New year, new challenges

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The semester began this week, and as usual it's like getting on a skateboard at the top of a really long hill that starts with a fairly gentle downhill slope that turns into a steep drop as you round the midterm corner. So you start with the knowledge that before you know it, the wind will be making your cheeks shiver and your eyes brim with tears, and you'll be heading towards a landing that could be harder than you expected.I will try being a better blogger, but the same situation that held me back in the second half of last year still obtains: my mother is suffering from cancer and we are spending all of our energies helping her fight, or live with, it. The operative word is "live". Some days are better than others; some months have been better than others. I'm happy to say that the year began much better than we expected, and Mummy is holding her own, with grace.A little word about what I'm teaching this semester. Besides the requisite introductory courses, there are two others that have not yet failed to excite me when I take them on: a course in social research methods, and a course in advanced English skills. What I like about both of them is the fact that they are courses that teach skills rather than content, and so there is room for a variety of interesting approaches.Here are my approaches, then. In the Social Research course, my students take part in a long-term ongoing piece of research about the economics of Junkanoo. Junkanoo is a well-researched topic in The Bahamas, but what is missing from the canon is a discussion about the economic impact of the festival. It's not cheap! Plenty money is spent on it -- but what is the return? (Please note I'm not assuming that there isn't any return. On the contrary; I'm supposing that there is a large return, but that we haven't worked out yet what that might be.) The students who enrol in my course engage in research projects that add to this study. Every semester I get excited about what they will discover.In Advanced English, the skills of writing and reading critically are developed while students engage in studies about Bahamian culture and society. Last year I decided to design a set of readings and discussions about democracy and The Bahamas, and the last time I taught the course, a year ago, it worked out really well. Once again, I'm excited about where we'll go this semester with it.I hope that I'll be able to contribute to these discussions from time to time here on this blog. Keep your eyes open. Assuming I will find the balance between the personal and the professional challenges, this year on this blog should be interesting.Finally, I'm also working on another book of poetry. Poinciana Paper Press's publication of Mama Lily and the Dead will soon be accompanied by a much less illustrious collection of my early writings, this one self-published (via Lulu). No promises about the greatness of the collection, but it'll be around for anyone who (like Obediah Michael Smith, who inspired it) wants to know what I was writing twenty-odd years ago.So! there it is. Happy new year to all.

Announcing Mama Lily and the Dead

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This chapbook has been almost 10 years in the making. Yes, I write slowly. But it's here! Launched on Wednesday December 29th at the Hub, Mama Lily and the Dead is a collection of poems about the life of one woman, my paternal grandmother. It's been a while. Copies are available from the publisher, Poinciana Paper Press, and maybe, maybe, after I finish delivering all my belated Christmas presents, from me.Cheers.

On sabbatical

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from this blog for the rest of the month. If you want to know why, go here:Shakespeare in Paradiseor here:tongues of the oceanIn the meantime, I'm thinking a lot a lot, about what we can do when we believe in ourselves, and what we don't when we don't.I'm also working on a series of "Drive By Podcasts" -- meditations recorded while driving around town. LOADS of fodder for discussion, believe you me! If they work out the way they ought, you'll see some being posted on this blog by month's end.Cheers.

Jackson Burnside on Day of Absence

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Is the Emperor naked? Is Art really absent? Nicolette makes it abundantly clear that, “We Bahamians have cultivated the habit of supporting certain cultural endeavours simply because they are produced by Bahamians, regardless of quality. We have suppressed our critical faculties. We have come to expect sub-standard work from Bahamians, so much so that the very adjective “Bahamian” stands for mediocrity.” While this sad case of affairs is undeniable, it is also true that there is an abundance of individuals and organizations that, in spite of the culture of the “Emperor and his court”, produce diverse expressions of the highest standards.This is a blow that Nico strikes on the defensive in her “Second Response” to Ward’s stinging critique. She asks two questions, how good are we? And, how do we get better? She also argues that most of us choose to present the culture of mediocrity to make the argument that we are not that good. She turns that argument on itself and begs us to focus on the positive. There is no argument from any of us that for a country of our size we have produced an enormous volume of excellent Artwork of all kinds.Ward argues, however, that when we think of “the world of Art”, we are thinking mostly of artists generally from outside our borders. This is a very important issue, in his mind, because he says, ” The reality is that most, if not all of the images and products that filter our way from great foreign cultural creators, such as the United States, have been produced by professionals who have already been paid. To ask the right question therefore, is to ask, what would the Bahamas be without Bahamian Art?”I agree with Ward that the metaphor of absence must be questioned. Ward says. “We do not need any more absence. We need to make our presence felt”. We particularly need to make our presence felt to ourselves, so that we, Bahamians, would not automatically conclude that to get quality creative production or design, we need to look outside of ourselves.

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Bahamas Writers' Summer Institute

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Telcine Turner-Rolle reads at the opening of BWSIYou know, it's about time I blogged about this topic. It's been coming for a good long while, and now we're in its third and middle week, and it seems to be going really really well.What is it? you ask. Well, I could give you a long answer, but I'll spare you that. Here's the short answer, culled from the FaceBook Group page:

The Bahamas Writers Summer Institute, in collaboration with the College of the Bahamas’ School of English Studies, is a Caribbean-centered creative writing program that brings together beginning and established writers in an exploration of craft, theory, and the relationship between imagination and culture.

