Groundbreaking Caribbean novels in spotlight

Milestone anniversaries of two groundbreaking Caribbean novels are among highlights of the upcoming 2024 NGC Bocas Lit Fest, with special events on the festival's first two nights.

Spirits in the Dark, the debut novel by Vincentian-Canadian writer H Nigel Thomas, will be in the spotlight on April 25, as the festival celebrates the book’s 30th anniversary. The free session will feature Thomas in conversation with writer and scholar Angelique V Nixon at the Writers Centre, 14 Alcazar Street, St Clair, from 7 pm, the Bocas Lit Fest said.

Described as “a pioneering intersectional novel of the LGBTQ+ and Caribbean-Canadian experience that was far ahead of its time," Spirits in the Dark was first published in 1993, and reissued in 2023 in a special 30th-anniversary edition by Canadian publisher Esplanade Press.

Social pressures and repressed sexuality are among the forces protagonist Jerome Quashee must contend with, as he comes to terms with his Afro-Caribbean culture and his own fears and ambitions, the Lit Fest release said.

This event will be presented in partnership with CAISO and the High Commission of Canada, and high commissioner Arif Keshani will welcome the distinguished author and other festival guests.

For the second half of the festival’s opening night, audiences can stroll one block south to CB’s Bar and Lounge at 15 Rust Street, where CAISO will present its high-energy BackChat event, an NGC Bocas Lit Fest fixture. With the theme We Resist. We Empower. We Are Fierce, BackChat celebrates LGBTQI+ voices through stories, poetry, and music, including an open mic event which writers are welcome to sign up to join, the release said.

On the following night, April 26, the festival celebrates another classic Caribbean novel: Dionne Brand’s At the Full and Change of the Moon, first published 25 years ago. The event at the Big Black Box is also free and will include dramatised readings directed by actor elisha efua bartels and featuring Mandisa Granderson and Conrad Parris, plus an appearance by Brand herself, and a music performance by 3canal.

At the Full and Change of the Moon opens in Trinidad in 1824, with a monumental act of rebellion by Marie-Ursule, an enslaved woman and secret resistance leader. The story then follows six generations of her descendants as they wander from Trinidad to North America and Europe, restlessly searching for a better future while haunted by ghosts of the past.

Festival audiences will have another chance to encounter Dionne Brand – often described as a leading contender for a Nobel Prize in Literature – on April 27, from 10 am at the Old Fire Station in downtown Port of Spain, this time focused on her poems. Brand will read from her book Nomenclature: New and Selected Poems and engage in a conversation with poet Shivanee Ramlochan on her work’s political commitment and deep formal experiment.

The full festival programme is online at www.bocaslitfest.com.