Memories of Christmas

What memories will today’s children have of Christmas? I wonder. Is it still such a special season for them?

I grew up in Kingston, and my memories of Christmas are still magical. So many things were special only to that season:

 – Getting up in the early morning darkness, getting dressed and running to catch the first bus to attend 5 o’clock Christmas morning service on Higholbourn Street  –  the air seemed to have a special coolness and tingle that it never had during the rest of the year

– The Christmas carols lustily sung by the congregation more casually dressed than it would be for Sunday service

– People greeting one another with seemingly real joy after the service  

– Walking to the down town area for the last of Grand Market on the streets and being mesmerized by the stretch of toys, people, excited children, the noises of fee-fees, bursting balloons, vendors calling attention to their wares, some crying from tired or disappointed small children who didn’t get the toy they wanted

–  drinking it all in with the knowledge that this wouldn’t happen again for another lo-o-o-o-ng time. (By the way, Santa figures were few and far between then, making it easier to believe in his magic, even if he didn’t visit us since we had no chimneys.)

I remember getting a small replica of a coal stove, a balloon and a fee-fee at Grand Market one year. Another year I got a new doll – priceless! Usually there would be a Christmas hat with streamers or pretty paper frills. Those were all the toys I might get as any extra money was spent on new curtains for our room (rooms as things got better financially) and special food for the day.

And what special food it was. Breakfast could be slices of ham, ackee and saltfish, maybe crisply fried fish, fried eggs, fried dumplings, special hard dough bread shaped like a bird –  I was allowed to break off and eat the head, washed down with orange juice or chocolate ‘tea’.

A quick tidying of the house would be followed by helping with the preparations for Christmas dinner – another feast of rice and gungo peas, ham, fried chicken  – I don’t remember the other meats as these were my favourites. There would be macaroni and cheese, fried plantain and, of course, sorrel (without rum for the children) and Christmas cake. People would drop in, either invited or not, and share the meal for there was always, just for this day, plenty to go around and be left over for supper. Some would be put in a container and sent for less fortunate persons in the area. Nobody had to go hungry on that day.

Afterwards, everybody would be slightly cross-eyed, the adults from the added rum in the sorrel or just from being overstuffed with food. I remember going to sleep until late afternoon, then getting up to play with my toys. I was an only child but usually there would be other children visiting and we would show off on one another, playing outdoors as there was no television to keep us locked up inside.

Sometimes we would visit other people. Nobody had expensive gifts to share, but people gave what they had. My mother reared chickens and ducks at one stage, and she would send me with one or the other – alive – to the home of some important person in her church who lived nearby. As I grew older, I got increasingly embarrassed about this. I am not sure that these important persons appreciated it either. But, generally, the day would be one of goodwill and friendliness, even for those who could be quite miserable the rest of the year.

A really good Christmas day would be topped up with a visit on the road by a jonkunnu band, mesmerizing us with the drum and fife music, colourful costumes, and sending most of us children scurrying away from the devil’s ‘fork’ or the policeman’s baton, or worse –  the horsehead figure which would snap in the most frightening way. So many things were special to Christmas.

At the end of one very good year, I got a wristwatch for Christmas. I didn’t need any other gift – that was really special because I had got into high school –quite an achievement in my community at the time. By that time we were beginning to put up a Christmas tree, complete with ‘snow’from a can  and blinking lights sent from  America by a cousin.

What does the modern child expect for Christmas? I guess some traditions remain –  the visits by family and friends, the extra special meals  – but so many things I would have regarded as out-of- this- world are now so commonplace that I wonder what is now special for Christmas? I hope, at least, the goodwill and extra friendliness remain a very strong part of our (new) traditions

Congrats - JCDC Medal winner

I am so proud of my student from my last writing class, Stephanie Lloyd. She won a gold medal and trophies in the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission's annual Literary Competition  for "outstanding writer" (2nd in JCDC's creative writing competition) and "best intermediate short story writer" with a story she started in the class. The course is too short (8 weeks - 4 for adults stories and four for children -2 hours twice weekly) to teach the basics of language use, so those who come in with a good command of English invariably gain more from the class.


Congrats, too, to three other past students who got certificates in the Merit and Honorable Mention categories. By next year they should be in the medal categories IF they continue practising writing.
Great job guys.

Senior Assistant Manager at Pelican Publishers, Latoya West-Blackwood (right), presents the Outstanding Writer trophy to Stephanie Lloyd, at the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission’s (JCDC) creative writing competition awards ceremony held on Wednesday (Nov.2) at the Knutsford Court Hotel.

