Carib Lit Plus (Mid to Late November 2022)

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).

Accolades

Selvyn Walter, Antiguan and Barbudan politician-writer-art-collector-and-pan-booster, who died in 2020, received a Sunshine Award posthumously for his support of the performing arts. It was presented November 26th during Moods of Pan, a premier local pan festival, which was live this year for the first time since the pandemic. Daily Observer reported that the award was partly in recognition of his founding role in Halcyon Steel Orchestra and was meant to have been presented at the multi-panorama winning band’s 50th anniversary, in 2021, but was delayed due to the pandemic. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco)

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Caribbean Reads author Danielle Y C Mclean’s The Whisperer’s Warning has been named winner of this year’s Bocas Children’s Book Prize. The book, illustrated by Rachel Moss, is a sequel to her Burt award winning The Protector’s Pledge.

The Trinidad born US based author’s book is “a juvenile fantasy novel which draws on TT folklore…packed with exciting and dramatic plot twists, taking readers into the shadowy world of characters such as Papa Bois, La Diablesses, jumbies, and douens, harmonising reality, myth, and imagination” (TT Newsday). The prize is in its second year. The winner takes home US$1000. (Source – Caribbean Reads on instagram)

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Musgrave medals have been handed out to 10 Jamaicans including writers Diana McCaulay and Geoffrey Philp.

(source of images – the one in the middle is from Twitter and the flanking ones are from Annie Paul’s Facebook)

Gold medallists are, per the Jamaica Observer, McCaulay (author, Daylight Come etc.), Lenford Salmon (actor, Third World Cop etc.), and Joy Spence (chemist).
Silver medallists are Philp (author, Garvey’s Ghost etc.), Kevin Jackson (animator), Eric Garraway (entomologist).
Bronze medallists are Safiya Sinclair (author, Cannibal), Patrick Brown (playwright), and Susan Koenig (biologist).
David Salmon received the youth medal award for advocacy and leadership.

Launched in 1889, the Musgrave medals are named forAnthony Musgrave, a former governor of Jamaica and founder of the Institute of Jamaica. (Source – social media – twitter and facebook)

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The Lionfish Derby has emerged as a creative solution to the problem of the invasive marine species in Antigua’s waters. In addition to the catch, there is also a competition for student artists. In the 14 – 18 category, 14-year-old Xezlaina Looby won, and in the nine to 13 age category Summer Goodwin won.

The winners attend the Christ the King High School. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco)

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The winner of Antigua’s got Talent, a creative arts showcase and fundraiser, which raised EC$15,000+ for PAAWS animal shelter, is Stephen Gore who performed Tian Winter’s “In de Dance”. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco/Antigua)

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Euzhan Palcy (director of Sugar Cane Alley and Dry White Season) collected the Governor’s Award from Viola Davis on behalf of the Motion Picture Association of America, an award previously announced in our early to mid September 2022 Carib Lit Plus bulletin. Two students from schools in Martinique – one from a school named for her – were present at the awards ceremony, to bear witness to this native daughter’s moment of glory. While doing so with gratitude, she also called out Hollywood for its diversity issues (being told “Black is not bankable, female is not bankable, Black and female are not bankable”- still ongoing. “I was tired of being the first of too many firsts but denied the chance to make the movies I (felt) compelled to make,” Palcy said. The award she said encourages her “to raise my voice again, to offer you movies of all genres that I always wanted to make in my own way.”

(Source – YouTube)

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A number of awards were given out in November by the Antigua and Barbuda Gospel Music and Media Awards, its 8th iteration of this awards programme. The Daily Observer by Newsco picked up three of those awards – media of the year, regional media of the year, and a legacy award for longevity.

