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Monthly Archives: May 2017

One Holiday, Two Americas: Memorial Day Thoughts

29 Monday May 2017

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Uncategorized

≈ 14 Comments

“We — those of us in the non-fighting America, those of us for whom the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are abstractions — perhaps remain too comfortable, detached from something of desperate importance: the duty done far from home in our stead by the children of other people. And removed and distant from how the “best and brightest” of their families risk and sometimes give up everything they hold dear.”

Thank you, Dr. Stein, for reminding us of the families in the “Other America” who are making the ultimate sacrifice in America’s endless wars.

Dr. Gerald Stein

Some of our fathers and brothers, even our sisters and aunts, served in wartime. Some serve now. Perhaps you too.

Today is the day we honor the fallen in all the many conflicts of this, our country.

Can two Americas fit into a holiday designed for one?

Thus do the two Americas array themselves: those for whom service is a calling and those for whom it is an economic necessity; those powerful and those without prospects; those respected and those afraid; those with fat wallets and those with empty purses; the few who are part of our volunteer army and the majority who choose not to be.

When my father did his duty in World War II, walking the Champs-Élysées on the first Bastille Day after the liberation of Paris, there was such a thing as military conscription: able bodied young men were required to participate. In post-war Germany, as…

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Down Independence Boulevard And Other Stories by Ken Puddicombe

21 Sunday May 2017

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Guyana, Recommended Reading

≈ 41 Comments

Tags

Guyana Independence Day, Guyanese-Canadian author, Immigrants, Ken Puddicombe, Racial violence, Short stories about Guyanese immigrants, Short stories of Guyana’s pre-independence racial disturbances

Book Cover - Down Independence Boulevard and Other Stories by Ken Puddicombe

On May 26, Guyana celebrates 51 years as an independent nation. Independence did not come easy. Worker strikes, riots, lootings, burnings, beatings, rape, and killings turned the coexistence of the country’s multi-ethnic population into a toxic stew of animosity and mistrust. The so-called “racial disturbances” of the 1960s drove hundreds from their homes. Those who could, fled overseas.

In his collection of sixteen short stories, Down Independence Boulevard And Other Stories, Guyanese-Canadian author Ken Puddicombe, who migrated to Canada in 1971, takes us within the homes of families faced with racial violence and upheaval. With the keen eyes of a master story teller, Puddicombe lays bare their ruptured lives and re-invention as immigrants in a foreign country. Continue reading →

On the Making of My Convent Novel

14 Sunday May 2017

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Guyana, The Writer's Life

≈ 48 Comments

Tags

Catholic nuns and priests, Clerical sex abuse, Creating complex fictional characters, Dr. Walter Rodney, Mabaruma/Guyana, Religious life, roman catholic church

When my friend and poet, Angela Consolo Mankiewicz, told me that my second novel had to be about my life in the convent, I balked at the idea. To embark on a journey back to a time and place that caused me grief would require some meaningful purpose. The 2012 documentary film, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, exploring the first known public protest against clerical sex abuse in the US, gave me the impetus I needed.

My convent novel, inspired by real events that took place in Guyana in the 1970s, had to be relevant to the present. To bash the nuns and priests would be unjust. Most religious men and women that I lived and worked with had devoted their lives to their God and strove to live according to His teachings. I have long forgiven those who had betrayed or abandoned me when I needed them most. Continue reading →

“Destination” – Poem by Guyanese-Canadian Poet Janet Naidu

01 Monday May 2017

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Guyana, Immigrants, Poetry

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

"Destination" by Janet Naidu, "New System of Slavery", Guyanese-Canadian Poet, Immigrants, Indian indentured laborers, Indian Indentureship in Guyana 1838-1917, Sugar plantations in Guyana

East Indian Indentured Laborers

In commemoration of the centennial of the abolition of Indian Indentureship on March 12, 1917, my Poetry Corner May 2017 features the poem “Destination” by Janet Naidu, a Guyanese-born poet, writer, social activist, and life-skills coach. She migrated to Canada in 1975, at the age of twenty-two, where she obtained a BA in Political Science and Caribbean Studies from the University of Toronto and, later in life, an LLB from the University of London (UK).

With the abolition of slavery in 1834 and the end of the apprenticeship scheme in 1838, the mass exodus of ex-slaves from plantations across the British Empire created a dire need for a regular and reliable supply of labor. On May 5, 1838, the first group of about 400 Indian indentured laborers, on a five-year contract, arrived in British Guiana on the sailing ships, Whitby and Hesperus. By 1917, their numbers totaled over 238,000 Indians, comprising 42 percent of the colony’s population. Only 65,538 returned to India on terminating their contract. Janet Naidu’s grandparents from Tamil Nadu were among those who arrived on the SS Ganges on November 8, 1915.

Sailships Whitby and Hesperus arriving at Port Georgetown - British Guiana - May 5, 1838

Born in the village of Covent Garden, East Bank Demerara, Naidu was the seventh of eight children. Like his parents, her father was a cane cutter. Her mother sold home-grown, green vegetables in the market.

In “Destination” from her poetry collection, Rainwater (2005), Naidu conjures the immigrants’ fearsome voyage across the ocean for an unknown destination. Continue reading →

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