Fay­ola K J Fras­er

Dur­ing last Sun­day’s NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, the flag­ship lit­er­ary event that takes place an­nu­al­ly in T&T, sev­er­al stand­out fe­male au­thors, both from the Caribbean and the di­as­po­ra, led dis­cus­sions not on­ly on their books but al­so on the crit­i­cal his­to­ries of our re­gion. 

Bo­cas, named one of the world’s best lit­er­ary fes­ti­vals, cel­e­brates books, writ­ers, writ­ing, and ideas with a Caribbean fo­cus and in­ter­na­tion­al scope. The fes­ti­val fea­tures read­ings, per­for­mances, work­shops, dis­cus­sions, film screen­ings, and more, bring­ing to­geth­er read­ers and writ­ers from T&T, the Caribbean, and be­yond. 

The core pur­pose of the fes­ti­val is to play a vi­tal role in cel­e­brat­ing and pro­mot­ing Caribbean voic­es and sto­ries, both at home and on the glob­al stage. Bo­cas al­so ad­min­is­ters ma­jor re­gion­al writ­ing prizes, in­clud­ing the pres­ti­gious OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture, won this year by Ja­maican au­thor Safiya Sin­clair for her non-fic­tion mem­oir, “How To Say Baby­lon”, one of the stand­out nov­els of 2023 that re­ceived wide­spread in­ter­na­tion­al ac­claim. 

Last week­end dur­ing the fes­ti­val, the stand­out ses­sions boast­ed three well ac­claimed au­thors, rep­re­sent­ing Ja­maica, Haiti, and T&T re­spec­tive­ly: Saifya Sin­clair, Ed­widge Dan­ti­cat and In­grid Per­saud.

In Sin­clair’s ses­sion, Marchelle Far­rell, au­thor of “Up­root­ing: From the Caribbean to the Coun­try­side” shared the stage, where they dis­cussed both of their non-fic­tion mem­oirs. “Up­root­ing” is a nov­el about find­ing home in an Eng­lish gar­den, but it is re­al­ly about leav­ing her home be­hind and forg­ing con­nec­tions to a space vivid­ly and deeply in­ter­twined with the threads of home. Far­rell’s nov­el has been met with ex­cel­lent re­cep­tion, de­scribed by the UK Guardian as “full of hope, heart, and com­plex, re­flec­tions on iden­ti­ty and be­long­ing, beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten, con­triv­ing to be at once rugged and del­i­cate.”

Sin­clair’s mem­oir, “How to Say Baby­lon” was named a best book of 2023 by the New York Times, Time Mag­a­zine, The Wash­ing­ton Post, Vul­ture, Shelf Aware­ness, Goodreads, Es­quire, The At­lantic, NPR, and Barack Oba­ma. It was de­scribed by the New York Times as “a breath­less, scorch­ing mem­oir of a girl­hood … (with) sheer lus­cious­ness of prose, the book is a ban­quet.” 

These two pow­er­house au­thors came to­geth­er to ex­plore the mean­ing of home, the in­trin­sic sense of be­long­ing, and the way our shared colo­nial his­to­ries have plot­ted a course that has been al­most im­pos­si­ble to break away from. Far­rell spoke to our need as a re­gion for a shared heal­ing, from the in­deli­ble mark that colo­nial­ism has left on our col­lec­tive psy­che, say­ing that there has been so much shame we have adopt­ed that re­quires un­learn­ing, as we “are trapped in cy­cles cre­at­ed by colo­nial­ism with con­stant erup­tions.” Sin­clair dis­cussed the way that the teach­ings of her Rasta­far­i­an fa­ther from a young age, have “taught me to walk tall in Baby­lon.” Up­on mi­grat­ing to the Unit­ed States to fur­ther her ed­u­ca­tion, Sin­clair did not ever be­lieve in shrink­ing her­self, but em­ployed some of the tenets of her for­ma­tive teach­ing to stand firm in her­self, her black­ness and her be­liefs. 

The Sun­day ses­sion, led by well-known au­thor Ed­widge Dan­ti­cat, was met with a sim­i­lar­ly packed house, ea­ger­ly await­ing Dan­ti­cat’s first ever pan­el at the Lit Fest. Ed­widge Dan­ti­cat is a Hait­ian nov­el­ist and short sto­ry writer who has re­ceived fic­tion awards from Essence and Sev­en­teen mag­a­zines, been fea­tured in the New York Times 30 un­der 30 list, and recog­nised with var­i­ous in­ter­na­tion­al lit­er­ary awards. Born and raised un­til the age of 12 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, she has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to lit­er­a­ture, fo­cus­ing on themes re­lat­ed to women’s lives, re­la­tion­ships, pow­er dy­nam­ics, in­jus­tice, and pover­ty.

Her de­but nov­el, Breath, Eyes, Mem­o­ry (1994), gained wide­spread ac­claim and was even se­lect­ed for Oprah’s Book Club. Dan­ti­cat’s lit­er­ary works delve in­to the com­plex­i­ties of the im­mi­grant ex­pe­ri­ence and the im­pact of glob­al­i­sa­tion on Hait­ian women. She is an ad­vo­cate for is­sues af­fect­ing Haitians both abroad and at home, us­ing her voice to shed light on im­por­tant so­cial and cul­tur­al mat­ters. 

Dan­ti­cat led the ses­sion not on­ly dis­cussing the breadth and depth of her lit­er­ary works but how so much of the Hait­ian ex­pe­ri­ence has been di­min­ished and es­sen­tial­ly for­got­ten by the world. De­scrib­ing the way she has cho­sen to con­tin­ue writ­ing about and por­tray­ing Haiti in all its glo­ry amidst the po­lit­i­cal, so­cial, and eco­nom­ic strug­gles the coun­try has faced, she seeks to paint a vivid im­age of the rolling moun­tains and the coun­try’s beau­ty for read­ers world­wide.

Dan­ti­cat al­so im­part­ed wise ad­vice to bud­ding nov­el­ists, en­cour­ag­ing them to “write about the world around you”, and bring to life lived land­scapes and re­al ex­pe­ri­ences. Dan­ti­cat al­so shared the way that the di­as­poric Hait­ian cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to spread the good word about the coun­try, say­ing that al­though many peo­ple know Haiti was the first Black re­pub­lic in the world, they don’t seek to dive deep­er and un­cov­er the im­mense for­ti­tude and re­silience of the Hait­ian spir­it. She im­plored the au­di­ence not to for­get about Haiti, as her own mis­sion con­tin­ues to bring their sto­ries to the fore. 

With these in­cred­i­ble women and oth­ers at the fore­front of Bo­cas’ Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val, crowds swarmed to spec­tate at pan­els, at­tend work­shops and line up du­ti­ful­ly to get their books signed by some of their favourite au­thors. Caribbean lit­er­a­ture has con­tin­ued to emerge through these lead­ing ladies, as a pow­er­ful plat­form for post-colo­nial stud­ies, ad­dress­ing themes of iden­ti­ty, re­sis­tance, and cul­tur­al re­silience. Re­lent­less­ly do­ing the im­por­tant work of carv­ing a space for Caribbean his­to­ries, Caribbean ex­pe­ri­ences and our re­al­i­ties, these women are paint­ing the re­gion in all its beau­ty and com­plex­i­ty, sit­u­at­ing it with­in a world where our is­lands are of­ten for­got­ten.