Are We Being Too Demanding As Caribbean Readers?
Is it ok to feel a way when a Caribbean author doesn’t use our language and our culture in their work?
The knee-jerk reaction to this is “No” but let’s think about it…
Is it ok to feel a way when a Caribbean author doesn’t use our language and our culture in their work?
We love reading novels and poetry from the Caribbean, especially ones written by Jamaican authors, but are we demanding in our expectations?
What’s up with publicists comparing Jamaican authors to each other when their styles and subject-matter are worlds apart?
Listen to Jherane, Kristina and Ashley on Like A Real Book Club talk about their complex relationship with Caribbean books and what we expect from them. This episode features a small clip from Olive Senior speaking about her writing (and why we don’t quite agree with Olive… gasp)
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Spoken & Seen: Queeribbean Open Mic Night
Links to all the artists who performed in our Spoken and Seen: Queeribbean Arts event in April 2020
Here’s a quick & dirty list with links to all the performers from our
Queeribbean Open Mic Night in April.
Lysanne Charles
Lysanne @GoddessEye from Saba who shared work from her book and absolutely loved the one about missing her grandmother Her(e): A Collection of Queer Caribbean LGBTI Affirming Poems and Short Stories
Ayesha Holder
Ayesha @AJHolderBooks shared her poems for the first time and LISTEN! She needs to keep writing and sharing because they were amazing, and I loved the drag about queer representation often ignoring Asexuality lol. I love it! Go check out Ayesha's Youtube channel
Devonae J. Manderson
Devonae @SoulAndMelanin came in like a goddess and made us feel like royals in yellow cotton! I love her poetry and that poem so much because black women in yellow is one of my favourite things in this world. Go check out her other poems on her blog everyone is a hit, Chaotic Woman and Hanover are my favs on her blog, please gently nudge Devonae to keep sharing her writing and do that collection because I need it in my life.
Shanice Natty
Remember Shanice Natty @Natty_S.A.N who came on singing because she hadn't realise the live had started? LOL. But that voice! I could cry.
The song Natty sang hasn't been release yet but I'm following her on Soundcloud in anticipation and you should too! (I already know what playlist I'm adding Natty's work to once it's released-the one with NoName & Ari Lennox yea)
Jess Brough
I met Jess @Jessbrough at book club in Mandeville a while back when they were visiting from Scotland and they were a delight, but goody neva tell me seh dem write! I felt like a delicate flower listening to them nerdily explaining the linguistics of love and relationships. Jess is PhDeeping now so they aren't sharing their work a lot, but once they stop we're going to push them to write and share more!
Jay
Jay @Jaytjohn came in right after Jess and decided to "shift gears a bit" with some erotic poems and mah! Jay not only shifted gears, I heard they shifted panties as well in the comments section. They're currently working on their own collection but for now you can go follow their IG for updates!
Taitu
Taitu @Ifabola246 words cannot express how much I missed hearing Taitu's voice and despite the technical difficulties (ugh @ Instagram fix up youself) we got incredible poems about working through a break up (and fighting about things like who gets to keep the King size bed) and Mangos... listen! Mi get three Julie yesterday and all I could think about was Taitu's mango poem and how this social distance thing need fi done. The poems she read isn't online, but if you see her on these Twitter streets let her know we need a collection in some shape or form.
Chereese Lavonne
Chereese @ChereeseLavonne took us on an journey through her personal queer discovery and it was a beautiful and intimate poetic voyage. Chereese does a bag a tings including design, but she sometimes posts her work on her personal instagram page and her website.
Ashlee Burnett
Ashlee @Ashleeaburnett reminded us that there's no way we can have a Queeribbean poetry night without talking about religion and she brought us to the intersection of queerness, health and religion, and spirituality. My fav is Gaia's hugs and you can check out more of Ashlee's work on her website.
EJ
EJ @Johnson_Etal told us about the Moon and counted the ways we cope with watching someone we love marry someone else 🙃 EJ has the Daddy Issues series on Instagram and they're the beautiful poems that are numbered, my favourite is no. 1 which EJ captioned "You said, "Write about me." I did."
Neila Ebanks
Ok, but who knew Neila @Enkompan.e could write as well as she danced? No sah, unnuh too talented.
Neila's first poem about birthing oneself reminded me to believe in me that self-doubt and imposter syndrome need fi dead. Her poems made me feel powerful and soft at the same time and it was such a beautiful experience.
