Own Voices and the Authentic Voices of the Caribbean

 

Down sizing and clearing shelves of books, one entirely of children’s and YA literature; in a digital world not many people or even libraries want them. What then will happen to our voices for our children? I once did a presentation at an ASCD conference in the USA entitled, Our Authentic Voices Call Out To Us: Do we listen? I presented a local version  Authentic Voices: The Case for Caribbean Children’s Literature in Teachers’ Colleges in Jamaica. In both, I referred to writers like Merle Hodge (Crick Crack Monkey), Olive Senior, Lorna Goodison, and research papers which highlighted the significance of  authentic voices in the material for our children and young people. 

Suddenly, it seems, America has identified Own Voices, and the Black Lives Matter movement has led to the ‘discovery of minority (African American) writers and children’s books.’ Then, since the prejudice against Asians has been uncovered, Asians are beginning to be included. We cannot but be pleased. Inclusion is essential, we know. 

The term Own Voices has been around for a few years, from 2015, it seems. If I’m wrong about this please write me or post a reply on my blog and I’ll acknowledge it.  It seems the  term ‘own voices’ was brought  back into focus because someone had written a book, to great acclaim, about Hispanics, and then was criticized as not giving an accurate portrayal of the particular group by a member of that group. I am being deliberately vague because I do not wish to rake up a discussion, which must have been painful for the writer and the critic

One publishing house has this to say about the concept:https://bluecrowpublishing.com/2018/03/30/what-does-ownvoices-mean/. “Own voices means that if you are writing a main character who is part of a  marginalized group, you are part of that marginalized group.   . . . .. If you are writing about an American Indian main character, you are American Indian. If you are writing about a disabled main character, you are disabled.” (This last point seems somewhat  counterproductive. You may not be disabled but be close to someone who is.)

 The quote continues: “Those books that are # Own Voices have an added richness to them precisely because the author shares an identity with the character. The author has the deepest possible understanding of the intricacies, the joys, the difficulties, the pride, the frustration, and every other possible facet of that particular life — because the author has actually lived it.”

I think this must be especially important with  books for Native American or First Nation children. Who else could ever tell their stories? I gather also that an African American had quite rightly pointed  out that he did not think 'others' should  be trying to write about the African American experience. However having made this point, he set a story in a country he had never visited and was called out on that.

So that leads us to another point of view: https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/04/228847/...
“Taken to its logical conclusion, this approach to storytelling will set strict and claustrophobic limits on imagination, confining authors according to an ever-narrowing concept of which identities, settings, or narratives are their own."

 What has this to do with us here in the Caribbean? Certainly, we have been telling our own stories from we started to write children’s literature. We recognized the need for our children to see themselves in books, to validate their lived experience, especially  in  our post colonial territories,  socialized by British stories fist,  followed by their American counterparts. While adult literature blossomed early it took some time for us to get to this stage where we see increasing awareness and acceptance of children’s and YA literature of our own, where perhaps we could say that we now have a third generation of authors and publishers.

Moreover we, as a multicultural, multiethnic region, seem to have worked out who can tell what stories. The challenge we face is not lack of representation of all our people in books;  we have built up  a trust amongst ourselves; we are sensitive enough not to write about what we don’t know. I can write about Indian children ( almost half of the population in Trinidad and Tobago and in Guyana) but the stories I have written are generalized, things that could occur among any group going to school, for example, Twins in  a Spin. Interesting though, there are twins in my family. This story is true to a twin experience that we in our family  had wondered about. So it is still ‘write what you know’. However, I would never write a coming of age book for an ethnicity  to which I do not belong, without consultation/a reader who represents this group. There is a connection, therefore,  to the concept of own voices and our authentic voices and validation of our lived experience.

This brings me to the importance of the Burt Caribbean Awards  for Young Adult stories, and regretfully its absence from our young adult coming of age lived experience. That will be for another blog.

 

 

What is a Caribbean story? Are our people in the diaspora still Caribbean?

 Can stories about Caribbean people in the diaspora still be Caribbean?

