Cherisse Moe

Laugh­ter and easy­go­ing con­ver­sa­tion filled the cosy, art-lined space of Tea Leaves 1881 in Wood­brook on Mon­day as 25 spe­cial­ly in­vit­ed guests gath­ered for a show­case of Christo­pher Lewis’ three books, cul­mi­nat­ing in the launch of his lat­est work, “Dear Caribbean Peo­ple: A Col­lec­tion of Proverbs for Liv­ing and Thriv­ing.” The in­ti­mate evening, com­plete with a wel­come char­cu­terie board and a com­pli­men­ta­ry cock­tail, al­so marked the au­thor’s 65th birth­day.

The event, ti­tled “The Three Lens­es of Suc­cess,” ex­plored the cen­tral theme run­ning through Christo­pher’s body of work: build­ing a life that feels gen­uine­ly mean­ing­ful. Through­out the evening, at­ten­dees re­spond­ed with laugh­ter, re­flec­tion and an­i­mat­ed dis­cus­sion as the au­thor shared lessons drawn from each pub­li­ca­tion.

Through satire, Christo­pher opens his first lens in his 2023 de­but, “The Cheat Code,” us­ing hu­mour and cri­tique to ques­tion how peo­ple get ahead in a so­ci­ety that of­ten mea­sures suc­cess by wealth and su­per­fi­cial sta­tus alone. Read­ing ex­cerpts from the satir­i­cal guide dur­ing his first-ever live read­ing, he joked, “This is an equal op­por­tu­ni­ty book. I’m at­tack­ing every­body.”

The sec­ond lens is ex­pe­ri­ence in “The Rolling Stone Gath­ered No Moss,” drawn from his 30 years as a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive and shaped in­to prac­ti­cal guid­ance for young in­terns and mid-ca­reer man­agers nav­i­gat­ing the cor­po­rate land­scape.

“I was seen as a rebel in the work­place be­cause I thought against the grain. But I be­lieve you earn re­spect by giv­ing re­spect and adding val­ue in a non-ob­nox­ious kind of way,” he shared with the au­di­ence.

Wis­dom forms the third lens in “Dear Caribbean Peo­ple,” pub­lished this May and writ­ten specif­i­cal­ly for read­ers across the re­gion. Un­like tra­di­tion­al West In­di­an proverbs that tend to be large­ly cau­tion­ary, Christo­pher’s book fea­tures 30 con­cise, one-page chap­ters that fo­cus on the pos­i­tive, of­fer­ing af­fir­ma­tions and life guid­ance tai­lored for the mod­ern age of the in­ter­net and en­tre­pre­neur­ship. To bridge the tra­di­tion­al and the con­tem­po­rary, he de­liv­ers prac­ti­cal guid­ance through col­lo­qui­al Eng­lish head­ings, in­clud­ing fi­nan­cial plan­ning in Chap­ter 14, “watch your mon­ey,” tack­ling pro­cras­ti­na­tion in chap­ter ten, “doh leave for to­mor­row what yuh could do to­day,” and the im­por­tance of in­tegri­ty in Chap­ter 5, “when you slip you slide.”

The book re­flects his be­lief that suc­cess is root­ed not on­ly in am­bi­tion, but al­so in dis­ci­pline, char­ac­ter and per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Its lessons en­cour­age peo­ple to recog­nise op­por­tu­ni­ties, em­brace growth and pur­sue their goals with con­fi­dence.

“The re­gion has so much po­ten­tial. Progress comes faster when we work to­geth­er and col­lab­o­rate with our peers. Shar­ing of ideas of­ten leads to bet­ter ideas, bet­ter busi­ness, and bet­ter suc­cess,” Christo­pher said, as guests nod­ded in agree­ment.

For some­one who nev­er planned to be­come an au­thor, Christo­pher’s pub­lish­ing jour­ney be­gan un­ex­pect­ed­ly. Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in 2020, he built an on­line stu­dio and launched a YouTube chan­nel where he shared in­sights on cor­po­rate life, eco­nom­ics and pos­i­tive liv­ing.

To­day, he is an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly pub­lished au­thor through Ama­zon and cred­its ed­i­tors Daniel Fran­cis of One Mo­men­tum Mar­ket­ing and Mar­va Mitchell of Enkryp­tions Ltd with help­ing him nav­i­gate the pub­lish­ing process, along­side the May 2026 launch of his web­site, lifeinthetrop­ics.com.

Through his work, Christo­pher hopes read­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go and be­yond will em­brace four guid­ing prin­ci­ples: be­lief in them­selves and their abil­i­ty to reach the high­est lev­els through dili­gence and col­lab­o­ra­tion; self-de­f­i­n­i­tion and the free­dom to de­ter­mine their own worth with­out giv­ing that pow­er away to oth­ers; ac­count­abil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in hold­ing elect­ed of­fi­cials to the high­est stan­dards; and op­ti­mism about the op­por­tu­ni­ties that lie ahead.

Af­ter the fi­nal Q&A ses­sion, as the evening be­gan to wind down, Christo­pher re­flect­ed on the im­pact of his writ­ing dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with WE Life and Cul­ture.

“I feel good. Through these books I can help more peo­ple than I ever could in one of­fice. It’s more im­pact­ful per­son­al­ly.”

Asked whether a fourth pub­li­ca­tion may be on the hori­zon, he laughed and said that if he does write an­oth­er book, it may be a se­quel to “Dear Caribbean Peo­ple,” fo­cused on pass­ing time­less lessons on to younger gen­er­a­tions to help short­en their learn­ing curves.

“A lot of them do not know what is the right thing,” he said.