Mickiela
@KhaosFromKiki shared her visual art work, and her collection of painting on CDs is my favourite! I think we should do a book-themed visual art workshop with her using recyclable materials. Let me know what you think!
Kevanté
@Alexia_Chantelle was so fun to meet and she's an incredible amazing storyteller! She spoke about her journey to becoming more honest with her identity and the how a bit of physical distance from Bahamas gave her a more in depth perspective. I love loved her poem 'Shit' and I've been having a grand time following her on Twitter since where sis drops all the tea. You can read some of Kavanté's poems and stories here
Adwoa
Adwoa @Adwoa.addae invoked Ms. Lou in her poem "Trouble Maker Mi Name" and I'm still shookt! She brought in queer identity into our understanding of language and reminded me of how important it was for us to tell our own stories. Adwoa doesn't have her work online but I'm determined to feature her on our podcast because whew! Adwoa has the power to shake the world and I need everyone to know.
Topher Allen
@Poet_Topher.Allen is easily one of my favourite poets in Jamaica right now and I need the world to know this. I fell in love with his work via Pree Lit Magazine and this is his second performance with Rebel Women Lit and every time he shares his work I get starry eyed.
Cane Piece Road and Body are two of my favourites from his work.
Lee Rose
@Lee.J.Rose… Now is there anything Lee can't do?
Lee ended the night by stepping on all our necks. Every poem felt like a love letter from our ancestors and their work always leaves me feeling full and satisfied. Here’s their Vimeo
The Confessions of Frannie Langton Review + Tea with Sara Collins on our Podcast
We review the Confessions of Frannie Langton and chat with Sara Collins, on Like A Real Book Club.
In The Confessions of Frannie Langton, Frannie shares her story of being formerly enslaved in Jamaica, who is then brought to England as an (under) employed servant, becomes a dominatrix sex worker, and later accused of murdering her employers.
Sis goes through a lot...
Everyone in book club was a little hesitant to start this book because the marketing focused on it being a slave narrative, an Lorde knows we can’t all handle the trauma that tends to come from books about slavery. But by in the first couple of pages, Frannie won us over convincing us that we’ve never read a book like this before.
“This is a story of love, not just murder, though I know that’s not the kind of story you’re expecting. In truth, no one expects any kind of story from a woman like me. No doubt you think this will be one of those slave histories, all sugared over with misery and despair. But who’d want to read one of those? No, this is my account of myself and my own life and the happiness that came to it, which was not a thing I thought I’d ever be allowed, the happiness or the account.”
Excerpt From: Sara Collins. “The Confessions of Frannie Langton.”
The book does indeed highlight slavery through the stories of experiments done on Caribbean plantations in the name of “science”, the motivations of white abolitionists, and other themes that we don’t see in best selling books based in the 19th Century England that are still on our CXC syllabus cough cough Jane Austen. Perhaps one of the best things about The Confessions of Frannie Langton is that it doesn’t throw historical records in our faces, instead, Sara Collins subtly shows how slavery built the UK’s wealth and how many people living in the UK never had to think about it when they asked for someone to “pass the sugar”.
At the start of book club a few people acknowledged that they stayed up all night reading the book, and Candiese even did a speed-read through the last few pages just before the meeting so she could talk about it! 🤣
Kristina summed up a lot of our feelings about being introduced to Frannie and Frannie’s drive to tell her own story.
The style of The Confessions of Frannie Langton is something we also admired for its very poetic and metaphorical language. In the book “scientists” try to find reasons for treating black people as sub-human, whereas Frannie uses logic and her hunger for knowledge to discover more about her humanity and the brutal ironies of abolitionists and slave-owners alike.
“It is impossible to be both black and a woman. Did you know that? No one was asking me to give any lectures. They allow some blacks to impress them. Men like Sancho, Equiano … Yet I fail to see what was so impressive about them. They wrote, yes. But thousands could, if someone would bother to teach them. And everything they wrote was written for whites. Petitions. Appeals. It’s another of this world’s laws. Blacks will write only about suffering, and only for white people, as if our purpose here is to change their minds.”
Excerpt From: Sara Collins. “The Confessions of Frannie Langton.”
