I was born and raised in a time and place where children did not enjoy the rights they do today. When adults or big-people (Caribbean English) were engaged in conversation or disagreement, children were not allowed to put their mouth in big-people talk. Children, they said, should be seen and not heard. Break the rules and you could get a licking (flogging). And so, from a young age, I learned to observe women’s behavior and listen in to their conversations.

Big-women often spoke in coded language that I learned to decipher when I entered my teenage years.

—Watch yourself around Mary husband. He hand fast.

—She sleeping with her boss. He promise her the world.

—Mary daughter get a big-belly for the landlord son.

—He take advantage of his own daughter/niece.

—Open your eyes, girl. The white man (British soldiers) only want a good time. When the time come, he going up and gone. And you get left behind as spoiled goods.

These stories and more I heard as I worked quietly in a corner of my mother’s sewing room, where she attended to her adult female clients. A few of these women have inspired the female characters in my debut novel, Under the Tamarind Tree (USA, 2019). Among them is the vivacious and attractive, young client of Portuguese descent. Her vibrant, outspoken personality brings to life the character of Gloria Cheong nee Henry, the mixed African-Portuguese wife of the protagonist Richard Cheong. My Auntie Baby is the inspiration for one of Gloria’s Portuguese cousins, a minor character, who is dating a British soldier.

Afro-Guyanese Mama Chips, Richard’s surrogate mother following the death of his mother when he was 13 years old, is inspired by my childhood beloved neighbor Auntie Katie. As a tribute to Auntie Katie, she also appears as herself in Chapter One as the Cheong’s family next-door neighbor and family friend. While creating the character of Mama Chips, a wise woman of lived experience, I came to realize how much she had meant to me as a child growing up in a poor working-class family.

Creating Richard’s oldest sister and antagonist of the story, Mildred Gomes nee Cheong, proved the most challenging of the female characters. Her animosity towards her younger and only surviving brother goes back to their childhood when their Chinese father did not hide his favoritism for his sons. Though she was his firstborn, he had little regard for her because she was female. Unknown to Richard, she connives to make him pay for their father’s sins.

I have known and worked with women who cheated, lied, and manipulated others to get what they wanted. I also heard of cases where Guyanese women used the services of an obeah-man or obeah-woman to fulfill their devious schemes. Of West African origin, obeah is a set or system of secret beliefs that use supernatural forces to attain or defend against evil ends. Without revealing too much of the storyline, Richard accuses Mama Chips’ daughter of working obeah on him.

To create an authentic, sociopathic female character, I had to understand the roots and motivation for Mildred’s determination to ruin the life of her younger brother. Her scars run deep and wide. Married to a successful businessman of Portuguese descent, who owns and runs a jewelry store in Georgetown, she lives in an upscale neighborhood in the capital, Georgetown, and socializes with the Portuguese upper middle class.

Mildred’s lifestyle and role as a benefactor of the parish church is inspired by three women, of the Portuguese upper middle class, with whom I had contact as a young nun. They worked closely with the sisters in providing care for the less fortunate in our parish. One of the women, like Mildred, couldn’t have children and was always critical of the way mothers raised their children.  

Through stories of the major and minor female characters in my family saga, Under the Tamarind Tree: A Novel, I bring to life their struggles for self-determination in a patriarchal society, undergoing political and social upheaval. Today, in my adopted homeland, misogynist and violent men—and women who support them—have once again risen to dominance. The gains of my generation for our body autonomy and self-determination are being stripped away one by one.