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.

 

 

Looking for yourself in a story . . .Aah! Finding yourself. Multicultural children's books

I have said that when I was little I was an avid reader (of course), but interested as I was in the stories I read,  my desire was that there be stories about us, as we are, as 'normal' people. I might now add, in relation to my last post, not necessarily quaint.

Fast forward to my MEd. Study,  “I will not look at books the same way again”: Teachers’ Feelings About the Use of Caribbean Children’s Literature (2003). One of my quotes in the literature was: Pugh (1988) cites Bill Martin Jr. “Without consciousness of how or why ...the reader is forever rummaging and scavenging through the pages for a glimpse of self ...”  Isn’t that what we do?  And if we don’t, is it that we have no concept of self?  We do not expect to find ourselves there. For our children, that would be a pity.

Come with me then. In my constant search for children’s books to read, ( I love reading children’s books), I came across The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan. Shame and more shame, I had not read him before. But that’s why we all need exposure to other people’s literature. And he is very main-stream, very popular.

So I’m ambling through the book and something catches my eye on p.3, where the young hero describes his father, “He has dark brown skin like mine, piercing brown eyes, a bald head and a goatee  . . . ”

Clearly I’ve misread it. . . .dark brown skin . . .I read it again. Hmm. Then on p. 7 the young hero, along with his father, go to pick up his sister. He says, “You would never believe she’s my sister  . . . she takes after our mom who was white, so Sadie’s skin is much lighter than mine. She has straight caramel-coloured hair . . . .her eyes are blue. I’m serious. . . .”

By now I’m breathless. And so yes, I now realize that the hero is indeed a child of colour; he is from a mixed race family. I say that calmly now, but then I just kept reading and rereading.  Have I really found ‘myself’ in this boy, in this book? Somebody wrote about us, as a hero, in a book which wasn’t identified as an  African American, Black British or Caribbean book? Somebody wrote about us in a ‘normal’ book!

I conclude that the writer must also be at least mixed race. At least! I look him up. He is not. He is a normal Caucasian looking man. He has written a number of books with a base of mythology, which fall into various series. The Red Pyramid  is from the series called the Kane Chronicles and has a lot to do with Egyptology. Fascinating!

The point is, however, if with all of my experience, I was still blown away by finding us in a ‘normal’ book, as the hero, not just one of a group to  be politically correct, much as I welcome that, how do children feel when they find themselves in a book? How do they feel when they don’t?

We have been talking about the need for our children to see themselves in books forever, it seems. However, now I dare to think that there may be a further breakthrough. Tuesday, January 27 is Multicultural Children’s Book Day in the USA. So we join with them in their recognition of this need. Books included here are just some of what we offer.

 Books shown here: Cricket is My Game by Jason Cole from Barbados; Shaggy Parrot and the Reggae Band by Jana Bent and Friends, Jamaica; A Tumbling World . . .A Time of Fire (an E-book on Amazon) by Diane Browne from Jamaica; Drog a Dreggen Story by Hazel Campbell from Jamaica,  and Boy Boy and the Magic Drum by Machel Montano from Trinidad and Tobago.

And independent Caribbean Cinderella for Independence, as promised

 Ebony  and the Auntie of the Starlight, a Caribbean Cinderella story has made it for Independence, August 6. In fact, she was up and ready for Emancipation Day.  The significance of Independence was that instead of Ebony meeting the prince at a ball, she meets him at the Independence Parade.  I do not know if there is any symbolism in Emancipation. I would not ascribe such links between the story and the symbolism  of Emancipation Day. It might even seem somewhat disrespectful. However, in all seriousness, there is the emancipation from mental slavery that Bob Marley sang about.

I have  sent out notices to all the people in my address book, which you guys know I hate, because it seems so pushy, so I’m glad that’s over. I have to develop a better marketing strategy. For one, very few people on my list will buy the book as an e-book. We are not into e-books yet for children.  For two, it’s not a targeted group. Many of the people on my list may not even be interested in children’s books.  

So come with me as we step awhile into the creation of Ebony  as a Caribbean Cinderella.

Differences/Similarities:

Differences and similarities are interwoven; they go in and out like maypole dancers (which are both European and part of our Jamaican heritage, as you may remember).

First, Ebony is in the Caribbean, and is an orphan in a children’s home, not related to the stepmother figure/villain figure as in the original fairy tale. However, the evil villain character, Mrs. Redeyeness,  still has two  mean daughters.

The fairy godmother has been replaced by the Auntie of the Starlight, and her transforming of Ebony from the kitchen to the parade, mirrors Cinderella, even as it creates humour at what is different. Ebony it seems, remembers the Cinderella story,  and wonders if the steps to her transformation will be the same. ( I love to do this by way of showing that the old folktales can make links with our stories today. I did it in Cordelia Finds Fame and Fortune, but just a mention.) So back to Ebony.