All winners can be viewed here and you can read about the awards programme here. While I didn’t see it on the main list, there is also reporting of the ABGMMA presenting an award to social media influencer J’Truth in the name of late (since his death in 2002) journalist, Leonard Tim Hector – a local pioneer in investigative journalism and unbridled criticism, with his newspaper Outlet and its “Fan the Flame” column penned by him often shaking the table and receiving the backlash that can come with that (see the Antigua and Barbuda media history post on this site). That Hector’s family did not give permission for the use of his name in this way became obvious when they condemned the award of the Leonard Tim Hector Impact Award for Social Activism to J‘Truth. The Leonard Tim Hector Memorial Committee which already awards a prize in Hector’s name with the endorsement of the family co-signed this condemnation. The public has been weighing in on the suitability of the award recipient (Ameen Dias who has become popular for his controversial vlogs), especially given the association with Hector’s name, but what I’m curious about, simply because as a literary and arts space we are always trying to empower ourselves (and the various creators who come here) with knowledge, is IP issues around the use of Hector’s name (any lawyers in the comments?). (Source – Daily Observer newspaper & Facebook)

Movies

As you’ll see below, two Caribbean films, The Fab 4 and Deep Blue, the latter by Antiguan and Barbudan filmmakers, are having their regional debut at Montserrat’s Alliougana Festival of the Word. And then there is Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The international blockbuster’s M’Baku, Winston Duke of Tobago, graces the cover of the latest edition of Esquire magazine.

He said on Facebook, “It has always been a dream of mine to grace the cover of especially esquire magazine! Growing up, being an esquire man was the epitome of style and masculine refinement. Dramatic, yet assured … being able to see myself on this is literally a dream come true! I dedicate this to my mom, Cora Pantin, whose love, guidance & prayers sowed the seeds. Though she isn’t here to see her son grow to this today.” You can read the Esquire article here. Excerpt:

‘As an island kid, he missed warm weather. Rochester was cold, and Americans were colder. “I come from a culture where people are warm-blooded, warm culture. When they talk, sometimes they talk real close to you. Americans feel entitled to space.”’

Also learned, reading the article of the death of his mother at 66, quite suddenly, quite recently. RIP Mama Coco. (Source – Winston Duke on Facebook)

Books & Other Reading Material

From Hansib, another 2022 release: Joe Solomon and the Spirit of Port Mourant. Port Mourant is a sugar plantation from the Berbice district of Guyana, and Solomon, who, at 92, is the oldest living West Indian Test cricketer, is one of three Windies 1960s players (the others being Rohan Kanhai and Basil Butcher) it produced. He played for Windies 27 times between the late 50s and early 60s. The book is written by academic Clem Seecharan with assistance from Ian McDonald (author of The Hummingbird Tree). (Source – Facebook)

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The Bookseller reports, “Picador signs first prose collection by Linton Kwesi Johnson”. The collection, Time Come: Selected Prose will be published in April 2023. “The publication brings together his book and record reviews published in newspapers and magazines, lectures, obituaries and speeches, spanning five decades.” Johnson is a Jamaica-born, Britain-based dub poet and activist. (Source – JRLee email)

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Dominica born and raised, in Vieille Case, Kisma Panthier-Jn Pierre, resident in Antigua and Barbuda where she is now building the MJP Academy, along All Saints Road, has announced the publication of My 10 Year Blue Print Journal: |A Journal that helps 10-16 year olds to create their future.

This journal is a part of the My 10-Year Blue Print Motivation Journey offered by Kisma which includes guidance and coaching in the form of videos, text, and live sessions. Your child or teen is not alone on this journey and for the next 100 days after starting this program, Kisma will be with them every step of the way. November 18th 2022 is listed on Amazon as the publication date and, per her linkedin, Jn Pierre is offering a special rate for the book, with coaching , through to November 28th 2022. This is not her first publishing experience. In 2021, she was part of an anthology Unleash Your Undeniable Impact: A Compilation of Messages to inspire You to maximize Your Impact on the World presented by Les Brown and Dr. Cheryl Wood. (Source – Kisma Panthier-Jn Pierre on linkedin)

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Moko: Caribbean Arts and Letters Issue 22 is out. It is a special Bermuda bienniel dispatch including the likes of Yesha Townsend and Nancy Anne Miller of Bermuda. There is also a new edition of Sky Words, the Moko podcast. (Source – Moko magazine email)

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The Speak Out! series on the Commonwealth Writers Adda platform. This is four issues strong with different editors from around the Commonwealth including Antigua and Barbuda’s Brenda Lee Browne. The stories and poems selected for the collection were submitted in response to “a call for submissions related to Freedom of Expression and its wider subthemes of gender, LGBTQIA+, race/ethnicity, and politics among others.” I have posted reviews to issues 1 and 2 of Adda (and full disclosure submitted to and was rejected by the selectors for Speak Out!). (Source – me)