Finally, the sex… oh the sex. No one saw The School House scenes coming and we couldn’t have predicted how thought-provoking it would’ve been to see 19th-century dominatrix black women in London. This spurred a lot of discussions about the politics of sex and how trauma can make its way into sex and sex work.
(No videos on that, go read the book! lol)
Another thing we really admired about the book was the intense that went into it. So much so that Natasha put together a playlist featuring all of Sara’s youtube videos talking about the research for the book.
There were a few things we wished were included in the book, particularly more about Paradise, Montego-Bay and more interactions between Frannie and other black people.
We got a chance to interview Sara Collins about her debut novel in our podcast Like A Real Book Club, and without even mentioning that we wanted to see more of Paradise, she brought up why she chose to tell the story the way she did.
Bonus: She talks about her upcoming sophomore novel.
And, in case you missed it, we also did our Like A Real Book Club podcast meetup to talk about this book in more details about the book and its plot.
We highly recommend reading this book and we guarantee it’s unlike any story you’ve read and we’re happy that it’s being adapted into a television series.
Subscribe to our podcast: Like A Real Book Club
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See You At Book Club!
Reading Deliberately: Our 2020 Reading List
Our 2020 book club reading list - complete with prompts!
2020 Books
Read Deliberately with RWL
We promised you that if you read with us for 2020 you’d complete our Reading Deliberately challenge and have 12 amazing new books under your belt (technically 13, we have two Olive Senior collections for August).
Here’s our complete 2020 Reading List matched with our Read Deliberately prompts:
Our Complete 2020 Reading List
January - Shortlisted for Lots of Awards
Girl, Woman, Other 🇬🇧 by Bernardine Evaristo
February - Mystery Novel by a Black Author
The Confessions of Frannie Langton🇯🇲 by Sara Collins
March - Collection by Queer Poet
Crossfire: A Litany of Survival 🇯🇲 by Staceyann Chin
April - Caribbean Based Historical Fiction
A Tall History of Sugar 🇯🇲 by Curdella Forbes
May - YA with Queer Main Characters
The Stars and the Blackness Between Them🇹🇹 by Junauda Petrus
June - Book that Centres 'Family' by a WoC
The Star Side of Bird Hill 🇧🇧 by Naomi Jackson
July - Book Filled With Drama
Come Let Us Sing Anyway 🇯🇲 by Leone Ross
August - Collection by Caribbean Poet
over the roofs of the world & Gardening in the Tropics 🇯🇲by Olive Senior
September - Science Fiction/Fantasy from a Black Author
The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1) 🇺🇸 by N.K. Jemisin
October - Self-Published & from the Caribbean
The Girl with the Hazel Eyes 🇧🇧 by Callie Browning
November - Novel With the Main Character Over 60 Yrs Old
Like A Mule Bringing Ice-Cream To The Sun 🇳🇬 by Sarah Ladipo Manyika
December - Caribbean Fabulism/Speculative/Magical Realism
The Marvelous Equations of the Dread 🇯🇲 by Marcia Douglas
If you’re reading any of these books this year, tag us on social media using #RebelWomenLit, join our book discussions on Goodreads, or listen to our podcast Like A Real Book Club.
7 Books You Should Read Before They Hit The Screens
7 Books You Should Read Before They Hit The Screens
Controversial opinion: read the book before its tv/movie adaptation comes out.
I can already hear the arguments in the comments and on twitter about which you should indulge in first to save yourself possible heartbreak. Personally, after I see a movie, it always feels too late to go back and read the book. So, when I know that a tv of film adaptation for a book is coming out, I try my hardest to read it first.
Regardless of where you stand on the Read It First vs Read It After debate, we can all agree that there’s nothing like seeing a story you only imagined come alive brilliantly on screen. So to help prep our reading list, I came up with a roundup of tv shows and movies coming out within the next few months that are based off novels diverse novels or will have diverse creators & casting.
Whether it be on your commute to work, before you go to bed, or on the beach these are definitely worth taking the time to read.
Americanah
About: Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira’s planned adaptation of the Chimamanda Adiche’s novel “Americanah” has a 10 episode show lined up for HBO Max. When she was a teenager Ifemelu, fell in love with her classmate Obinze while living in military-ruled Nigeria. As young adults, they each depart for the West, with Ifemelu heading for America, where, despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple for the first time with what it means to be black living in America. Obinze had hoped to join her in America, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous undocumented life in London.
