Carib Lit Plus (Mid to Late March 2023)

A reminder that the process with these Carib Lit Plus Caribbean arts bulletins is to do a front and back half of the month, updating as time allows as new information comes in; so, come back, or, if looking for an earlier installment, use the search window. (in brackets, as much as I can remember, I’ll add a note re how I sourced the information – it is understood that this is the original sourcing and additional research would have been done by me to build the information shared here – credit and link back if you use).

Books and Other Reading Material

‘It’s important to point out that because I’m a shameless self-promoter who’s also fairly friendly that sometimes many people that I don’t know reach out to me because they like my work and offer to assist me with random things. (That’s tip number four — network, network, network) That’s also how I got funding for my very first audiobook, The Secrets of Catspraddle Village, an anthology of award-winning short stories. A Bookstafriend sent me a link about a seminar for an audiobook class which the National Cultural Foundation (NCF) was hosting. I signed up because I thought “eh, why not?”. What I thought would just be an informative seminar turned out to be an even bigger blessing. Every single person who attended was given studio time to help them record their audiobooks. (Shout out to the NCF for supporting Bajan culture, btw!) BUT please note that (a) I already had material written which was deemed good enough for my application to the writing retreat (b) Catspraddle Village was already compiled since I had planned to release the anthology this year. I say that to say this: (tip five) you don’t have to get ready if you stay ready. In both of those instances, I was (unknowingly) prepared.’ – Callie Browning guest post: Callie Browning has “done everything wrong” and That’s All Right: The Bajan Author on the Secrets to Her Success

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I (Joanne C. Hillhouse) opened Twitter today to see my face …which was quite jarring as, though I had been interviewed by Jacqueline Bishop for Jamaica Observer’s #InConversation series in Sharon Leach’s Bookends column, that had been some months ago and I had not realized it was scheduled to be published this Sunday, March 26th 2023. I also had not realized, as I now do per a Facebook comment by Leach, that this is the last entry in the series (which is an annual series for Woman’s History Month). So, while I initially thought she meant last ever, it makes more sense that she means last for this year – in which case, I’ve never been so happy to bring up the rear.

I’ll track down the entire interview and post to Wadadli Pen’s Reading Room and Gallery 48 – where you can also find Bookends #InConversation with Trinidad and Tobago’s Barbara Jenkins – and the Media Page on my Jhohadli blog. (Source – Jacqueline Bishop on Twitter)

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March 25th is the International Day of Remembrance of the victims of slavery and in particular the trans Atlantic slave trade. In memory, here are links to some past Wadadli Pen posts about chattel slavery in the Caribbean and Antigua and Barbuda in particular:

More People You should know – about Eliza Moore, who used the Emancipation act in the British West Indies and the fact that she was born in Antigua, part of the BWI, to secure her release from enslavement in St. Croix, which was still a slave state.

The Beginnings of Education for Black People in the British West Indies – Historical Notes (Antigua and Barbuda) – about how two free Black sisters, whose family were paradoxically slave owners and ameliorists (not abolitionists), and the free and enslaved Black people who built the country’s first school.

About Court or Klaas – about Antigua and Barbuda’s first national hero, leader of the failed 1736 rebellion who was subsequently broken on the wheel and his head hung on a pike at Otto’s pasture as a deterrant.

The Full has never been told – key dates between 1674 and 1835 and reference texts.

(Source – A. McKenzie on Twitter)

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This post from A Writer’s Path and this recent posting on my Jhohadli blog both stress how pre-ordering can boost the success of forthcoming books. So let’s talk about some forthcoming books I’ve recently engaged or am involved with. Starting with Carol Mitchell’s debut novel What Start Bad A Morning. This is not Carol’s first book – in fact, she is a well-established independent author and publisher (including of two of my books). But this is her first full length adult contemporary novel with a traditional international press, Central Avenue Publishing. I read an advance review copy of What Start Bad A Morning for the purpose of blurbing and, as I do with books I like and/or have something to say about, I reviewed it for my Blogger on Books series.

The official publishing date is September 19th 2023 but it is already available for pre-order. Also available for pre-order is To be a Cheetah which, I’ve mentioned before is a collaboration with Antiguan and Barbudan artist Zavian Archibald.

This officially drops on July 4th 2023 – an easy date to remember right, especially as it’s with US publisher Sunbird Books. The third book I wanted to mention, meanwhile, is an abridged anthology of a previoiusly released (with US and UK publishers) anthology; the aa is with German publisher, Unrast. New Daughers of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby came out in 2019, 25 years after the similiarly seminal Daughters of Africa, aslo edited by Busby. Neue Töchter Afrikas – also edited by Busby who selected 30 of the 200 authors from the original anthology, including yours truly (my story “Evening Ritural”) for this German edition – officially launches June 20th 2023 in Cologne (wish I could be there) but it will be available for pre-order from April 25th 2023.

Pictured above, left to right, I am signing a copy of New Daughters at the Sharjah International Book Fair in 2019; that’s Margaret in the middle, a recent social media image, also with the book, and at right, the cover of the German translation. I’m excited about this because while it’s not the first time a creative work of mine has been translated, nor the first book in translation (see Perdida! Una Aventura en el Mar Caribe) but it is my first German translation and I am happy to see this amazing collection continue to penetrate new markets years after its release.

I’ll end by circling back to my fourth picture book, eighth book overall, To be a Cheetah. Best of Books bookstore will be hosting a launch in Antigua and Barbuda and I am looking forward to that. But to the theme of this entry, you can also pre-order from them if in Antigua and Barbuda, or even the Caribbean (I just signed copies of one of my books bought at Best of Books by someone placing the order from St. Kitts). Between this and all of the online options for purchasing, I do hope you will consider ordering now – it’s a small thing you can do for an author you love or a book you’re anticipating to help boost it in the marketplace. (Source – me)

Assistance

The Wadadli Youth Pen Prize has worked to nurture and showcase the literary arts in Antigua and Barbuda since 2004, as a legal non-profit since 2021. From its inception, Wadadli Pen’s work has been voluntary, and, at this writing, it remains so. If you want to work with us (either as a volunteer or an intern – the latter ideal for college students seeking experience and mentorship), see this page for details. To contribute to the 2023 Wadadli Pen Challenge season, or to Wadadli Pen generally, see here.

