There are many reasons to feel good about the current state of literature in T&T.One can draw this conclusion from the latest edition of Wasafiri, the 29-year-old British literary journal that highlights the work of black and Asian people around the world.Wasafiri has devoted its entire summer issue to analysing and showcasing the work of writers from T&T.One of the issue's contributors, Sharon Millar, gave the country's literary fraternity another cause for optimism when she was awarded the Commonwealth Short Story Prize last week, in a tie with Canadian Eliza Robertson.Another contributor to Brighter Suns, Trinidadian-British writer Monique Roffey, who won this year's OCM Bocas Prize for her novel Archipelago, described holding regular workshops over the last four years with Millar and a handful of other new writers.
One of them, author and poet Barbara Jenkins, at this year's NGC Bocas Lit Fest won the Hollick Arvon Prize for emerging writers. Another, T&T Guardian editor/columnist Lisa Allen-Agostini, was shortlisted for the award. The prize gives the winner cash and other forms of support to allow them to finish a piece of work.Five of the writers on the shortlist were from T&T. All six were women.A spirit of collaboration, the establishment of new institutions like the T&T-spawned Bocas, and more women entering the field seem to have infused fresh enthusiasm and hope into the local writing industry. This was reflected in the tone of Roffey's essay."There is a boom going on right now, a big crop of literary talent has sprung up in Trinidad," she writes.The essay, like the entire issue, celebrates the work of the established–Earl Lovelace, VS Naipaul and Lawrence Scott, and of course Samuel Selvon, from whose novel A Brighter Sun the Wasafiri issue takes its name–while promoting the emerging, such as Amanda Smyth, Anu Lakhan and Roger Robinson, among others.
One of the major differences between the new generation and the old, writes Roffey, is that more of them are writing while living in T&T, "embedded in the culture, language and politics of the island."Millar, in her article, detailed two institutions Roffey credited with helping revitalise modern T&T literature–the Caribbean Literature Action Group (Calag) and Bocas. Calag, made up of writers and publishers, was formed last year (it is now going by the name CaribLit), and the festival saw its third instalment in April this year."The joint objective is to help another literary generation take up the baton," Millar writes in a review of the 2012 festival. "Alliances like Calag need forums like Bocas to foster ties and encourage the dialogue that needs to continue after everyone has gone home. The formation of Calag signalled a commitment to writers with few regional resources."Miller describes the mood of the 2012 festival as "optimistic and excited."
There are a growing number of Indo-Trinidadian women authors, Prof Frank Birbalsingh points out in another article. He calls them "late arrivals on the Caribbean scene" who began their rise to prominence in the early 1990s.
Looking at the works of Shani Mootoo, Ramabai Espinet, Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming (another Hollick Arvon-shortlisted writer) and three others, Birbarsingh contrasts the new authors' "well-rounded, fully fleshed portraits of Indian-Trinidadian women who are leading participants in the action of their stories" with the female characters one sees in the work of authors like Selvon and Naipaul.The men's characters, Birbarsingh writes, "tend to be sketched in bare physical and emotional outline, and they tend to play roles that are secondary in importance to those of their male counterparts."The new, women-penned work "assumes a revolutionary aspect in its presentation of female Indian-Trinidadian characters," Birbalsingh writes.But publisher Jeremy Poynting issues a warning for the new writers in a potentially controversial essay.Too many local writers, he argues, become trapped in "self-consciously national writing"–clich�s of what is "Trinidadian" that are based on what has been written before or what people who don't live on the island expect.Part of the explanation for this may be that despite the increase in T&T writers producing work from home many still live abroad. Poynting admits with concern that his company, Peepal Tree, publishes more work from the Diaspora than the resident Caribbean by a 60:40 ratio.
"Too many submissions we see from Trinidadian writers seem inclined to repeat what has already been done," he writes. "None of this is to deny the significance of Carnival, calypso and steelband as hugely creative inventions of popular origin," he adds. "Or to argue that they are impossible topics for imaginative treatment, but prospective writers need to look hard at books suchas Selvon's I Hear Thunder (1963) or Lovelace's The Dragon Can't Dance (1979) to ask themselves if they are doing anything new."Elsewhere in the magazine, Earl Lovelace examines the role of rebellion in the history of T&T; one essay makes the case that VS Naipaul is a "queer Trinidadian" and Lawrence Scott contributes a poignant short story that ponders the parallels between capital punishment and ageing.Dark romantic entanglements are at the heart of a story from Allen-Agostini, and poems from Abinta Clarke, James Aboud, Alison Gibb and others are featured.
The 100-page journal chronicles a promising beginning. But it is just that–a beginning."What writers need is not just a room of their own," writes Monique Roffey, "but also some kind of system of support, of backup, a society, a culture in which to be received." She concludes: "This is what I believe is happening for the first time in Trinidad, that there is now enough of a groundswell of literary activity in which Trinidad's writers can not just grow, but thrive."