Preserving the Caribbean's Literary Heritage

‘Inspired by the Archives’ panel chaired by Kei Miller, with Anu Lakhan, 

Breanne Mc Ivor, Andre Bagoo and K. Miller (left to right)

Caribbean Literary Heritage (CLH) is a Leverhulme-funded research project that focuses on raising awareness about the importance of Caribbean literary legacies and their preservation, as well as generating and promoting research on literary archives, author’s record keeping practices and fuller literary histories. Led by Professor Alison Donnell and award-winning Jamaican author and Professor Kei Miller, this three-year long project will explore these issues from a variety of angles with the objective of connecting the past and present of Caribbean literature in thinking about future long-term preservation.

At Bocas Lit Fest, where CLH collaborated with the festival around the theme of literary heritage, Alison Donnell explained how this project had been in her mind for a long time. Introducing ‘Secret Lives: Why Literary Archives Matter’, one of the panels she chaired at the festival, Donnell pointed out: "Sometimes I find the name of a woman writer [in the archives] but no work, sometimes I find the work but nothing about her, so it had always been my dream to be able to have a project that could look seriously at this.”

 ‘Secret Lives: Why Literary Archives Matter’, from left to right: Evelyn O’Callaghan, 

Kei Miller, Alison Donnell and Shara McCallum.

Kei Miller, Caribbean literary scholar Evelyn O’Callaghan and poet Shara McCallum joined Donnell on this panel at Bocas Lit Fest. In reflecting about the role of archives, Miller talked about how the eloquence of Alexander Bustmante’s letters challenges popular portrayals and myths about him, adding the poignant question: “How do the archives counter-stories”?

As stated in the project’s website, Caribbean Literary Heritage is concerned with the Caribbean’s literary past and the region’s tangible and intangible literary heritage. It is particularly interested in neglected writers and writings at risk of being lost, and in thinking about what influences such precarity. At present, there is no established platform to access the location and scope of authors’ papers, including many scattered and undocumented sources. The literary histories that researchers and students can access are often incomplete and privilege male writers, as well as those who migrated and published with presses in the global north. This project wants to enable fuller literary histories to be told and their sources to be known, preserved and made accessible.

The main aims of the project are:
•    to create a fuller literary history of the period 1940-1980
•    to recover stories of forgotten writers and writings
•    to help writers save today’s manuscripts and papers for tomorrow’s researchers
•    to bring together academics, archivists and writers to discuss the changing nature of Caribbean literary archives across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

Part of the team Caribbean Literary Heritage at Bocas Lit Fest. 

From left to right: Zakiya McKenzie, Jennifer McDerra, Alison Donnell and Kei Miller.

You can check out this link to find out more about the project’s team members:
https://www.caribbeanliteraryheritage.com/people/

The project’s blog publishes stories and reflections around literary archives and research from a variety of perspectives and experiences: those of writers, researchers, librarians and archivists. It aims to be a space for dialogue, sharing and collaboration and we invite those interested to contribute by getting in touch with us via our site’s contact form or email address (www.caribbeanlitheritage@gmail.com) 

The partnership between CLH and Bocas Lit Fest also resulted in the commission of three Trinidadian writers: Andre Bagoo, Anu Lakhan, and Breanne McIvor visiting and responding to a variety of local archives at the Alma Jordan Library, UWI St. Augustine. They shared powerful creative writing inspired by that experience in a Bocas Lit Fest event chaired by Kei Miller and wrote three engaging pieces for our blog. You can enjoy them, and all our other blog posts here: https://www.caribbeanliteraryheritage.com/blog/

There is also a section entitled 10 Questions on Caribbean Literary Heritage in which Caribbean writers discuss their first piece of writing, their first and current readings, and their interest in the literary past.
https://www.caribbeanliteraryheritage.com/ten-questions/

 

Zakiya McKenzie interviewing Breanne Mc Ivor at Bocas Lit Fest

We would like to share our call to Caribbean writers and those of Caribbean descent. Please check out and fill in our author questionnaire about your own working papers and recording practices. We are very interested in hearing writers’ views!