(Source – in-house)

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Antiguan artist and art teacher, Rhonda Williams, has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She’s relocated to the US and needs assistance covering the costs for treatment. Here’s her go fund me. (Source – Intersect Antigua on Twitter)

RIPs

“From helping found the Environmental Awareness Group and the Antigua Yacht Club, to her invaluable work with the national museum, the incredible legacy of Lisa Nicholson will continue to reverberate for many years to come.” (Daily Observer by Newsco)

Nicholson died March 20th 2023 at age 88. With her husband Desmond, she was not just active but pioneering in Antigua and Barbuda’s yachting sector – and its byproducts, such as Antigua Sailing Week and the Classic Yacht Regatta, research and restoration in their local English Harbour community and the island generally – including the works of the Dockyard and Museum, and environmental preservation – via the EAG.

“And she was an active member of many community organisations including the Expression Choir, Friends of Holberton Hospital, Sunnyside School, and the St Paul’s Crisis Intervention Group.” (Observer by Newsco)

The Expression Choir sang for the longtime community activist shortly before her death as she had done (as a member of the choir) for many others over the years. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco)

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Montserrat is mourning the loss of its literary lion Howard Fergus.

Fergus died on March 23rd. He wrote poetry and non-fiction primarily if not exclusively about Montserrat. His publications include Montserrat: History of a Caribbean Colony, Volcano Verses, The Arrow Poems and Sunday Soup, Obama and Other Poems, and Road from Long Ground: The Twilight Years. (Source – House of Nehesi Publishers on Twitter)

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Our previous Carib Lit Plus shared the news of the passing of Dominican literary giant Alwyn Bully. We wanted to excerpt a couple of the tributes to enhance knowledge of his contribution to the arts. This one is from historian and writer also from Dominica Lennox Honeychurch (excerpt): “Alwin Bully was born in Roseau in on 23 November,1948 and was educated at the Convent Preparatory School, the Dominica Grammar School, the St. Mary’s Academy and the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. He returned to teach at his old Alma Mater, eventually serving as its headmaster. During this time, he was deeply involved in promoting all aspects of the arts in Dominica including drama, painting, dance, folk traditions, creative writing and carnival. In 1965 he represented Dominica at the Commonwealth Arts Festival in Britain along with members of the Kairi and Dominica Dance troupes. In 1978, with the encouragement of then Minister of Education, H. L. Christian, he established the ‘cultural desk’ in the Ministry of Community Development which became the Cultural Division. In 1987 he left Dominica to work at the regional office of UNESCO in Jamaica, applying his creative skills to the wider Caribbean. Alwin Bully designed the national flag in early 1978 in preparation for the gaining of independence from Britain later that year and the Cabinet made certain small alterations to the original design. The flag was legally established by Act No. 18 of 1978, The National Emblems of Dominica Act, signed by the Governor, Sir Louis Cools-Lartigue on 31 October 1978, Gazetted 1 November 1978 and effective 3 November 1978.”

This one is from St. Lucian researcher and poet John Robert Lee (whose email blasts I reference often in this series): “Alwin was a close friend from our years at Cave Hill from 1969. We acted together and taught theatre workshops in many islands. He was one of those seminal figures of my youth who remained a formative influence. Our friends were the generation of artists, writers, theatre persons throughout the Caribbean with whom we formed lasting friendships. Both our own age group and older friends like Kamau Brathwaite, Derek Walcott, Rex Nettleford, Lorna Goodison and many others. We were children of those dynamic 70’s when so much was happening in our Caribbean in the arts and culture, popular music, politics, literature, ideas etc etc. He was the star, the leader among us. Now in our mid seventies, our generation is slowly but surely moving on….” (Source – JR Lee email)

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Jennifer Rahim, an award winning Trinidadian and Tobagonian writer of poetry, fiction, and literary criticism, has died. She is the author of Mothers are Not the Only Linguists: and Other Poems for which she was named writer of the year by the Writers Union of Trinidad and Tobago (1992), Songster and Other Stories (2007), Casa de las Americas prize winning Approaching Sabbaths (2009), Redemption Rain: Poems (2011), Ground Level: Poems (2014), Bocas prize winning Curfew Chronicles: A Fiction (2017), and Sanctuaries of Invention (2021). Paper-Based Bookstore in tribute to her said, “Her backlist remains sought-after by students, critics, as well as everyday lovers of literature. She was a thoughtful & tremendously intelligent correspondent, whose updates on new writing we always looked forward to receiving. We recommend her bibliography without hesitation.” ETA: Jennifer has a book, Goodbye Bay, forthcoming July 2023 with Peepal Tree Press.

Book synopsis: It is 1963, one year after Independence, and Trinidadians are beginning to wonder what they can expect. But for Anna Bridgemohan, the year is one of crisis. Her mother has just died, bringing to the fore issues about Anna’s parentage, and she has broken up with her boyfriend. Since they both work at the central post office in Port of Spain, she decides to take up a temporary post in the small coastal village of Macaima, remote and declining cocoa country whose simpler rhythms, she thinks, will give her space and time to reflect, away from the pressures of the city and the intense political discussions at work. But neither space nor time is granted; the life of Macaima passes through the post office, and there is no way Anna can hold herself aloof from the stories that the villagers bring. Long before the year is up, Anna has been immersed in an intense seasoning in Macaima that will change her for ever. (Source – Paper-Based Books on Twitter)

Events

The theme of this year’s US Virgin Islands Literary Festival & Book Fair, a virtual and in-person live event, set for April 13th – 16th 2023, is “Carrying: Recognition and Repair” – also the theme for volume 37 of The Caribbean Writer, currently being prepped for publication. The headliner will be Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake, with Augustown author Kei Miller, A Million Aunties author Alecia McKenzie, Now Lila Knows author Elizabeth Nunez, and Fear of Black Consciousness author Lewis Gordon among the supporting cast of writers. Planned workshops cover topics like “Using Virgin Islands History to Write Fiction” by Tiphanie Yanique, “Teaching Caribbean/Virgin Islands Literature in Virgin Islands Classroom” by Velma Pollard, writing plot, building character, weaving setting, writing about political controversy, writing poetry, and writing for children and publishing. The popular Book Bacchanal reception will be held at the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts. The festival also has a Children’s Corner and among the authors in this genre expected to hang there, real or remotely, are Denene Milner, Tohira Durand, Michael Fleming. The Festival will also pay tribute to unsung Virgin Islanders like Valerie Combie, Vincent Cooper, and Joan Medlicott. Announcement of prizes for pieces published in The Caribbean Writer will be announced during the festival. For more information visit: http://www.usvilitfest.com or email usvilitfest@gmail.com (Source – JR Lee)

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Soothe, a neo-soul-ish talent showcase and lime in Antigua and Barbuda was back to live events at Sugar Ridge on March 11th 2023 for the first time since the pandemic (a time during which they ran the online Sessions by Soothe series). The Resurgence, as it was called, included award winning pannist and Culture director Khan Cordice, soca queen Claudette Peters, among other singers – Arlen Seaton, Christian Ivy, etc., groups like the Serenade jazz ensemble, spoken word artist Kadeem Joseph, and singer Laikan (covered twice recently in CREATIVE SPACE), among others; a reported 16 performers. And Soothe (started in 2014 by Gemma Hazelwood and Taslim Gordon) with its line-up and stylized ambience delivered the vibes to its stylish audience.

