Reading Room and Gallery 43

Things I read or view or listen to that you might like too. Things will be added – up to about 20 or so – before this installment in the Reading Room and Gallery series is archived. For previous and future installments in this series, use the search feature to the right. Possible warning for adult language and themes.

VIDEO ESSAYS

“When he left, Marley was despondent, feeling betrayed by the country he had given his life to…”

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“It’s harder than you think it is…” – Lindsey Ellis

POETRY

“Hurricanes that stagger like a betrayed lover barreling through the islands until its rage is spent on the sands of our beaches/littered with masks and plastic bottles” – ‘Archipelagos‘ by Geoffrey Philp

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“I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.” – from Langston Hughes’ ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers‘

FICTION

“When Kali fights Raktavera it seems impossible because every drop of his blood generates new demons. She figures out how to defeat him. She lifts him above the earth, slays him, and drinks his blood. Consuming Raktavera’s blood, Kali goes into a destructive trance. She can’t control herself. She kills.” – from ‘Journey to Ashes‘ by Joy Mahabir

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“In the beginning Leona thought the river was a horrible way to meet men. She thought Nell and I should meet them through normal channels, at church or a coffee shop, and not immediately after they’d tried to end their lives. Over the years, though, she’d accepted that my sister and I weren’t attracted to churchgoing, coffee-shop sorts, that we liked men who’d reached the ends of their ropes, guys who’d been gut-punched by life enough times to know they would be gut-punched several more.” – from ‘The Narrows by Janet Jodzio‘

REVIEWS

“…all in all I loved this book (both books), and find it consistent with the author’s oeuvre, which I’ve found to have strong, athletic and adventurous females, some element of fantasy, some mystery to be solved or problem to trouble shoot, within a Caribbean setting that just is. It’s very accessible for young readers and I can see it becoming a favourite of a young girl who is in to art, science, and sports, or perhaps just likes a bit of fantasy.” – from Blogger on Book (2021) – Quick Takes III. The Blogger on Books series used to run on this blog and has since moved to Jhohadli. This post is quick takes of the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books Volume 12 Number 1 Summer 2019, and two Big Cat books How to be a Calypsonian and The Lost Sketchbook (the review of the latter excerpted here)

NON FICTION

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‘Writing forty to fifty short stories annually provided Louis with just enough money to live comfortably as long as he kept tight control over his budget. Maintaining his morale was also a reason for the high productivity: “My system was to have so many stories out that when one came back its failure was cushioned by the chances that were left,” he wrote to author and editor Ken Fowler, “and by the time they returned I had others out.”’ – from Louis L’Amour and the Legend of the West: Beau L’Amour remembers the Life and Work of His Famous Father in Crime Reads

VISUAL ART

Something I made…

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Moko: Caribbean Arts and Letters in 2021 featured the photographic art of Nadia Huggins, a Trinidad-Tobago born, St. Vincent and the Grenadines raised artist and director. The series of images is part of her documentation of the La Soufriere eruption. See more images and read more about her work here.

READING

This was a promotional reading posted to her publisher’s YouTube by Turtle Beach author Barbara A. Arrindell. This book is part of the Caribbean line of Big Cat books and Arrindell is a Wadadli Pen team member.

CREATIVES ON CREATING

It’s crazy to me that this film didn’t get more awards love. Why? See my review of both the movie and the book from which it was adapted.

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“I could work on a song for an hour or two and then I want to jump off to the next one…working on one song I can get bored and fall out of love with it…he has no problem just sitting with one song.” – Anderson.Paak on working with Bruno Mars

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“We Often Have Dope Crew Jackets On My Joints. I Often See Them On Ebay For Big Money.” – ‘Remembering the Iconic Visuals and Creative Process of Spike Lee’s School Daze‘ by Spike Lee

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“Creative writing in an of itself is a form of journalism…if you’re speaking to an issue, you’re speaking to something that has a spine, you’re just altering the delivery method in which someone gets the information.” – Roy Wood Jr. in conversation with Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due

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“We need to know what a particular form does for storytelling so we can make an informed decision about if we want to use it, when we want to use it, or if we want to dismiss it altogether.” – Tiphanie Yanique on Breaking the Rules of Form in LitHub

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“The entry point for me with this particular story though it’s an aquatic adventure set under the sea, the entry point for me was friendhsip.” – Joanne C. Hillhouse at Write the Vision’s Aspiring Authors and Writers Virtual Literary Event, speaking on ‘The Art of Writing Children’s Books?’, speaking at this point on writing Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure

CONVERSATIONS

“The problem with canons is how they squeeze people out, it’s not how they include people.”

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 “But who I am is my father’s son…” – Sydney Poitier, Academy Class of 2014, Full Interview

His story about the slap back he insisted on in ‘In the Heat of the Night’ and the story he tells about the role he turned down pre-fame (when things were so bad he had to take out a street loan against his furniture to pay for his daughter to be born in hospital) have in common his awareness of his responsibility to his character, characters, and community, and determination not to make money his only motivator.

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“Poetry and fiction publishing by Caribbean women has been on-going for decades. Readers should have had more multilingual anthologies available during the last twenty years. We have such a significant number of excellent writers coming from the region and the larger Caribbean world.” – Loretta Collins Klobah in interview (alongside Maria Grau Perejoan) with Plume

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“How come we are so visible, yet we are invisible.” – Edith Oladele of the African Slavery Memorial Society, discussing how she came to an awareness of her connection to slavery and to Africa.

