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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Young author enthralls with short stories about Trini life

by

20110608

Sel­dom does a re­view­er meet the au­thor of a book he's about to cri­tique. But dur­ing my brief stay in Trinidad I met Lyn­don Bap­tiste. For a few min­utes we chat­ted. What I failed to dis­cern then was the enor­mous tal­ent of this young man who seemed quite unas­sum­ing. His re­cent ef­fort, Boy Days, is a com­pi­la­tion of two dozen short sto­ries that is ethno­graph­i­cal­ly Trini­bag­on­ian in char­ac­ter. Lyn­don's ver­sa­til­i­ty is ir­rev­o­ca­ble.

Pages are lit­tered with the sar­don­ic hu­mor and col­lo­qui­al­ism of Paul Keen Dou­glas, the in­com­pa­ra­ble prose of Samuel Selvon, and the haunt­ing­ly po­et­ic vers­es of Pearl Springer. Lyn­don deft­ly us­es colour, im­agery, and ca­dence as a de­vice -first steady­ing, and even­tu­al­ly grip­ping the at­ten­tion of the read­er. To the very end, Boy Days re­fus­es to sur­ren­der. Lyn­don Bap­tiste is that good. His lit­er­ary style can be likened to that of an in­stru­men­tal­ist-evoca­tive, with a per­fect­ly timed ebb and flow.

Boy Days is a para­dox­i­cal and eclec­tic work of art that elic­its the widest range of hu­man emo­tions. Its pages are wrought with in­creduli­ty, su­per­cil­ious­ness, joy­ous nos­tal­gia, wrench­ing pain, and even anger. In truth, Lyn­don's work tran­scends its con­tex­tu­al base. It tells sto­ries of ex­is­ten­tial re­al­i­ties-past, present, and fu­ture.

Bit­ter Life

In A Bit­ter Life, the evils of racism and sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion and vi­o­lence jump out at the read­er, force­ful­ly. The pro­tag­o­nist, Seema, is ever so close to suc­cumb­ing to these cul­tur­al dis­eases. "Wait! What you try­ing to do? Arrange a wed­ding? I is on­ly 15 years old. You must be feel I is one of your goat or cow!" she screams at her fa­ther. Hers is a sto­ry that still res­onates in every so­ci­ety.

Obeah

In Obeah, Bap­tiste touch­es on an un­de­ni­able re­al­i­ty etched in­to the psy­che of Caribbean peo­ple, their very DNA. Call it what you wish, but the be­lief in the su­per­nat­ur­al, some­times to the per­il of the gullible is well cap­tured in this thrilling piece. "Then the spir­it over­take me," he writes, "and I start to dance and while I danc­ing, Moth­er Corn­husk beat­ing me like a dog, but I not feel­ing a thing, and with every lash the pipe bend­ing more and more......."

Oth­er tales....

That In­ter­net Thing is a bel­ly full of laughs, as he re­lates his first time ex­pe­ri­ence on a com­put­er. He writes: "I hear about some kind o' thing name the In­ter­net.... I watch porn un­til my back hurt. My whole life I can't talk to girls but if you see me on the ICQ...If them is thir­ty, I is thir­ty three; if they is eigh­teen, I is twen­ty-one; if them is six­ty-five, I is six­ty-eight." He con­cludes: "Women al­ways like men three years old­er..."

Con­verse­ly, his Man on a Mis­sion is ren­dered al­most in an al­tered state, be­twixt fan­ta­sy and re­al­i­ty. In Si­mon and Baby­lon, he de­liv­ers a gut­tur­al ex­pos&ea­cute; on the stench of wast­ed youth to ill got­ten gains. Fi­nal­ly, in The Teenage Man, this young au­thor seals his lit­er­ary depth with a Kant­ian dis­course on laws and so­ci­ety. He mus­es: "If every­one who came out of school with­in the next ten years was like me, then so­ci­ety would be a dif­fer­ent place. It would be nor­mal to do what is con­sid­ered wrong to­day."

Sad­ly, many of the best lit­er­ary minds were recog­nised on­ly af­ter their tran­si­tion. The pro­found­ly enig­mat­ic William Blake be­longs to this spe­cial class. Luck­i­ly though, Lyn­den Bap­tiste is still among us. Why not give him his due now? At the end of the day, its al­ways a boon to recog­nise un­recog­nised great­ness.


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