Who’s in it: Lupita Nyong'o, Uzo Aduba, Corey Hawkins, Zackary Momoh
Read Americanah
Release date: TBA from HBO
P.S. I Love You 2
About: If you love a cute rom-com you’ve probably seen the film To All The Boys I Loved Before a few million times on Netflix and you can’t wait to see the sequel coming out just before Valentine’s Day! In part 2, Lara Jean and Peter have finally taken their relationship from pretend to officially official. They’re going on romantic dinner dates, holding hands, giving valentine’s day gifts, the works. When another recipient of one of her old love letters (from part 1) enters the picture and Lara Jean realises she also has feelings for him. Can a girl be in love with two boys at once?
Who’s in it: Lana Condor, Noah Centineo, Madeleine Arthur, Ross Butler
Release date: February 12 on Netflix
High Fidelity
About: Hulu is also swinging in this Valentine’s Day with their gender and race swap on British novel High Fidelity was not something anyone could have anticipated, but we’re all pleasantly surprised by it. This Rom-Com follows Rob, the owner of a semi-failing record store, as she takes a look back at the five biggest heartbreaks in her life, all so she can figure out why she keeps having her heart broken.
Who’s in it: Zoë Kravitz, Jake Lacy, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph
Read High Fidelity
Release date: 14th February on Hulu
Little Fires Everywhere
About: Based on Celeste Ng’s 2017 turn-pager, Little Fires Everywhere follows the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and an enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives when they move into their rental property.
Who’s in it: Kerry Washington, Reese Witherspoon, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Joshua Jackson.
Read Little Fires Everywhere
Release date: March 13 on Hulu
The Underground Railroad
About: This Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner’s screen adaptation is highly anticipated by readers and cinephiles alike. This historical fiction TV series directed by Barry Jenkins follows Cora, a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia, who finds out about Underground Railroad, and decides to take a terrifying risk and escape with Caesar, a newly arrived slave from Virginia.
Who’s in it: Thuso Mbedu, Chase W. Dillon, Aaron Pierre, Joel Edgerton
Read The Underground Railroad
Release date: TBA on Amazon Video
Lovecraft Country
About: If you’re into drama horror this is the HBO tv serie created by Jordan Peele, Misha Green, J.J. Abrams and Ben Stephenson promises to be the story you’re craving. In this story, Atticus Black joins his friend Letitia and his Uncle George to embark on a road trip across 1950s Jim Crow America in search of his missing father. This begins a struggle to survive and overcome both the terrors of white America with monsters that could’ve been ripped from an H.P. Lovecraft book.
Who’s in it: Jonathan Majors, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Wunmi Mosaku, Aunjanue Ellis, Michael K. Williams, and Abbey Lee
Read Lovecraft Country
Release date: TBA from HBO
The Witches
About: This Roald Dahl’s children’s book gets a dark fantasy twist for the big screen. In The Witches a little boy stumbles across a conference of witches while staying with his grandmother at a hotel, and gets transformed into a mouse by the Grand High Witch, played by Anne Hathaway.
Who’s in it: Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Stanley Tucci, Chris Rock
Read The Witches
Release date: In Theatres October 9th
Reading Deliberately in 2020
Reading Deliberately in 2020 - The #RebelWomenLit Challenge
Easily the best thing about the Rebel Women Lit community is that we all inspire each other to read more frequently and deliberately.
We did a diversity reading challenge in 2018 and it was phenomenal! I was personally challenged to read with more intention and actively seek out voices in books that were unlike the ones we typically see in mainstream media.
For 2020, we want to bring back the Rebel Women Lit reading challenge, so we can all be more intentional about what we read while sharing our favourite books with the community. This year’s challenge is calls for 12 books, which is perfect for everyone who wants to read at least one book a month, and great for combining with other challenges if you read more frequently.
The book club picks for our monthly meet-ups will be based on the prompts from this challenge (so just by coming to book club you can complete the challenge. And if you’d like to double-up, we’ll also share additional recommendations for each prompt here on our blog and using our #RebelWomenLit hashtag on Twitter and Instagram.
If you’re accepting our challenge to read more deliberately this year, feel free to share your books with us on social media using the hashtag #RebelWomenLit.