It started two weeks ago, with classes in various areas of the craft as well as a class in Caribbean context and literature and special seminar events where the students enrolled in the various disciplines can come together to talk about writing and literature as a whole. These take place on Mondays, Tuesdays and Saturdays. On Monday evenings there are conversations about the business of writing, on Saturdays there are readings and discussions with practising writers about their craft, and on Tuesdays are the discussions about the Caribbean context and literature of the region. Wednesdays and Thursdays are the craft-specific workshops.I'm teaching playwriting. I have a class of four students, and so far it's been a blast! The other workshops are creative non-fiction run by Marion Bethel, fiction run by Helen Klonaris, screenwriting run by Maria Govan, and poetry run by Obediah Michael Smith.It's the brainchild of Helen Klonaris, supported by Marion Bethel, and grew out of the movement that began with the establishment of the Bahamas International Literary Festival by Alesha Hart last year. If I had more photographs I'd show them, but they're all on Facebook.But I started this because last night's discussion (at the Hub) was about blogging. The discussants were Ian Fernander, Lynn Sweeting, Angelique Nixon and myself, and we spoke to an audience of writers and others many of whom read blogs, but virtually none of whom blog themselves. The discussion covered the value of blogging -- and of course with people like Lynn and Angelique and me there we talked about the radical power of blogs and bloggers.The Institute continues till the end of July. The Monday and Saturday sessions at the Hub are open to all (they start at 7 and end around 9). If you're interested, drop by -- and if you like the idea, I'm sure Marion and Helen would love to let you know what's happening next year! One thing, though -- next year's Institute should have its own open blog, so that people who aren't on Facebook can see what it's doing.Here's the schedule, courtesy of Bahamas Uncensored, which is the only place you can find it on the open web.

M.O. for the rest of the year

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I've been a bad blogger lately. There is a reason (isn't there always?) and it's the simplest reason in the world -- I'm stretched to the limit, and I've got five blogs going on six to maintain. So things tend to slip.I had all kinds of plans for the year. I still have them, but they're going to change somewhat. I had planned to issue a new volume of Essays on Life, for instance, and that is still a priority. I had planned to finish my book of Lily poems and submit it for publication, which in itself is a lengthy process, and I had hoped also to begin working on a second collection of poems, this one about the Bahama Islands. Maybe that one, though, will finish itself before Lily; I don't know.And I had planned to write a memoir about my five years in the civil service. There's such a thing as theatre of the absurd, and my favourite proponents of that are Eugène Ionesco and Tom Stoppard; and I never realized how close to absurdism life in the Bahamian civil service can be. (I'm sure all bureaucracies work similarly, especially in the postcolonial world; but I know the Bahamian model the best.) Days I'd wake up I'd be reminded also of Armah's The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born.But Shakespeare in Paradise and tongues of the ocean, together with my return to COB and commitment to research and teaching, are more than enough to keep me busy! So some things have to be postponed, or rescheduled.Accordingly, I plan to keep checking in on my personal blogs, but far less frequently than before. I'm hoping to post something once a week on each, just to keep things going. For the rest of the year, that's how it'll be.Cheers to you all, and watch this space -- just not as frequently perhaps as you used to.

Interview - Antilles: the weblog of the CRB

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I count Nicholas Laughlin as one of my cyberfriends, though I think we really met over the telephone during the last CARIFESTA (such arts festivals are always, truly, such a waste of time, are they not? They make no connections, advance no careers, clearly, and they are so much a waste of money that we prefer to spend our millions on, oh, Miss Universe. But I digress.) Since then we've been communicating and collaborating online, and he has been a champion of tongues of the ocean.Anyhow, Nicholas is the valiant editor of the Caribbean Review of Books, which he continues to publish in the face of opposition, failing finances, exhaustion, fed-upness, etc.In the spirit of massive support that he'd already established, he recently interviewed me about tongues. Go check it out.And then, if you like it, go subscribe to the Caribbean Review of Books.Antilles: the weblog of the CRB.

Many Antilles readers are familiar with tongues of the ocean, an online poetry journal based in the Bahamas, which was launched in February 2009. Edited by poet and playwright Nicolette Bethel, and focused on poetry from the Caribbean and its diasporas, tongues plans to publish three issues per year, with the contents of each issue appearing gradually week by week.Soon after the second issue of tongues — dated June 2009 — began appearing, Bethel answered some questions via email about the journal’s background, influences, and modus operandi.

