive jackass puts it: 'Di world no level.' "