Episode Transcript
Kaiama Glover 00:00:10 Hi, Tami.
Tami Navarro 00:00:11 Hi Kiama.
KG 00:00:12 Well, I am excited to jump right in, but, um, we should probably introduce ourselves, don't you think?
TN 00:00:17 Yes. So I am Tammy Navarro and
KG 00:00:19 I am Kiama Glover. And we want to welcome you to the first episode of Writing Home: American Voices from the Caribbean.
TN 00:00:26 Yes. This is our effort to create space for cultural producers in the Caribbean and across the wider Americas to talk to us about their work and their lives.
KG 00:00:35 And today we have the immense pleasure of welcoming to the studio Naomi Jackson, author of [The] Star Side of Bird Hill in 2015, among else. Uh, Naomi is someone we had the opportunity to hear read from her work about three years ago now. Um, so why don't we start by having a listen to a moment from that, that first encounter.
Naomi Jackson 00:00:55 A couple of hours later when the sun had long since set and the murmurs of goodbyes filled the church hall Dionne went to find Trevor. It was hot outside as if all the heat that had gathered during the day, decided to stay the night. Sweat collected in Dionne's bosom, plastering her cotton bra to the top of her dress' wide collar. She'd worn the dress all evening with an air of self-sacrifice. But now in the open air, she tugged at its buttons. She took a seat on Trevor's forebear's grave with the gift Bible tucked firmly beneath her making a show of trying not to dirty her new clothes. "You havin' fun yet?" Trevor asked. "Define fun."
"Come on Dionne. You have to admit that seeing Sister B doing the pepper seed was fun.
"Yeah, I guess you're right," Dionne laughed. She remembered the older woman shaking shoulders. The way everyone was genuinely concerned about her teeth rattling out of her mouth. "What do you think his life was like?" Dionne asked.
"Whose life?"
"His life, Trevor Cephas Loving. July 14th, 1928 to July 21st, 1973. Probably the same as my father's baptisms, weddings, funerals, more food than you could eat in one lifetime. Same as yours. Do you want to be a Reverend?"
"I guess I never thought I had a choice."
"Everything in life is a choice. It's not like you just wake up one day and suddenly you're Father Loving the Third."
It was not like in the States where you just decide what you're going to be, and then you go to school and you become that thing. Here on The Hill, who you are is who your people have been. I was born the same day my grandfather died. Everyone said that was a sign I was coming back as him Dionne felt the door close on anything as substantial between her and Trevor, but then also the urgency of their closeness. Dionne knew that any man whose life was already decided for him couldn't be hers. But here, where her spirit felt only halfway home, anchorless without Avril, she wanted something familiar to be close to, somewhere to land.
TN 00:02:57 Welcome to Writing Home, Naomi.
NJ 00:02:59 Thanks for having me.
TN 00:03:00 Yeah. Thank you for joining us. Um, so it's been awhile since we last had you here. Uh, could you catch us up and let us know what you've been up to?
NJ 00:03:08 Been trying to make progress on the second novel then I'm working on, um, it's a book tentatively called Behind God's Back. Um, so kind of treads some of the same terrain in terms of talking about Caribbean American experience and particularly, um, Asians, but this time it's focused on the United States, so starts in the 1930s and goes up to the two thousands, so much broader scope than my first book, which was just focused on the summer. Um, so that's been mostly what I've been up to. Um, but it's a pleasure to be back. I, you know, looking at that video, I can't believe that I actually had a chance to sit with Dr. [Gloria] Joseph before she passed. Um, and it was such an incredible gift at the time. I think, I didn't know she would only be among us for a couple more years. Um, so thank you for making that space available and it's nice to be back.
KG 00:04:02 That's good to hear. Um, yeah, we've been, we chose that passage in particular, and hopefully you've noticed this because we, we did hope to start off with a question that I remember was in that space already with Dr. Joseph, particularly because of her anchoring in the Caribbean and the fact that you were here in so-called diaspora. And so we wanted to ask you some questions or a question about home and movement and diasporic belonging. If you'll allow the term from Barbados to Brooklyn, this is kind of hoping that we could hear you think out loud about the space between those two places. Your novel was met by an overwhelmingly positive response here in the United States. And so much of who you are, who you've become as a writer is marked by the, you can call, I guess, the prestigious signposts of sort of the North American context, right? So the Iowa writer's, colony, workshop rather in the MacDowell colony and your education at Williams College among, among other things. So I suppose I want to know more about how you think about the, or to what extent "Naomi Jackson, writer born and raised in Brooklyn, New York" engages the geo-cultural space of the Caribbean in your writing, in your thinking, if you can be specific and even broad if you want about those things.
