CaribbeanTales is excited to share the news that we have received funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation to produce 5 Audio Books of works by Caribbean-Canadian authors.

Audio books bring out the very real importance of the 'oral' in Caribbean storytelling culture and will also provide great learning tools for many – both inside and outside of the classroom.

As Ramabai Espinet, our featured storyteller this month puts it, “The Audio Books project will provide a much needed resource in the classroom. As an educator I will be able to use them to bring to life the tonal aspects of a text, the sound system of Creole languages, a novelty to those who have not learnt to listen beyond a standard Canadian delivery, and to utilize dramatic excerpts to heighten the impact of a text. Audio books also maximize reading time because of the different environments in which books can be 'read'”.

Look for our first Audio Book Project in the fall, as we bring Nalo Hopkinson's award winning book of short stories, Skin Folk to your ears.

Among our offerings this month we've got some great clips from Ramabai Espinet's recent trip to Trinidad to launch her novel The Swinging Bridge for the first time in her home town San Fernando; Around the Fire, our special section on Tales from the African Diaspora features the final instalment of an interview with South African dramaturge and writer Mtutuzeli Matshoba; and, in Meet The Team we give you a peek into the financial engine room at CaribbeanTales, in an interview with Susan Panchan.

Finally, we have 2 tickets to give away to An Island Style Fete at Tropical Nights on the Danforth featuring DJ Wild Apache on June 18th. The first person to send an email and answer the skill testing question below, will win these tickets.

Which Featured Canadian Caribbaen author calls “home” Toronto, Ottawa and Trinidad?

Good luck!

Trinidad-born Espinet is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto where she teaches Caribbean Studies and Women's Studies, and is involved in a South Asian Studies program. She is also a full Professor of English at Toronto's Seneca College.

Ramabai Espinet already has a solid body of published literary work, but The Swinging Bridge (HarperFLAMINGOCanada) is her first novel. Set largely in Trinidad as well as in Montreal and Toronto, it tells how Mona travels to San Fernando to oversee the re-purchasing of some family land. The trip brings back a flood of childhood, half-forgotten memories - good, bad and some distinctly ugly - and also makes Mona privy to a number of family "secrets" and petty scandals. Interacting with people from her childhood, she finds the answers, some of them totally surprising, to many questions which had long puzzled her and she is fascinated by vaguely-recalled references to her great-grandmother.

Only a shadowy figure in Mona's girlhood, great-grandmother Gainder had come from India as an indentured labourer in 1879. Mona is determined to learn more about her. In the course of doing so, largely from little references in her grandmother's notebooks and scraps of conversations, which fill in pieces of the jigsaw, she gains some understanding of Gainder and her life.

Espinet was born in San Fernando and attended Naparima College before coming to Canada more than 25 years ago. Working to pay for her education in the 1970s she decided to become a taxi driver. "I was one of the first two women - the other was a Native Canadian – to take the Ministry of Transport's taxi-driving course," she says. "We called it 'Cab College' and I drove for Metro, mostly at weekends, for about a year. It was a way of getting to know the city - and an education about the human side of things."

Other jobs, as she worked towards her first degree, included cocktail waitress, sorter with Canada Post, shipper, ace sandwich-maker and proof-reader. She went on to earn a Doctorate in Post-Colonial Literature. Espinet's first four books were all published in Toronto by Sister Vision Press a decade and more ago, beginning with her editing Creation Fire, a collection of poetry by Caribbean women, in 1990.

The following year Sister Vision published a collection of Espinet's own poetry, under the title Nuclear Seasons, and then two children's books, The Princess Of Spadina in 1992 and Ninja’s Carnival in 1993.

A performance piece called "Indian Robber Talk" has been staged in Toronto in several festivals and a poem called "Shay's Robber Talk" formed the Afterword in Sherene Razack's Looking White People In The Eye, which, was published by the University of Toronto Press in 1998.

Espinet also worked with a women's collective to write and produce a play called "Beyond the Kali Pani," about Indian women and indentureship in the Caribbean. Between 1992 and 1996 she wrote a "Focus on Women" column for the fortnightly community newspaper INDO-CARIBBEAN WORLD and still contributes essays and commentaries. Latterly, she worked as a librarian, has judged Calypso contests and regularly ‘plays mas' at Caribana.

A gourmet cook, Espinet wrote an authoritative article on Indo-Caribbean cuisine and its cultural importance in THE MASSACHUSETTS REVIEW in 1993. She is also something of an authority on horse-racing. "I love it, though I don't often go to the track these days." Espinet said. "I enjoy the mathematical methods of calculating how horses ran in the past and will run in the future, and how they look and feel on a particular day. I consider this kind of forecasting to be an art form in its own right."

The Swinging Bridge is a powerful and evocative novel which will strike many chords with Indo-Caribbean readers and open up a new world for other readers. It has been highly praised by established Caribbean literary icons. Antigua-born Jamaica Kincaid has called it "…beautiful, luminous and an utter pleasure to read." While George Lamming of Barbados describes it as "…an extraordinary achievement in the exercise of remembering."