Images from Soothe on Facebook. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco)

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St. Anthony’s Secondary School ‘Make It Art Fest’ competition and family fun day has been announced for April 1st 2023. Categories include painting, drawing, and face painting. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco)

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HAMA Films, the independent film company (producer Mitzi Allen, and co-producer/director husband Howard Allen) that brought Antigua and Barbuda it’s first full length feature film with The Sweetest Mango back in 2001 premiered its fifth film, Deep Blue first in Barbuda, March 11th, and on March 25th, in Antigua. There was an advanced screening in Montserrat late in 2022 during the Alliougana Festival of the Word.

Early reviews of the premiere event and the film itself on social media have been positive. Example, this one from Colin John Jenkins, prominent architect known for his commentary on various things including life in Antigua and films, “

Movie Review: Deep Blue

Last night was a really nice outing man. Familiar faces, both ladies and gents dressed up and such, and the venue was aptly set for the first showing of Deep Blue.

Without giving away too much, the plot focuses on the familiar story of development in a small island state, corruption, village politics, and environmental issues. Very timely, if I don’t say so myself.

It was really cool seeing people I know stepping up like this and the cinematography was enjoyable as the punch lines.

We do have great access to actors here and I hope the film industry and these kinda events continue to grow.

Maybe I might even do a 15-minute short film after this inspiration right here.

Kudos to everyone involved! I enjoyed it.

(Source – various on Facebook)

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In Jamaica, there’s the ArtWalk Festival. What’s that? It’s a free public arts event, the last Sunday of the month, that showcases artistic and cultural talent (dancers, musicians, visual artists, poets, writers) in Jamaica. Partially funded by the Tourism Enhancement Fund, it is a Kingston Creative project started in 2018 and held in Downtown Kingston. March’s theme is Literature and Storytelling and poet and activist Stacey-ann Chin was the announced special guest for the March 24th meet-up and this is the March 26th festival line-up:

(Source – Twitter)

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The Bocas Lit Fest will be back live for the first time since the pandemic April 28th to 30th 2023 in Trinidad and Tobago. Booked authors announced include authors who’ve dropped acclaimed texts in the intervening years including Celia Sorhaindo (Guabancex, 2020, and Radical Normalisation, 2022), Sharma Taylor (What a Mother’s Love don’t Teach You, 2022), Cherie Jones (How the One-Armed Sister sweeps Her House, 2021), Alake Pilgrim (Zo and The Forest of Secrets, 2022), and Ayamna Lloyd Banwo (When We were Birds, 2022) among others. See also the kids’ programme. (Source – N/A)

Accolades

Jamaican writer Marcia Douglas has been announced as the 2023 winner of the Whiting Award for Fiction.

Read more about Marcia here. Here are all the current winners. (Source – Whiting Foundation on Twitter)

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Recognising the winners of Priest Kailash of Antigua and Barbuda’s annual African Heritage/Black History essay competiion and the programme itself. Winners were announced during an awards ceremony at Cortsland Hotel and received laptops and tablets. These are 12-year-old Gloria Sampson, Raffael Davis, and Tezjah Smith. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco)

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Sandra Pouchet Paquet of Trinidad and Tobago is this year’s recipient of the Bocas Swanzy Award for distinguished service to Caribbean Letters: “in recognition of her pioneering contributions to the fields of academia, literature, and cultural studies.” The award is for editors, broadcasters, publishers, critics, and others working behind the scenes in service to Caribbean literature. Pouchet Paquet is remembered as a pioneering scholar in the field of Caribbean literary studies – “her book The Novels of George Lamming (Heinemann, 1980) remains a seminal text” – and many of us, Caribbean writers, also remember her Caribbean Writers Summer Institute out of the University of Miami in the early to mid-1990s. I (Joanne C. Hillhouse) attended in 1995, the programme’s penultimate year; it was my first international workshop and reading – and it was life changing. Credit to Pouchet Paquet, the programme’s director, for, as Bocas said, “shap(ing) the careers of a generation of authors”. Pouchet Paquet is also the founder of Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal. She will receive her award on April 29th 2023. (Source – Bocas email)

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Jamaican writer Colin Channer is one of Poets & Writers announced recipients of the 2023 Writers for Writers award. A committee made up of present and past members of the P & W board of directors made the decision. The committee’s chair, literary agent Eric Simonoff, commented: “We are thrilled to celebrate these three [Channer, Reyna Grande, and Celeste Ng] outstanding authors and one extraordinary editor [Jennifer Hershey], who have each shown a deep commitment to broadening the literary conversation. Through their dedication to writers and writing and their insistence on the importance of representation, they have enriched the publishing landscape immeasurably—to the benefit of us all.” The awards will be presented on March 27th 2023. Channer is best known for his fiery first novel Waiting in Vain and for being a co-founder of the Calabash International Literary Festival. (Source – Christian Campbell on Twitter)

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Jamaican Ishion Hutchinson is to receive the Susannah Hunnewell Prize, which honors a writer for an outstanding piece of prose or poetry published by The Paris Review in the previous calendar year. The prize was established in 2023 in memory of Hunnewell, who worked with the magazine for over 30 years up to her three-year stint as editor, the role she held at the time of her death in 2019. Hutchinson is the prize’s first winner for an essay entitled “Women Sweeping”, published in the Spring 2022 issue (no. 239). (Source – JR Lee email)

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One of if not the Caribbean’s most coveted literary prizes, OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, has announced its 2023 long list. In poetry, the celebrated writers are Michael Fraser (The Day-Breakers), Anthony Joseph (Sonnets for Albert), and Pamela Mordecai (de book of Joseph); in fiction Marlon James (Moon Witch, Spider King), Ayanna Lloyd Banwo (When We were Birds), and Jasmine Sealy (The Island of Forgetting); and, in non-fiction, Ira Mathur (Love the Dark Days), Patricia Joan Saunders (Buyers Beward: Insurgency and Consumption in Caribbean Popular Culture), and Godfrey Smith (Diary of a Recovering Politician). Fraser is Canadian with Caribbean roots, Joseph and Banwo are UK-based Trinis, Mordecai a Canada-based Jamaican, James a US based Jamaican, Sealy a British born Barbadian Canadian, Mathur an Indian born Trinidadian, Saunders lives in the US (I am unsure of the specific island connection but she is part of the Caribbean diaspora) and Smith is a Belizean.