“Oh, Auntie of the Starlight, thank you, thank you!” she cried. “But are you sure I can walk in glass slippers?”  

“They aren’t glass, chile. Everybody knows glass would break,” said the Auntie of the Starlight. “I don’t know where you get that idea of glass slippers. Pure foolishness! They are plastic.” 

“Oh,” said Ebony, “I thought I heard it in a story. So should I have a coach made from a pumpkin? Or maybe not. . .” 

“A coach! No! What would you do with a coach? If you wished for a car. . .  but you didn’t,” said the Auntie of the Starlight. “So run, chile! Run and catch the parade before it pass.”  
 

The prince is not a prince, but the son of the owner of a spice factory called the Spice Kingdom,  therefore  prince-like as far as the people in the district are concerned. 

 Symbolism and Character in the Story:

Ebony is an orphan in a children’s home. This beginning has never been auspicious for anyone anywhere. Ebony rightly concludes she has no future. This is what she has to overcome in the story,  if she can.  I clearly describe Ebony’s physical  appearance and hair (that which we do not wish to mention) as  celebration of the African part of us.

Mrs. Redeyeness: the fact that she is not related to Ebony by marriage makes her behaviour all the more dreadful. The term ‘red eye’ refers to someone who is envious, grudgeful, jealous and has pure 'bad mind'.  She so dislikes  the fact that Ebony has grown into a lovely woman and that she is genuinely a sweet person, that she goes out of her way to be unkind to her, by inviting her into her home to become a drudge.  See how Mrs. Redeyeness  rejoices as Ebony’s  beauty seems to fade under all the hard work she has to do:

 “Ebony will just look like a poor bedraggled butterfly.” Every time she thought of it, she laughed, “Ha ha! Ha ha! A bedraggled butterfly! Ha ha! Ha ha! A bedraggled butterfly!”
 

Auntie of the Starlight: we first see her in the Christmas story I wrote light years ago, which I usually put on my blog ever Christmas. I developed her in place of the traditional fairy godmother. Auntie is a term of respect here, and I love starlights, such excitement when I was a child.  Such magic. Perhaps she is also partly the wise old woman who features in our stories, mine included, the mother-female/the grandmother-female.

The song sung by the Auntie of the Starlight, celebrates our trees, links to the fact that Ebony’s name is that of a tree, and so perhaps that allows for extra magic; who knows? for additional help for this daughter of the island, daughter being a respectful term for a  young  woman. Perhaps I got the term from Rastafarian speech. I don’t know. Things seep into the psyche and reappear in stories.

The spices celebrate our spices, that I think we could really develop and access niche markets.

Alfred ‘the prince’ is noble and handsome and good, and sees who Ebony really is. He will respect her, we know. That is very important. His character rather than his position, indicates why Ebony could love him.

Plot: Aha! By the time I’d got to the part where Alfred  has done his ‘some day my prince will come’, asking for Ebony’s hand in marriage, and then Mrs. Redeyeness and daughters cling to Ebony, declaring their love and need for her, and Ebony is wondering if they really love her after all, and maybe she shouldn't leave them, I was pretty fed up with the ‘too-good’ Ebony.  She redeemed  herself in my eyes, however, by working at the spice factory, gaining shares in the spice factory as part of her wedding settlement, along with the ring. Mercenary? Not at all. Modern little girls need to know that a certain amount of security is important, especially when they work for it. In addition, she brought other girls from the orphanage to work there and was training others to do so. Female empowerment, sisterhood, and yes, girls from children’s homes can have a future if they can work for it - independence.

After that Ebony deserves the wonderful wedding with dancing to reggae and soca. ( a nod to the ‘Caribbeanness’ of us all) and in describing  the dancing, I chose words which to me give exactly that feeling, that movement of the feet and body.  . . . sway, sway, sway, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle  yo, yo yo . . . I hope that they succeeded.

There is no ‘happily ever after’  statement (which has fooled up all us females, all our lives) except that which Ebony can make with her life. “And Ebony realized that she had a bright future after all, and she smiled to think how happy she was.”  

Many of the old-time fairy tales/folktales were morality tales of a sort, warning tales, even if today they have been so sanitized and changed  that we have forgotten whatever that was about. Does Ebony and the Auntie of the Starlight have any  of these elements? Yes, although I did not set out for it to be so. I think that 1) the message (especially for ‘sweet people’) is do not let people take advantage of you, under the guise of love and affection, and 2) stand on your own two feet even when you think your prince has come.