NJ 00:05:16 Um, so it's interesting, I guess I hadn't thought about it like that, but I think it's true. My adulthood has been at a marked by these big signposts, like this institution, this award. Um, but I think my childhood was definitely marked by the sense of, um, both home and dislocation. Um, so, you know, my father is from Antigua, my mother's from Barbados and my stepmother's from Jamaica. So I kind of have this pan-Caribbean upbringing- only thing I didn't get was a second language, maybe Patois from three different places, put those three together counts a foreign language. Um, so I think you growing up, I definitely felt like I was pulled between all four of those places. So, you know, I spent, um, a couple summers as a kid in Barbados, but probably eight or nine summers in Antigua. So I actually spent a lot more time in Antigua with my dad's family.
So it's a bit ironic that I spent so much time writing about Barbados, cause I actually know a lot less about it and I'm less connected to my family there. Um, but I think that actually opened up a space for me, imaginatively to write about Barbados that wasn't there, um, for Antigua. So, you know, Antigua is a smaller place than Barbados, both literally and, um, they occupies less space in certain, in the Caribbeans, like, um, the space that we give Caribbean people. So I think, you know, Bajans is just are bigger. Um, in terms of, at least in the United States who we think of as the major Caribbean groups.
KG 00:06:52 You should put that on a t-shirt: Bajans are just bigger.
NJ 00:06:56 I don't know if we wanna encourage that!
TN 00:06:57 It ties into Kincaid's work. Right. So, Jamaica Kincaid, the literal title of her text, A Small Place.
NJ 00:07:03 Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think, I mean, there are a couple of things operating there. I think it felt that Jamaica was such an incredible hero in my life and she was born the same year as my dad, um, in '49 in Antigua, same hospital, I think, like a month apart. Um, and there's a possibility there's some family connection there. Um, but I just felt like she was such a legend, um, literary legend that it didn't actually feel like there was a whole lot of space to write into. An Antiguan American experiences as it were, I felt like she had that on lock. Um, and it's true. Like Paul Marshall who's just passed. Um, definitely had a similar, um, stature in the United States, but she's of a different generation. Um, and I think felt less close to me family-wise so it felt like there was just more space to play in terms of writing about Barbados.
And I think I had more and more interesting set of questions about life and my family in Barbados than I did about my family in Antigua. I felt like my Antiguan family, like we know who they are, we know their story. They have a certain set of, um, beliefs about who the Jacksons are. Um, and I think there was legend, but of the more notorious, uh, variety, um, for my family and Barbados. So I was like, those are the people, the vagrants, and like the people who don't occupy this more wanted place in society. Those are the people who I want to write about. Um, so it's a really interesting thing where I spent less time in Barbados as a kid, but kind of was more intrigued by it because I had spent less time there.
Um, and then as an adult, my grandmother had been very sick for many years. And so I spent, I started going back there, I think in 1999 to Barbados almost every year to check in on her. And so there was this urgency of constantly being there to see how she was doing. And I hadn't even thought about writing about it. It was just this thing that was occurring beneath the surface. I hadn't, wasn't talking about it, but it just kept coming up. Every time I turned around, I was like with time to go to Barbados and check on Granny again. Um, and so that relationship kind of opened back up, um, and emotional space and a longing to know more about that side of my family. So that's really how I came to write about Barbados. Um, I don't, you know, my grandmother was the last member of my family, who I felt really connected with and she died, um, in 2014.
Um, so it's a strange thing to feel this connection to a place, um, where you don't have the little recollection of family. Um, so there's a really interesting mix of like both melancholy and freedom that Barbados offers for me because the same time that there's sadness there, cause it's definitely a place of grief. Like I never stopped thinking about her not being there when I'm there. Um, it also means that there's nobody to please, you know, no one's going to care if I embarrass myself, so-called, um, by talking about things that are inappropriate okay. Um, in Barbados, whereas I think in antique, a lot of people would care. Um, so it's the difference between going into a store in Antigua and signing a credit card bill and someone saying, oh, your father's this person, and I know your uncle and your grandmother went to this church.
