KRISTY RAMNARINE
Kristy.ramnarine@cnc3.co.tt
Award-winning author Dr Brenda Flanagan, formerly Brenda Phillips, arrived in the United States of America with just US$10 in her pocket in 1967.
She left Trinidad with the intention of becoming a writer.
Now with four books under her belt and her fifth book, about American singer-songwriter and pianist Nina Simone, nearing completion, Dr Flanagan continues to serve as a Cultural Ambassador for the United States Department of State. In that role, she has visited Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Chad, Panama, and India.
But her journey began in Trinidad in 1949, when she became the 12th of 14 children and had deceased Jamaat al Muslimeen’s leader Imam Yasin Abu Bakr (Lennox Phillips) as an older brother.
“I was born in Richplain, Diego Martin. I always wondered about the name, as it was neither rich nor plain,” she recalled as we spoke during her recent visit to Trinidad.
“I went to the Diego Martin Elementary School. I used to walk to school all the way from Richplain to Diego Martin. Sometimes we would have to walk back home for lunch and then walk to school again.
“My mother used to worry about me because we didn’t have a lot of cars on the road, but some, and my mother was always worried that I would get knocked down on Diego Martin Main Road because my head was always in a book.”
With her Trini accent intact, Dr Flanagan continued to relay her story. After her primary schooling, Dr Flanagan attended Alpha Academy, a private school run by Owen Merritt. Back then, she already knew writing was her calling.
“I was afraid to tell anybody. Back then, we were being educated under the British system, and I didn’t really know anything about Trinidadian writers,” she said.
“There were, but in my education, I was not being taught about those writers. I wanted to be a writer because I wanted to see and hear local characters in books. I desperately wanted to read stories about people who looked like me.
“Also, the expectation for me was that I would become a seamstress or something that girls back then would do.”
Dr Flanagan started writing poetry at the age of ten; however, at the age of 14, she had to drop out of school because her family could not continue to pay the school fees.
“I had taken a job at a peas cannery on Wrightson Road where only women worked,” she said.
“I was the youngest at the factory. I remember these women would talk to each other, and I would go home and write down what I heard them say. I didn’t know what their real lives were behind the factory, so I would make up stories about them.
“I recall accompanying my brother Lennox (Yasin) to the airport to pick up his wife Elaine Ahye Phillips. Mr Merritt was there, waiting on Dr Eric Williams. He said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said I’m working at this factory, and he said ‘no’. He knew that I was good at English, and it so happened that the young man who was the reporter at The Nation was about to leave to go to the United States. Mr Merritt said, ‘Come in next Monday, and I will hire you.’”
For two years, Dr Flanagan worked as a trainee reporter at The Nation, the newspaper of the then-ruling People’s National Movement.
“I had a wonderful time. I recall meeting up with veteran journalist John Babb at events because The Nation was the government paper and we used to get invited to all the important functions,” she added.
Dr Flanagan held on to her dream of becoming a writer and headed to the United States to further her education.
“I wrote to Dr Williams in 1967, who was technically our boss,” she said.
I knew he taught at Howard University. I said to him that I wanted to go to school in America, and he said, ‘No, Brenda, do not go, you have no idea what goes on in that country.’
““I knew something about the ways in which black people were being treated, but of course, we weren’t being given the full story. He said he couldn’t write me a recommendation to go to America. He wanted me to stay and become involved in politics, but I said, Dr Williams, I am going.”
With her earnings from the factory and savings from a sou sou, Dr Flanagan was successful in acquiring a US Visa.
With a US social worker she met in Trinidad as her only contact, she landed at JFK Airport in June 1967.
“I thought that ten American dollars was a lot of money. I broked my ten dollars to call the social worker who allowed me to stay with her,” she said.
“On Sunday, I got the New York Times to go through the job section, and my eyes were drawn to an agency in Harlem. On Monday, I visited the agency, where the woman told me they were now starting to hire black models, and I said absolutely not because in Trinidad back then, a model was synonymous with a ‘lady of the night.’”
Dr Flanagan managed to secure a job as a domestic worker for American singer-songwriter and pianist Nina Simone, who was in Trinidad a few weeks before.
“I didn’t get any free tickets, and I was unable to buy any,” recalled Dr Flanagan.
“The woman from the agency said Nina has a daughter and wanted someone to work with her. I was not star-struck because I didn’t know how big she was at the time. They sent me down to RCA Victor Studios in New York to meet Nina who was astounded and incensed that I did not attend her concert.
“The first person I actually told that I wanted to be a writer was Nina Simone. She was wonderful to me. She was a very strange person, but I didn’t know what her attitude was attributed to until years later, when I started finding out about racism in the United States and how that could destroy you.”
Dr Flanagan recalled meeting Malcolm X’s wife, Betty Shabazz, while living with Simone.
“After Malcolm X was killed, Nina found a place for Betty to live with her children,” she said.
“Betty had all these little girls. She knew I could have combed their hair, so I used to go whenever I could to comb their hair in cornrows and walk them to school. Betty kept asking me back then to work with her on Malcolm X’s paper, but even then I didn’t realise how important a person Malcolm X was, and of course here I was turning 20, and I met a guy who Nina warned me about because Nina checked him out; I didn’t know she was checking him out.”
Dr Flanagan didn’t take Simone’s advice and she became pregnant. Motherhood and marriage deflected her plans to study. However, she managed to achieve a few community college credits that she “snuck out to get,” due to her unsupportive husband (now ex).
After convincing the University of Michigan to accept her through the CEW+ Scholarship Program (which was established in 1970 to honour the academic performance and potential of women whose education has been interrupted), she began undergraduate studies in print journalism while she was pregnant, already with two small children in 1975.
She graduated with distinction and moved directly into an MA in TV and Radio, which she completed in 1977.
“I decided to stay in academia to be able to care for my children and stay home with them during the summer,” she said.
“I was accepted into the PhD programme at the University of Michigan, where I researched pesticides and their effects on small-scale farmers.”
Graduating in 1986, she was awarded a CEW+ fellowship to help fund this research for her PhD.
Dr Flanagan’s books include: You Alone Are Dancing; Allah in the Islands; and In Praise of Island Women. Sh also co-authored Women’s Artistic Dissent: Repelling Totalitarianism in Pre-1989 Czechoslovakia. She has also written several short stories and plays.
“I never thought of becoming a writer for money; it was always about wanting to be able to tell stories and wanting to share those stories with other people in the world,” she said.
“I encourage people to think about that. It is important for me to tell young writers to have faith in themselves and not be deterred from their path because there will be a lot of people who will tell you no.”
Holding a copy of Women’s Artistic Dissent: Repelling Totalitarianism in Pre-1989 Czechoslovakia in her hand, she said, “This book came out in December. It is from one of the most important publishing houses in the United States and my colleague and I have not gotten a cheque as yet, and it’s selling.”
While attending school, Dr Flanagan was the only black person in her classroom, though she didn’t realise it at the time.
At Davidson College, where she continues to teach creative writing, Caribbean and African-American literature, and literary analysis, she is the only black person in the English department.
She’s also the first black professor to receive the Hunter-Hamilton Love of Teaching Award, the highest teaching award received at Davidson College.
In 2009, she received a literary non-fiction award from the North Carolina Arts Council to write a book on singer Nina Simone, which will be released in 2025. The memoir blends Flanagan’s and Simone’s life.
