Preserving our literary heritage

For the Love of Books

There is only so much a writer can reveal of her/himself through their work. I am privilege to learn more about our writers by meeting them and working along with them.
The underlining message in those experiences is in order to write well one must read avidly. Here are some episodes of lives portraying the love for books and the love for reading:
• (Extract from an interview with Cyril Dabydeen, Guyana, August 2007)

I used to read voraciously while living in Berbice, not only the Guyanese and other Caribbean authors like Martin Carter, Wilson Harris, George Lamming and Sam Selvon, but also the British and American ones like Eliot, Auden, Dylan Thomas, and those from India and Africa also like Tagore and Chinua Achebe. I would spend long hours in the British Council Library and the New Amsterdam Public Library, once or twice a week: I would ride my Raleigh bicycle about four miles from Canje Rose Hall to be there.

• (Extract of interview with Elly Niland, Georgetown, Guyana, August 2007)
I love 19 century literature above all else. I love Charlotte Bronte, Thomas Hardy, Seamus Heaney, Sylvia Plath, Walcott, Agard’s ‘Half Caste’, Grace Nichols’ ‘I is a long Memoried Woman’; What a Guyanese woman! I’d like to walk in her path; there’s a lot we can learn from the work of that wonderful woman.
• (Extract of interview with Ian McDonald, June 2010)
Since I was a young boy of nine and ten I use to read avidly and at school my favourite subject was literature and here too I continue to read. As I continue to read I found I also wanted to write which is a natural transition from reading to writing. One of the things when you read, when you read something that impresses you, automatically your mind tries to assess and analyse why this is making such an impression.
• (Extract of interview with Janice Shinebourne, Guyana, February 2013.)
At…Bookers which is Guyana Stores now, was the place to be when you were young…there would be these carousels of paperbacks and we use to go and buy our snacks. And then we…would go and look at books. So it was a culture that valued books and we were all well-read; we were up to date with the latest classics…
• (Extract of an interview with Oonya Kempadoo , Georgetown, Guyana, January, 2008)
There were two books which I read while I was growing up in Golden Grove – ‘Cannery Row’ by Steinbeck and ‘Miguel Street’ by Naipaul, both set on one street, similar to the street on which I live and seeing the possibility of capturing observations and characters and sort of social sketch and something so enjoyable to read, occur to me as something I could attempt one day. So that was the first and strongest influence. Since then I’ve been reading all sorts of literature from Scottish to Indian and Irish authors.
• (Interview with Berkley Semple, Georgetown, Guyana, August 22, 2011)
…I have writers in the family, but my people are mostly readers, consumers of books. My maternal grandfather, Jacob McKenzie, was a prolific reader of historic things, who use to memorise all kinds of poetry and recite them, even long passages of Shakespeare. That was certainly my point of departure. I was a hungry reader before I started writing. I like the sound of words, the tone and rhythm and cadence.
• (Part of an interview with Charuamanie Bissundyal, Guyana, 2012.)
(CB): There were other factors like the fact that my family members were ardent readers of the Valmiki and the Tulsidas Ramayana, the Mahabharat,….
(PP): Very important influences – it is important if you want to write well, you must be well read.
(CB): Right. So that was one aspect. Then there was the whole philosophy of poetry. If you read the Tulsidas Ramayana – the … Poetry is all about beauty and nature. That’s where Tagore got his influence.
• (Part of an interview with Brenda DoHarris, Guyana, January 2010.)
(PP): Talking about school and books, what were some of the books that influenced your writing?
(BD): One of them is Buchi Emecheta’s ‘Second Class Citizens’, well all her books not just that one. Buchi Emecheta is a Nigerian woman novelist who has written a lot on women issues especially women in the post-colonial environment. One of her best books I think is ‘Second Class Citizens’ in which she details what life was like in England for Blacks and others who went there in the 1950s and how hard life was finding housing etc, in the face of discrimination, trying to find jobs in a society that was patently racist at the time.
I’ve also read Merle Hodge. Her books were a tremendous influence especially, ‘Crick Crack Monkey’, … and Haiti’s Edwidge Danticat.
• (Part of an interview with Peter Jailall, Guyana, 2008).
(PP): …We have talked about writing, what about reading, getting children to read?
(PJ): First and foremost, we can do the oral – tell stories and recite poems, get them comfortable with the oral, let them flow. Before you read, you have to deal with the scarcity of books. First, let’s get the books, good books, colourful literature, attractive books. Now back to the community, it is important that parents, and guardians and grownups read to children, get them to listen to words, words forming picture and music as in poetry. Teachers should read more and more to children, find poems and stories that tell about different lands, peoples and cultures, poems and stories about science and other subjects and learning will become easy.
(Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com)

by Petamber Persaud

 

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