The  main purpose of the story is enjoyment, the creation of our own Cinderella facing one of our possible realities.  Children know the original Cinderella story and so I hope they will also enjoy these differences, and claim this as their own. One does not expect them to understand the symbolism, but for our present-day girls, I hope the modern twist resonates with them as they are growing up.

 

Despatches: from the year of putting my children's books on Amazon as e-books

 

My last post told the story of Cordelia Finds Fame and Fortune, now on Amazon. What is fascinating is that I remember the days, not that long ago, when some of us would sit around at authors' meetings asking each other, ‘Do you know how  you get a book onto Amazon? in awestruck tones, as if it were the promised land. We would send out scouts to find a way (assign it to someone to investigate). Well it is not the promised land. However, we are way past wondering. I have a friend who can do it for me. How wonderful is that, and how quickly technology has moved that mere mortals can now access this place.  So from time to time my posts will tell you about  the latest book I have put on Amazon.

Remember what my plan is: to put as many of my books on Amazon as I can, between those that were published under the auspices of the Children’s Writers Circle, self published (one), and done by other publishers where the copyright has reverted to me. It’s a place for them to be since I can't afford to reprint them. I just discovered that others are doing this in other countries, so I am not alone.  Oh yes, I’d love  my books to sell,  love to make lots of money (sound of hysterical laughter), be discovered by MGM lounging on Amazon while drinking a soda, or more appropriately,  coconut water from the shell. Ok, hush my children, you have to be from our vintage to understand. Hint: in the olden days in Hollywood, starlets  were discovered . . .

The next/latest book is in fact a new story. It’s called Ebony and the Auntie of the Starlight, a Caribbean Cinderella. So yes, it is a sort of kind of version of Cinderella.  Ebony is, however, abandoned, no one knows who she is.

"Once upon a time in an island with deep green forests and rushing rivers and waterfalls, there was a little girl, called Ebony. Ebony lived in a children’s home, which is like an orphanage, called Ebony House,  in the district of Spice Mountain. Ebony had lived there from she was a baby. Nobody knew how she came to be there. Nobody even knew her real name. That’s why she was called Ebony, after the name of the home.

Ebony had one possession, and that was a tortoiseshell hair clip.  Perhaps it could have been a clue to who Ebony was, but nobody knew anything about the tortoiseshell clip either."

Ebony has a bit of a hard time from  some real 'bad-mind' people who pretend to befriend her , taking her out of the children's home (led by Mrs. Redeyeness  - you know how she stay, right), using wood stove, coal pot and sad iron (because of high electric bills it seems) . . . Does her prince come along? Well yes, he does, ‘some day my prince will come’ and all that. And in the end Ebony becomes a modern miss with some modern ideas.

The artwork! Oh the artwork! It is gorgeous! It’s done by artist, Rachel Wade. I just  love her work and you will too.

 

The plan is to have it available by Independence as that’s when Ebony meets Alfred, at the big Independence parade. I’ll keep sending you despatches.

Can Cordelia find fame and fortune again - as an e-book?

 

The story of Cordelia Finds Fame and Fortune:

There are people who will swear that Cordelia Finds Fame and Fortune is the best book I’ve ever written. One person says to me after each of my books comes out, 'I like it, but it’s not Cordelia’. Cordelia, is admittedly, without being too modest, a really good book. It was first published by Heinemann Caribbean in 1990, along with other children’s books. It won the Book Industry Association of Jamaica's best children’s book award. In 1994 it was chosen by Harcourt Brace in the USA to be part of a collection for school libraries in the USA, called Passports, and appeared in a gorgeous hardcover edition. This was a publisher to publisher agreement, so no, I did not get rich. That version was translated into serious Standard English. The original was in English anyway, with just a hint of Creole structures (except for the folksong, which after all, is a folksong). In their version it was interesting to see that the folk song, ‘Cordelia Brown whe mek yu head so red?’, became ‘Cordelia why is your hair so red?’ Oh, my goodness! Nonetheless, it was pretty cool to have an American edition,( which it seems can now be found on Amazon without its cover?)

Possible symbolism/meaning in Cordelia Finds Fame and Fortune

 Many of my children’s books contain a bit of a folksong or reference to a folksong. This is because I want our children to recapture the magic of the folksongs I loved as a child; to preserve our culture. ‘Cordelia Brown whe mek yu head so red?’ is one of my favourite folksongs. 

 Even when we do not plan it, there is meaning. Stories come out the author’s reality and often may be related to the time in which they are written. Cordelia is being teased, gets the idea of leaving home for fame and fortune from Puss in Boots, (although that story is not called by name), in the hope that once she has achieved success, no one will tease her anymore.

