Charmaine Valere

Caribbean Women Writers (series): Romance and Relationships: Vashti Bowlah's "Catch of the Day"

In this second edition of the Caribbean Women Writers series, I'm including the works of five writers who have given me permission to share their unpublished writing with you. In the following story, written by Trinidadian writer Vashti Bowlah, the narrator tells a juicy tale about love and meddling. 

It was the talk of the small fishing village when the only doubles vendor in the area brought home a wife. Word quickly got around that she was hotter than the special blend of pepper sauce his customers couldn’t get enough of. Young and old wondered what had prompted his sudden change of status. He had driven off one morning in his beat up old car... [More here]

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.

Reading Nalo Hopkinson's "Old Habits"

Imagine dying in a mall and being stuck there for the rest of your afterlife. Imagine also that you are there with other folk who died in the mall, and though you’ve all lost your senses, i.e., your sensory abilities to touch, taste, smell, you still retain the habit of doing, feeling, and thinking through your senses. And, imagine that you’re made to re-experience your death (die all over again) once a day, which allows you to experience through your senses again, but only the last ones you had.

The narrator in Nalo Hopkinson’s  short story “Old Habits,” her first publication for the year 2011, finds himself in just such a damnable condition, and the story begins with his description of it:

Ghost malls are even sadder than living people malls, even though malls of the living are already pretty damned sad places to be. And let me get this out of the way right now, before we go any further; I am dead okay? I’m fucking dead. This is not going to be one of those stories where the surprise twist is and he was dead! I’m not a bloody surprise twist. I’m just a guy who wanted to buy a necktie to wear at his son’s high school graduation.

 
He, and the others in the story, died in the mall--his was a bizarre accident in an escalator--and it appears they are condemned to remain there in a repetitive sense-less existence, constantly longing for what they left behind.

The mall as a setting for the afterlife, or as a setting for a community of after-lifers, is of course the idea upon which the story’s ironies and its inevitable societal commentary (its depiction of a certain modern-day human condition) lie. That commentary is handled deftly with humor and tender sentiment in the story. And there are many instances of this handling to choose from: While on one hand the narrator laments the loss of his sense of smell, for instance--he wishes he could smell his husband’s warm milk breath after his morning coffee--he’s glad he can no longer inhale the “migraine-inducing” esters cloying the air around the mall’s perfume counters. Another kind of backhanded plus may be that they can only walk “through” each other, which means there’s no possibility of human connection, but there’s also no bumping into each other in crowded situations (as happens often in a mall). And though old habits appear truly hard to die, some may be worth the extra baggage in the afterlife. One man’s “habit” of homophobia seems ridiculous and out of place in a world where human contact is no longer possible, but another man’s habit of belief (so to speak) that one should have a caring person bear witness to his or her death, allows us another view that maybe some beliefs are hardy enough to last wherever human beings commune and whatever the circumstances.

Perhaps the most damning depiction of the mall existence of the after-lifers in the story is a dark moment when they surround a young girl who has somehow regained her senses, her sensory abilities, and demand that she tell them how it feels. They do so until nothing is left of her; she dissipates “like fog,” the narrator tells us. And he shamefully concludes “you stay long enough in the mall, and you learn what happens if you begin to get the knack of living again. We’ve used Kitty up. And we are still starving.”

And what about escape from this mall existence? Is that at all possible?  Well, it appears one could leave by simply opening a set of big glass doors and stepping out into the “blackness” if one were either an adventurous wandering child or a stir-crazy adult. But maybe because once those people stepped outside they never came back, the after-lifers stuck in the mall are reluctant to do the same. The fear of the unknown looms larger to them than the encouraging lesson of those who left, which the narrator interprets as follows: “...we can touch the doors to the outside. Not everything in this mall is intangible to us.” The story concludes with him standing in front of the door staring at the blackness beyond and contemplating how it would feel to open it. Whether it is a positive moment or not, it brings together the story’s “mall” themes--mall as escape; mall as entrapment; mall as addiction to be broken--and leaves the reader with plenty of which to speculate about the things we carry around with us (the tangibles and intangibles) and about whether or not we’ll continue to carry them around with us when we die. “Old Habits” engages, thrills, and raises questions. Those qualities make it a satisfying read... in every sense.

__________________

 

 

Hopkinson’s story appears in the fourth edition of Jonathan Strahan’s Eclipse Four: New Science Fiction and Fantasy. If you’re a fan of Nalo Hopkinson, or a fan of science fiction / speculative fiction period, be the first to let me know here or via email, and I’ll send you a copy of the collection.

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.' "