https://www.caribbeanliteraryheritage.com/writers-survey/ 

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You can follow us on Twitter: @CaribLiteraryH, Facebook: Caribbean Literary Heritage, and Instagram: caribliteraryh

(!) TUNE IN on Twitter and FB for International Archives Day, this Saturday 9th June!! Follow our links as we celebrate archives, and tell us about your experiences and best memories in the archives using the #CaribbeanLitHeritage and #InternationalArchivesDay

25th Miami Annual Sunrise Ancestral Remembrance

25th Miami Annual Sunrise Ancestral Remembrance of the Middle Passage Ceremony, honoring the memory of all who endured the Middle Passage, known as the Transatlantic "slave trade"  (the millions who perished and those who survived to give life to future and present generations).

Traditional Native American and African as well as multicultural contemporary prayers and meditations, performances, open "Village Talk" and the welcoming of offerings of fruits, flowers, grains, and other appropriate items to be carried out to sea. 

Spiritual leaders, drummers, musicians, performers, creative artists specially invited.
WHEN:

Sunday, June 10, 2018, 5:30 - 8:00 a.m.
The second weekend in June has been selected by a growing number of cities around the country and in the African Motherland as the date for Annual Remembrance ceremonies.

In Miami, the sunrise hour has been traditionally chosen because the land is clean and refreshed, and also in remembrance of all those who had to work form "Can't see in the morning until can't see at night." 


WHERE:
Historic Virginia Key Beach Park
4020 Virginia Beach Drive (off Rickenbacker Causeway)
Miami, FL 33149

Directions:
I-95 or US 1 to Rickenbacker Causeway/Key Biscayne
Rickenbacker Causeway (Sunpass toll) to Virginia Key and left turn at second traffic signal, just before the bridge to Key Biscayne.
Park entrance is 1/4 mile ahead.

WHO:
 
All are welcome.
The Annual Remembrance is free and open to the public.

The ceremony is not limited to any particular belief or ideology.

For further info: 305-904-7620 or 786-260-1246.


"The wholeness of the living is diminished when the Ancestors are not honored."

Graphic: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/374009944039844394/

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Hola, Negrita!

So I can retire in peace.

At the end of every semester, my students give their own “This I Believe” speech, which was inspired by the NPR series.

I’ve been using my novel, Garvey’s Ghost, as the textbook,  and one of my students confessed during her speech.

I remember complaining to my mom about my skin color one Sunday morning. My two older brothers are both white and I am what you would call “Café con Leche.” I just wanted to look like my mother and brothers. The fact that my brothers used to tease me about being a “Negrita” made me insecure. When we would go grocery shopping they would point at a box of Negrita flan and say, “Look, what is Melody doing on the cover?” When my brothers did that I would cry and cry, until I could not cry anymore.

Now that the semester is over, I asked her to expand on the idea and she wrote this.

Reading Garvey’s Ghost brought all these memories back into the light. Just like Kathryn, I was insecure about my appearance and I needed guidance towards self-discovery. Fortunately, my parents were there to steer me into who I was meant to be, a daughter of God.

Garvey’s Ghost encourages us to think of ourselves as perfect human beings. We need to wake up to the truth that we are beautiful and intelligent people (Philp 215).

I am very grateful that I was exposed to this truth at a young age. I learned to love myself and embrace the caramel skin that God gave me. Garvey’s Ghost is not only about Kathryn finding herself, but about the reader finding out who they are.

Nowadays, I love that the first words that come out of my father’s mouth when he sees me; “Hola Negrita, como estas?”

 I think I've accomplished what I needed to do on Calle Ocho.

 

geoffreyphilp.com is back!

My cyber-squatter must’ve fallen asleep at the wheel or maybe s/he gave up. Either way, I am happy to have my name back.

For the past five years a cyber-squatter has owned geoffreyphilp.com and would not release it unless I paid at least $1000. I know, I know, I should’ve been more careful. But a few years ago, I was going through a rough patch. A very rough patch. I had a lot on my mind, and I thought, you know, who cares? Well, someone did.

S/he saw an opportunity and registered geoffreyphilp.com under his/her name. When I tried to register geoffreyphilp.com under my name, I was directed to a site where I needed to pay $1000 to get back my name.