"On the Wreck of the Henrietta Marie"

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Accepted by The Caribbean Writer.Now this is a poem that has been hanging around my Writing folder for four years or so. Inspired by a conjunction between the travelling exhibition of the slave ship that re-opened the Pompey Museum after the 2001 Market Fire and an in-depth poetry workshop session over at the Poetry Free-For-All, it made the rounds of the appropriate journals. I thought -- wrongly -- that it might get picked up two years ago, when commemorating slavery and its detritus was a year-long affair, but it didn't. I'd almost given up on its being published, not being too sure what was not-right about it and not knowing what to do about it. I'm a big one for letting a poem be, of knowing when something's finished (or ought to be finished), of letting the time pass when it ought to, and after several years of honing and tweaking it seemed to me that "Henrietta Marie" was finished. This year, I pulled it back out, dusted it off and polished it a bit, and then sent it off with four others to The Caribbean Writer. And last month, managing editor Quilin Mars let me know they wanted to publish it.Well, yay, I say. And to others inclined to see rejection slips as always being about the quality of the work (sometimes they are, but not always; sometimes the work doesn't fit the publication), I pass on the writer's advice: never give up, never. The one that publishes you is almost always the last one you try.Here's a bit of it:

I.  Vendue House/Pompey Museum, Nassau, BahamasCome. Stand in a place to sell slaves where planters, farmers, businessmenbought planters, farmers, businessmen.  Just there, a crier stoodbefore a block.  An African stood upon it.  Shackles and lockstrammelled black legs that ached from the straightening.

Go buy The Caribbean Writer Vol 23 if you want to read more.

Not exactly an apology: on ideology, debate, and patriots

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Over the weekend, Rick Lowe and I had an email exchange that didn't end as well as our private exchanges usually do. I won't go into details, but it boiled down to the question of whether I dismissed him in the discussion following the last post or not. He certainly felt dismissed. Not what I intended, but there it is.The matter in question was health insurance, which I declined to discuss. The bigger question, though, was the idea of debate and discussion and whether or not, by not discussing it, and by referring to ideology as my reason for not discussing it, I dismissed Rick and his point.That was not my intention, as I said before. And yet I didn't want to engage with the topic, and I still do not want to for reasons that are very personal. Part of the reason is that Rick and I have discussed health care at some length elsewhere on this blog, and I'm not at all sure that either of us has changed our position. But part of the reason is also, fundamentally, our disagreements are predictable. He is a libertarian; I tend towards socialism. Our positions on any issue are liable to be diametrically opposed, and usually are. Though sometimes a lot can be gained from the discussion, the best debates are those that are supported and/or supportable by evidence. In the case that I avoided, Rick has most of it; I don't have all that much. What I do have is a weight of personal experience, which makes my bias emotional and fundamental, and which skews the discussion in such a way that it is liable to deteriorate.But our private exchange raised the question for me. What is the role of ideology in debates? Speaking for myself, I don't have a whole lot of time for prepackaged ideologies, not even the kinds that makes sense to me, which usually (but not always) fall to the left of the centre. Most ideological stances were developed by dead white men in countries far, far away from here, in times far removed from ours, holding assumptions that do not fully apply to our realities; most ideological stances are only vaguely relevant to our country and our reality.But Rick and I are both patriotic Bahamians. Where I find discussions between us to be most interesting are in the spaces where we agree. Libertarians and socialists usually don't; where we do are in places that touch our shared Bahamian experience. Where we do should be a bright flag for whoever reads our blogs regularly. As for the rest, for me the value is in the debate itself. Conclusions are boring; they're probably going to find us on our sides of the issue in the end, and we'll be joined, predictably, by people who share our positions. But it's the journey that's the fun part.And so Rick, maybe one day I'll engage about health insurance. But not right now. Right now, I'm more interested in the general economy -- and not in how we're spending our money (or not) today, but where we're going to get it in the future. I could be wrong; but I see the current economic time as a symptom of a far greater change in global economics, not an end in itself. Where we're moving I can't say. But what I am pretty sure about is that our country and our government are stuck in a reality that is fast becoming obsolete, and we'd better get all hands on deck, and light every torch around, to figure out what we're going to do when it's over.

Day of Absence: 11th February

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In 1965, an African-American playwright by the name of Douglas Turner Ward wrote a play he called Day of Absence, which told the story of a small town -- any small town -- in the Deep South in which the white inhabitants discover on a particular day that all the black people have disappeared.

When this fact becomes general knowledge, the establishment comes to the brink of chaos. Without its black labor force, the town is paralyzed because of its dependence on this sector of the community.