 Cordelia reflects the time when people were leaving or had left, and I wanted to reclaim the idea that fame and fortune need not be found only abroad, or in ‘foreign’, as we say. This is not in any way to diminish the reasons for that migration, nor negate the fact that Jamaicans have always migrated, and can be found  all over the world. But perhaps at that time I may have realized that that migration might have lasting effects for our country. Family and friends left and were missed. Cordelia, then becomes the magical link for us all, even when we cannot change the way things are.

 The old lady she meets has been all over the world looking for fame and fortune. She lists the countries, Cayman, Panama, etc. This  reflects the Jamaican higglers (traders), mainly women, who were then going all over the region/world and bringing back goods to sell. These were/are intrepid travelers, many of whom, to their credit, made enough money to create a new life for their families and themselves.

One day at a workshop someone said to me, ‘This story is about your younger daughter, isn’t it?’ I felt as if  I’d been punched in the stomach. That’s when you know a nerve has been touched. I was in shock! I had always said to prospective writers in workshops, ‘Know yourself, know your passions, etc.  because it will come out in your writing’. And yet, I had had no idea. No idea at all. My younger daughter, with light brown hair, lighter hair than her sister or any of our immediate family, was being teased.  In an ex-colonial territory, swept up in that moment of ‘let’s be against anything that remotely reminded us of the past’, that was enough.  She would weep over being teased at school. And we could do nothing about that. You just have to learn to deal with that sort of thing.  And she did, eventually, just as Cordelia finds she can. I had no idea that it hurt me so much! So Cordelia is the flag bearer for all children who have been teased for whatever reason.

 

I was invited to the Miami Book Fair  to be part of its Student’s Encounter Programme and read Cordelia in a number of schools, where she was well received, and we sang ‘Cordleia Brown whe mek yu head so red?’ exactly as it is. ( I can’t sing, but it seldom matters in situations like this). Cordelia went on to have many reprints here in Jamaica, even when the publisher went out of business and the copyright reverted to me. However, the thing about printing is that you have to be pretty sure that you can sell most of your print run if you are to make back the money you put out. Bookstores usually ask for 6 or 12 copies maximum, at a time, which  cannot a print run make. If you go through a distributor, which solves all your distribution challenges, it’s 50% right away (overseas, I think it may be even more). So we are caught in a spiral or vicious circle of economies of scale - small print runs, therefore high print costs and selling prices higher than overseas books, small disposable income amongst the buying public. Gone are the days when the libraries would take enough copies for all their outlets – they have no money. And now with a falling dollar, everything is tight, tight!  But how could I just let Cordelia wither away into nothingness.

Some of us had put books on Amazon. I had put on a collection of adult short stories, just to see what happened. Nothing much has, except for some lovely reviews, for which I’m very pleased.  In spite of that, I was playing around with the idea of putting a new children’s book on Amazon since one of the effects of Amazon, as we all know, has been the challenge to bookstores and publishers. But I was stuck in my mind, stuck in this massive change that has overtaken books and publishing, like a deer caught in the headlights, as they say; or perhaps in the Caribbean, like a crab crossing the road with car lights bearing down on it. Will it reach the other side? Then one day, my friend, Hazel Campbell said, ‘Why don’t you give me Cordelia and let me try to put it on Amazon?’ I was astounded! I had not thought of that. ‘You think you can do that?’ I said. ‘I’m going to try,’ was her reply. And so she did! And that’s how Cordelia is on Amazon.  I had the flash drive with Cordelia for about a week before I uploaded it. Fraid like what! Afraid of what? Oh please, it’s technology! And I view technology like I did Math at school. What you know, do; do not venture into the unknown.

And now Cordelia Finds Fame and Fortune has a new life. I have received many good wishes and one great review. (Thank you, thank you!) I have not fooled myself into believing that I’m going to make money from this book on Amazon. But I think you will agree with me after reading Cordelia's story, that she must be located somewhere, where those who want her, the 'one-one' copies, can find her. Of course, I’ll be using her as a test case for others to follow (books and other writers also).  I think I’ve decided to put as many of my books as I can, where they can be found. And who knows, if we all have enough books on Amazon from the Caribbean, they might see us in this enormous ocean of books.

Marketing is,  of  course, the challenge! I put the info on Facebook,  and I sent it also to all the people in my address book, and felt somewhat embarrassed, because you really should not promote yourself  to your friends and acquaintances in our Caribbean world. So 'boldface'! (One step from being out of order). So I have not solved the marketing aspect of the whole Amazon business. Therefore,  maybe it will really just be a place for my books  to be. We’ll see.