I didn’t have $1000 and I was angry at myself for my mistake. Still, I persisted. Isn’t that my life story?

For the past five years around this time, I checked to see if geoffreyphilp.com was available. Nope. Then, a few weeks ago I checked and voila! The site was free once again. I was free once again.

I quickly registered the website under my name and worked feverishly to set it up again.
So, I guess you could say that it’s a new and improved site. So take a look around and tell your friends about it. Then, come back every now and then for updates on my work.

One Love,
Geoffrey

Book Launch: "The Gathering" by Malachi Smith

The Gathering
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Jepa's Place,
7153 West Oakland Park Blvd.
Lauderhill, FL 33313

"The Gathering takes us on a lyrical dance...at once rub-a-dub, at once three-step, at once quiet crooning in your ears as you 'rent-a-tile' ...Malachi, the word-Smith, has given us a poetry collection that seamlessly moves us through the soundscapes where love, history, memory, and the prophets sway our most powerful imaginings."
~Heather Russell, author of Legba's Crossing: Narratology and the African Atlantic

"One of Jamaica’s most compelling performance poets, Malachi Smith is offering here praise-poems mainly, and elegies, with these and other pieces raising questions about love, guilt,  identity, culture, politics, and eye-opening experiences in travel.  There are shafts of protest, but the dominant mood is of compassion.  The policeman dub poet is a 'healer-man.'"   
~Mervyn Morris, OM

"In The Gathering, Malachi displays his characteristic lyrical gifts in the exploration of subjects as diverse as travel, family, drug addiction, and the plight of the sufferahs. In these poems, the call of the Caribbean dances through memories that trigger his imagination and the various masks he employs to dramatize events. Sometimes a wizened storyteller, sometimes a prophet with magisterial lines, “Let them come,” Malachi delves into the political and class conflicts that divide the people of Jamaica and its diaspora, yet these differences disappear under the gaze of a poet who believes in the power of redemption."
~Geoffrey Philp, author of Garvey’s Ghost.

"Malachi's poems travel skillfully, confidently from the stage to the page. Here is an experienced bard and guide who writes and chants...With compassion about life in all its heartbreak and beauty, he has walked the walk and talked the talk for a long time. This gathering of poems is his generous gift to us. Give thanks."
 ~Lorna Goodison, Poet Laureate of Jamaica and winner of the prestigious 2018 Windham-Campbell Prize.

"Malachi Smith is the most dynamic poetry performer I've ever had the pleasure to witness."
~ Philip Hammial, Australian poet and sculptor.

Introduction of Marlon James at Cornell University by Carole Boyce Davies

  Carole Boyce Davies and Marlon James, Ithaca, NY, 12 Oct 2017. 

Photo by Stephanie Vaughn

MARLON JAMES INTRODUCTION
The Creative Writing Program of the Department of English, Cornell University
Fall 2017 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series
presents:

Marlon James, Novelist

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned;
Until there are no longer first class and second class citizens of any nation;
Until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes;
Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race;
Until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained.
Until bigotry and prejudice and malicious and inhuman self-interest have been replaced by understanding and tolerance and good-will;
Until all Africans stand and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes of all men, as they are in the eyes of Heaven;

The chorus as we know is:  “There will be war,” a promise of unending violence. And we already know that these wars are both across national boundaries; but often internal as well. And in the case of the Americas, the violence of indigenous genocide, the African maafa and the succeeding three centuries of enslavement and continuing colonialism, American imperialism and its attending ills, have cumulatively produced a certain unending violence, often re-enacted within groups. 

These words from Haile Selassie’s  1963 speech to the United Nations are just as relevant now as they were over fifty years ago. I begin with them deliberately.  They inspired  and were charged by Jamaican reggae legend Bob Marley in one of his classics. It is significant to mention these two conjunctions, as they are precisely what animates Marlon James’s classic text.  Bob Marley functions as a veiled fictional presence in Marlon James’s prize winning,  A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014). Bob Marley was the voice of  resistance, throughout the US and Caribbean Black Power period, (1970’s-90’s) engaging political and knowledge fields like Pan Africanism,  Rastafari, the African Diaspora, Human Rights but also Love, Sexuality and liberation, for a generation, with rhythms and lyrics that became movement anthems that still endure.  In many ways the singer, as he is termed in this novel,  becomes the creative metaphor  or center of the text, if one exists;  but also the one who in many ways generates the text and around whom but also to whom, some of the killing is directed. Marlon lets us see the singer through the eyes of several male characters but also through the voice of Nina Burgess the most fully developed woman in the text, who lives to migrate to the U.S. 