Creole (patois/patwa) versus Standard English

Our Language Dilemma

Creole (patois/patwa) versus Standard English – the debate continues.

It spills over into writing stories for our children. Some persons, especially the educators, frown on the use of creole in the stories as the children have to learn to use Standard English to pass exams using Standard English.  (They speak it – don't let them have to read it, too )

But, more and more, it seems, the creole is the preferred form of speech for many Jamaicans and there are children coming from homes and communities where very little (if any) Standard English is spoken.

Here’s an anecdote. A friend brought her gardener’s two children to church one Sunday morning. They were visiting from a deep rural area. During the sermon the boy, about 10 years old, began to fidget and look distressed. When she asked him what was wrong, he answered, “Me nuh unnertan a wud de man a say.”

Translation, “I don’t understand one word the man is saying.” What are the implications for learning?

We do have two languages.

For the fiction writer, using the creole, or not, presents peculiar problems. Realistically, the writer cannot present a scene on a playfield, for example, and have the children speaking Standard English. They wouldn’t. So what to do? How to represent the reality without offending the gatekeepers?  Very often the writers take a sort of middle ground. What is written in the story is a sort of no man’s land with a mix of the Creole and Standard, keeping as close to the Standard as is feasible. Since there is no standard way of spelling the creole words, most use phonetic spelling, or use the Standard spelling of an English word supposing that the creole speaker will interpret correctly. (in the creole). It is sometimes very confused and confusing.

Another problem is that the creole is very fluid. There is a range of usage, some with words seemingly close to Standard English, which creates the impression that the creole is merely ‘broken’ English.

Also, usage differs from parish to parish and from speaker to speaker, so persons will complain that the written creole is not authentic because they are not familiar with a particular form.

I was struck by the language problem again just today when writing a story. I had written this piece of dialogue:

 “They all bringing flowers and laying it around the statues now.”

Deeper creole would change They to them(dem). But the problem with meaning is not the difference between them and they but with the word all. A standard speaker would be inclined to believe that the sentence should read – ‘They’re all bringing flowers ....’. A creole speaker would understand that all in the sentence I wrote does not mean all as in everybody, but they are now bringing flowers, or they’ve started bringing flowers...

Of course, the problem intensifies when we think of selling to the overseas market.

I was privileged some years ago to ghostwrite a story for the popular Beacon Street Girls series - Katani’s Jamaican Holiday by Annie Bryant

This is about a girl from Boston, USA, with Jamaican ancestors, visiting Jamaica with her grandmother. The series is meant for American ‘Tweens’. When I consulted the editor about using the creole, she agreed that the flavour would not be authentic if there was no creole usage on the streets and in experiences with the local people. I got around some of the problem, by having the American teen, Katani, ask for explanations. This had to be done judiciously, so that it didn’t become tedious or slow down the story.

When the book was published, some USA children commented that they found the creole difficult. Others were comfortable with it. A few who had Jamaican parentage were thrilled to see it in the story – but I was happy to see that even those who found the creole a bit difficult to understand still enjoyed the story.

I loved Charles Dickens’ stories and devoured them as a child. I didn’t understand all the Cockney speakers, but I could follow the stories.

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn presents similar language difficulties for children here, as teachers soon discover. The last time I taught Huck Finn in a school, I had the class dramatize parts of the story using our creole. They did a good job of it, showing that they understood the story. Children are remarkable people.We very often underestimate them.

An additional challenge is that how language is used often indicates social standing, an issue we might not want to emphasise in children’s stories.

I have no answers to the present situation with our language(s).I wish I could be here many years into the future to see how we resolve the issue. Probably then, Jamaicans will be regarded as truly bi-lingual, moving with ease between both languages and frowning on neither.

As I was about to post this, I read about this conference:

:

As part of its Conferencias Caribeñas 9 lecture series for the 2011-2012 academic year, the Institute of Caribbean Studies of the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras (UPR-RP), invites the academic community and the general public to the lecture “Research on Multi-Lingualism and Cultural Diversity in Small Island Societies: The Case of Aruba,” by Dr. Lydia Emerencia (Director, Center for Research and Development, University of Aruba).
 

Aruba is a smaller island than Jamaica where most people speak the four main languages: Papiamento, Spanish, English and Dutch.

There might be some lessons there for us in Jamaica.

