IN KEEPING with UNESCO’s proclamation designating 2011 as ‘International Year of People of African Descent’, we now embark on a series of articles highlighting Guyanese Writers of African Descent who have made significant contribution to our literature. There are many pitfalls and shortcomings associated with listing, grouping and categorising; straightway, I apologise for omissions or any other deficiencies.  Of course, I may stumble here, and, of course, I would depend on your support in supplying necessary information so we are all the wiser in the end.
So far, we have looked at Ivan Van Sertima, N. E. Cameron, Eric Walrond, ER Braithwaite, Jan Carew, O. R. Dathorne, Beryl Gilroy and Denis Williams, getting a feel from whence we came, how we have evolved within new constraints, and how we have had to struggle, and are still struggling, to enjoy inherent human rights.
This continuous battle was, and still is, fought on many fronts, with various instruments of engagement, chief amongst them the pen.
We now take a look at Henry Josiah, a writer who has left us the exhortation “to rediscover ourselves, to sometimes dig up the ground our forebears have covered, and take a long and loving look at our roots.”
Josiah was attempting to practise what he preached, but ran out of time: He was attempting to let us into the life and times of slave hero, Damon through a short novel. Josiah was also attempting an epic novel, retracing the Aboriginal peoples’ journey across the Bering Straits down into the Americas.

HENRY JOSIAH
Journalist, magazine publisher, radio commentator, children’s book editor/producer, Henry Josiah was an inveterate word merchant who started his writing career at high school. This creative impulse was given momentum when his first published story in the Caribia regional magazine won a readers’ popularity poll against the ilk of Edgar Mittleholzer, an already published novelist.
Josiah’s stories also found their way into the Guyana Times magazine, and in a significant anthology, The Lure of the Mermaid and other Stories, edited by Janet Jagan. His poetry won prizes in the Kaie journal, and found its way into important anthologies like Independence Ten, Guyanese Writing 1966 – 1976, edited by Seymour, and Voices of Guyana, edited by Donald Trotman.
In 1966, one of Josiah’s stories carried his name to international acknowledgement when ‘Makonaima and Pia’ won a children’s story contest.
Reprinted in illustrated book form, that story earned a ‘Book of the Day’ award at the 1967 ‘Man and His World’ international exposition in Montreal, and was included in a UNESCO travelling book exhibition, ‘Best of the Best’.
Locally, that legacy of writing for children is celebrated in the form of a literary competition, ‘The Henry Josiah Writing Story for Children Competition’. That competition was initiated in 2002, when Texas-based Guyanese philanthropist, Dr. Tulsi Dyal Singh, who resuscitated the Guyana Christmas Annual (now The Guyana Annual) in 1998, sought to revitalise the literary legacy of Guyana by targetting and involving children of a tender age.
Alan Fenty, in introducing the competition, said: “…the idea is to discover and encourage those who have a knack, a skill for creating entertaining, educational and credible local stories for the nation’s children.”
Josiah graduated from the London Polytechnic School of Modern Languages, and studied journalism in Britain on a colonial scholarship, making him the first qualified Guyanese journalist.
In 1953, he became the secretary of the British Guiana Union of Journalists, serving alongside William Carto, Carl Blackman, and R. B. Harewood, replacing the ineffective British Guiana Press Association.
On several occasions, he worked at the Government Information Services (GIS), and held the post of Communications Advisor in the Office of the Prime Minister; both positions placed him in the midst of anything happening anywhere, so he was well informed.