Preserving our literary heritage by Petamber Persaud
The number of books published during 2019 was not as large as in 2018 but this does not take away from the quality of the works published.
Below are some books crossing my desk during 2019*.
‘We Mark Your Memory: Writings from the Descendants of Indenture’
‘We Mark Your Memory: Writings from the Descendants of Indenture’ edited by David Dabydeen, Maria del Pilar Kaladeen, and Tina K. Ramnarine was launched in Georgetown on Tuesday, May 7, 2019. This book was published to mark the centenary of the abolition of the system in the British Empire (2017–20). It is a collection of new writing of prose and poetry from across the Commonwealth.
‘Spontaneous Deluge’ by Alicia Budhram
Alicia Budhram is an environmentalist, vegan, poet and psychology student. Her first collection of poems, ‘Spontaneous Deluge’ was launched on August 18, 2019, with elaborate décor and celebration matching the scope of the writing and appreciated by a large audience, an impressive number for a book launch on a Sunday. Her first poems came to her spontaneously and that led to a book of almost fifty poems ‘touching of themes of domestic violence, inner dialogue, personal growth, emotions, self-exploration, universal search and man’s destruction of nature’.
‘The Poor Man’s Wisdom’ by Vanrick Beresford
Vanrick Beresford’s ‘The Poor Man’s Wisdom’ was launched on November 29, 2019, in Georgetown. It is a collection of eight of his books including ‘Crown – The Analysis of Life’, ‘The Poor Man’s Wisdom’, ‘The Revelation of Jesus The Christ’, ‘Heavenly Wisdom – Mighty Words’, ‘The Seven Pillars of the Church’ and ‘Guyana in Prophecy’.
‘Rubberoadsters’ by Michael Castello
‘Rubberroadsters’ is a collection of thirteen ‘riveting thrillers’ mainly about people who have lived or who have come into contact with the Rubber Tree Road in Mabaruma, North West District. All of the stories are based on real life incidents and that is what makes this book really interesting for the writer has skillfully woven fact into fiction. This is Castello’s fifth book of stories from the heartland of Guyana.
‘Come Lehwe Reason’ by Eric Huntley
Eric Huntley ‘Come Lehwe Reason: A Journey of 50 years with Walter Rodney’, written and compiled by Eric Huntley, was published Bogle L’Ouverture Publications. 50 years of the journey with Walter Rodney is detailed in fifteen chapters with a ‘publisher’s note’ at the beginning, numerous photographs within and a list of books by Rodney at the end, all coming together to make this book more than just a collector’s item.
Many bits of information are new, others well established facts, both arranged in a new setting and from a new perspective. Rodney’s life and work unfolded in the following chapters, namely, ‘Jamaica Sojourn’, ‘Africa to the Rescue’, ‘The Spark has been lit’, ‘Diary of Events of 16th October, 1968’, ‘Reaction to the ban’, and ‘Poetic Tributes’ in which one significant development must be mentioned and that is the banning of Rodney by Jamaica led to the formation of the Bogle L’Ouverture Publications and its first publication, ‘Groundings with My Brothers’.
‘The Evolution Of Writing In English By And About East Indians Of Guyana, 1838-2018’ by Ameena Gafoor
Following in the wake of her magisterial work on Roy Heath in ‘Aftermath of Empire: The Novels of Roy A.K. Heath’, published by the University of the West Indies Press, Ameena Gafoor has produced another book of immense import to the literature of Guyana but particularly and more importantly this book is a timely addition to the slim list of scholarly works on the writings of East Indian of Guyana.
‘The Evolution Of Writing In English By And About East Indians Of Guyana, 1838-2018’ has been compiled with meticulous care to details and great concern for the preservation of the literature of East Indians. This work, coming 180 years after the arrival of East Indians to Guyana, flies in the face of sins of omission and sins of commission with regards to the composition of the literature of the region. The quantity and quality of literature that was bought here by the people who came is an indication that the Indians who came were not mere ‘illiterate peasants’ and that their contribution to the literature of the region was slighted and undervalued.
One of the reasons for Gafoor’s most recent publication is ‘a significant effort to set the record straight with respect to Indian Guyanese literacy, and literary scholarly production’ (Dabydeen).
Gafoor spells out the objectives of this work saying that ‘this bibliography seeks to capture the imaginative and objective writings of East Indians in Guyana including statements by Guyanese artists as well as statements by art historians and critiques by art critics of the significant works of visual arts produced by Guyanese artists of East Indian extract…includes works of Anthology, Literary Criticism, Critiques on the Visual Arts, Creative Writing, Social History, Education, Governance, Politics, Journalisms, Accounting and Financial Management’.