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Three recent Papillote titles are Still Standing: The Ti Kais of Dominica by Adom Philgene Heron with photographs by Marica Honychurch, Black Man Listen by Kathy Casimir Maclean, and A Scream in the Shadows by Mac Donald Dixon. Papillote Press is a small, independent publishing house specialising in books about Dominica and the wider Caribbean. From observation, Dixon’s book especially has been getting a fair amount of critical attention including from Bookends in the Jamaica Observer where the three-time novelist was described as “arguably one of the Caribbean’s most versatile writers” and A Scream in the Shadows as “a timely novel that will strike a chord with readers.” (Source – N/A)

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Antiguan and Barbudan artist Zavian Archibald has illustrated another of Harper Collins’ Big Cat children’s books. She previously illustrated Turtle Beach written by Antiguan and Barbudan writer Barbara Arrindell and now Jumbled by British writer Jasmine Richards. It’s the story of Baccoo, a character from Guyanese folklore, which may have originated from Yoruba culture, infiltrating a classroom in the UK

(Source – various)

Events

Caribbean artists Diana McCaulay of Jamaica and Kendel Hippolyte of St. Lucia are (at this writing) scheduled to participate in Art and Climate Justice: Reimagining the Future, a critical conversation bringing together artists and activists from Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific to discuss the power and importance of art to the global conversation on climate change. It’s on November 29th 2022. Register here. & we’ve seen climate activists targetting art but art was also used to illuminate the issues.

e.g. this mural by Indian artist Shilo Shiv featuring climate campaigners from the Amazon, Uganda, and Pakistan. – “the stories we tell and the cultures we create is ultimately what shifts public opinion.”

e.g. this mural by Painot, a young illustrator from Peru; it spotlights people from different professions resisting the fossil fuel industry.

(Source – Commonwealth Foundation email)

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The Alliougana Festival of the Word kicked off in Montserrat on November 17th 2022. Here are some scenes from their opening parade.

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Activities between November 17 and 19 listed below:

Two Antiguan and Barbudan films are being screened on movie night, Yemoja’s Anansi, a short by Christal Clashing as mentioned above and HAMA’s Deep Blue.

(Source – AFW on Facebook)

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Two music events have crossed my timeline. One is Burna Boy announced for December 17th at the Sir Vivian Richards stadium, Antigua (on the heels of mixed reports out of Dominica about the costs associated with booking such a high profile international artiste) and the other is part of the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra play out series, with guest violinist Braimah Kanneh-Mason.

Braimah is part of the renowned Kanneh-Mason clan out of the UK – the patriarch of which has Antiguan roots. (Source – Facebook)

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The Moray House Trust’s 2022 programme will close with two events to commemorate Guyanese writers Martin Carter and Edgar Mittelholzer. Every December they feature the work of Martin Carter who died on 13th December 1997. This year the plan is to focus on Carter’s Poems of Affinity. This year, the finale of the Chapter & Verse series will be dedicated to the work of Edgar Mittelhozer, who was born on 16th December 1909. The call goes out to anyone who has a favourite poem from Poems of Affinity or a favourite passage (or poem) by Mittelholzer and would like to read, should email Morayhousetrust@gmail.com by Friday 18th November. They will record the readings by Zoom from 21st – 25th November. (Source – the Nature Island Literary Festival on Facebook)

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 32

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 32nd  one which means there are 31 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

WRITERS READING

Reading (1995) at the University of Miami as part of the Caribbean Fiction Writers Summer Institute by Brittany Wivell, Nicola Johnson, Maritza Stanchich, Eugenia O’Neal, Joanne C. Hillhouse, Beatrice Gardiner, Kezia Page, and Omar Garcia. This was my first public reading of my work (ever!) – I come in at about 56:35-ish, but watch the whole thing. (click on the image)

THE INDUSTRY

A “If editing is key to writing, persistence is key to publishing.” – editors’ roundtable w/Jennifer Wortman, Megan Giddings, Luiza Flynn-Goodlett, and Robert James Russell.