Um, so there's just a lack of, um, invisibility and I think of invisibility, it's like a writer superpower. I know the ability to air hustle and to move more seamlessly in and out of spaces. Um, you know, when I was working on star side, I spent two months in Barbados, literally just listening to people and writing. So I just go out and, you know, a friend of mine was working on a film. She was doing location scouting for her film. So we'd just go out every afternoon and drive around Barbados. So that's how come I think the novel feels so rich in terms of landscape. Cause I spent a lot of time on the road just looking out the window and thinking about the terrain of the place, but then also just listening to people and saying, that's funny, Bubbies for breasts. Okay. Um, you know, um, I think also coming to Barbados as an adult a little bit divorced, um, from some of the patois actually helped me find more joy in learning about what it was and approaching it kind of like a foreign language. There's a great book by Frank Collymore about Bajan Patois that I picked up and started thumbing through and asking friends, look, do people really say this? Um, and I don't know that I would have done that if I had really been born and bred with say two Bajan parents and going back to Barbados all the time in the way that some people did. So that's a very, long-winded answer to your question that may not,
KG 00:12:16 It does, can I just follow up really quickly? I just want to know, had you thought about this relationship between these two different island spaces to your writing prior to right now? Is this something that you had pre-considered in almost deciding where to set your novel? Or are you working this out as you go along?
NJ 00:12:33 Yeah, I mean, I think, I think I've thought about it pretty significantly. Um, because I think I had to imagine, okay. When I go forth and I think I didn't even understand how deeply this would happen when I go forth into the world. There's really only one choice. I can either be seen as a writer with roots in Antigua or writer with the roots in Barbados. Um, but there's not really a lot of choice about that. I don't think there are many writers, like if we think about, about it Edwidge is from Haiti, Merlin's Jamaican, uh, you know, Tiffany's from the VI. I mean, I think Tiffany actually gets to claim more spaces in the VI because there's more to claim and under the umbrella.
KG 00:13:20 People don't know also [crosstalk] the Virgin islands.
NJ 00:13:22 Yeah. Um, but I don't think that this really possible for other people, there's not like a twin nationality that's available to people. Um, and I think people are pretty uncreative in terms of imagining how other people live their lives, even though it's very true. Most people don't have just one place that they're quote unquote from. Um, I don't think they give other people the choice to be from more than one place. Um, so yeah, I did think about it pretty significantly. And when I was embarking on the second book, because it's a bigger project, it's like, well girl, if you're going to write about 80 or 80 or 90 years, I think you need to at least decide on a place where these people are from. And I think there's like one paragraph where they're big boned Antiguans fighting, um, in the book, but that's the only reference to Antiguans um, in the book. So I really, you know, maybe one day I'll come back around Antigua will like figure my work in some more important way. But for right now it doesn't feel as present. I haven't been there since 2004, which is such a long time, but I haven't taken citizenship because I'm close to my family. And Antigua, it's easier to get citizenship when you have a functional family. Um, so yeah, it's complicated.
KG 00:14:52 It's complicated.
TN 00:14:56 I have another question to follow up on both the complexity of the Caribbean, um, and your writing life. So you've taken us into a place where we were thinking about and playing that clip the relationships between, um, folks in the U S right, with, with Caribbean roots and those who remain in the Caribbean. And I'm really interested in your thoughts on the intra-regional complexities. So you've invoked for us Antigua, Jamaica, Barbados. And, you know, you've talked about the geographic difference, but the kind of outsize influence that a geographically smaller place like Jamaica would have, right. So everybody knows Bob Marley. Everybody knows reggae. I'm interested in, in some of this coming from and working through a small place, the Virgin Islands and some of those dynamics, right? How oftentimes small islands feel and are in fact overlooked in favor of larger islands. This came to the fore, I guess most recently with some of the hurricanes that we had, you know, in Irma and Maria and some of those tensions, um, in the face of calls for solidarity, you know, there were still on the ground tensions between, well, why is Puerto Rico always on the news? How come, you know, nobody understands what's going on, um, in the BVI? And so I guess I just want to hear you talk a little bit more about some of the complexity within the region. Right. Whereas, and I was saying this to Kaiama recently, these spaces are in the US so often read as this sort of monolithic place called the islands. Right. That they're all one thing. And we all know that that's not real.