Part of the reason I agreed to take the job of Director of Cultural Affairs, and much of the reason I left, was that, in many ways like African-Americans in the 1960s USA (and black Bahamians, and people of African heritage the world over), cultural workers in The Bahamas -- artists, musicians, writers, actors, directors, dancers, designers, craftworkers, you name it -- are marginalized, disrespected, and taken for granted in our nation.Thirty-six years after independence and forty-one years after majority rule, creative workers in our country are unable to find work in the areas in which God has gifted them. There are virtually no avenues in The Bahamas to enable creative people to develop and hone their talents, or to enable them to make use of them when they are developed. Our greatest brain drain is arguably in the area of the arts; like Sidney Poitier over sixty years ago, Bahamians who want to exercise their talents in the cultural industries are faced with the choice of pursuing their callings as hobbies at home, or of leaving home to make a living by their gifts elsewhere. And we are all the poorer for it. That we appear to be unaware of the absurdity of this state of affairs in a nation which welcomes several millions of tourists to our shores annually is indicative, to my mind, of our abject conviction as a people that Bahamians, and particularly Bahamians of colour, are congenitally unable to produce, behave, or perform at any level that could possibly be considered world-class, and that it is a waste of time, money and effort to believe anything else.Newsflash. No country can be great, or even good, without its artists. When all has passed away, when all has crumbled and gone, it's not the speeches of the politicians, the enforcement of the country's laws, the profit and the loss, or the tourist arrivals that are left behind to tell the story of the people who once walked this earth. It's the art. It's the statues, the paintings, the music, the poetry. Until we invest and believe in our art, and until we respect our artists, our country will never even be.And so I'm calling for a Day of Absence in honour of all cultural workers in The Bahamas and around the world.On February 11, 2009, I'm asking us all to stop -- for a day, for a moment even, and imagine our country, our world, if we woke up one day and all the artists and cultural workers had disappeared.I see it as a symbolic day, to be started this year and go on annually, where artists can come together in person or in cyberspace, and blog, email, sing, act, perform, speak, or whatever they want to do, in honour of art and artists themselves.I chose February 11 because it's my father's birthday, and the disrespect began to be evident when he was Director of Culture. It wasn't so clear while he was living. As with so much in this country, the people who did not respect what he stood for, who did not respect his art, respected him. Many of the leaders -- the politicians of his day, and certainly the senior civil servants -- had been his schoolmates, had known him and his family for years, and trusted him when he said he could do things. It's for this reason and none other (well, maybe it was also because of our new-nation status too) that culture flourished to the extent that it did during the 1970s and early 1980s in The Bahamas. But his death in August 1987 took everyone by surprise.People say that no one is indispensible, and there is certainly truth in that; but some people, especially when they fill a gap that is created because of ignorance or prejudice or disrespect, are irreplaceable. My father appeared to be one of those people -- not because of any specialness about him (though he was special) but because of the fundamental emptiness and fear of self of the Bahamian people and their leaders.  Our cultural development didn't take place during his tenure because our country respected culture. It took place because our leaders respected him. It took the government 7 years to replace him because they had taken him and his position and the work he was doing so much for granted, and had no idea what they had lost or how to replace it.I know governments are only a part of the equation, but the things he left in place when he died in 1987 have yet to be replicated or replaced by the government or the country of The Bahamas, and culture has absolutely no respect in the national discourse.And so: Day of Absence. It's to be a day like Green Day or World Hunger Day -- a movement, an idea that can catch fire, a spark that can spread without specific action, but just as people see the idea and become ignited by it.Art and culture are the most human, the most divine, the most basic, and the most true actions that any living human being can do. But in The Bahamas (and throughout the world too) arts and culture are far more likely to be laughed at, talked down about, ignored, dismissed, insulted, disrespected, and taken for granted than any other action.There are more creative people and more creative activity in our nation than there are other people with special interests. Yet our government has no legislation that supports our activity. It has a whole national sporting complex in Nassau and has sports fields and sports equipment and sports activities throughout the Bahamas, and it has legislation to govern hotels and tourist activity and education and health and disability, but nothing either in law or on the ground, to support, encourage or develop artistic activity.And yet artists and cultural workers in The Bahamas and throughout the world are the invisible backbone of nations. When people think about what is "Bahamian" they think about what we produce, not what the doctors, lawyers, athletes, or politicians produce. This is true in every part of society, from top to bottom, from secular to religious.And yet no one wants to recognize us, respect us, hire us, support us, or acknowledge that we exist or are important.The Day of Absence concept is designed to get us as artists and society as general to imagine a world without artists. It is a day on which artists can stop what they are doing so that people can notice how fundamental art and artistic production and cultural activity are to everyday life. It is a day on which we encourage DJs to stop playing music for an entire minute, hour, or day, when we ask talk show hosts and newscasters and writers and editors and songwriters and artists and straw workers and advertising agencies and whoever else works in the creative field, is unappreciated for their activity, is producing work that people think of as "soft" or unnecessary, to stop doing what they do so that the people who do not respect us understand for just one moment or just one day that we are important, that without us society stops.It's a day to wear white because it's a day without colour. Artists govern colour.It's a day to be silent because it's a day without music, writing, speeches. Artists produce music, writing, speeches.It's a day to stop spending cash because without artists, money has no meaning -- the designs on our coins and our paper money were created by artists.It's a day to worship silently, without music, or pretty clothing or the Bible, because artists are the vehicles God chooses to express the glory of His creation and Himself.It's a day of reflection, of discussion, of absence in honour of the creative spirit that our society insists on beating down, on disrespecting, on crushing.On February 11, 2009, I will observe it.  Come join me.