My thanks to Peepal Tree Press for including the fact that I won a Silver Musgrave Medal in their latest newsletter. Adam Lowe also put in the page reference for reviews of Singerman, my collection of short stories published by Peepal Tree in 1991.And all of a sudden I am back into writing for adults. The creative process is really a strange one.

Reviews http://www.peepaltreepress.com/review_list.asp?au_id=10

Purchase Singerman from Amazon or from Peepal Tree

Using story books to introduce Literature

When geocities closed down their free hosting of websites, I thought all the information would disappear. I am seeing now that they are restoring access to websites they hosted. Below is a link to a page from my former site, which gives basic information on how to assess literary quality in books for grades three to seven. Students in the lower grades in Jamaica do not study  'Literature', this being part of their Language Arts courses. From anecdotal evidence, however, it seems that teachers are sometimes at a disadvantage in helping their students to appreciate the literary quality of the books they recommend their students to read, so they can move beyond merely saying 'the book is interesting/nice etc'. The children, of course, do not have to be bombarded with all of this information. It is aimed at the teachers. Please make judicious use of it.

I hope that the information on this page will help It makes special reference to two books Little Island, Big Adventures by Maria Roberts Squires and The Ring and the Roaring Water by Diane Browne, both published in Jamaica, and for the upper end of this age group.

Please see this information now at http://jambooks-fiction.blogspot.com/2013/08/elements-of-good-story.html

 I am making the article as a new post. Elements of a good story. http://jambooks-fiction.blogspot.com/2013/08/elements-of-good-story.   http://jambooks-fiction.blogspot.com/2013/08/elements-of-good-story.html

Musgrave plaque

My plaque from the Institute of Jamaica for the Silver Musgrave Medal of which I am very proud.

My Silver Musgrave Medal award

I belong to a generation which often forgets to blow its own trumpet.

(Don't boast they used to warn)

So, I forgot to post my most recent shining moment – receiving  a 

Silver Musgrave Medal for literature from the Institute of Jamaica 
on October 12^th,.until a friend asked me why I hadn’t done so.

The Silver Musgrave Medal

The Musgrave Medal is quite a prestigious honour.

Here’s a bit of its history from the IOJ’s website:

”The Musgrave Medals are awarded to selected

 persons for achievements in the fields of literature, 

art and science. According to the Institute of Jamaica’s

records, the  Musgrave Medal was first awarded in 1897,

as a memorial to Sir Anthony Musgrave, former Governor

of Jamaica who founded the Institute of Jamaica in 1879.

 Subsequent to his death in 1888, the decision was taken 

by the  Board of Governors of the Institute in 1889,

 to award medals annually in his honour. 

The Medals then were designed  by well-known 

British sculptor, Alfred Toft.”

Specifically, my award was for “contribution to children's literature

 and the encouragement of new writers”- which refers both to my

 published books/stories and my teaching of Writing Stories courses 

at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts at UWI, Mona.

Me (left) receiving plaque from Minister of Culture Hon Babsy Grange

It was a proud moment for me.The Institute of Jamaica

 on East Street in Kingston was a place for school field trips

 to see scientific displays, the Jamaican iguana lizard

 ( before there was a zoo) and other fascinating displays.

 The auditorium was a place for musical recitals, 

speech festivals and so on. I never would have dreamed

 when I participated in these exercises that I would one day

 stand on that platform to receive a Musgrave Medal.

All Awardees with the Governor  General and Minister of Culture

MY PUBLISHER, CARLONG PUBLISHERS (CARIBBEAN) LTD HAS PUT UP A CONGRATULATORY PAGE WITH 

THE CITATION http://carlongpublishers.com/view_news_details.php?id=21

My thanks to Carlong

A Snowman, anyone?

My granddaughter's computer generated art at 6 years of age. Just recently recovered it from my old geocities page. Think I will write an accompanying story. At the time she said it was a snowman melting in Jamaica. Hmm! Hope she doesn't read this page. She's turning into an accomplished artist, so this would embarrass her no end. But, I love it.

Who are we writing for?

This is a question I have asked before. When you are writing from a small country with specific cultural differences to the world’s leading countries, who are you writing for? Your own children or all the children of the world? A tutor once told me ­– when you write for everybody, you write for nobody.

Eventually, I interpreted that to mean, write from the heart about the things you know and feel and share with your own people. Write out of your culture for your culture. If your work is true, others will come to appreciate it, even if the gatekeepers try to keep you out.

