By Subraj Singh
Imam Baksh is one of the newest writers to emerge from Guyana. His first novel, Children of the Spider, written for children and young people, won the Burt Award for Caribbean Literature in 2015 when it was submitted as a manuscript.
Imam described himself as “moderately happy” after the win simply because, according to him, there was still a lot of doubt in his mind because, at the time, the book had not yet found an audience and one of his primary goals as a writer is to ensure that readers are the ones granted the emotional experience offered by the book. After winning the Award, Imam’s novel has now been published by the Jamaican-based publishing house, Blue Moon Books, under its imprint, Blouse and Skirt Books, and was officially released on Friday, July 15th 2016.
The novel falls into the fantasy genre, relying on Caribbean folklore and Caribbean society in order to tell its tale. The story follows a young girl named Mayali, as she escapes from the land of Zolpash and comes to Guyana in an effort to find her father. On her journey, she meets many friends and helpers and battles many enemies. The novel is quite entertaining and offers Guyanese children the extremely rare opportunity to read a novel that is set in their own country, using their folk traditions, with characters who behave and sound like people they might actually know.
With his first novel, the writer says that he hopes people can gain the experience of having lived as another person for a while when they read Children of the Spider, with the further hope that the reader can understand the social problems in the world of the characters, which, it should be noted, are also problems that exist in the very real world that the readers live in.
It should not come as a surprise that Imam writes for children, since he was very clear memories of himself as both a reader and a writer when he himself was a youngster. He says that he started writing since he was five years old and attempted, but didn’t succeed, at writing his first novel when he was twelve years old. Unusually, his favourite book to recommend to people is a children’s book, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Expury. Imam says that he also dabbled in writing fan fiction early on and only began to take writing seriously when he was twenty one and aimed to write short stories that could be sold to magazines and anthologies.
Despite having won awards for his writing, Imam does suffer from the same fears all writers have, as when probed about the worst part of the writing process he says that it is “the uncertainty about the quality of what you’re writing.” Conversely, like all writers know, and perhaps are the very reasons why they write, are the good moments in the writing process, the best parts, with each writer claiming something special from the process for him/herself. For Imam, the best thing about his own writing process is the puzzle-solving effect of figuring out scenes, of sorting actions, dialogue and connections, and feeling those “happy explosions” in your brain once it has all been worked out. For Imam, the writing process also includes receiving feedback on the draft of the work at various stages in the creation of the text. He maintains that the names of such people do not matter since “it is often different people at different times.” However, he does make the point on the necessity of writers to receive feedback from readers and people close to them, noting the importance of giving a wide cross-section of trusted readers previews of the work. On the matter of receiving feedback while writing, Imam offers up the known rule of thumb which states that “if one person tells you they didn’t like something in your work, then it probably wasn’t to their tastes; but if five people tell you about it, then you probably need to figure out why it’s not working.”
Imam also offered up his opinion on the current literary climate in Guyana. He opines that many Guyanese writers may fail to succeed because they do not offer enough importance to the story. He further expounded on this observation by stating that “they are too focused on the message and the agenda at the cost of an entertaining story.” Although he does think Guyanese writers are everywhere, he does feel that Essequibo (Imam is a native of that county) can sometimes “be too isolated in many ways to feel like you’re a part of a national conversation” – a statement which is perhaps ironic, considering that Essequibo is the largest of our three counties, but definitely highlights the fact that there is good creative work being done not only in Georgetown and the areas in close proximity to the capital. On the matter of whether Guyanese are supportive of their writers, Imam says that the people of our country “like the idea of writing and literacy” and that they “respect the intelligence and labour behind writing”, but at the same time he admits that he does not know whether they enjoy books enough to support writers financially.
Imam Baksh studied at Queen’s College in the nineties, and then moved on to study English at the University of Guyana and Education at the University of Toronto before starting to work as a teacher. He described his high school as “a place filled with knowledgeable and expressive people” and that this was one of the factors which resulted in him learning to express himself in different ways – whether it be through the telling of jokes or having debates. Imam considers dialogue to be a strength of his writing and much of what he knows about dialogue and the way people speak was learnt during his days at Queen’s College. Interestingly, his next novel, which is described by the author as “an ole higue story” is set at the school and is entitled The Demise of the Queen’s College Adventure Club.
Imam believes that young writers, in order to be successful must be open to criticism and must seek avenues for criticism. He also warns against hoarding ideas, saving them for when the writer believes they will be a better writer, and encourages young people to write now, pointing out that good ideas always replenish themselves.