Advertise With Us
About Us
Listen
Watch

Login

/

Subscribe

Home

News

Carnival

Business

Sports

E-Paper

Features

Opinion

Traffic Cameras

Life

Classifieds

Death Notices

Community

Real Estate

About Us

Contact Us

Home
News
Carnival
Sports
E-paper
Business
Classifieds
Other
Death Notices
Traffic Cameras
Covid-19
Features
Opinion
Games
Subscriptions
Real Estate

Browne cops top literary prize with High Mas

by

#meta[ag-author]
Joel Julien
20190505181210
20190505

For the first time in its nine-year his­to­ry, the OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture has been won by a work of non-fic­tion.

Kevin Ado­nis Browne claimed the lit­er­ary prize for his book High Mas: Car­ni­val and the Po­et­ics of Caribbean Cul­ture dur­ing the award cer­e­mo­ny held at the Old Fire Sta­tion in Port-of Spain on Sat­ur­day night.

Browne was an­nounced as the win­ner by chief judge Dame Ma­ri­na Warn­er.

Speak­ing to the me­dia fol­low­ing the event, Browne, who is a lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus’ De­part­ment of Lit­er­ary, Cul­tur­al, and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies, said the vic­to­ry was for his stu­dents.

“It feels won­der­ful to be val­i­dat­ed, to have the work that you have done over the past few years to be recog­nised in this kind of way is, of course, go­ing to be ex­cit­ing and hum­bling and all of that,” Browne said.

“But I think it is less for me per­son­al­ly than for the work that I do. I see my­self pri­mar­i­ly as a teacher so I am think­ing about how my stu­dents are go­ing to ben­e­fit from the work that I do,” he said.

High Mas is Browne’s sec­ond book.

The first was Trop­ic Ten­den­cies: Rhetoric, Pop­u­lar Cul­ture, and the An­glo­phone Caribbean.

“High Mas is a book that in­volves four se­ries pho­tographs that have ac­com­pa­ny­ing es­says so the pho­to­graph­ic se­ries are Blue Dev­ils, Moko Jumbies, the La Di­a­b­lesse that Tra­cy Sankar played in 2015, and Jou­vay Ay­i­ti per­form­ing their mas on Eman­ci­pa­tion Day,” Browne said.

Browne said the book was fin­ished back in Jan­u­ary 2017 and pub­lished last year by the Uni­ver­si­ty Press of Mis­sis­sip­pi. Browne said it was an “im­mense ho­n­our” to be recog­nised the same year Earl Lovelace’s The Drag­on Can’t Dance turned 40 years old since he wrote his dis­ser­ta­tion on it when he was do­ing his doc­tor­ate at the Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty.

“I read The Drag­on Can’t Dance as the­o­ry, not just fic­tion or art, the­o­ry that chal­lenged me to do this kind of work,” he said.

Warn­er de­scribed Browne’s book as “huge­ly en­er­getic.”

“This is a huge­ly en­er­getic, orig­i­nal, mul­ti-faceted, deeply en­gaged ac­tion in book form, which takes up what he calls the mag­ic of per­ish­able things,” Warn­er said.

“Kevin Ado­nis Browne moves be­tween mem­oir and his­to­ry, aes­thet­ics and gen­der pol­i­tics, vi­su­al im­agery, po­et­ry and prose to think about Car­ni­val and mas as a high­ly orig­i­nal and per­son­al depth,” she said.

“He is trou­bled and his ma­te­r­i­al is trou­bling but the book took me and the oth­er judges to un­ex­pect­ed di­men­sions of un­der­stand­ing and awe at hu­man com­plex­i­ty and depth,” Warn­er said.

Jour­nal­ist and ed­i­tor Gary Younge who was part of the judg­ing pan­el for non-fic­tion work said High Mas was “im­pres­sive, lyri­cal and in­no­v­a­tive.”

“Im­pres­sive in scope, lyri­cal in style, and in­no­v­a­tive in form, High Mas is im­pact­ful both as lit­er­a­ture and art,” Younge said.

“Kevin Ado­nis Browne’s ex­cep­tion­al ex­plo­ration of mas blends pho­to­graph­ic es­say, mem­oir, po­et­ry, polemic, prose, po­et­ry and prose, to trans­for­ma­tive ef­fect.

The gim­let style pho­tog­ra­phy forms an in­te­gral part of the ac­tion demon­strat­ing the in­sep­a­ra­bil­i­ty be­tween mask and mas, go­ing be­yond the his­to­ry and nar­ra­tive Browne peers in­to the soul of the peo­ple with whom he feels a deep kin­ship, the re­sult is a rad­i­cal genre-de­fy­ing trib­ute to a cher­ished lega­cy in the finest tra­di­tion of lit­er­ary non-fic­tion,” he said.

Browne earned US$10,000 for his win.


Click HERE to Login

Want FREE access to all our content? Sign up HERE!

Tagged in:

Responses

Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored

Trending

Acting CoP suspends officer in traffic warden viral video
Nine Vindra Naipaul-Coolman murder accused to receive $20M from State
Harewood-Christopher in pole position for CoP job
Cop captured in social media row with Traffic Warden suspended
State must pay $20m for failed Naipaul-Coolman case
President sends Erla Christopher's name to Parliament for CoP nominee debate
Highest-ranking name for new Police Commissioner delivered to President
Griffith silent on Kamla’s call for unity: PDP, Duke, some ex-UNC MPs not interested
Piarco records the lowest temperature in January in 10 years
US resident held with ammo in Piarco airport
Today's
Guardian
View
Subscribe

Publications

Hungry Ghosts

Hungry Ghosts

Hungry Ghosts

Hungry Ghosts

Pain, power and poison...a review of Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein

20230126132207
2022 TS Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph as he reads from his winning collection of poems Sonnets for Albert at the award ceremony in London on January 16.

2022 TS Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph as he reads from his winning collection of poems Sonnets for Albert at the award ceremony in London on January 16.

Adrian Pope

2022 TS Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph as he reads from his winning collection of poems Sonnets for Albert at the award ceremony in London on January 16.

2022 TS Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph as he reads from his winning collection of poems Sonnets for Albert at the award ceremony in London on January 16.

Adrian Pope

2022 TS Eliot poetry prize winner memorialises 'charismatic' father

20230126141654

Numbness in your feet?

20230123072450

Your walking gear matters!

20230116101944
Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

News

Business

Sports

Life

Opinion

Tobago Today

Classifieds

Death Notices

Subscriptions

Real Estate

Categories

News
Business
Sports
Features
Opinion
Traffic Cameras
Death Notices

INFORMATION

About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Privacy Policy
Subscriptions
Terms of Services

Digital Media

The Big Board Company.
Real Estate
Classifieds

TELEVISION

CNC3 Television

RADIO

951 Remix
Sangeet 106.1 FM
Sky 99.5FM
Slam 100.5 FM
Vibe CT 105 FM
Mix 90.1 FM (Guyana)
Freedom 106.5 FM

About Us

Guardian Media is the premier provider of multimedia solutions and authoritative insight on news, politics, business, finance, sports, and current affairs. Our brand portfolio includes CNC3, Guardian, TBC Radio Network and The Big Board Company.

Contact us

Send us an e-mail here or call us at +1-(868)-225-4465

Follow us