NJ 00:16:22 Yeah. We don't want that. Yeah. I think the interesting thing is I think even growing up in the United States as a Caribbean kid, I still knew that there was a big difference between these, um, geographic groups. So like when I encountered my stepmother's family for the first time, it could not understand what they were saying. Oh, Jamaica really is a different place. Like I didn't even have a facility with Jamaica because I feel like even growing up in Flatbush, there would be whole buildings that were just Jamaicans, just Trinis, just Haitians, just Bajans. Um, so there was already that complexity of feeling like we were all from the same place, but clearly we didn't all get the same amount of airtime. Um, and also clearly there were divisions and stereotypes about people from different islands, a lot of side-eye and gentle complexity about, you know, who, um, ran what church in Brooklyn, for example.
NJ 00:17:22 So there, you know, I grew up in the Episcopal church and, um, you know, my dad was at a deacon at a Bajan church for maybe 13 years. Um, and that was a very different experience than being at a church that was more dominated by Jamaicans. Um, so I think I was a very aware of that, um, growing up. And so I think that speaks to what I was talking about before, in terms of having a sense that there was no choice, like you had choose where your allegiances were going to lie, because nobody was going to allow you to straddle the spaces between those things, even if that was more true to your experience. Um, and I, I definitely saw that, you know, with the coverage of Maria and Irma had family in, um, in the Virgin Islands, cause, you know, Antigua has all these people end up in, in St.Thomas specifically, um, and you know, had family pass in that hurricane. And I was just amazing to see how the experience of people in the Virgin islands was completely obliterated in favor of people talking about Puerto Rico. Um, and even that experience eventually started to fall out of the news cycle. Um, so that was pretty depressing to see what that coverage was like. Um, and I think it just brought to the fore some existing like cracks, um, in terms of Caribbean solidarity that were already existing, you know, like I, I think even I remember growing up with Hurricane Gilbert, I want to say that was like 89. Um, and that was different cause it was Jamaica. And so it was much more present. And you know, I remember doing all these food drives as a kid for Hurricane Gilbert. And it was like, there was a different, um, way that it's set in the community because it was, had so heavily affected Jamaica. The same thing with Hugo same year, 1989. Yeah. So I'm aware deeply of what it is to be a small island person. Um, and I, strangely, even though I don't write about Antigua, I feel like I still have a little chip on my shoulder about being a small Islander in the face of big island. People who think they're better, more important, you know, so yeah.
TN 00:19:50 And then we come to the U S and that all gets glossed over in certain contexts.
NJ 00:19:54 Yeah. I think basically if you're not in a Caribbean context, people like don't care. Right. It's, doesn't make a difference. It's like, is it Bahamas, Bermuda or Barbados. [crosstalk]
KG 00:20:10 You were laughing and you're talking about it with such confidence, but at the same time, I do sense that there's, there's some regret there. You said a couple of times and the LA the most poignant thing, just a couple of moments ago about, you know, whether or not that feels like you're being true to yourself. And that's a strange choice to feel compelled, to have to make as, as a writer. I mean, maybe it's more prominent than I think, but certainly I do get the sense that it's a hard choice to say strategically. Um, either for my craft or for the exigencies of marketing, I'm going to make this choice to identify in this way. Um, it seems like something that's not such an easy thing to have done, maybe has some regret to it.
NJ 00:20:49 Yeah, I think so. I mean, I have a whole other project, that's like a short story that I'd like to turn into a screenplay. That's set at a teacher's college in Jamaica, but I think part of what has been holding me back about that is that I feel like I don't really have the legitimacy to write a Jamaican story.
KG 00:21:09 It's funny you didn't mention it when Tami asked what's new. Um, because kind of, you didn't mention it when Tami asked what's new.