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, Musical Youth, With Grace, Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure, The Jungle Outside, and Oh Gad!). 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.

Reading Room and Gallery 25

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. 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 25th one which means there are 24 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

MISC.
– re storytelling lessons from the screenplay.

ON BEING A WRITER

“A lot has to happen from the time you finish your book until it is published. ” – from 10 Things I learned as a New Author by Phyllis Piano

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“If I had been deterred or demoralized by the initial rejections, if I had given up then, the manuscript would still be sitting in some drawer.” – Leonard Chang

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‘Thick Skin. I wish you the covering of the cascadura, since you must endure many disappointments and discouragements. Rejection slips are never welcome, and, unless you are very lucky, you will get many of these. Harder, though, may be the tossing-aside of people who dismiss your work, or folks, some of whom you may count as supporters or friends, who pigeonhole you. “A genre writer! Good at fantasy!” “Not bad at children’s stories.” “Good at travel writing — not much else.”’ – Pamela Mordecai

INTERVIEWS

“Most poems begin for me with the very basic, almost physical need to write. Then comes the process of finding the right words, finding images that are both unexpected and easy to relate to. I write, then roll the words around in my mouth a bit, make sure that the texture is right. Read, edit, re-read and repeat!” – Danielle Boodoo Fortune. The post includes three of her poems.

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“This was one of the things I learned about creativity. You have to let go of self-consciousness. When I started thinking about this book, I knew that if I felt self-conscious while writing, it would probably come out bit by bit and it would not be as honest.” – Amy Tan

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“We were just in an atmosphere …that said it was okay to write…there was no separation for me from the West Indian street outside and the work that I was reading, sometimes even in French….I would say that it’s the duty of any parent to check out the talent of the child and to make sure that that talent is not smothered, that you don’t divert that child’s ambition, especially in terms of a writer; we would have more writers if we didn’t have a system that said you have to be a doctor or engineer.” – Derek Walcott in conversation with CBC Radio

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“When you’re creating, it’s not always automatic. Many days in the studios were just days of talking and listening to music that had nothing to do with our music. Sometimes she’d say she wasn’t coming in. We treated it much more as a creative thing than an emotional process, but we knew there was a lot of emotion involved. Literally she’d sometimes say that she just was not coming in, so we’d create new tracks or tweak something or comp a vocal. We always had things to do even when she didn’t come in and we’d pick up where we left off.” – Jimmy Jam (producer) discusses the making of Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope

CREATIVES ON CREATING

“Drop the hints. Don’t point out the clues.” – Janice Hardy on Telegraphing

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“My advice to aspiring writers is the short story is a fantastic form to commit yourself to, but don’t to put all your eggs in the competition basket. Subscribe to your local literary journals, read them, submit your own stories: when accepted, add a line to your literary curriculum vitae; when rejected, take another look at the story and see if there’s anything you want to change before submitting it elsewhere.” – Confessions of a Prize Winner by New Zealand writer Craig Cliff, at Commonwealth Writers

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“Foreshadowing can be a little confusing. It’s a single word used to describe a narrative technique that can be used for two different purposes. Probably there should be two different words—one for each purpose—but there isn’t. So to make this discussion a bit clearer, I’m going to borrow a word from film studies: planting (as in: planting and payoff).” – Don Allmon

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“To me, structure always comes about as a result of trying to answer the issue of point of view.” – Christopher Nolan discussing Dunkirk

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“I decide to dissect myself” – Sheena Rose

POETRY

“What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?” – from Harlem by Langston Hughes

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“I am the great mother boa
turning the soft egg of the world
beneath my ribs. I will tear myself in two
and heal before morning.” – Danielle Boodoo Fortune

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“I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with Allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to Europe
to cool my thirst.
My oldest daughter is Nefferttiti
the tears from my birth pains created the Nile
I am a beautiful woman” – Ego Trippin by Nikki Giovanni

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“The night she tried to beat me, I slept on the veranda
of the shop in the square. At dawn, a man hauled
me home. She dragged me to school, whipped me
with the principal’s cane.” – Wounds by Juleus Ghunta

FICTION

“Hyacinth Ike wanted to kill himself because he had lived a fulfilled, successful life and couldn’t think of anything else he was loitering in the world for.” – By Way of a Life Plot by Kelechi Njoku

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-excerpt from The Wide Circumference of Love by Marita Golden
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“God thought of ways to punish the woman for what she had done, without immediately killing her.” – from The Day After by Stephen Greenblatt in The Paris Review

NON-FICTION

“I remember a Haitian radio show I was on years ago, after my first book was published. This woman called in to say, ‘That’s all fine and good, but you better get your nursing degree.’” – Edwidge Dandicat

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‘It doesn’t matter what pisses you off, she says, as long as you pay attention to that feeling. “Writing against” is a good compass “until you know what you’re writing for,” she said.’ – Katherine Boo’s 15 Rules for Narrative Non Fiction

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“Most of us are not compelled to linger with the knowledge of our aloneness, for it is a knowledge that can paralyze all action in this world.” – The Creative Process by James Baldwin

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Sojourner Truth’s Ain’t I a Woman speech is a powerful piece of speechmaking (note the use of tone and rhetoric in the words and in this Cicely Tyson interpretation of them).

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“You stay because it’s your home, you have to stay and take care of it.” – Luis by Jo-Anne Mason

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!, Fish Outta Water, With Grace, and Musical Youth). All Rights Reserved. Do not re-use content without permission and credit. 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.