Tag Archives: Domestic violence

“Broken System” – Spoken Word Poem by Guyanese Poet Renata Burnette

01 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by in Poetry

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Victim of domestic violence with her mother – Guyana

 

My Poetry Corner July 2018 features the spoken word poem, “Broken System,” by young Guyanese poet Renata Burnette. Residing in the capital, Georgetown, she is a second-year undergraduate at the University of Guyana, pursuing a degree in Communications.

Renata’s poetry calls attention to the daily struggles and issues of young Guyanese, especially those in their late teens and twenties. She gained national attention in August 2016 with her poem, “Dear Mr. President,” expressing her challenges in finding a job as an undergraduate.

In “Broken System,” published on Guyana’s Independence Day, May 26, 2018, the poet portrays a system that offers little to no protection to the country’s vulnerable youth.

We have 15-year-old girls being gang raped; boys being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just children running away from their homes because the ones that are supposed to be protecting them, they’re now physically and sexually abusing them… These children, they have no faith in us because we have failed them…

Renata observes that the justice system fails these abused children by either condemning them to the juvenile penitentiary or returning them to their abusers. Further on, she raises the issue of drug dealing and the difficulty of finding work, even for someone with higher education.

So how do we fix the system, the same system that’s putting away our young men for selling or smoking weed, but we’re yet to curb the increase of lung cancer disease that’s mainly caused by tobacco smoking, also known as cigarette smoking. So what do we do? We put a warning label on the pack and just hope that it stops… And even when I graduate from one of the highest institutions in the land, they cannot guarantee me a job…with or without this degree. And you want to know why our young people are out here selling weed. Food for thought. Stay woke. See, plugs make more money than teachers make on their government salaries.

Without a pause, Renata addresses sexual harassment. No subject is taboo for our young poet.

And if you’re a woman in today’s society then sexual harassment is something that you’re almost guaranteed. It’s like a rite of passage, so be careful. Don’t wear anything loose, don’t appear to be too revealing, because when the man across the street shouts for you, calling you every single thing except your name, you better look… But really and truly all our tongues burn to say is just stay away from me. But we’re too scared because our system is broken; it’s backwards…

The system also fails victims of domestic violence. The police, the poet notes, not only show up until after the attack, but there’s also no justice for the woman.

And even though she’s the victim, there would be no justice for he [the abuser] knows people in high positions. You know, that can make a police report disappear regardless of how he acts. Those kind-a people in authority that have a knack for sweeping every single thing under the mat…

Like a maestro conducting an orchestra, the young poet controls the rising and falling rhythm with expressive hands. Without a script. Giving voice to the voiceless.

On America’s Independence Day, I offer these closing words of insight from our young Guyanese spoken word poet (emphasis mine):

If history has proven anything, it’s that the truth would always survive and, if needs be, it would bleed through crooked lines.

You can watch Renata Burnette’s performance on YouTube. For my complete transcript of “Broken System” and to learn more about the poet, go to my Poetry Corner July 2018.

CAPTIONED PHOTO
Victim of domestic violence with her mother, Guyana
In 2013, Natasha Houston’s husband killed their two children, slashed her arm and hand, then killed himself.
Photo Credit: WGVU News

“History Shelves” – Poem by Caribbean-American Poet Sassy Ross

03 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Poetry

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Father and Daughter
Photo Credit: Parent Cue

My Poetry Corner January 2016 features the poem “History Shelves” by Caribbean-American poet Sassy Ross. Born in St. Lucia, at the age of ten, she moved to the USA where she lives in New York City. From a sample of fifteen of her poems, recently published in Coming Up Hot: Eight New Poets from the Caribbean by Peekash Press, this poem explores the poet’s troubled relationship with her father. Using the bookcase filled with “books dense as stone tablets / on a pharaoh’s tomb,” in their family room, Ross recalls those early years of their history together.

The poet’s memory of her father is enmeshed with the drug culture in the Caribbean in the 1980s. In her poem “The Rottweiler,” she and her mother go in search of her father the drug addict. Late at night, their Rottweiler alerts them when her father returns home like “a thief who had his own set of keys.” Continue reading →

Chris Brown & Domestic Violence in Guyana

02 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by in Family Life, Guyana, Human Behavior, Relationships

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Help & Shelter Candle Vigil against Domestic Violence - Guyana - 25 November 2011

Guyana NGO Help & Shelter Candle Light Vigil against Domestic Violence

Source: www.demerarawaves.com

Domestic violence is a difficult issue for me to discuss. But, ever since Chris Brown cancelled his Guyana Christmas concert, originally programmed for Boxing Day, following protests from local women’s rights groups, the subject has been haunting me.  According to the U.S. Human Rights Practices Report for 2007, one in every three Guyanese women is a victim of domestic violence. An article in the Kaieteur News, published in January 2012, puts the number at over two-thirds of Guyanese women. Violence against women contaminates all social and economic strata and ethnic groups of Guyanese society where men batter, rape, maim, and kill their female partners.

As a child growing up in Guyana, I was unaware that other children in school shared the same shame and fear that I experienced in living with a father who became violent when pumped up with alcohol. My parents fought constantly. It got worse when my mother learned to fight back. I was fifteen the day she grabbed her sewing scissors to defend herself. I intervened. The thought of losing my mother terrified me.

I decided at an early age to remain single. I decided, too, not to have children. I would not bring children into this world to suffer as I did. I eventually married a persistent suitor: a practicing Catholic like myself whose loving father had died when he was twelve. He never hit me. He abandoned me and our two sons in Brazil. His punishment was brutal.

I had not heard of the American R&B singer, Chris Brown, then nineteen, until he made US national news in 2009 for battering his then-girlfriend, Rihanna, an award-winning recording artist of Guyanese-Barbadian parents. As an idol for millions of young men in the US and worldwide, Chris Brown’s record of domestic violence makes him a potential contaminant for young Guyanese men who already have a propensity for violence against women.

Domestic violence and all forms of violence against women have consequences that last a life-time. It took years for me to learn to forgive my father. It will take another life-time for the wounds inflicted by my ex-husband to heal. Years after my father’s death, my mother still holds onto her hatred for him. “He robbed me of my youth,” she told me. Rancor has spoiled her goodness, driving us apart.

What can I say to the thousands of Guyanese men who batter the women in their lives? We live in challenging times. The survival of our nation and of our species depends upon co-operation between both men and women to find solutions that plague our nation and our planet. Be part of the solution and not the problem. Stand up and be counted.