More importantly, this work is organized in chronological order to better trace the development of the body of writings’. This timeline serves many purposes including events that may have has ‘an impact on the consciousness of East Indians in Guyana and, in some instances, prompted the writings’ and facts that possibly ‘shaped the lives of East Indians as well as citizens in modern Guyana’.
‘A Hidden Legacy’ by Kim Sheldon
‘A Hidden Legacy’ was shortlisted for the London Literary Festival and according to its author, ‘it is about a painting done by Allan Ramsay who was the Court painter in England during the late 1700s and he actually painted Queen Charlotte with her natural features because it is said she was a mixed race woman and it [the novel] is about how the main characters in my book have been painted out which were the two children of colour. They were painted out and covered up because slavery at that time was either popular or unpopular and if you were nouveau riche in that business, you didn’t really want to say you were in that business. The book is about their lives; how one child returns to the Caribbean becoming a revolutionary and the other one, a girl, joins the abolitionist movement. KS One of the things I wanted to put into to it because this is the real hidden legacy as well for there were black people in London and at the time, there were 15,000 black people which people rarely talked about – some did well in life, some had normal lives, some did not do so well in life. But there were many interesting people there of colour and many of my fictional characters will meet true life character like the famous violinist George Bridgetower’.
‘My book of Poetry 1’ by Alicia Daniels
This book consists of fifty-one poems written for various occasions, opportunities gifted her by her local church as she addressed ‘Mohter’s Day’, ‘Father’s Day’, ‘New Year’s Eve’, and ‘Easter’. Her poems appeared in The Guyana Annual.
‘Is you madness, nah me own’ and ‘Blackout Daze’ by Gabrielle Mohamed
The blurb of the first title says Ms Mohamed ‘is a Creole poet employing her country’s native vernacular and post – colonialist notion within her work in the hopes of avoiding a resurrection and resuscitation of the colonialist touchstones’ as portrayed in poems like ‘welcome to the graveyard a imperialism’, ‘Elizabeth, de un-Indian Coolie gurl’ and ‘Great Grandmudda Lakshmi’. Mohamed is a prizewinning poet and her work was first featured in The Guyana Annual.
‘Ma Mae’s Legacy’ by Melva Archer-Persico
‘Ma Mae’s Legacy’ is Persico’s first collection of stories where she is like a live griot at a storytelling session inviting the audience to participate. As the blurb says the book provides ‘a snapshot of life in Guyana from the early twentieth century to the present’ by way of focusing on the following themes: ‘life in matrifocal households …Love, betrayal and dysfunction…Growing up …growning old…Migration, heritage and the diaspora’.
‘Jung Bahadur Singh of Guyana: 1886-1956’ by Baytoram Ramharack
Focusing on unsung heroes of Guyana, Baytoram Ramharack follows up on his ‘Against the grain: Balram Singh Rai and the Politics of Guyana’ with another significant work, ‘Jung Bahadur Singh of Guyana (1886-1956): Politician, ship doctor, labor leader and protector of Indians’. The blurb says that JB Singh was a pioneer in many ways in Guyana and the Caribbean and that his ‘contributions towards nation-building in Guyana were unmatched by many of his peers…JB Singh relentlessly advocated for universal adult suffrage’.
‘Kiskadee Days: Village People’ by Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra
‘Kiskadee Days: Village People’ was born of an adventurous spirit and the stories are adventures into the past of a rural Guyana during the colonial and post-colonial eras and are coloured by characters that we can relate to, ladies of various shades and shapes and of different inclinations and callings such as the pastry maker, the washerwoman, the village gossiper, the roadside vendor, with generic names like Miss Lady and Marajin, all of this coupled with the ‘budderashun lil bias’ [boys]. Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra’s storytelling skill is at its best when she mixes humour with pathos and Standard English with Creolese. ‘Kiskadee Days: Village People’ is food for thought, adventure and nostalgia.
‘The Dark of the Sea’ by Imam Baksh
Imam Baksh’s ‘The dark of the Sea’ is yet another award- winning title following ‘People of the Spider’ and numerous prizewinning stories appearing in The Guyana Annual. ‘The Dark of the Sea’ is a sort of indictment of our education system and dysfunctional rural community and the author uses this to spin another fantastical adventure this time beneath ‘muddy waves’ of the Essequibo River where a disadvantaged school boy becomes a hero.
‘Shame on me’ by Tessa McWatt
‘Sharing my Memoirs- My big book’ by Frank Narine
‘Under the Tamarind Tree’ by Rosaliene Bacchus
‘Woman Value and Purpose: a key piece in creation’s design’ by Ediclia Bastardo
‘Oil Dorado: Guyana’s Black Gold edited by John Mair and Neil Fowler
*Manuscripts (and there are a few on my desk) not included.
Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com
