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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

?Trinis to be proud of

by

20091002

?This is a bumper sea­son for Trinida­di­an lit­er­a­ture. Hear nah, book like rain, you know! Com­ing from all di­rec­tions, and lick­ing shot from At­lantic to Pa­cif­ic.

Be­fore I make any more noise, I want to big-up all the Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian au­thors who gone be­fore. The CLR Jame­ses, Al­fred Mende­ses, Ralph de Boissier­res, come right down to Wayne Brown (God rest he soul), Gor­don Rohlehr, An­son Gon­za­les. Kevin Baldeosingh have to get a spe­cial shout-out, be­cause up un­til the oth­er day he was, as he put it in a col­umn, the on­ly Trinida­di­an nov­el­ist of he gen­er­a­tion who liv­ing in Trinidad. And of course, Un­cle Earl Lovelace de­serve he own sen­tence. Not to men­tion Lawrence Scott, Shani Mootoo and Robert An­toni. You go be amaze at how much of Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian it have out there writ­ing, yes. They writ­ing nov­els, po­ems, movie and all, for re­al years now, while we hard­ly know about them. I tell a girl in a in­sur­ance com­pa­ny the oth­er day I's a writer. She say, oh, like No­ra Roberts? I say no. She say, like Danielle Steele? I say no. Con­ver­sa­tion done, be­cause I didn't want to be pre­ten­tious and say like VS Naipaul, but some­how I feel that is the on­li­est Trinida­di­an lit­er­ary writer I feel she might of recog­nise.

But I could of been wrong, be­cause over the past few months a good few Trinida­di­an writ­ers come out with new ti­tles and they get­ting good no­tices.

Char­i­ty be­gins at home, as my moth­er would say, so I want to start with Fran­cis Es­cayg and my­self. Both of we have chil­dren nov­els in a new Macmil­lan Caribbean se­ries name Is­land Fic­tion. Two out of six of the books is by Tri­nis, so that is a good ra­tio, I feel. Fran­cis does call he book "a pre­quel to Pa­pa Bois," and so far chil­dren eat­ing it up. My book is about twins liv­ing in Trinci­ty who find out that they is ge­net­ic ex­per­i­ments. The se­ries come out late last year, but on­ly reach Trinidad ear­ly this year. (Both of we, plus the se­ries ed­i­tor Joanne John­son, go­ing and read on Sun­day in Nalis Celebri­ty Read-a-Thon at the Na­tion­al Li­brary Am­phithe­atre, start­ing at 1.30pm. You could come; plus it free.) In June, Aman­da Smyth come out with Lime Tree Can't Bear Or­ange (Ran­dom House). It name one thing in the States and an­oth­er thing in Eng­land–they call it Black Rock there. Any way you take it, the book do­ing very good, and the UK In­de­pen­dent call it "a vivid and com­pelling sto­ry". Not a bad re­view at all, es­pe­cial­ly for a first-time nov­el­ist.

Then whaps! Ju­ly come and a next Tri­ni come out with a nov­el. Monique Rof­fey book name The White Woman on a Green Bi­cy­cle (Si­mon and Schus­ter). I had the plea­sure of in­ter­view­ing she the oth­er day for Guardian, and I have to say that overnight suc­cess doesn't be no overnight noth­ing. She might be look­ing at a Or­ange Prize for Fic­tion–that is a UK prize for the best book by a woman–but bet your bot­tom dol­lar is work she work for that. She first nov­el, Sun Dog, well get good write-up, and this book seem to be do­ing as good or bet-ter. A Tri­ni name An­ton Nim­blett bring out a book name Sec­tions of an Or­ange (Peepal Tree Press), and one re­view say this about it: "The sto­ries' emo­tions sneak up on you, hid­den be­tween lyri­cal de­scrip­tions of every­day life." I didn't read it yet, but I look­ing for­ward to it. Is a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries about gay Trinidad, and that is some­thing you doesn't read about every day. The re­view­er I just quote, Rosa­mond S King, point out that not since Aelred's Sin it had a book deal­ing with Tri­ni gay men. Willi Chen write a book of short sto­ries too–not about gay men but about coun­try peo­ple and some Chi­nese Trinida­di­ans, and oth­er peo­ple in we land­scape. Cross­bones and Oth­er Sto­ries (Han­sib) al­so have a sto­ry in it that he pub­lish in Trinidad Noir last year. (I co-ed­it Trinidad Noir with Jeanne Ma­son, and Akashic Books pub­lish it in the US.)

Fi­nal­ly, Prof Eliz­a­beth Nunez, a big sawa­tee writer and Provost of Medgar Evers Col­lege in Brook­lyn, bring out her new nov­el, An­na In-Be­tween (Akashic Books). The Prof have about a mil­lion books, and the re­views seem to say this one is the best so far. Again, I can't wait to read it. What all these new books have in com­mon is that all of them pub­lish out­side the re­gion. Han­sib, Willi Chen pub­lish­er, is Caribbean, but they based in Eng­land. Akashic in Brook­lyn; Peepal Tree in Leeds; Si­mon and Schus­ter and Ran­dom House in Amer­i­ca and in Eng­land. No­body not pub­lish­ing no lit­er­ary books in Trinidad. I want to know when we will start back tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for we own self in this area, and put some mon­ey in­to pub­lish­ing. Is a point I does make over and over again, that if your bright­est and best have to go out­side to get pub­lished, that is a prob­lem. In oth­er words, I have to wait for some­body in Eng­land or Amer­i­ca to tell me they find my book good enough? The oth­er route is self-pub­lish­ing and that... let we not even go there, be­cause that is a next sto­ry al­to­geth­er. Al­fred Mendes, one of we first boss writ­ers, get lick-up as a writer be­cause he went out­side to try and get he work pub­lish. When he fail, be­cause no­body didn't want to pub­lish it out there, he burn he man­u­scripts and stop writ­ing for al­most the rest of he life. I hope that don't hap­pen to more of we. But you know, wher­ev­er they get pub­lish, I re­al proud of my peo­ple and their achieve­ments, and I would tell any­body to go out and buy their books.


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