The winners of the genre and main prizes will be announced during the Bocas lit fest which returns to live for the first time during the pandemic, April 28th – 30th. This is the 13th year of the prize; past main prize winners are Derek Walcott (White Egrets), Earl Lovelace (Is Just a Movie), Monique Roffey (Archipelago), Robert Antoni (Like Flies to Watless Boys), Vladimir Lucien (Sounding Ground), Olive Senior (The Pain Tree), Kei Miller (Augustown), Jennifer Rahim (Curfew Chronicles), Kevin Adonis Browne (High Mas), Richard Georges (Epiphaneia), Canisia Lubrin (The Dyzgraphxst), Celeste Mohammed (Pleasantview). If you’re in to stats, that’s six writers from Trinidad and Tobago, three from St.Lucia, two from Jamaica, and one from the British Virgin Islands; and six books of fiction, four books of poetry, and two non-fiction books. (Source – JR Lee email)

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Guadeloupean writer Maryse Condé, 89, is on the International Booker Prize long list. I mention her age as its been revealed that she is the oldest writer ever to make the list. Her longlisted book is The Book According to The New World, translated by her husband Richard Philcox. Per this article, “[they] are the first husband-and-wife team ever nominated for the prize. Condé, who has a degenerative neurological disorder that makes it difficult to see, dictated The Gospel According to the New World to Philcox, who then translated it into English.” Condé was previously shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2015. (Source – Facebook)

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Grenadian filmmaker Teddy Frederick’s documentary film New Land: The Kalinago Dream has picked up awards at the Tokyo International Short Film Festival and the Rome International Movie Awards.

It has received honourable mention at the Munich New Wave Short Film Festival, and is an official selection at the Amsterdam International Awards, the Berlin Lift-Off Film Festival, and the Nouveaux Regards Film Festival. These selections place it in contention for more accolades. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco)

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The Derek Walcott Prize was awarded in 2022 to Saddiq Dzukogi’s Your Crib, My Qibla. The prize, named for St. Lucia’s late Nobel Laureate, is awarded in a partnership between Arrowsmith Press, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, and Trinidad and Tobago’s Walcott Festival. (Source – JR Lee email)

Arts and Culture

Tropical Fete led off this year’s art and culture column series CREATIVE SPACE. It’s annual report, just in to my inbox,highlights its top three accomplishments of the past year as its cultural enrichment programmes in the areas of music and dance; the mas in Time’s Square and at the Brooklyn Public Library experiences; and providing college scholarships to two students. Twenty 23 goals include finding a location from which to operate 24 /7, game app development, and continued exploration of art and culture in relation to mental and physical health in a research setting. Read the full report.

tf-annual-report-2022Download

(Source – Tropical Fete email)

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Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Authority has announced a new festival: Antigua and Barbuda Art Week April 16 – 22. The line-up of activities notably omits literary arts despite the number of published books by Antiguans and Barbudans, and past community-organized literary art showcases like the Antigua and Barbudan International Literary Festival, Wadadli Stories Book Fair, and the Wadadli Pen organized Word Up!. That line-up, as published on visitantiguabarbuda.com, is a schools art competition just posted in Opportunities Too; an art week exhibition at the Boom at Gun Powder House and the V C Bird International Airport with artists like Heather Doram and Mark Brown and fashion designers like Argent and Nicoya Henry announced; art walks and studio tours (with stops at galleries like Zemis, Guava de Artist, Fig Tree, Edison Arts, the Hunts, Rhythm of Blue, Papa Zouk, Ana’s on the Beach, Copper and Lumber, Abracadabra, and Art Cafe in Barbuda); movies under the stars (not sure which movies are to be featured but the time and venue are April 19 and a place named “garrot blacks” – a name that perhaps needs some unpacking especially when you add its gorilla motif); an artist showcase on April 21st spotlighting performing artists in the musical and spoken word space (no names announced at the link); and on April 22nd, a sip and paint activity led by Gerron Farquharson at Greencastle Ranch. Here’s a posted promo video spotlighting Doram in her studio.

(Source – Daily Observer by Newsco.)

Opportunities

March 25th 2023 is the date for the previously reported Celeste Mohammed short story writing workshop. It is being held via zoom and costs US$100.

Get started here. (Source – Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival email)

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The Caribbean Media Awards is open for submissions and will remain so until April 12th 2023. Details of the various categories, across various media platforms and topics, are listed and linked in the Opportunities Too database. The awards are being held this year in partnership with the Healthy Caribbean Coalition, with the addition of a category focussed on a healthy Caribbean. Per an emailed press release, “As the effort continues to promote healthy food policies, the region’s lead advocacy body in this area, the Healthy Caribbean Coalition (HCC) will be recognising print journalists who are covering this area, and doing so well.” The prize will include a trophy as well as a US$500 bursary for the award winner to produce additional material under the theme. Example of topics that would be a good fit for this theme include school food environments, healthy food fiscal policies, and efforts to strengthen regional food labelling. Entries must have been published between January 1st and December 31st 2023, and can be submitted through April 12th 2023. Again full award details here. (Source – personal inbox)

As with all content on wadadlipen.wordpress.com, except otherwise noted, this is written by Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, Oh Gad!, Musical Youth, With Grace, Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure, and The Jungle Outside). All Rights Reserved. Subscribe to the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks.