No longer Director

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For those of you who have not heard and are not aware, I ceased to be Director of Culture on 31st December, 2008.It's a move that has been a long time in coming. For those people who wish to speculate that my return to the College has to do with politics or changes in government or any mundane reason like that, let me attempt to set the record straight right now.I took up the position, initially in an acting capacity, on 20th October 2003, on the understanding then that it was a secondment from my position at the College of The Bahamas. In July 2004, however, I was transferred from the College to the Civil Service, and given a letter signed by the Governor of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas, as is customary for civil service appointees. I queried the move, and indicated that I had no intention of making a full-time move to the Public Service, and requested that the arrangement be rectified. However, the wheels of government turn slowly when they turn at all, and nothing came of that request.At that time, things were looking vaguely bright for culture in The Bahamas. The National Commission on Cultural Development had been established, and was meeting on a regular basis to craft a new way forward for Bahamian cultural life. The period was revolutionary, in that for the first time in decades cultural experts from every different field sat in a room together, hashed out policy and made recommendations directly to government, and fashioned real visions for the way forward for a country that has been impoverished intellectually, socially and emotionally by too-rapid, uneven material development and a lack of reflection. During that period, the Commission drafted three pieces of legislation for the government, travelled throughout the Islands of The Bahamas, touched base with Bahamians everywhere, and highlighted the extent of what we do not know about ourselves.Out of the Commission also came a draft National Cultural Policy for The Bahamas, the beginning of a way forward for us as a people and a nation that goes beyond the surface and beyond the material.As time passed, however, it became evident that the Commission was more revolutionary in title and composition than in any other manner. Its role was treated as instrumental only in so far as it met the specific goals of the politicians. Two of the three pieces of legislation were adopted, and in a watered-down fashion; the specific recommendations contained in those two -- recommendations that reflected the will of the Bahamian people, as determined through nation-wide surveys, in town meetings, and from radio discussions -- were ignored. The Heroes and Honours Bills were pushed through the House of Assembly in a hurry, and ignored their most fundamental elements -- that the successful implementation of Bahamian honours would require the abolition of the British ones, and that the recognition of National Heroes would have to acknowledge, depoliticize and recognize and celebrate the milestone that was Majority Rule. The change of government affected Bahamian cultural development in a very basic fashion -- by ignoring the vision developed for the country by the NCDC (not because it was a bad vision, but simply because the Commission was instituted by the previous administration, and most things so establlished were dismantled, as had happened five years before), leaving culture in the position it had been in 2003, when I first took the position.Here's why I'm returning to COB, then.

  1. I always planned to do so, the fact that my secondment/temporary appointment was botched notwithstanding.
  2. After five years, culture is right back where it was in 2003 -- entirely dependent on the personalities who head it, and on the goodwill of those politicians and civil servants who might look upon it favourably. If those people exist, as they have done over the past five years, good things will happen in culture. If not, then culture will continue to die, as it has done for the vast majority of our independence. I am temperamentally unsuited to walking in circles. I have a pretty good sense of direction, and I know futile wandering when I see it. 
  3. Conflict of interest. I was a cultural worker before I became Director, specifically in the fields of theatre and writing, and my husband is a theatre director who has worked for all of his career in various capacities on various contracts for the government of The Bahamas. His first government job came in 1983, when he was contracted to mount the folk opera Sammie Swain for the Tenth Anniversary of Independence, and he has been involved in the production of national events on a fairly regular basis ever since. However, my position as Director compromised the extent to which he was able to work with the government, and certainly for the Department of Culture (more accurately, the Cultural Affairs Division), even in situations when he was the most experienced/best qualified/most available director. Further, as a playwright and member of a theatre production company, my work was curtailed by the fact that I was a government official.
  4. The strictures of the civil service are at fundamental odds with my calling as a writer and with the democratic principles on which our country is founded. General Orders prohibits any civil servant from speaking about his or her job without permission. As a civil servant, very simply, I could not say what I thought outside the confines of boardrooms and the offices of Under Secretaries, Permanent Secretaries and Ministers.
  5. I see more potential for change among people under forty than among those over it, and the vast majority of the people in the civil service are over forty. There is far more potential for national development outside the service than in it, and the soon-to-be University of The Bahamas is poised to be a catalyzing force in that development.
  6. And last, but not least: so my career has some room to grow. I'm forty-five, with a statutory 20 more years of service ahead of me. In two or three years, though, I will have reached the top of my particular Directorial scale, and will be stuck at the same salary, with the same perks, with no hope of advancement, for the remaining 18 years, unless I choose to leave the technical field and move into exclusive paper-pushing. That is the situation that has afflicted most of the people who work in the Cultural Affairs Division, and there is no good reason why it will not happen to me. COB offers far more scope for career advancement and potential earning. (And, not incidentally, I have come to equate salary scale with respect for one's field and position. The dead-endedness of every long-term position in the Cultural Affairs Division, in which no senior officer has received a promotion of note in a good twenty years, and the concurrent impossibility of hiring new blood, are the best indicators that I have ever had of the complete non-importance of culture and its development to the politicians and civil servants that have run the country for that period of time. But more on that later.)

So I'm leaving government and going back to the College because, ladies and gentlemen, it's the twenty-first century. We've almost closed the first decade of that century, and we're still running our country with a late eighteenth century institution, developed exclusively for colonization and for the subjugation of hostile populations. I'd rather work for a late twentieth-century institution, thanks. At least the College was established in my lifetime, and has changed more in its short thirty years than the Public Service has changed in 230.It's a no-brainer, really. But more on that to come.Cheers.

Christmas in Nassau

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is by far the biggest holiday of the year. It's not just Christmas, of course, though that's important, a time for sprucing up and family gatherings and very conspicuous consumption, but also because of Junkanoo, which happens on Boxing Day and then again on New Year's Day. If you're lucky, there's a cold snap and you can wear all your long-sleeved, northern fashions without expiring from heat prostration; and it's the one time everybody stays up all night just for the hell of it.Just thought you'd like to know. Or if you already know, thought you might like the reminder.