NJ KG 00:21:12 Yeah. Cause I think, I think I'm waiting for people to be like "You ain't from Jamaica. What business do you have telling this story? You don't understand, this is given to you second hand," you know, like I just expect all this stuff and some of this is like, um, imaginary. Um, but I don't think that it is, I think some of it is really born out of my own experience, dealing with other writers and just what it is when people are trying to categorize you as this type of person in the world and really make you legible because everybody's trying to figure out, "I don't know, who are you, where do you fit" in terms of the classifications that I need to make to make it through my day.
KG 00:21:56 Thank you. Um, I have a quick question going back to craft, I guess. Um, you said earlier that, I love that, what you said earlier about writing as a pursuit of understanding as instead of as an expression of knowledge you already have. So kind of the idea of writing as a question more than a knowing. Um, so in the context of you having said that I'm wondering with the second project, what are you after, what are you trying to find out?
NJ 00:22:22 Um, yeah, so I think of the first book, one of my questions was like, will my parents make good on the, or what would have happened if my parents make made good on the threat to leave me in the Caribbean, if I misbehaved, because that's what they would always say. Like, if you act up, we're going to leave you there. Or if you act up here, we're going to send you home. Um, and so I felt like the Caribbean was both this place of joy and possible exile. Um, and so, um, I think part of the reason why I wrote this first book is I was like, well, what if that really happened? Like, what would it feel like? Um, and I can even write my way, all it all the way into that question. Cause it really is ends with the girls considering what their future might be like for real there.
I think the second book, um, I'm asking a deeper question about motherhood and like the intergenerational transfer of both trauma and aspiration. So, you know, the big question is like, can you do better than your mother? Um, I think everybody assumes that they will, um, that they know better than their mom, that they will do better. Um, and then as you grew up, if you're lucky, I think you realize you probably won't and you realize how much of the world was stacked against her, um, and start to develop a compassion, um, for what it is to even bring a kid into the world and, um, what it is to have hopes and dreams for them, what happens when they aspire and achieve and what happens when they aspire and don't. So I think that's the major question. Like, can you do better than your mom? Um, so it's about three generations of women basically trying to outdo the people who came before them. Um, but isn't that just life, like, I don't know.
KG 00:24: 31 This is why she's the writer, right? That's really, yes. You're tearing up.
NJ 00:24:35 Yeah. So it's a, it's a big question that I think, you know, probably in my early twenties, like I have a very complicated relationship to my own mother. Um, but one of the things that helped me is I just started to realize how hard she had it. And I was like, damn lady, you're still alive. You made it. Um, and you might not have made it on terms that I recognize. Um, but given what you had stacked up against you, what a miracle that you're still here. Um, so I think, and that that's like all my more compassionate days and other days I'm like, oh, you drive me crazy lady. Um, so I wanted to really write my way into that question and then to, to think about that question universally, but also in the, in terms of the specific context of Caribbean American women in the United States.
So what kinds of opportunities are available in the thirties, the sixties, the two thousands, like has the change from our grandmothers to mothers to, you know, today's generation. Um, what does opportunity look like in 1939 versus, you know, 2000? So, yeah, so it's a little bit of historical fiction, like trying to understand Caribbean women's place in American history. And I think wanting to, you know, every writer wants to write the great whatever novel in my case, the great Caribbean American women's novel. Um, but I, I think I wanted to both answer the universal question about motherhood and then answer the specific question about what does opportunity look like over the last century for Caribbean American women.
KG 00:26:19 So it's a small project.
NJ 00:25:20 Small ting.
NJ 00:26:23 That's why I'm done. No, I'm joking. That's what it's going to take me awhile.
KG 00:26:31 We'll wait.
TN 00:26:29 But, one of the things that you just said about context, about what does opportunity look like in these different historical moments? It brings me to something I wanted to ask you about given what's happened in Barbados relatively recently and in the United States, there's been a sort of sea change for good or ill, um, in both spaces, right? Politically with the election of Donald Trump here and Mia Motley and Barbados as prime minister. And I remember you were talking with us really candidly about your approach to writing as a political act and feeling your political commitments and exercising those through your writing. And I'm wondering what that, what those changes, what those elections have if they have at all influenced your writing or your approach to writing as a political act.