Reading Room and Gallery 31

The Reading Room and Gallery is a space where I share things I come across that I think you might like too  – some are things of beauty, some just bowl me over with their brilliance, some are things I think we could all learn from, some are artistes I want to support by spreading the word, and some just because. Share by excerpting and linking, so to read the full story or see all the images, or other content, you will need to go to the source. No copyright infringement is intended. Let’s continue to support the arts and the artistes by rippling the water together. For earlier installments of the Reading Room and Gallery, use the search feature to the right. This is the 31st  one which means there are 30 earlier ones (can’t link them all). Remember to keep checking back, this list will grow as I make new finds until it outgrows this page and I move on to the next one. – JCH

POETRY

“The woman is perfected.
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment…” – Edge by Sylvia Plath

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‘“Unwritten: Caribbean Poems After the First World War” is an attempt to address this gap in the narrative.’ Those poets commissioned by this project, writing and researching new work, come from both the Caribbean, and the Caribbean diaspora. Performing are: Jay Bernard, Jay T John, Ishion Hutchinson, Kat Francois, Tanya Shirley, Vladimir Lucien, Charnell Lucien, Malika Booker and Karen McCarthy Woolf.’ – Unwritten

NEWS FEATURES & OPINION

“The fact that no importance is placed on storytelling makes me very frustrated not only because it puts so little value or emphasis on children’s creativity, but also because storytelling is more than simply an art – it is a crucial skill for life and commerce.” – Ditch the Grammar and Teach Children Storytelling Instead by Tim Lott

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“Simon was a four-time Oscar nominee and a staggering 17-time Tony nominee; he won three times and received a special Tony in 1975, along with virtually every other honor a playwright can win, including the Pulitzer Prize for 1991’s Lost in Yonkers. Because he was so prolific, churning out more than 60 plays, screenplays, teleplays, and even contributions to musicals over the course of half a century, it’s hard to home in on his most important works, or even his most important decade. But here are four Simon works we think every theater lover should know.” – Vox on late American playwright Neil Simon

CREATING

“When I was 24 years old, I chanced upon this style of comedy. I was doing a very small cable TV show, it was a public access show in England called F2F and I was playing an early form of the character that became Ali G. In that version he was  called Joseline Cheadle Human. He was an upper-class wanna be rapper, skateboarder, lover of hip-hop. In this show, I would go out and shoot little segments and then I would sort of pop them into this live show. I shot a little thing with this character and then I saw a bunch of real-life Ali G’s. The director with me at the time, a guy called Mike Toppin, a brilliant ex-editor of evening comedies who happened to be working on this public access show. I said, those guys are like me and he said, go and speak with them. That moment changed my career. I interacted with them, I started trying to get on my skateboard and they are going, ‘you’re wack, man. That is ridiculous.’ They were mocking me, and after two minutes I came out of character and I said, ‘guys, I’m pretending. It’s not me.’ They were shocked, and I realized oh my God, I’ve found something. Suddenly a tourist bus turned up. I jumped on the tourist bus with a camera. I grabbed the microphone. I started rapping into the microphone. We got off the bus, I went into a pub and started breakdancing on the floor. They called the cops. I then went into the lobby of some big business firm and I said my dad ran the business, and security threw me out, and I was completely invigorated.

I took the stuff and would cut it into the live show, and by the third segment everything was cut. It went black. Somebody had pulled these pieces that we’d shot. I was pulled in front of the station chiefs afterward and they said, never do that again or I’d get sued. I knew at that point that I had found something. It was by chance, by luck. I chanced upon a new style of comedy, which was putting comedy characters into the real world. A week later there was a pro-hunting rally in England, which every member of the upper class was there, save the royal family, and I decided to go undercover as a foreign character. I’m driving down there and in the back seat. There’s a hat from Astrakhan in Southern Russia. I put it on my head and I come out of the car and I am basically an early form of Borat.

Hello, my name is…[he assumes the Borat accent]. I would start asking people, ‘excuse me. When we went hunting in Moldova, we like to hunt the Jew. Would you hunt the Jew here?’ And they’d start answering…[assumes upper crust British accent] ‘Well, actually…yes, so long as he was given a fair start. Yes, I would.’ And I suddenly realized here was a method that allowed people to really reveal their true feelings on camera. I came back home and I said to my flatmate, I think there’s a new style of comedy here that I’ve accidentally chanced upon, an undercover character comedy. I just started working on that and when the cable access show got shut down, I started developing a show for Borat, which was going to be undercover in a house with students with hidden cameras for three months, kind of an early form of Big Brother. It was not commissioned, but that is how all this happened.” – Sacha Baron Cohen

****

“To know a character, I have to understand what they want and what they’ve lost.” –  Bret Anthony Johnston

***

‘The short story is well placed for putting twists on simple things. Unlike the novel – in which the author is primarily concerned with world-building – the short story is typically centred on a moment or event and charged with a more playful energy. An author of three novels – The Beast of Kukuyo (2018), The Repenters (2016) and Littletown Secrets (2013) – Hosein felt ‘Passage’ was better suited for the short form, for its warmth, tension and confusion. “‘Passage’ works because of its set-up and quick deflection of expectations,” says Hosein. “There also had to be continuously rising tension that’s a lot more difficult to maintain in a novel, especially a novel that entails such few players.”’- Kevin Jared Hosein on The Culture Trip

THE BUSINESS

“1.Give anything you’ve just finished some time and space before you submit.

2.Try to be as objective as possible when you finally do return to that piece.

3.Be ready and willing to revise.

4.Know thyself. Be brutally honest.

5.In the end, go with your gut. If you think it’s ready, send it.” – Matt Mullins in Atticus Review newsletter

INTERVIEWS

“A sense of the inner wildness, the “untameness” that is always beneath the surface of people and places, is what drives many of the poems. In the process of writing and editing Doe Songs, I tried to access that inner wildness and to learn to see it in everything, to acknowledge that the domestic and the wild, the gentle and the feral are bound together so closely in all living things and places.” – Danielle Boodoo Fortune 

***

***

“What is the first thing you wrote?

When I was in sixth form, I studied literature for my “A” levels with Dennis Scott. We had finished with the syllabus fairly early, so Dennis invited his friends, Rex Nettleford, Mervyn Morris, Lorna Goodison, and Christopher Gonzalez, to name a few, to talk to us about music, art, and poetry. I believe it was after a lecture by Lorna Goodison that he gave us an assignment to visit any gallery and write an essay about what we saw.

I had arrived at the gallery late and begged one of the cleaning ladies to let me in. I told her it would only be a few minutes. She smiled with me and said, “Only ten minutes.”

When I walked into the gallery, a security guard was walking past a statue, “Eve” by Edna Manley. As he walked by the statue, he slapped the statue on the buttocks and said, “Big batty gal.” Talk about a visceral reaction to art.