If you don't know my name you don't know your own

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The title is a quotation from James Baldwin.  I got it from the address given by Obediah Michael Smith at the Bahamas Writers' Forum held at Chapter One Bookstore last month.I've meant to post an excerpt from that address for some time, but never did for one reason or another. The time, however, has come.Hear, now, from Obediah:

I can still recall the impact of encountering this remark by James Baldwin for the very first time: "If you don't know my name, you don't know your own."With what was this assertion connected? In other words, what was Baldwin saying? Who or what was he saying it about and to who were these remarks addressed? Is this James Baldwin the poet, novelist and playwright having come into his own? Is he addressing his country, The United States of America? His was certainly one of the most definitive voices of the crisis of the '60 in the U.S.A.James Baldwin, the writer, the citizen, with confidence, with arrogance even, asserts his significance. If I am insignificant he states to his United States of America or whom ever he is confronting, you are as well, without significance.It is about identity too. If I am nobody in America, who is to be considered somebody? If his identity was in questing, whose wasn't? Who had definition if he hadn't?Baldwin's confidence at this point seems to have resulted from a new found self-awareness, his own awakening as it were.As a writer, as person, as citizen, Baldwin would have struggled with himself, his art, and his world to rescue and to cultivate a self.Like a gardener with the flowers blooming - with the sun shining on them - with the rain falling on them, he seems satisfied. His words, somewhat boastful, are about success.He has gotten somewhere; he has produced something, himself. This he offers up. It is prayer or it is weapon or it is both.Baldwin's suggestion is about being tied together. He is tied to whomever he is addressing and they are tied to him. It is the right hand and the left hand or two feet to stand on or two eyes to see with. Baldwin's words are about things that come and go, like the blood, to and from the heart.I found it convenient recently; right here at home, to assert myself using these very words. What an important moment it was for me, I thought initially.A lady called to extend an invitation to me to appear as a guest on a local radio show. I was feeling quite good about it and going agreeably along until I was told of the need to supply them with questions I wanted to be asked.Oh, discovery finally, I thought. This has to indicate national curiosity about my poetry. This call, I though, suggested that someone had invested in knowing about my work. To ask me to provide questions though, suggested the very opposite.It was just more of me knowing about me. I have over time, read hundreds of interview. There was never any indication that this is how it was done. Where therefore was the scholarship? It seemed an attempt to stage something and suggest that it was actually happening. It seemed dishonest. It seemed like an attempt to deceive the Bahamian public or whoever the intended audience was."I am the producer," said this lady, "and this is how I [she might have said we] do it!" I insisted upon wishing to be interviewed by someone aware of or familiar with my work.She decided it was time to update me. "I do not who you are," she said. "Before just recently, I had never heard of you.""Why therefore am I receiving this call?" I asked, perplexed.She was the producer. It was the host of the show, she said, who asked to have me on.I've published 10 books I told her. And you're the producer? I asked. Abruptly our conversation concluded. I was insulted and angry.This seemed the perfect occasion for Baldwin's words I'd known and loved so well for so many years. These words were the weapon this moment needed. I sent her an e-mail: "If you don't know my name, you don't know your own!" I enjoyed these words very much.

Amusing, yes.  But frightening on some level also, surely.

Walcott warns; others walk

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Walcott warns : Stabroek NewsRight, well I've been hinting at it for some time now on this blog, but now I think it's time to come out and say it straight.  I've turned in my resignation as Director of Culture for the Bahamas Government.  I had originally intended to leave at the end of this month, as of August 31st, but a series of situations have pushed the actual date back till the end of this calendar year, and turned the resignation into a requested transfer back to the College of The Bahamas.  Courage!People who have heard sometimes ask me why.  (People who know me and have known the tribulations of working as a cultural professional within The Bahamas government don't ask why; they ask when.)Derek Walcott, Caribbean Nobel Laureate for Literature, gives a very good reason why in his speech at the opening of the CARIFESTA Symposia.  Here's what he says:

Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott yesterday implored the region’s governments to resist prostituting themselves to foreign investors, warning that giving into tourism-fuelled gentrification would spell disaster.“The prostitution is a thing we call development,” he said in stinging remarks delivered during an impromptu presentation at the grand opening of the CARIFESTA X Symposia, at the National Convention Centre. He warned: “Don’t let this continue, [because] something serious is going to happen.”

and:

 “It is terrifying, all around there are huge hotels we are going to leave as monuments,” he said, with obvious disgust. “We are not leaving museums or theatres, because the governments say they can’t afford it.”

and:

Walcott took the view that investors should also be encouraged to put money into the development of cultural infrastructure, like museums and theatres. He also challenged regional governments to be more supportive of artists, saying that younger people needed to have access to more scholarships.Walcott, who had once famously  called for the scrapping of the festival, was featured as the Distinguished Guest at the symposium. Nonetheless, he admitted that he still harboured serious reservations about the fate of artists afterward. Indeed, he blamed the regional governments and institutions for keeping artists in what he described as a state of deprivation. “Is this what we are celebrating?” he asked. “You are killing your artists.”

and:

Walcott challenged regional leaders to pursue development of the arts simultaneously. Though he was not optimistic that the idea would be realized, he said it was important for them to adopt a change in attitude. He said there be should be no question of competing needs; that governments should do both.***He also suggested yesterday that the governments consider putting a moratorium on the festival in order to ensure that it is professionally organized and that it features the best people that the region can offer. “You need the best,” he said, before quickly adding, “But it is self deception, because what happens afterwards? What are their futures?"