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“Sink into writing. Then when it’s written, come up for air and publish, because if you think about publishing before you finish the book, you’ll be outdated in your thinking by the time the book is complete. Just enjoy writing the story for now.” – C. Hope Clark

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“This article is all about the trends I have observed in the publishing industry – in terms of manuscript publishers, self-publishing, and literary journals – over the last year or so. The key word in the previous sentence is “I”. This article reflects my personal opinion, and what I have noticed. I write a new/updated version of this article every year.” – Emily Harstone

NON-FICTION

“I think it’s a general misunderstanding, not just his. It’s as if we imagine an old book to be a time machine that brings the writer to us. We buy a book and take it home, and the writer appears before us, asking to be admitted into our company. If we find that the writer’s views are ethnocentric or sexist or racist, we reject the application, and we bar his or her entry into the present.

As the student had put it, I don’t want anyone like that in my house.

I think we’d all be better readers if we realized that it isn’t the writer who’s the time traveler. It’s the reader. When we pick up an old novel, we’re not bringing the novelist into our world and deciding whether he or she is enlightened enough to belong here; we’re journeying into the novelist’s world and taking a look around.” – Brian Morton

FICTION

‘She had told Mr. Peebles things. Not indecent, but personal things. About herself. Her life. How could she not? There they were in her house, in her den, elbow-to-elbow at her family table. To her left: the upright piano at which she’d taken lessons until her teacher quit, citing “personal issues.” (I think I was the person he had issues with, she’d told Mr. Peebles. Said he: Not every pair’s a match.) To her right, a photo gallery of Pam and her brother as babies, as toddlers, as brace-faced pre-teens, photos in front of which Mr. Peebles paced while Pam retrieved his weekly payment from her father.’ – Peanuts aren’t Nuts by Courtney Zoffness

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“The devil liked being a woman, because in a woman’s body, it could feel the truth. The things the body did when no one was watching, the way it could swallow things, drown parts whole, hide and house people. In a woman’s body, it could feel the weight of her kindness; the restraint it takes to know exactly how easy it is to raze a man’s life but still choose not to—and yes, there was something delicious about being that close to being good. But its patience was running thin.” – Night Wind by Eloghosa Osunde

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“It must have been a gunshot. I’d know the sound of a .45 anywhere. And it came from upstairs. But I wasn’t going to let my curiosity get the better of me, like my captain in Afghanistan used to warn me.” – from “Our Dirty Little Secrets” by Geoffrey Philp

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‘Girls do not climb coconut trees,’ he said, tossing the belt over his shoulder. ‘It spoils the nuts.’ – Matalasi by Jenny Bennett-Tuionetoa

VISUAL ART

“More than 20,000 submissions came in representing all genres of travel photography, from street scenes to wildlife. AFAR’s highly respected panel of photography judges selected the winners, whose work we’re proud to present here.” More here.

POETRY

“Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!” – If we must die by Claude McKay

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“and every deployment
is a Talking Heads song
and every morning
is an invitation to dance
in a pill bottle
and you’re not interested
in keeping busy
and you don’t want
more group texts
and you don’t want
your daughter learning
to shoot a rifle
with the other kids
who aim at a silhouette
of someone’s son
tied to a haystack” – Asking for a Friend by Abby E. Murray

CREATIVES ON CREATING

“After having a baby and becoming a mom, I was super-raw at that point in my life. It was the first time that I would work in the studio during the day. I was about to breast feed and I would put her down for a nap and then come back. It was very kind of daytime-y sober. I felt really present making that record, because normally we’d open a bottle of wine and shit-talk and record at one in the morning. It just wasn’t that anymore.” – Pink discussing her various albums

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“In a sense, the poem is again about gratitude. There is no regret or there is no even wishing it had not happened. It’s just a realization that we lost ten years of making frittatas together. As a mother and a daughter who loved each other and who love each other, that’s a lot.” – Alice Walker

INTERVIEWS

“I think I always write with the Caribbean in mind.  My voice comes from Grenada and, in my head, that’s my first audience.  In reality, I have to face the fact that my books are often not available in Grenada.  I write for everyone who cares to read, wherever in the world they may be.” – Merle Collins

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“There was this place in Antigua, The Point, that’s always attracted me. It’s a really fascinating neighborhood. Not only was it a slave burial ground in the 1700s, it was one of the first places in Antigua where slaves started a revolt that led to a big uprising. It’s one of the only tenement yard systems left in Antigua. On top of that — being one of the poorest areas in the island — it shares walls with St. John’s, the capital and a duty-free port for cruise ships.” – Shabier Kirchner, Antiguan and Barbudan filmmaker discussing his short film Dadli. For this and more Antiguan and Barbudan artist interviews, go here.