After the blog on Nancy Drew (March 2), it might seem that I was overcome by the realization that Nancy Drew was still beloved.  I admit to being somewhat confused. What do I write next which is relevant? Has it all been for nothing? So perhaps it has taken this time to garner my thoughts. I can have no quarrel with Nancy Drew. I too loved her, and look how I turned out. My life has been about writing stories, our stories for our children.

And there is much more activity on the children’s book scene: young writers writing, young publishers publishing; Caribbean book prizes of substance now exist, including our Lignum Vitae Awards, which will consist of the revitalised Una Marson Award for adult writing, and Vic Reid Award for YA, and the brand new Jean D’Costa for children’s; and she is still alive. This is recognition indeed, as there has been the realisation of the need to divide the former children’s section into two categories. Book festivals abound here, and in the region at large. Talking Trees comes up this month (it alternates with Calabash) and I am delighted that it has  good corporate support. Moreover, there has been more corporate support for literacy and books through the purchase of local children’s books for leisure reading. These initiatives have been spearheaded by the new generation of writers and publishers. Reading Week, this  week, sees corporate sponsors providing for reading in schools. Some schools, on their own initiative, have asked for authors to come and read. What more could one ask? Well, more sales, but we might be getting there.

From the point of view of what to write next, some of us have also revisited the concept of quaint versus contemporary. And as we look at the books/stories from the developing world, which are recognized by the developed world – allowing for publishing opportunities and increased sales -  we see that quaint, or what is different, holds sway. And indeed, why not? If I’m reading about some other country far away from our region, I think I would want to know what’s different, what traditions and customs have created the situation in which the characters find themselves, and have made the characters behave in the way they do. (Does anybody know of a book set in the Seychelles or Mauritius? I just have a feeling that might be fascinating.) So if you are going to write a Caribbean children’s/YA story do you have to set it in the  Caribbean? What a question to ask. In truth, I never thought I’d ask it.

In search of an answer, let us see what this journey has been? I come from the group that produced the first truly Jamaican children’s stories to be put in schools as supplementary readers. We were bold even in the face of some opposition, but the Ministry of Education believed in that project and in us. We were bold because we had survived colonialism. Perhaps you would not understand unless you too had been there, to survive. We created stories set in our own environment, with children in the image of our people, using our own words. Bold indeed! We were the group that celebrated black is beautiful. Perhaps you would not understand unless you  too had been there, to celebrate. We became comfortable in our hair and our skin,  and in our island and region, and we dared to put them in children’s books. We dismissed Enid Blyton! 

And in our literature! We delighted in Naipaul, Selvon, and Mittleholzer and Carew, and later, Hodge, who knew exactly what colonialism had done to us. We almost felt as if we had discovered these writers, and indeed we had, because we had discovered ourselves through them. I was in Trinidad as a  presenter at a workshop when Selvon died, and Merle Hodge wrote in my own, original, old copy of Crick Crack Monkey, and I thought that I was a part of history. 

So we are bold enough to ask, what can we write? Should it be quaint or contemporary? Should writing for the Caribbean be set only in the Caribbean, or can it  be in the diaspora? Discovering the diaspora as a valid place for us to be, is akin to discovering ourselves when we were bold enough to recognize ourselves in books and create ourselves in books. I was therefore taken aback when an overseas writer said in an interview, giving advice to us, ‘You don’t have to write about somebody going to Toronto or New York for it to be important. Setting your stories right here in the Caribbean is important’ (paraphrased). And I thought, but we know that! We have survived colonialism, we know that black is beautiful because we signed on for that, and we know that we are in books because we put our protagonists there.

But what about migration, the enduring fabric of our lives? We all have family that has migrated. Do they have stories to tell? Marlene Nourbese Philip’s Harriet’s Daughter (YA set in Toronto) had a story to tell. Samuel Selvon’s  Lonely Londoners had a story to tell. What is contemporary? I think we must write about all the experiences of our people. We must be bold enough. Each writer must write the story each writer has to tell, even if not being at home in the region all the time or quaint, is not the place to be.