There you have it.  My dilemma in a nutshell.  On the one hand, there are the people who tell you that the country needs you, that we have come a long way, that we are on the move and things are gonna get easier.  "Why now?" they ask.  The answer is simple, and Walcott has stated it plainly.  Caribbean governments do not invest in their people. Caribbean people do not see any real reflections of themselves.On the other hand -- and this is the reality, while the other is simply the spin -- the bare naked truth is that The Government of The Bahamas (gold, red or green, the party in charge doesn't matter) is no different from the governments of all our neighbours when it comes to cultural investment.  The Nobel Laureate has stated the truth, and there is no getting around it.  The President of Guyana has stated the excuse, and there is no getting around that either.  To remain in the post legitimizes the active underdevelopment of our people that all of our governments have made the central policy of their administrations.  To remain in the post restricts the criticisms that I can make; and to remain in the post compromises, whether we like to admit it or not, the attainment of excellence in all that we do.

ARC Review #1 - Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, (Lalami)

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Country:  Morocco, North AfricaAuthor:  Laila LalamiReview:  This is a novel/collection of related short stories, and in this way reminds me of Naipaul's Miguel Street. The stories are about four Moroccans who take the risk of crossing the narrow straits between Morocco and Spain, and are separated into two main sections: "Before" and "After". The book grew on me; to be honest, I was not hooked by the prologue until I'd read the whole thing. By the end, though, I was sorry to finish the book.Lalami's style is clean and spare, and her four characters rise off the page and we care. Each of the characters gets two full stories, a "Before" story and an "After" story, and the prologue tells the climax -- the moment when they cross the straits and succeed, or fail, to make it to another life. One of the characters -- a man with an English degree, a voracious reader of American literature -- gets three; it's his POV in the prologue. By the end, the short stories lock together in a single whole, and the novel is there -- its protagonist is The Immigrant, and its resolution is variable.There were a couple of bits that stand out. One of my favourite stories in the collection, the first one after the prologue, "The Fanatic", is told from the POV of a character who never recurs. He sees, and affects the life of, one of the immigrants, someone whose story is told in the second part of the book. I suspect that it's a weakness, especially if the stories form a novel, but on its own it's very fine. Of course it is. It was shortlisted for the Caine Prize -- the African Booker.I imagine that for others part of the allure of this collection is the fact that it's rooted in Islam, which is the religion du jour for many Western literati, and that the characters do not conform to the expected stereotypes. Only one of them is particularly religious; the rest behave remarkably like people (warning: sarcasm intended).Comment: I've not read any North African literature proper, other than Camus, which masquerades as French literature, and Gide, who's an expatriate anyway. I keep meaning to read Mahfouz but haven't managed yet. My North African exposure is narrow. Lalami's a welcome change from that.I've been following her work for some time now.  I came across her blog, oh, sometime back in 2005 maybe, before Hope was published, and have often intended to read the book. I'm not disappointed I finally did.

My Africa Reading List

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If I take part, that is.What's under my belt is pretty male and middle-century, and so I thought I'd branch out with some female voices and writing from more recent times

  • Adichie (Nigeria) - Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun
  • Emecheta (Nigeria) - The Joys of Motherhood
  • Ngugi (Kenya) - Wizard of the Crow
  • Baingana (Uganda) - Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe
  • Lalami (Morocco) - Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits
  • Gourevitch (Rwanda) - We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with our Families
  • Ilibagiza (Rwanda) - Left to Tell

