Welcome to the latest installment of the Bocas Book Bulletin, a monthly roundup of Caribbean literary news, curated by NGC Bocas Lit Fest, Trinidad and Tobago’s annual literary festival, and published in the Sunday Express.
New releases
The Stranger Who Was Myself (Peepal Tree Press), a candid, poignant and questioning memoir by Trinidadian writer Barbara Jenkins, records her childhood and youth in pre-Independence Trinidad, her departure on August 31, 1962, on a government scholarship, her experience of 1960s Britain as a university student and then as a young wife and mother — and culminates in her eventual return to Trinidad. This portrait of the young writer is also a portrait of her extended family, the colonial town where she grew up, and its class and ethnic hierarchies. Jenkins’ sense of being constantly an outsider or “stranger,” even to herself, gives her memoir a unique psychological insight. Her patient and supple prose propels the reader through a narrative that is both unique and representative of a generation of Trinidadians negotiating big questions of identity and belonging in the era of Independence.
The Dreaming (Peepal Tree Press), the debut book by Trinidadian Andre Bagoo (author of several books of poetry and one of essays), revolves around a group of queer men in contemporary Trinidad, variously searching for love, sex, family, and safety. Comedy and evil are never far apart in these tales, which hearken back to VS Naipaul’s keen social observation but are also unafraid to delve into the dark places of loneliness, longing and heartbreak.
Radical Normalization (Carcanet Press), the first full-length book of poetry by Dominican writer Celia Sorhaindo, ranges in its concerns from family life to mental health, from the aftermath of natural disaster—specifically, Hurricane Maria, which devastated Dominica in 2017— about a writer’s place in a literary tradition and what poetry can and cannot do to help us navigate personal and collective crises. Curious and restless on the cheek, Sorhaindo’s distinctive Caribbean voice connects the everyday with the eternal.
If I Survive You (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), the debut book of fiction by Jamaican-American Jonathan Escoffery, offers a sequence of linked short stories about a Jamaican family that migrated to Miami in the 1970s and the aftermath over the following decades of that uprooting on the protagonist Trelawny. Born in the U.S., surrounded but also in some ways excluded from his parents’ Jamaican culture, Trelawny’s story is one of survival through trying to make a home for himself in an often hostile society, with a lively attitude towards fate and circumstances.
Writers of Dominica, 1920–2020 (Emmanuel Publishing House), compiled by Alick Lazare, provides a broad and rich overview of Dominica’s literature over the past century, combining a critical study of Jean Rhys’ novel The Wide Sea Sargasso with selection from 44 others. writers of prose and poetry originating from the Nature Island – after “the growth of a national literature from the unstable and insecure social conditions during the colonial era to a more secure and secure society that prevailed in the post-independence period”.
Prices and awards
The OCM Bocas Award 2023 opened for applications in August. Sponsored by One Caribbean Media, and presented annually since 2011, the cross-genre award – for books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction – is considered the most prestigious prize for writers of Caribbean origin or citizenship. The 2023 prize is open to books published in the calendar year 2022. The overall winner is selected from the three genre category winners and presented at the annual NGC Bocas Lit Fest, the largest literary festival of the Anglophone Caribbean. For complete information, including deadline dates and eligibility and submission guidelines, visit www.bocaslitfest.com/awards/ocm.
Writer H Nigel Thomas, who was born in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and immigrated to Canada in 1968, has been announced as the 2022 winner of the Canada Council for the Arts’ Molson Arts Prize. Established in 1964, awarded annually and open to citizens and permanent residents of Canada, the Molson Awards are “intended to encourage continuing contributions to Canada’s cultural and intellectual heritage” and come with an award of CDN$50,000. Thomas is the author of numerous books, including novels, short story collections, and poetry.
The poetry collection Mother Muse by Jamaican Lorna Goodison has been shortlisted for the 2022 Derek Walcott Prize – “awarded annually for a book of poetry by a non-American citizen published anywhere in the world”. Now in its third year, the award comes with a cash prize of US$1,000. The winner will be announced on October 13.
No less than seven writers with Caribbean connections have been appointed Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL), as part of a group of nearly 100 in 2022. They include Malika Booker, Fred D’Aguiar, Kit de Waal, Ferdinand Dennis , Hannah Lowe, Karen McCarthy Woolf and Monique Roffey – with roots in Guyana, Grenada, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis and Trinidad and Tobago. Among other honorary friends “who have made a significant contribution to the advancement of literature as publishers, agents, librarians, booksellers or producers” is Polly Patullo, founder of Dominica-based Papillote Press. And the winner of the RSL’s 2022 Benson Medal, recognizing lifetime achievement in literature, is writer and storyteller Sandra Agard, born in Britain to Guyanese parents. Founded in 1820 and based in the UK, the RSL is a charity which works to “reward literary merit and excite literary talent”.
Other news
The First National Citizens Poetry Slam will close out its tenth anniversary by returning to the physical stage for the finals. The highly anticipated in-person event will be held at Naparima Bowl on October 9, with a ticket cost of $200. The crowd can look forward to strong performances from the Slam finalists as they challenge reigning champion Derron Sandy for the $50,000 grand prize and the coveted title of FCNPS winner. Second and third place finalists will receive $20,000 and $10,000, respectively, courtesy of First Citizens.
NGC Bocas Lit Fest’s Independence Season, a month-long program commemorating T&T’s 60th year of Independence, began on August 31 and runs until Republic Day on September 24. It brings together newly commissioned writing from T&T authors reflecting on our past and future, and a series of discussions and readings focusing on recent books that ask questions about the meaning of belonging and citizenship, all available to watch online on demand. The full schedule is available at www.bocaslitfest.com/independence-2022.
Caribbean Bestsellers
Independent bookstore Paper Based (paperbased.org) shares its best-selling titles in the Caribbean for the past month:
1. The Bread the Devil Knead, by Lisa Allen-Agostini
2. Pleasantview, by Celeste Mohammed
3. The Dreaming, by Andre Bagoo
4. Love the Dark Days, by Ira Mathur
5. The Mark of Cane, by Ken Jaikaransingh