I wrote the essay and then, published my first poem, “Eve (For E.M.)” in the Daily Gleaner.” – Geoffrey Philp interviewed for the Caribbean Literary Heritage website

***

“You know I think the jokes that work for white guys and their white guy comedian friends don’t work, always, for women of color. …” – Amber Tamblyn

***

“What advice would you give to new writers starting out? Where to start? Kill adverbs. Use nouns and verbs. Adjectives are less useful than you think. Think about what you’re trying to say and then do that, plainly. Be kind to yourself – writing is hard. Read lots of stuff, everything, but try including some good ones, you know, that have critical acclaim. It does count for something. Grammar. Jesus Christ – fixing that is not an editor’s job, or it shouldn’t be. Go looking for your inspiration – be active. There is no bolt from the blue that will deliver you literary perfection – it takes work. READ. Most of the time the story will not just seek you out – you have to go find it. READ. Oh, and if you’re a poet, I beg you not to read poetry in that sing-song voice that so many put on at worthy events. Sorry, I know I’m supposed to be talking about shorts. READ. ” – Leone Ross

***

“For writers, dreams are where it’s at.” – Angela Barry

***

“Who made reading important to you? When I was little, my older sisters read to me from time to time. I also have one memory of my father reading to me. He was not a very fluent reader and I remember him struggling with the words, but he tried very hard and put a lot of heart into it. I was about five or so and was very moved by it all; that reading experience fueled something and has remained with me on many levels.” – interview with Marcia Douglas

***

***

“If you’re prepared to be tough with yourself. That’s hard to instill in people – that you can have a lot of confidence and still be really tough. And also know it’s not factory work, it’s not office work, it’s not going to come out the same every day. And because this is the only place we write from, this self that we are, some days it’s a bit fucked up.” – Jeanette Winterson with Marlon James

***

‘And when someone asked me that [authority question], I said, “You mean… talent and imagination?”’ – Marlon James with Jeanette Winterson

FICTION

“The obit didn’t say how he died. Just that he left a wife, one son, a brother, and a mother behind.” – From Where We Rush Forth by Rachel Ann Brickner

***

“In the autumn of Maria’s eighteenth year, the year that her beloved father—amateur coin collector, retired autoworker, lapsed Catholic—died silently of liver cancer three weeks after his diagnosis, and the autumn her favorite dog killed her favorite cat on the brown, crisped grass of their front lawn, and the cold came so early that the apples on the trees froze and fell like stones dropped from heaven, and the fifth local Dominican teenager in as many months disappeared while walking home from her minimum-wage, dead-end job, leaving behind a kid sister and an unfinished journal and a bedroom in her mother’s house she’d never made enough to leave…” – Mary When You Follow Her By Carmen Maria Machado, Illustrations by Sergio García Sánchez

***

“‘Well me wasn’t there, but people say it, so I believe it,’ the man said, chuckling through a smile of missing teeth.” – An Elephant in Kingston by Marcus Bird

As with all content on wadadlipen.wordpress.com, except otherwise noted, this is written by Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, Oh Gad!, Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure, Musical Youth and With Grace). All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed it, check out my page on Amazon, WordPress, and/or Facebook, and help spread the word about Wadadli Pen and my books. You can also subscribe to the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks.

James, Hutchinson are Academy Winners

“NEW YORK, March 20, 2018—The American Academy of Arts and Letters announced today the names of 15 writers who will receive its 2018 awards in literature. The awards will be presented in New York at the Academy’s annual Ceremonial in May. This year’s literature prizes, totaling $185,000, honor both established and emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The Academy’s 250 members propose candidates, and a rotating committee of writers selects winners. This year’s award committee members were Joy Williams (chairman), Russell Banks, Henri Cole, Amy Hempel, and Anne Tyler.”

Among the 15 are two notable Caribbean writers, Marlon James and Ishion Hutchinson who are among eight recipients of Arts and Letters Awards of $10,000 each honoring exceptional accomplishment in literature.

Read the rest of the list here.

Reading Room XIV

This page is for sharing links to things of interest around the internet. It’ll be sporadically updated; so, come back from time to time. For the previous reading rooms, use the search feature to the right, to the right.

CREATIVES ON THE PROCESS

“Calypso provided lessons in how to play, teasingly, with language.” – Joanne C. Hillhouse

***

“These days, I meet far too many young writers who try to start off with a novel right off, or a trilogy, or even a nine-book series. That’s like starting in at rock climbing by tackling Mt. Everest. Short stories help you learn your craft. They are a good place for you to make the mistakes that every beginning writer is going to make. And they are still the best way for a young writer to break in…” – George R. R. Martin

***

“Be careful to stay consistently in one verb tense unless your narrator is a person who might switch tenses.” – Crawford Killian

***

“As I’m sure you know, Time is never a neutral, abstract thing. Nor merely a clock-ticking-on-the-mantlepiece thing. Time for writing your novel is time not for other occupations, not for other people. It’s time stolen from your loved ones; time they will probably resent you not devoting to them. Time is closing the door behind you and not answering when people knock – not unless they knock very hard, and shout words like ‘Fire’ and ‘Bastard’ and ‘I’m leaving – I really am’.” – Toby Litt

***

“I should be clear: there are plenty of times when the thought of reading my own story one more time makes me want to vomit.” – Max Barry

***

“I do think that as a society, even though my work is valued in the tertiary system as a text, writers are often seen as artists. And artists are often connected with entertainment, and seen as not scientific and not affecting evidence-based decisions.” – Oonya Kempadoo

***

I almost passed this one over because I’d never read Anne Lamott but there was too much good insight here to overlook…and now I want to add Lamott to my very long and ever growing reading list. Here’s Theo Pauline Nestor on things you can learn from reading Anne Lamott.

***

“One Wednesday night, while Pastor was telling us that blessings were five miles upstream so we should, like Enoch, wait on the Lord, I started reading Salman Rushdie’s “Shame,” hiding it in the leather Bible case. I had never read anything like it. It was like a hand grenade inside a tulip. Its prose was so audacious, its reality so unhinged, that you didn’t see at first how pointedly political and just plain furious it was. It made me realize that the present was something I could write my way out of. And so I started writing for the first time since college, but kept it quiet because none of it was holy.” – Marlon James

***

“But for those of us who are called to this craft, we know we must write. Because it’s true, your mother, father, brother, sister or cat could end up hating you, but if you don’t write, you’ll end up hating yourself. Ultimately, we write not for the world but for our own souls.” – Bushra Rehman

***

“This is how I know that the symbols we write and read about are as real as flesh, and are one of the only means of remembering ourselves and our personal and ancestral stories.” – Danielle Boodoo-Fortune. Read and see her Amazona and And Other Winged Creatures.

***

“We recognize, in their faces—in their actions—their fearlessness. They haven’t yet been anesthetized by the daily grind of adult life. They still think they have a puncher’s chance at beating everything.” Interesting post by Matthew McGevna, my co-panelist at the Brooklyn Book Festival, about the genesis of his book, Little Beasts. Read his full post.