But around the singer as around Nina Burgess, who functions as a witness,  there is an extreme masculinized violence  in language, as in politics and definitely in practice, that populates this not at all brief history.  Some call it a polyphony others a cacophony  or even a whirlwind of voices, another,  a collage of voice through which these stories are told in a cast of characters already made it seems for screen and optioned by HBO.   Here the dead speak right from the start. Here assassins execute; CIA agents operate; killers kill; drug dealers deal in what all reviewers agree is an epic novel, taking Caribbean literature fully into new possibilities.  For one of his fellow Jamaican writers, Geoffrey Philp author of Garvey’s Ghost  the following assessment:  “Compared to earlier writers, Marlon does not prettify or romanticize the violence.  He pushes the boundaries of what is possible in Caribbean writing and goes to places in his writing that many of us have not dared to go.”  

For me, a Caribbean-American feminist critic,  Marlon James had revealed his ability to develop a space for women and resistance in The Book of Night Women.  (2009)  set in plantation Jamaica in which before “Django”  we have an enslaved woman, killing a rapacious slave master and burning down a plantation great house (think of a Linda Brent who does not hide in the attic for seven years) and walking away from the act.  Still my favorite is his John Crow’s Devil  (2005 )  an experimental and surprisingly beautiful encounter  with his version Caribbean magic realism,  sexuality, insanity, possession, the supernatural with corrupt evangelical ministers as the lead characters,  all carried out in a Caribbean country side,  which will never make it into the tourist brochures. This book we learn was rejected over 70 times. For the would-be writers in the audience:  Courage!

Marlon James who describes himself as a post-post-colonial, in the sense of no longer having to deal with the UK but with the USA was born in Jamaica in 1970.  He writes about his coming into himself as a writer and in claiming his sexual identity in “From Jamaica to Minesota to Myself” New York Times, March 10, 2015. And finding himself in Minnesota,  even as he gains international fame, he remains grounded,  as  he wrote, after the acquittal of the police killer of Philando Castille, the realities of  the psychic and physical violence of continuing racism and the possibilities of accidental  or deliberate police execution  as a reality for black people in America.  It is a classic critique which I recommend to all titled:  “Smaller, And Smaller, and Smaller” (June 17, 2017) which my Writing Black Experience read today and had amazing responses to:

I have a big global voice, but a small local one, because I don’t want to be a target, and resent that in 2017, that’s still the only choice I get to have. … I go out of my way to avoid police, because I don’t know how to physically act around them. Do I hold my hands in the air and get shot, Do I kneel and get shot? Do I reach for my ID and get shot?

Do I say I’m an English teacher and get shot? Do I tell them everything I am about to do, and get shot? Do I assume than seven of them will still feel threatened by one of me, and get shot? Do I simply stand and be big black guy and get shot? Do I fold my arms and squeeze myself into smaller and get shot? Do I be a smartass and get shot? Do I leave my iPhone on a clip of me on Seth Meyers, so I can play it and say, see, that’s me. I’m one of the approved black guys. And still get shot?

… You will never know how it feels to realize that it doesn’t matter how many magazines articles I get, or which state names a day after me. Tomorrow when I get on my bike, I am big black guy, who might be shot before the day ends, because my very size will make a cop feel threatened. Or if I’m a woman, my very mouth. And a jury of white people, and people of colour sold on white supremacy will acquit him. And even me hoping for hipster points on my fixed wheel bike, is countered by them thinking I probably stole the bike.

Marlon James won the 2015 Man Booker Prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings, and has also won many other prizes for his other works.  He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and teaches English and creative writing at Macalester College.