As I like to tell my writing class, and this is my own viewpoint, when Bob Marley and his cronies started writing songs about the things they knew and felt, I don’t think they sat around saying  — ‘them gwine love this one in Germany or Japan. This one will wow them in England.‘  I suspect that if they had passed the lyrics of some of the songs by the international gatekeepers they would have been scoffed at – Who in the rest of the world wants to hear about cooking cornmeal porridge in a government yard in Trench Town? Of course, songs have the additional benefit of the music and the singer’s voice and personality to convince and woo, but the principle is the same. They were writing/composing out of their own experiences.

So, should we be unduly worried about the voices from abroad who say our writing and illustration styles are too ‘different’? Our language and illustrations too parochial? The work won’t attract anybody abroad, including our own migrant population ( who now judge us by 'big' world standards) OR, should we continue to write for our children, illustrate for our children, interpret even other people’s realities from our own unique way of looking at things, from our own experiences and most of all from our hearts. We don’t dance like North Americans. Our music is identifiably Caribbean, so too is our cuisine.. Shouldn’t our writing and art be also? Does this make our books inferior?

I don’t think any of our writers, at this point, especially the writers of children’s stories in the Caribbean, expect any of the great financial returns that being ‘accepted’ by the ‘big’ countries might bring. So what are our rewards?

For me, it is reading for a group of youngsters and watching them get excited as the story expands their imagination and reveals things about themselves and their environment they might never have thought of.

I once watched a little boy about eight years old sitting before me with his eyes literally opening wider and wider as the story drew him in and filled his mind with new possibilities. On another occasion, it was a mother saying that her daughter would not go to bed until she had finished reading one of my books. Fortunately, it was not a very long one.

So, to come back to my initial question - who are we (who should we be) writing for? My answer is — our own children. The rest of the world writes for theirs, who will write and illustrate for ours if not us?

.

Congratulations

My very good friend and fellow writer of children's stories Diane Browne won
the special prize for children's story in the commonwealth short story competition 2011.
Congrats Diane. It's well deserved the story can be read here Diane's story

Diane Browne

 

Boys again!!

I hope this link to the New York Times article stays available for some time

Boys and Reading: Is There Any Hope?By ROBERT LIPSYTE Published: August 19, 2011 

Boys don't like to read

“The important question is why aren’t boys reading the good books being published?” 

As you will see in the article, there are several answers to this question

"Boys gravitate toward nonfiction. Schools favor classics over contemporary fiction to satisfy testing standards and avoid challenges from parents. And teachers don’t always know what’s out there for boys."

Also

"Boys don’t have enough positive male role models for literacy. Because the majority of adults involved in kids’ reading are women, boys might not see reading as a masculine activity.”

"Schools favor classics over contemporary fiction to satisfy testing standards and avoid challenges from parents"  Should we be asking  -  What is wrong with contemporary fiction to make teachers nervous about recommendations?

Positive male role models  -: When was the last time you saw a man walking with a novel he intended to read at the first available spare time? If you did, chances are he was a lecturer; or a student forced to read a novel to pass a course. Even the reading of newspapers in the home might soon be a scarce sight as many subscribe to online news instead of an actual paper.

Boys gravitate towards non-fiction.  This suggests that boys are reading, but not fiction.

In my own experience with my grandsons, this is true. Both are good readers but decidedly prefer non-fiction. I have tried to get them to explain why this is so, but they can't give a coherent answer. Just that non-fiction is more interesting. So perhaps what we should be looking at is subject matter.

Boys prefer action  and are less inclined to read books which emphasize feelings - what my elder grandson calls  "chick books". He was curious about Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, because so many of the teenage girls at his school were walking around reading it at the slightest opportunity. He took a look at it and was quite puzzled. What is so interesting? he wondered. I, being female, couldn't explain it so that it made sense to him.

So, another challenge might be that so many of the writers today are female and we are not producing the sort of fiction that will attract male readers. Is it worth the while for our female writers to research the areas which would attract boys and use these in their fiction? Seems we wouldn't lose our female readers since it is generally agreed that whereas boys do not want to read "chick books" girls will read any interesting story - boy or girl oriented.

Another question we have to settle is why is it so important for boys to be reading fiction. if there is enough non-fiction available isn't it enough that they are reading these?

I really would like to see a Caribbean discussion on these ideas.

As to teachers not always knowing what is available for boys - I don't know who is responsible for that.

Here are a few  recent titles (some not so recent) from Jamaica featuring boy protagonists or situations which might attract boys  from the 8-12 age group. And there are more

carlong

LMH

McMillan

Horizons

LMH

Carlong

Carlong

Recovering our history through fiction

With reference to Freedom Come by Jean Goulbourne 

Carlong Publishers (Caribbean) Ltd.