Is she working on a second one, I asked Espinet? "Oh, yes!" she said - and smiled enigmatically.

in search of grace
life and nature’s uncertain

territories alone.
You must already miss

the warmth
of your mother’s smile

the sound
of her singing you to sleep

as you lay contented,
head nestled in the crook of her arms.

You think constantly
of the maybes you left behind,

daydream
of simple things: your room,

its yellow walls
tiny crib and fluffy carpet,

so different
than this new bed of moss and grass.

And at night
you weep a little, and wish

that life for you
could have been different,

imagine
how those other children –

so like you yet so alien
with their schoolbooks and toys –

were so lucky
they must never be sad.
Sometimes, you play
with them, inhabit their worlds

for an hour or two
in the evenings until one by one

they disappear –
mammas and papas calling them in

from the streets
to dinners and bedtimes with stories,

prayers, tuck-ins,
and kisses. You can only look

on, turn tail
and trudge back into the darkness,

your body
steadily moving into the forest

your feet
trying to find the way home.

She holds a Business Diploma in Business Administration after qualifying in 1987 from The Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology in Toronto.

When she is not crunching figures or reconciling budgets in the office Susan has an equally demanding task as a volunteer worker managing and co-ordinating community projects where her financial management savvy has been extensively employed in fundraising activities.

An organizer and business administrator of note, she has helped get a number of adult and children’s projects off the ground - from conceptualization to completion.

She joined Leda Serene Films and Caribbeantales in 2003 as a General Manager responsible for the day-to-day operation of the two media divisions, which entailed establishing conducive working relationship with stakeholders.

Susan is in the process of stepping up several rungs on the management ladder as she is currently working towards a Bachelor Of Administrative Studies through York University.

We managed to distract her attention from her financial reports for a brief postprandial interview.

Could you share with us, in brief, your childhood background?

I was born and raised in Toronto as an only child. Both parents were immigrants from West Germany, they came to Canada in 1951 (after the war).

What does your work as general manager at Caribbeantales entail?

The work is as interesting as it is varied. Human Resource management, financial management, project co-ordination, line producing and other collateral duties.

What, in the main, do you like about the job?

I love the fact that Caribbean Tales is doing a job that in my opinion is vital to the community. Informing, educating and entertaining about the wealth of talent and history that the Caribbean offers to the world. I am also honored to work with such fine women as Frances-Anne Solomon, Anne Marie Stewart and the rest of the members of the Board of Directors. Every month we meet I am inspired by their contributions to the team.

At the end of the day I am proud that I am part of this organization.

You have done the same work for many other companies and organizations before, how has your experience been like working with non-profit entities like Caribbeantales whose mission is to showcase cultural values?

I particularly enjoy working with Caribbean Tales because I strongly believe in what they are trying to do. I have children of Caribbean descent and I find it extremely important that they be exposed to literature and culture that is rich and positive. There is more to being Caribbean than hip-hop and the beach. Through the website, the newsletters and the documentary series, they are opening their eyes to new role models, strong, smart, educated leaders in the Caribbean community.

Caribbeantales’ main mission is preservation and celebration of literary heritage and oral culture. What do these themes mean to you in your own background?

As I mentioned my family is from Germany and I have very fond memories of my grandmother telling me stories about raising a family during the war, stories of my grandfather (who died before I was born) which brought him to life for me and stories my late mother shared with me about her experiences growing up during bomb raids and famine. I have a very strong sense of what it means to be German even though I was born here and I try to pass this on to my own children who I hope will continue the tradition.

Can you tell us about the Literacy Outreach program you sponsored?

I was involved in a Reading Circle for children of all ages. I sponsored the event because I strongly believe that reading, story telling and literature in general is of vital importance to children in this generation. They are growing up with video games, DVD's and computers and are losing the benefits that books can bring. I volunteered my time as a one-on-one reader with the children as well as donated prizes as incentives for the children to attend and to continue attending.

What other community project are you currently working on?

Currently I am involved with fundraising for youth sports organizations. I am also a firm believer that children today need to exercise their bodies as well as their minds. My own children participate in a variety of competitive sports; basketball, soccer and diving and I try to support them by being actively involved.

In the next issue we will be featuring another great writer from Afrika - one more chance to share in those brilliant thoughts and enthralling words of Afrikan wisdom - in the meantime, the stage is set for Bra Mtutu!

Enjoy!

You believe that people don’t necessarily need formal training to write their stories. How do you convince producers within networks to work with people who have no formal training in the art?

I have actually made it my responsibility to help people develop their ideas by acting as middle man between them and producers because I have the advantage of being multilingual and secondly I can identify a philosophy and a good story in many languages. There are many good stories out there that have actually not seen the light of day simply because they are not written in English and secondly, they are not structured in accordance with principles or standards adopted in the western form of storytelling. I have taken it into my responsibility to convince these producers that there’s some uniqueness in breaking away from conventions. Some of these writers rely on Afrikan stories because these are the only stories they know.

He warns producers that they are only going to stagnate themselves if they expect independent storytellers to tell stories in English.