Microwave not recommended to bake a quality bread product

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I'm baking a frozen roll of French bread for breakfast.  That's what it said on the package.Know this.  As long as I'm awake, little things run through my head, rather like the ticker tape display you see at stock markets.  Little communications from my subconscious flash across my conscious mind and distract me from what I'm doing.  And unfortunately for me and those around me, those communications have emotional reactions.  Recently, I've been operating in a state of low-grade anger.  It's a bit like a low-grade fever; it makes me irritable some of the time, snappish and sarcastic (which has its humourous moments).  Most of the time, though, it just makes me depressed.  It's like being locked in a tiny room with no windows and a nagging relative.The thing that makes me angriest these days is the fundamental disrespect that we offer ourselves as Bahamians, our country, and (yes) our culture.  The three are inseparable, and the disrespect is pervasive.  I'm not talking about crime or politics here, although both are symptoms.  I'm talking about the conviction that far too many of our leaders seem to have that we are really second-rate people. Our country can't compete.  We are incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial.  We can't develop ourselves, so we have to find foreigners to invest their money in our economy to develop us for us. Etc. (Shut up, Nico).The disrespect comes out when we see what we invest in ourselves, in our society, in the formation, cementing, and celebration of our identity as a sovereign nation.  I keep raising the point that we are the third richest independent country in the western hemisphere.  So forget the fact that Bermuda and Cayman are richer than we are; they're still colonies/dependencies of Britain.  The Bahamas is richer than every other country in the Americas than the USA and Canada.And what do we have to show for it?  What monuments, institutions, works of art, buildings, public spaces, have we provided for ourselves (and only ourselves) over the course of thirty-five years?  What we did have we have also destroyed -- Jumbey Village comes to mind, along with Goombay Summer, the National Dance School home (the institution still exists, limping along in near-oblivion, but its building was demolished for no reason anyone can give me, whose land still stands empty next to Oakes Field Primary School, and its rent now costs the government a goodly and unnecessary packet), the Dundas Repertory Season, the Government High School.Great nations invest in symbols.  They understand the need to spend hard money on creating objects and institutions that mean -- or can mean -- something to the people who belong to the nation, and they create a sense of belonging.  Washington D. C. is an example of the kind of grandness that preceded the greatness of a nation; the American founding fathers imagined a great nation, built the symbols, and let the country catch up to their vision.  In Britain, squares and statues and public places and institutions and buildings are created for every great moment in their history, and you can see those great moments literally laid out on the ground.  In the capitals of our Caribbean neighbours, public and private funds are invested in monuments -- statues, institutions, promenades, parks -- so that even the most humble of their nationals, and the most arrogant of their visitors, can get some idea of who they are.But here in The Bahamas of the twenty-first century, we put up our parks and our monuments and our et ceterae only when we beg the help of our foreign investors.  Meanwhile, we take the taxpayers' money and pour it into failed institutions or foreign pockets and cry poor-mouth when asked to help artists explore our identity though self-expression.  The people who get our money do not know or care who we are, except that we are whores who will let them wipe their feet on us when they are finished with us.  And without them our governments (no matter what initials they wear), who are stewards of the third richest independent government in the New World, choose again and again not invest a penny in the development of the Bahamian person, the Bahamian soul.So how did I get here from what's written on a packet of frozen French bread?Simply this.  The French, who have invested millions in their people and their symbols (some of which, like the Eiffel Tower, could be regarded as a horrendous waste of time, aesthetics and money) and who hold in their greatest art museum not only the great art of the French but the great art of the world (the Mona Lisa, after all, rests in the Louvre) have an unassailable sense of themselves.  People who know claim that the French are arrogant.  But after all, they have things to be arrogant about; their governments' investment in culture has made even the most ordinary and semi-educated Frenchman proud to be French. And that pride leads to quality -- a quality that is recognized world-wide, and that turns, in the end, into money again.Hence the message on the bread package.  Microwave not recommended.In this microwave land our politicians and administrators have created for us -- that we have allowed to be created for ourselves -- it's the kind of thing that nags me, and threatens to drive me mad.

Freedom from Tyranny, Freedom from Fear

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My father has been dead for twenty-one years. Is there a day when I don't think about him? Probably not, as I sit in his chair and attempt to restore the work that he did in the heady early years of our life as an independent nation. Certainly not, when I survey the land that he worked hard to plant seeds in, to create Bahamian citizens who were proud and free and self-aware.During the heady years leading up to Independence, when people were waxing patriotic, my father wrote music. The most famous of his songs, of course, is "When the Road Seems Rough". But my favourite, I think, is the anthem "Praise". Here it is, being sung by the CARIFESTA Chorale in 2006 at the closing ceremonies of CARIFESTA X.So the reason I'm thinking about my father today lies in the words to that hymn:

Praise to God the Almighty Creator,We render thanks to you in humble prayer.Guide us as we make these fair isles our homeland,Keep us forever safe in thy care.We will establish, guard and cherishFreedom from tyranny, freedom from fearGreat God, Deliverer, we praise Thee, we thank Thee,Bless us, Thy servants, forevermore.

And the reason that they come to mind today is that more and more often we're hearing stories -- apocryphal perhaps, but perhaps true -- that, thirty-five years after my father wrote those words, Bahamians are not living free from tyranny or fear.I don't think it matters who the tyrants are. At the moment, they're faceless. Sometimes they're the agents of the state, as was the case with the Millar's Creek incident -- which we haven't heard anything officially about. Sometimes they're outlaws, as was the case with the men who shot the tourist on Cable Beach, or the people who spent time spraying the former Prime Minister's house with bullets.Sometimes they're the thought police, who want to stand between us and our words. There's a controversy going on in writing circles these days. It's specifically to do with the Wednesday night spoken word celebration Express Yaself; one of the regulars has been banned from attending, and has allegedly had her poetry turned over to the authorities by her parents. I don't know enough about that incident to follow it up. It was published in the Tribune last week, but as that paper doesn't publish online, I can't link the story for you. What I can do is link to the commentary that it provoked, or post that on this blog.At any rate. I don't know what more to say on this topic, given that I don't know enough. But let me say that this morning I woke up feeling as though there was a thick gummy layer of gelatine over my head -- something too thick and yielding to ever push through -- and I began to think about my father's song, "Praise".Let us all work towards creating a homeland in which we are free from tyranny and fear. If we don't, we will have no home at all.