History textbooks usually just give facts and information which many children find boring.  Historical fiction, on the other hand, can make those facts come alive and be quite entertaining.

Hidden behind the scenes in the history texts are events ranging from fascinating and awe inspiring to scary, depressing and sometimes comedic. Wars and conquests, romance, inventions, crusades, slavery and so many other topics provide rich material for the storyteller. It’s people who make history. Authors of historical fiction make those hidden scenes come alive. A single incident or experience could be expanded into a novel by building up the background of events leading to it, and the resulting consequences.

Why haven’t we done more storytelling about our history in the Caribbean? See previous post Historical stories in Caribbean children’s books    for some ideas on this.

Historical fiction can fall into two categories:

1. The setting is historical but people and events are entirely fictional.Time travel stories tend to do this e.g. there was a war, or a natural disaster at a particular time in history, but the story doesn’t dwell on the known historical characters or events. Sometimes an obscure fact in history can be taken out and expanded into a story.

2. Both setting and characters are factual with the author imaginatively expanding on aspects of the events – it could have happened, and this was probably what was happening behind the scenes that history records.

Writers of historical fiction need to remember that:

Plot must be clear and not railroaded by historical details

Historical details must be accurate

Characters must come alive

Illustrations must be relevant to the time period.

Obviously, research is a key for the writer of historical fiction who needs detail to make the story believable. The elements which make for good story are as important as the factual information – especially the use of sensory details. How did things look, taste, feel, smell and sound. These are very important challenges for the writer wanting to make the story come alive.

The author of Freedom Come, Jean Goulbourne, studied and taught history and evidently called upon her scholarship in writing these stories for children.

It isn’t often that we see slave children in stories or even in accounts of slavery. The more striking stories in Freedom Come are about slave children.

The author gives us a glimpse of what it must have been like for children in this era. In the story Cimarron! Cimarron! Goulbourne shows us two young boys taking a break from work (feeding the pigs) to play a little. The bookkeeper on the plantation catches them at play and whips them soundly. We feel the frustration of a way of life which has Alrick, the protagonist, threatening to take his life. Luckily for him, his father, who had escaped to join the free Maroons some years before, returns and rescues him and his mother. They safely escape to a better life in the mountains with the Maroons

Slaves on way to sell produce at market from  Freedom Come

In a gloomier tale, The Whipping, another slave child, this time a girl,  escapes through death. However, the author presents death as preferable to the slave life. In death she is welcomed by her ancestors and we get a feeling that she will be now at peace. This is a gripping first person story with details that make the slave experience come alive in personal ways. The death scene is presented as a celebration.

“There on the sands of a large and wonderful land was a crowd of black people; and the drums were beating and they were dancing; men and women, boys and girls; and the waves washed the shore and the drums beat and the trees waved their branches; and the drums beat and Ole Granpus came out of the crowds and into the sea and his hands were held upwards, welcoming me,and I knew. This was Africa. This was home.”

It is said that many slaves believed that death would carry them back to their home in Africa.The beliefs and superstitions of the slaves are skillfully woven into this story which is mostly about how the slaves themselves interacted with one another in this terrible dehumanizing era.

Slavery was an extremely harsh way of life and it is difficult to use it as a setting for children’s stories since so many of the experiences of the slaves were so painful, physically and emotionally and, no doubt, the kinds of experiences we would like to shield our children from. This collection of stories is meant for the 10 to 12+ age group.

Other stories in this collection deal with the experience of a Taino boy helping his village to celebrate with a feast to which he contributes wild ducks which we watch him catch, Taino style. Another story deals with boys in Port Royal, the famous city of the pirates. The boys learn, first hand from Peter, an old pirate, about one of the more famous raids carried out by the buccaneers -  the raid on  Panama City.  The last story is about the heroic journey of a boy who helped to carry a message to Daddy Sharpe (now a National Hero) on the eve of the Christmas Rebellion in Montego Bay, which helped to hasten the end of slavery.

All the stories bring the history of their era alive. Jean Goulbourne has won many awards and acclaim for her literary skills as a poet and storyteller. The poetic influence can often be seen in the language of her prose. This book is a very useful supplementary reader for students of our past.

Freedom Come was a runner up award winner in the 1999 Vic Reid Award for Children’s Literature, a competition hosted by the National Book Development Council of Jamaica.