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“So many of us writers keep returning to our history of slavery. Why do we keep doing this? It’s because there’s still something to understand and retrieve from that past. Storytelling is a medicine and we are not yet healed.” – Marcia Douglas with Loretta Collins Klobah

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“‘Not only do black women authors have to find other routes to market their books to mainstream audiences, often times they are even left out of conversations of classic novels within genres like fantasy, horror, science fiction, romance and even cooking. Why do you think black women authors are not recognized in all literary genres?’

‘I think it’s just we get overlooked at times, and it becomes this thing. Like science fiction — apparently black women do not like comics or sci-fi. We know that is not true. But it’s another stereotype that is placed on black women, and we can tell because we have been ignored from these spaces. It’s as if there can’t be any black elves in a story or something that is reflective of our existence.

I’m really proud that we have authors that push against these stereotypes, and can really show what it means to be a black woman in these spaces. I read an incredible science fiction book by Rivers Solomon called An Unkindness of Ghosts. Now, you would think by looking on television or reading books that black women don’t belong in [outer] space, and that’s not true. It’s just a reflection of the limited imaginations people can have, and what we see as futuristic.

All of these genres, like mystery and romance, have incredible writers like Beverly Jenkins. There are so many writers that we just don’t acknowledge in these spaces. But they exist.’ – Glory Idim being interviewed about her book Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

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“By the early 70s, we’d moved away from the politics of black power, purely, to a more class based politics.” – Linton Kwesi Johnson

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“I was inspired to write Caribbean characters into the work I was doing by the fact that I grew up in the islands, and my biological father was Grenadian. I had a wide variety of friends and family who had Caribbean roots growing up. SciFi didn’t have a lot representation of that. As someone who was light-skinned but bi-racial, I was used to being in a culture with a wide variety of skin tones, but wasn’t seeing that in my SciFi much. I didn’t, much to my shock, realize this until I was much older. I had a scales-falling-from-the-eyes moment when I read Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling. He was a white American cyberpunk (a subgenre of SF) writer who set a book in Grenada. When I encountered it, I was so stunned because it exposed a whole gap in mind’s eye: why shouldn’t there be SciFi with Caribbean settings and heroes? And I saw all the stuff that I felt Bruce should have added! After that, I started drawing pictures of starships docked in St. Thomas. I later read Octavia Butler, and that confirmed to me that SciFi could be different than a lot of what I was reading.” – Tobias Buckell

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“I write for an ideal reader — an actual person who is now dead, but who still sits on my shoulder asking certain questions about authenticity and truth. This ideal reader was a renowned, respected and important author and critic, and he became my friend. I write for him because he represents for me the best in literature, in thinking, in humanity and because I always want to write something that he would like to read.” – Tessa McWatt

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“How you wear the environment is the key to auditioning” – Mahershala Ali

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‘Atticus is the quintessential emblem of the “good white Southerner,” of “moral white America.” What I hope that my book will do—by providing the historical context for understanding what Lee was battling with and what she was trying to do with the character of Atticus—is help us be more well-informed about the political struggles that shaped not only her, but also the South and the nation more broadly. Whatever you may think of To Kill a Mockingbird as a piece of fiction, I think that understanding Atticus and critically engaging with how we’ve long been taught certain romanticized notions of racial morality are important for all of us.’ – Joseph Crespino

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Q. What if you were in a room with aspiring writers? What advice would give to them?

Francie Latour: Read read read read. The best way to become a better writer is to read, and to study the architecture of every good piece of writing you come across.

As with all content on wadadlipen.wordpress.com, except otherwise noted, this is written by Wadadli Pen founder, coordinator, and blogger Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, Oh Gad!, Musical Youth, Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure, and With Grace). All Rights Reserved.

Remember to #readAntiguaBarbuda #voteAntiguaBarbuda