***

***

“Editing can also lead to moments of humor. At some point, when two of my main characters, an older female scientist and a working mom who grow very close over the course of the book, clasped hands for something like the fifth time, I almost cried out with irritation, and wrote ‘There is way too much hand clasping in this book! Stop it!!’” – Kamy Wicoff

***

“You are not imagining it, my art has become darker over the last couple years. For so long my attitude was that I just wanted to paint upbeat, joyful images to increase the beauty in this world, and not dwell on negativity, which would just be feeding it.

At the time, that meant bright, vibrant, ‘sunny’ colours … sometimes I literally painted on yellow canvases.

But the times we live in have a dark undertone, and I am not immune to it. As artists, it is not just our nature, but our job to FEEL, and to be a channel – through our art – to make others FEEL.” – Donna Grandin

POETRY

“How could his daily toil
of hammer, saw and nails;
an old lady’s reckoning
of last month’s window
against the patching
of her roof this week —
how could her life of sacrifice
and his of labour, sweat
and boiling sun
be totalled up
in this small word?” – Word (on teaching an adult male to read) by Esther Phillips

***

“She was stabbed in a bar in Kingston.
Only men attended her funeral, extra drunk.” – Ishion Hutchinson, Prudence from Far District

***

“There’ve always been Sunday mornings like this,
when God became young again
and looking back you see
that childhood was a Sunday morning.” – Kendel Hippolyte, Sunday

***

“And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:” – Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

***

“…the beach say, This him. John Goodman
he name, originally Jean-Paul Delattre,
brother of Stephen Dillet, first coloured man

in Parliament. Come here on a boat
from Haiti back then, back again,…” – Goodman’s Bay ll by Christian Campbell

***

“…their lines uneven, their slow step out of sync
marching with wrinkled faces to commemorate
a war they didn’t start, majesty’s ship that didn’t sink
distended necks show a conceited attitude

for having served mother England.” – from Memorial Day by Reuel Lewi

VISUAL

Danielle Boodoo Fortune working on a mural project in Trinidad… when I bookmarked this a while ago, my note to myself was why can’t we have something like this in Antigua… turns out, we do, sort of; check out the Antigua Graffiti series.

***

Heather Doram’s Rootedness and other art pieces from the Caribbean, Latin America, and Canada, showed during the Pan Am Games, featured in this showing at the Textile Museum of Canada. See all the pieces here.

***

This beautiful painting (I want it soooo bad) is Gardener of Small Joys, 2015 by Danielle Boodoo-Fortune (artist). Danielle is a Trinidadian-Tobagonian artist (and a Wadadli Pen ally having served as a judge in 2014 and 2015); she is superbly talented in both the visual and literary medium. Here’s a link to her work. And to a review of her work in the Arc.

***

The film Ah! Hard Rain is the story of a fishing village struggling to survive due to over fishing by huge trawlers from, Europe, China, etc. The film sponsored this special performance at the British Museum, on Saturday 15th August, 2015 by providing two of the amazing Moko Jumbie performers, all the way from Trinidad & Tobago, who feature in the soon to be released film Ah! Hard Rain. Photo is from the Ah! Hard Rain facebook page https://www.facebook.com/AhHardRain

INTERVIEWS

w/John R. Lee:

“…how the literature has developed through personages and work, I’ve always been conscious of that; I’ve always been conscious of the cultural context of our literature and our arts…”

***

w/?uestlove:

“I don’t mourn the bad, I don’t celebrate the good, I just walk forward.”

***

w/Attica Locke:

“We exist in the middle: We’re not demons or angels — we’re human beings. And so that is what needs to be reflected in the art of our nation.”

***

w/Anne Germanacos:

“As writers, we live double lives: lived once in the world of others, and again, in the quiet of our own minds. It takes a certain amount of will and courage to leave with regularity the circle of humanity in order to enact a kind of theft, which is one aspect of what the writing life seems to be.”

***

w/Diana King:

“As for me, I just was not the type of Jamaican singer that was ‘hype’ at the time so no attention or encouragement was given. Dreams can die like this.”

***

w/Marlon James:

“Of course I’m intimidated, but I’m also protected by social and artistic privilege. You can be immune if you’re a Rex Nettleford, or a rich gay dude, but for a poor or middle class person, not so much. And nobody is ever really immune. Gay men are still getting shot in the face in New York, there is still too much stigma against HIV for no reason. Job discrimination. Some stores want a legal right to discriminate. It isn’t over.”

***

w/Justin ‘Jus Bus’ Nation:

“I think that if we help to support this type of creative behaviour, musically and artistically, our culture in the music and arts sector can evolve greatly. A lot of people get discouraged because from a young age they are being told that they can’t succeed at their dream because it’s not the normal doctor or dentist stereotypical job that their parents see fit for sustainable income. If the government and more people took it seriously and equally took risks and chances then an infrastructure could be made for year-round arts and music on a more realistic economic level for people – instead of this fairytale, ‘movie star’ illusion that’s being fed to young kids through TV and internet.”

***

w/Yiyun Li:

“I used to keep this journal…and I knew my mother would read my journal (so) my journal was just negative space; so if there was a bird, I would not say there was a bird – I would describe the cloud around, trees, skies, just leaving a blank space of the bird. So if my mother read it, she would not see the bird.”

***

w/Joanne C. Hillhouse:

“The analogy in my head is like I’m driving down a lane, a bumpy lane like so many of the off roads in Antigua, and I’ve never been on that road before and there’s a bend and I don’t know what’s around the bend but I want to find out so I keep going, even though it’s a little bit scary…”

***

w/Diane Chamberlain:

“I wish someone had told the very young me that good writing is the ticket to success in nearly everything. I didn’t learn that until my junior year of high school when a history teacher taught us how to research and organize our essays and term papers. Suddenly, I realized I could use my writing skills in every subject (except math, unfortunately). My grades soared. It’s those skills that got me through college and graduate school, and it’s those skills I still use today as I outline and work on my books. We can do our young people a big favor by helping them learn to write well.”

***

w/Jamaica Kincaid:

“More immediately, I’m trying to earn a living in the way that is most enjoyable to me. I love the world of literature, and I hope to support myself in it. I come from the small island of Antigua and I always wanted to write; I just didn’t know that it was possible. I would pretend when I was a child that I was Charlotte Brontë, because I’d read Jane Eyre when I was ten and, although I didn’t understand it, I loved the idea that this woman had written a book. I wanted to be her.”