NJ 00:27:15 Yeah, I guess the interesting thing is I've, I've kind of cut off the very end of this last book before the contemporary context. So I don't go into like Trump or Motley or any of those changes. Cause I'm really thinking the second book really peaks at the, the housing crisis, like in the 2006, when the market is going crazy and people were, gentrification is happening in Brooklyn and, you know, a question of, um, who buy all these bronze brownstones that the Paule Marshall Brown Girl, Brownstones generation bought in the late fifties. Um, so I really give myself a pass because I just don't touch any of that stuff. Um, I mean, I think I've, I've thought a little bit about short stories, particularly in the context of, um, Youi and thinking about what it means to maybe not have access to free education anymore. Um, because I think that's a huge question that came up in the states, obviously in the sixties and seventies, you know, I think it was a different place when people could think that City College was the Harvard of New York city and was also free. I think the city that Audre Lorde and Paule Marshall experienced was quite different because they had access to Hunter, but Hunter was not a million dollars. So it's not to say the hundreds of million dollars now, but it's not free. And so I do think that that changes people's access to public education.
KG 00:28:49 And being able to afford to live in the city, to attend colleges that are even perhaps less expensive than private institutions.
NJ 00:28:55 Yeah. So I think I started to think about that a little bit in a short story, but I haven't really taken on any major political questions of the present moment and in the book that I'm working on. I mean, I think, you know, I struggle cause I think sometimes political commitments can make you ham-handed, you know, I was really committed in part, you know, this is also the strange thing about writing a first book. You both want to have it be its own thing. And you also think what if I never publish another book again? What are the things I feel like I have to say in the world, if this is my last chance with the mic, like if they steal this from me, and I never get to talk again, what do I want to have out there? And so I think in the beginning, when I approached that book, I was like, there needs to be a gay character in this book because there's not enough representation of gay characters in books set in the Caribbean.
True. Did I do a great job of it? No. Um, and I think that, you know, it's interesting cause I struggle with this a lot. I try to make several of the central characters gay cause that's like, how cool would it be to have a lesbian character at the center of a Caribbean level? Cause we've never really seen that, although that's not really true, Patricia Powell and other people have had it. But um, I mean I think I just was struggling to make anybody gay this book because I was like, this is going to transform things. And I think what I settled on didn't really work, but I was really committed to it. And so I've forgiven myself for that.
KG 00:30:36 What are you forgiving? What didn't work in your mind?
NJ 00:30:38 Writing this like secondary character who's this gay man who is the best friend of the mother the book.
NJ 00:30:46 And I think in the end he felt kind of flattened, stereotypical for some people. And I've, you know, I know this is true because there's a least been one review where people said, yeah, that's what happened. And I was like very mad at that reviewer, which made me think, oh, they probably touched on something that was true. Um, so I think I'm wary, I'm both like aware that it's important to have political commitments and also wary of what happens when you tried too hard to strangle them into the narrative. Um, so I think that's something I'm going to be a little bit more careful about in the future. So it's a strange thing. Like I was reading Bernadine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other which I loved and I thought, wow, she's gonna, she's gonna really try to write a non-binary character, how cool. And then I thought this could be terrible. Um, and I really appreciate both her bravery in it. And then I had all these questions about whether she had a right to write this character. So it's really complicated. Um, and so I'm just aware about all the ways it can go left. It can be exciting and it can also be a mess. Yeah.
KG 00:32:13 I'm just gonna a question that I hadn't thought to ask before, but I will now, um, if you have any thoughts on, I'm trying not to make this a leading question. Sorry, hold on.
NJ 00:32:13 Tell me what to say, Kaiama!
KG 00:32:29 Let me, can I pass you a note? No, I want to know what you think about US Black American hyper-presence. Let's say increasing hyper-presence as a literary force and phenomenon. Uh, if you feel like you're able to ignore that and be your own path and write the great, what was it, the great Caribbean women, feminist novel, epic, et cetera. Or if you feel either frustrated by, or you need to account be in dialogue with this kind of hegemonic phenomenon that is itself marginal in its context, but it takes up a ton of space, um, that otherwise might be available to Blackness from other places. It's a lot.
NJ 00:33:15 Yeah. It's a complicated question. How do I talk about this without getting into trouble? Right. <inaudible>
KG 00:33:25 That's why I hesitated to ask it.
