What’s your six?

“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.” Brandon Sanderson, fantasy and science fiction writer

If Sanderson is right, this year’s Bocas/Newsday People’s Choice Book of the Year have given people a lot to think about. The nominees for the award is in and there are 39 works to choose from. Some of the nominees are well-known names on TT’s literary scene. Andre Bagoo, writer, former Port of Spain mayor Louis Lee Sing and economist Terrence Farrell are among them. The works fall into five different categories: children’s literature, fiction, graphic novel, literary non-fiction and poetry.

Seven books of poetry were nominated, a graphic novel, eight works of fiction, 17 works of literary non-fiction and six children’s books. The topics are as varied as the people who write them, from pan to TT’s economic state are all subjects of the works chosen for the prize. But what might surprise you most is that the winner and those chosen are all up to you. The prize was launched December 15 last year and so far has seen people nominating books for the prize. It is the first time, a prior Newsday article said, that an annual literary award will be determined through online voting.

The prize will be determined in two rounds with online voting for the top six books taking place between February 23 to April 26 and round two, which takes place from May 1 to June 1, to chose from the top six who will be the winner.

And some of the titles might surprise you. Leel Arlen Bain’s To All Sincerely. A Nudist. A Naked Soul. A Naked Flame (fiction) explores, “the burden of humanness from an introspective perspective. Often, we need to appear strong. We need to appear confident. We need to appear invincible....When we do speak of our personal struggles, we scratch the surface. We give just enough to be able to identify with others but not enough to truly connect with others... In “Letters To All’ I offer myself as a sacrificial lamb, I transparently delve into the nether regions of my darkness and light with hope that my words would hold your hands, while guiding you to another level of self-discovery, sooth your mind as you become acquainted with the lonely halls of self-confrontation and embrace your heart as you are elevated to another level of self-acceptance and self-love.”

The sole graphic novel, Celflux, by graphic artist Everard McBain and wife, Dixie Ann Archer, features “a superhero, sci-fi, fantasy, action-adventure, about OKIRA. A young, benevolent, kind-hearted priestess who becomes the involuntary leader of a disjointed group of strangers. Though unprepared for the challenges she’s about to face, she’s determined to meet them head-on.

“She wakes up one day in a remote lab without any memory of how she got there, or what happened to her. She must begin a journey of trying to find the answers while leading this hostile team. This task is made difficult not only because of the fact that they have conflicting personalities and prejudices but also because they are relentlessly pursued by a powerful group with a global agenda.”

Lee Sing’s I Used to Live in Heaven; Letters to my Granddaughters looks back at TT’s past and also “proposes remedies needed to restore life in this country to the way it used to be—and ought still to be.”

It tells of his boyhood days growing up in near the Savannah and going to school in Belmont.

“In other sections, as one might expect, Lee Sing deals more overtly with politics, recalling, for instance, his unsuccessful screening as a parliamentary candidate in 2014—an event that precipitated his final, painful break with the PNM, the party he had belonged to for forty-six years.”

In the literary non-fiction category, Farrell’s We Like It So? The cultural roots of economic underachievement in Trinidad and Tobago, “explores the socio-cultural factors which have been negatively influencing the economic performance of Trinidad and Tobago and arguably the former other former colonial territories in the West Indies.”

Anna Lucie Smith, the Bocas Lit Fest programme co-ordinator, said the lit fest was pleased with the variety of nominations it received.

So share with Newsday, “What’s your six?,” vote and get the stories sharing.

Here is the list by category of the nominated books:-

21 Powerful P's to Success by Nichola Harvey

A Fiery Irishman by Harold Moylan

Amen: A Great Light Within Divine Darkness by Tevin Dube

Book of The Enlightened One by Tevin Dube

Bryden: Colour of Memory by Hugh Blanc

Celflux Issue No 3 by Everard and Dixie Ann Archer Mc Bain

Civil Rights in America and the Caribbean, 1950s–2010s by Jerome Teelucksingh

Curfew Chronicles by Jennifer Rahim

Don't Go Mango Picking by D.H. Gibbs

Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting by Shivanee Ramlochan

I Used to Live in Heaven by Louis Lee Sing

Legends of Panderica by Brian Benoit

Letters To All, Sincerely A Nudist, A Naked Soul, A Naked Flame by Léel Arlene Bain

Letters to Honest Folk by Omavi Langevine

Letters to the Broken, Healing and Healed by Katrina McIntosh

Mahendra's Answers by Mahendra Mathur

Makaynuh and the Magical Curtains by Melissa Matthews

Men and Misfits by Lyndon Baptiste

Multiple Identities Essays on Caribbean Literature by Kumar Mahabir

Oh Happy Day by Michelle Ragoonanan-Ali

Pitch Lake by Andre Bagoo

Political Encounters 1946 to 2016 by Ferdie Ferreira

Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism in the Trinidad and Tobago Calypso 1970-1998 by Louis Regis

Soulspection: A Collection of Poetry by Michelle Borel

Tales From the Forest by Penelope and Lylah

The Repenters by Kevin Jared Hosein

The Shaping of a Culture by Satnarine Balkaransingh

The Story of Pan Am North Stars by Cyril Matthew

The Trinidad Dougla: Identity, Ethnicity and Lexical Choice by Ferne Regis

The Twelve O'Clock Man by V. Ramsamooj Gosine

The Yard by Aliyyah Eniath

To Glorify the King by Agnes and Krystle Abdool

Told By the River by Judith Theodore

Totem Rebirth by D. H. Gibbs

Tropical Sunsets in Delhian Nights by Kimelene Carr

Truth: Spoken Word for People Who Hate Poetry by Julie Gonzales

We Like it So by Terrence Farrell

You Have You Father Hard Head by Colin Robinson

Zeee by Sheetal Daswani