***

w/Jamaica Kincaid:

“I was up all night long, working on a sentence,” she said. She hadn’t finished it yet.

***

w/Michael Anthony:

“I realized I liked words, the sound of words” – Listen to the full interview 

***

w/Colin Farrell …yes, that Colin Farrell…Colin is officially the first Hollywood actor in the Wadadli Pen Reading Room…as if Hollywood actors need more publicity, right?…But whatever, I like this interview and love his accent…no apologies….besides it’s always interesting hearing artists, from any area of the arts, talking about their craft…and always refreshing to see the ways in which their journey and sensibility is not that foreign from your own:

Interviewer: Was that the last time that you were on stage?
Colin Farrell: …other than struggling to be myself on things like this.

***

w/Oonya Kempadoo:

What’s the best advice on writing you ever received? “Just write.”

***

w/John Robert Lee:

“Firstly, more creative arts education programmes are needed at all levels of our education system. The arts will evolve when young people come to a better, informed understanding of the arts. This education also creates an audience for the arts, an audience that is informed, understands what is being presented to them, and so they are better able to appreciate and evaluate creative arts.”

***

w/Tamara Ellis Smith:

“Well, the idea for Hurricane came when my son — who was four at the time — asked me from the back seat of the car, ‘Who is going to get my pants?’

This was August 2005, and we were driving a few bags of clothing and food to the Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort. What a great question! Of course I didn’t know, but I began to imagine who would get his pants — and then I began to actually IMAGINE who would get his pants. And I was off and running . . .”

STORIES

“But it’s getting weird lately; some nights as he rocks on top of me, I start to imagine that I’m Her…” – Starfish by Randy Triant

***

“He always cooked his pepper pot on their Oh Gad, claiming coal fire gave a better flavor, but Nora knew that it wasn’t the fire that made the dish unforgettable, it was him. It was the way they would sit on the veranda, with a bowl of the aromatic stew and listen to him recount the tales of his youth, stories of climbing mango trees and oil pan cook out by the dam. Of adventures in the sugar cane fields, and of jumbi, and sokuna and all the things that made up the lore of the country side. All their legends told in his base voice, punctuated by belly laughs and mouthfuls of pepper pot.” – The Grave Digger’s Wife by Random_Michelle (Michelle Toussaint)

***

“Legend states that the Moss is a creature hatched from a chicken egg layed on Good Friday after three months of incubation. The egg is placed under the arm of the person wishing for the Moss and has to stay there until the three months have passed. Once it begins to hatch, at the moment it emerges from the shell, one must say: ‘Mweh seh mette ou’ (I am your master) before it can say it to you, needless to say what happens if you fail. If you accomplish this then the Moss is charged to fulfill your every desire not unlike the Djinns of Persia. However it seems that a Moss comes with a terrible price…” – Glen Toussaint, Tale of the Moss.  Read more.

***

“He is taking the back way to town so that he can look at this man’s corn and consider the way in which his corn looks better.” – listen to Austin Smith’s Friday Nigh Fish Fry

***

“Outside, I see a million butterflies flitting about in the golden sunlight. He once told me that there’s a place in Kingston where, in butterfly season, you can see them falling out of trees like golden rain. We’d made plans to marry beneath one of those trees. But those plans, like Isaiah, have all disappeared. Suddenly, an image of Peter and Denise appears before me, the money they have promised me for one night.” – Read all of Sharon Leach’s Sugar.

***

“Miss lady house burn down, everybody outside. Not even the moon out but everybody out.” – Read all of Glen Toussaint’s Is Obeah dat burn down di house or Goat Mout!?

WRITERS ON PUBLISHING

The only part of this Andrew Lowe article I didn’t like was “He said no. Something about how he never allows his images to be used for commercial reasons.” which, to me, felt vaguely dismissive/mocking of the photographer’s choice but overall I thought it was an interesting and insightful take on the process of cover design… something, incidentally, we’ve tried to tackle with the Wadadli Pen Challenge.

***

If you’re out here freelancing, this article actually has a lot of stuff I’ve tried and continue to try …with mixed results.

***

“Build relationships with your readers as best you can. Building a loyal following of readers who are willing to pay for your books is your most effective way of personally combating piracy.” – if you’ve written and been published, chances are you’ve come across some site purporting to offer your book for free at some point. As with any theft, it feels like a violation…and it’s cutting in to your royalties. This article provides tips for writers on dealing with piracy.

***

“I thought back over the many interactions I’d had with agents – all but two of them white – before I landed with mine. The ones that said they loved my writing but didn’t connect with the character, the ones that didn’t think my book would be marketable even though it was already accepted at a major publishing house. Thought about the ones that wanted me to delete moments when a character of color gets mean looks from white people because “that doesn’t happen anymore” and the white magazine editor who lectured me on how I’d gotten my own culture wrong. My friends all have the same stories of whitewashed covers and constant sparring with the many micro and mega-aggressions of the publishing industry.” – Daniel José Older on Diversity is not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing

NON FICTION

“After colossal effort and countless attempts to acclimate myself to them, I focused on changing my way of seeing them. I pulled the curtain from the other side and started to explore the depths of their world. It took me a while, but I came to the conclusion that criminals laugh, too”. – from 1000 Lashes Because I Say What I Think by Raif Badawi. Translated by Ahmed Danny Ramadan. Read more.

***

“When I was a little girl I was sent to mass every Sunday, but I did not pay much attention to the mass, which was mostly in Latin.  My interest was drawn to the ceiling of the church where there were hundreds of paintings of pink-faced cherubs, angels and saints. There was not one black face on that ceiling!  I deduced that black people did not go to Heaven. I was a child, how was I to know that those paintings were some artist’s depiction of The Great Beyond?” – Daisy Holder Lafond, I could have been a terrorist

***

Storytelling by Jamaica Kincaid, Josh Axelrad, and Sebastian Junger from the Moth Radio series: link.

As with all content (words, images, other) on wadadlipen.wordpress.com, except otherwise noted, this is written by Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight,  Fish Outta Water, Oh Gad!, and Musical Youth). All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed it, check out my page on Amazon, WordPress, and/or Facebook, and help spread the word about WadadliPen and my books. You can also subscribe to and/or follow the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks. And remember while linking and sharing the links, referencing and excerpting, with credit, are okay, lifting whole content (articles,  images, other) from the site without asking is not cool. And using any creative work without crediting the creator will open you up to legal action. Respect copyright.