NJ 00:33:24 I think that I wasn't as aware of those things before I published my book, I think after it came out, um, I was hyper aware of the ways in which my book was being ignored alongside some other Black American writers whose books were coming out at the same time. And so I was like, oh right. I forgot. I'm not American. Like not really. Um, and so, and you know, I joke I have a lot of African friends and I always joke I'm like, I really should have been African, Nigerian I was saying this because I've said this to a million of my African writer friends who I'm just like, you know, it's hot, it's trendy to be an African writer in a way that it's just not to be a Caribbean writer. And I think, you know, I think Marlon James' success has helped.
NJ 00:34:15 Um, but I think even that was seen as extraordinary and one person, I mean, it wasn't necessarily the beginning of a, like a trendy Caribbean writers movement. So I think, you know, in the last 10 years I feel like I've seen many spreads that are like the African Literary Vanguard or the African-American Literary Vanguard and there's no, um, parallel existing space for Caribbean writers. It just does not exist.
KG 00:34:45 They're one-offs, there's Edwidge, there's Marlin.
NJ 00:34:47 And I think people don't even see us in relationship to each other, which is weird. So strange. I think we see ourselves in community with each other, but, um, I don't think people read and say, I love Caribbean writers, these are the people, unless they're Caribbean themselves. So I don't think people ness, but I do think people say, I love African writers. I love African-American writers. Um, so there's all I can say is like, just was not aware of that somehow I was naïve and I'm glad I was.
I think I knew that the like Bajan, Antiguan, Jamaican thing was going to be a thing. I don't think I understood what it would mean to be a Caribbean person writing in that context. Yeah. So I think it was a, it was a blessing to not have considered deeply before. Cause I think it would have like prematurely hurt my feelings or something like that. Um, and whereas I became aware of it afterwards and then I was like, well, what are my choices? I mean, more recently I was working on a short story and I thought, oh, this is going to definitely make it to a big publication because it's about America set in Baltimore, the characters are American. There's no trace of Caribbean anything. And I was like, this is my chance! Finally written American story. Um, so yeah, that's what I have to say about that.
KG 00:36:24 Thank you for being so frank, appreciate it.
NJ 00:36:26 Anytime
KG 00:36:28 I think that we could probably keep you for another one, like an hour or two hours. Uh, we can't. So we're just gonna wrap up by saying thank you so much for being so candid for giving us all of this wisdom and perspective. I don't know that we expected to get so much from, from all of this. So yeah. Thanks for being here. Thank you.
TN 00:36:51 Thank you
KG 00:36:53 Honestly, Tammy, I had as good a time talking to Naomi in the studio today, as I did on stage with her and Dr. Joseph back in 2016. I'm so glad we went ahead and did this, that live Critical Caribbean Feminisms event was incredible. And checking back in with Naomi now, just, it made a lot of sense, but we haven't said anything about Critical Caribbean feminisms.
TN 00:37:10 I don't think so. No.
KG 00:37:12 Well you do the honors.
TN 00:37:14 Sure. We started the series back at Barnard in 2015 as a way to center work on the Caribbean and provide opportunities for writers to discuss their experiences and writing processes. We've had an incredible lineup of guests in the series so far. Each conversation has been important and I don't want to miss anyone. So I hope you'll excuse me for reading the list of guests. Now go for it. Since 2015, we have heard from Jamaica Kincaid and Tiffany Yanique, Edwidge Danticat and Victoria Brown, Gloria Joseph and Naomi Jackson, Claudia Rankine and Dionne Brand, Erna Brodber and Nicole Dennis-Benn. And then we went to Paris for that conversation with Maryse Condé and Fabeinne Kanor.
KG 00:37:57 Actually, videos of all of these past events are available on our Writing Home website. And that's also where we put a bunch of information about upcoming live events in the Critical Caribbean Feminism series, and also some news about past and future guests on this show.
TN 00:38:12 Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us. We hope you'll tune in again.
Writing Home is produced by Kaiama Glover, Tami Navarro, Rachel James and Miriam Neptune. Support for this podcast comes from the Digital Humanities Center, the Center for Research on Women, the Media Center and the library at Barnard College. Our music is by Ayizan from their album Dilijans and the track is Tribilasyon.