Training is fine. There’s indoctrination: ‘read this manual and write a according to its instructions.’ Training is transfer of experience. If I’m managing experienced writers and act as ‘mid-man’ to transfer their skills to aspirant writers we can short circuit the route,… the long route taken by others to get that experience. We noticed that people with such experience are much better than artists who follow certain standards. The industry must train “mid-men’.

He might lose the support of the women folk in the industry if he keeps using terms like “mid-men” as it might be deemed sexist within those quarters. If he cares about such sensibilities, I suggest he starts finding a sex-friendly substitute.

There is a general feeling amongst Afrikan storytellers that English is used to oppress those who are not prepared to produce their material in the language. We are actually pandering to the dominance of the oppressors if we refuse to tell our stories simply because we are forced to tell them in English – they should persist to tell them in their own indigenous language. One of the weaknesses we have: The desire for approval by the conqueror. In other part of Africa people still believe in their own influences. Zimbabweans carve statues from their own perspective, not Michael Angelo’s method. The Venda (one one South Africa’s native groups) craftsmen’s designs are influenced by their own cultures. If a concept doesn’t work for the white audience we regard it as a failure and as not important. We should learn to appreciate what is ours. There’s enough appreciation for what is ours. An experience that people identify with is an experience they can share.

(left: Venda wood sculpture)

Would you enforce those empowerment principles if you had the power?

I would. I would,...unashamedly. It has been done before. This is actually what the dominant minority used on the back of the so-called, “unqualified labour” or whatever the right term is, to exclude us.

(We both start to grope around for the right expression but nothing comes forth. I later had the benefit of double- checking and I think the term we were looking for is “unskilled labour”.)

It happened with the Afrikaner community around the fifties: they turned unskilled people into managers and now they are running the country’s biggest conglomerates simply because their gained experience was acknowledged.

(He points at a number of high-rise office buildings in the Johannesburg CBD.)

They were built by black labourers supervised by a few white engineers. Those labourers have over twenty years of experience in building skyscrapers but they wouldn’t be recognized as being anything other than bricklayers. They deserve more than that – they have to be rewarded. But this doesn’t happen. I’m saying that those people who had training in any sphere of society and have claim to credibility should be rewarded. So I would definitely do it!

Back to the films now: Do we have that capacity? Have we gained enough experience to tackle the world movie industry?

Not at present. The people involved in the industry work in isolation. There’s television production houses mushrooming everyday – everyone thinks they can create their own Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer etc. They forget that Hollyhood was not made after individual efforts. It’s a collective. We have very capable producers, Seipati Hopa, Zola Maseko, Ramadan Suleiman etc. But, they are all working in negative competition, looking to outdo each other. If we pause and look at this and access our strength, we can strategize better and move far.

Bra Mtutu emphasizes that at DV8, they practice what they preach.

If you take a manuscript to David Philllips (Book publishers), for instance, they will access you work in terms of their market profile - which is fine. But a development industry wouldn’t do that – in the structure where I work, we don’t look at whether you have a fax, e-mail, computer etc., before we give you a chance. W e only look at the merit of your material then we help you grow with your idea as far as our resources allow.

(DV8 is a digital film initiative that develops, produces and markets genuinely South African feature films)

Whenever international filmmakers come to the continent, mostly they don’t use our actors and they come with their own written material: they only use the place as location for their films. Does this mean that they don’t have interest in the stories we have to tell?

It’s cultural imperialism. The fact that they bring their own actors means we are succumbing to imperialistic ideals - sometimes they come to act in African stories. We can resist by saying ‘no’, this is our story. If you want to come in, come in on the funding side. Zola Maseko, for instance, did a South African story using an American actor, thereby compromising our story for the sake of American money.

(left: Zola’s Drum)

(Zola’s Drum, starring Taye Diggs and Moshidi Motshegwa, above, was rated one of the best works at Cape Town’s International Film Festival late 2004 and was recently awarded FESPACO’S Golden Stallion Of Yennenga.)

Filmmakers who have sought the guerilla industry, having been in this industry for long, they know that international producers will just come and exploit their product, they will come like they have come to capture slaves here – just for our brains… because producers here are individualistic. We don’t protect ourselves and our interests in the indigenous material. One still has to attach oneself to a Gavin Wood for instance, if you want your material to be recognized. What a blow to the image of our local industry. Are we so useless that we aren’t even capable of telling our own stories?

But what are you doing?

My mission is to build a pool of creative work and bring creative talent together in a powerhouse called Lesaka ( a kraal),where creative people gather for development and exchange of ideas. A home for the Afrikan creative brains. That’s my dream…..

At the end of the interview I still feel like Bra Mtutu can say more. But his wife needs him for that honest advice … and somebody else somewhere out there needs him to help them realize their dream – I’ve got to let him go, and this I do, begrudgingly.

There’s only one thing I wish for Bra Mtutu -- to see his Afrikan ‘kraal’ bulging with talent as he watches over it from his rocking chair, a novel in his hand and a smoking pipe squeezed between his lips while he enjoys the warm rays of the setting sun falling onto his feet.