Thomas Glave in  his introduction to  Our Caribbean.  A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, (2008)  says:  “What would it be like to attend – to truly hear,  for once – the many conversations that we have had with each other and still need so very much to hear? What would it be like to listen to and now, by way of a gathering of voices like this once, actually observe these conversations between ourselves?”   

I invite you to listen to Marlon James.




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The Marcus Garvey Rootz Extravaganza Moves Into High Gear

The Lauderdale Lakes City Council officially endorsed the 2017 Marcus Garvey Rootz Extravaganza on Tuesday, July 25, 2017 at its City Commission meeting.

Accordingly, Thursday, August 17, 2017 will once again be Marcus Garvey Appreciation Day in the City of Lauderdale Lakes, Florida.

Lauderdale Lakes Mayor Hazelle Rogers signed and sealed the proclamation recognizing the annual Marcus Garvey Rootz Extravaganza  and she presented the official city document recognizing the event to the President of Rootz Foundation Inc. Priest Douglas Smith and Vice President Ras I. Jabulani Tafari at the City Commission chamber.

The Garvey Extravaganza is presented by the Rootz Foundation Inc. in association with the City of Lauderdale Lakes.

The 2007 Marcus Garvey Rootz Extravaganza celebrating the 130th anniversary of Marcus Garvey’s birth, takes place at the Lauderdale Lakes Educational & Cultural Center, 3850 West Oakland Park, Lauderdale Lakes, Florida 33319. The birthday celebration starts at 7.00 p.m. and runs until 10.00 p.m. There is no charge for admission.

The specially invited Guest Speaker for the event will be Garvey scholar and University of the West Indies professor, Dr. Rupert Lewis. The evening's entertainment will be highlighted by Kristine Alicia, Eugene Gray and Revalation.

###

 

1 Minute Book Review: Come Let Us Sing Anyway

Name of the book: Come Let Us Sing Anyway

Author: Leone Ross

Publisher: Peepal Tree Press

What’s the book about?

In Leone Ross’s luminous collection of short stories – ranging from richly extended stories to intense pieces of flash fiction, set between Jamaica and Britain –  anything can happen.

Ross’s setting may be familiar and her characters recognisable, but these stories take a magical/fantastical turn that dramatically transforms the way we see. Other stories draw us straight into the world of the fantastical or the implausible with such meticulous and concrete detail that we accept these as reality: a wife returns from the dead and their marital bickering resumes, a headless girl barely lifts an eyebrow among her school companions, a security guard collects discarded hymens and uncovers a deeper empathy for women.

At the heart of the stories is Leone Ross’s refusal to accept any boundary between the erotic and the most inventive kind of pornography. There is a seriousness here too, in the author’s intentions: a vision of the fluidity of the person, the inequalities of the body politic – from the deaths of black people at the hands of the police, to the deep shifts that signal subtle changes in the nature of capitalism.

This is a richly varied, witty and entertaining collection whose frankness may sometimes tickle, sometimes shock; but always engages the intellect and the heart.

Why am I reading this book?

To be honest, I haven’t finished reading the book. I bought Come Let Us Sing Anyway after I read an excerpt on the Peepal Tree web site and I was hooked. But then, after reading just the first line from the first chapter (see below), I knew I was encountering a formidable intelligence—that Leone Ross was attempting something that I hadn’t seen before and I was enchanted.

Quote from the Book: “Mrs Neecy Brown’s husband is falling in love. She can tell, because the love is stuck to the walls of the house, making the wallpaper sticky, and it has seeped into the calendar in her kitchen, so bad she can’t see what date it is, and the love keeps ruing the food—whatever she does or however hard she concentrates, everything turns to mush.”

Update: June 3, 2017. I've finished reading Come Let Us Sing and it has lived up to my expectations. I also learned a few things too.
 

Where to buy: http://www.peepaltreepress.com/books/come-let-us-sing-anyway

About the Author

Leone Ross is a novelist, short story writer, editor, journalist and academic of Jamaican and Scottish ancestry. She was born in England and grew up in Jamaica. Her first novel, All The Blood Is Red was long listed for the Orange Prize, her second novel, Orange Laughter was chosen as a BBC Radio 4's Women's Hour Watershed Fiction favourite. In 2015, Leone was one of three judges for the Manchester Prize for Fiction.