Our 2020 #RebelWomenLit Challenge
Science Fiction/Fantasy By A Black Author
Novel With Caribbean Magical Realism
Self-Published Book From The Caribbean
Poetry Collection By A Queer Poet
Caribbean-Based Historical Fiction
Young Adult Novel With Queer Characters
Mystery Novel By A Black Author
Novel That Centres 'Family', Written By A Woman of Colour
A Book Filled With Drama (Mix-up an Blen-up! Messy Drama!)
Novel Whose Main Character Is Over 60 Years Old
Poetry Collection By Caribbean Poet
A Book By Black Author That Has Recently Been Shortlisted For a Lot of Awards
Image of all our #RebelWomenLit challenge prompts
Our Thoughts on Pet and Who We Think Should Play Bitter in a Movie
Our collective thoughts on Pet by Akwaeke Emezi as told through our book club meetup questions.
In October we read Pet by Akwaeke Emezi.
We had terrific discussions about the plot, symbolisms, allegories, and had lot of friendly arguments about the odd utopian/dystopian world of Lucille.
Akwaeke’s work is no stranger to our book club. We read Freshwater last year and it immediately made everyone’s (and I do mean EVERYONE’S) Favourite Book list. With that in mind, we were very excited and hopeful about Pet and whether Akwaeke would live up to the really high bar they had set for themself with Freshwater. Akwaeke surely lived up to their name of being thought-provoking, genre-defying, and rebellious in their sophomore novel, Pet.
We asked each Rebel Women Lit meetup to share their feedback on Pet and here’s a quick recap:
Overall, is the story and/or its characters easy or difficult to relate to?
“It’s a world I would want to live in but everything is flawed. It would be nice to live in a world where LGBT+ people, people of colour, neuro-divergent people etc. can feel safe. But it’s still a world where children aren’t believed and predators are protected, which is sad, but that part mirrors our reality. I wish they went into more details on what this ‘perfect’ society looks like.” - Gabrielle, Mandeville
“I didn’t so much relate to the characters, but I still feel warmly towards them. The moment I found most relatable was when Jam struggled to ‘see the unseen.’ ”- Akilah, Kingston
Mandeville Book Club Meet-Up
“I didn’t relate to any of the characters much except for Moss because I’ve been in a similar situation of being abused by the angel that was to protect us and not having anyone to talk to about it.” - Jaii, Montego-Bay
What do you think was Akwaeke’s message in the book? What ideas were they trying to get across?
“The need to critically reflect on the world, especially considering the limits of ‘perfection’” - Damali, Kingston
“I think they were speaking to a younger version of themself; they were trying to convey ideas of justice.” - Jodi-Ann, Kingston
“To remind us that forgetting and denying the past and trauma can create a new cycle.” - Jessica, Kingston
“I’m thinking that they want to expose our desires of a utopian society by asking us to truly consider the set-up. They are asking us to interrogate our ideas of justice and of what ‘perfection’ looks like” - Kristina, Kingston
What part of the story resonated with you the most?
“The scene where Jam stopped Pet from Killing Hibiscus by asking it to consider how effective that would be in the long run as well as how that would bring any peace or reconciliation for the victim, Moss. It resonated with me because it was a moment of reflection for me on how I perceive justice.” - Kristina, Kingston
“The tension with striving for a better world”- Damali, Kingston
Kingston Book Club Meet-Up
“I loved the world building, the characters and the task of figuring out what their names meant. I thought it was great that they tackled a serious issue in a way that kids would understand (who doesn’t like mysteries and fighting monsters?)” - Jaii, Montego-Bay
If Pet Got Made Into A Movie, Who Would You Cast?
BITTER:
Charlayne Woodard, Dominique Jackson, Angelica Ross or Lupita Nyong'o
ALOE:
Sterling K Brown, Winston Duke or Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
PET:
James Earl Jones or Viola Davis
REDEMPTION:
Asante Blackk, a young Dayo Okeniyi (lol), Ethan Herisse
JAM:
… [We all agreed that we need more black teen girls who are of trans experience in Hollywood!]
Final thoughts?
“I’d recommend this book to fantasy readers, especially (black, queer, neruodivergent, or Caribbean) looking for a good read.” - Gabrielle, Mandeville
“I really like their commitment to non-ableist language!” - Jodi-Ann, Kingston
“I'd recommend Pet to mostly pre-teens and teenagers. But I think there's value in adults reading it as well” - Kristina, Kingston
Thank you to everyone who came to our book club meetups for Pet by Akwaeke Emezi!
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