Carry On Friends: The Caribbean American Experience
Carry On Friends has an unmistakable Caribbean-American essence. Hosted by the dynamic and engaging Kerry-Ann Reid-Brown, the podcast takes listeners on a global journey, deeply rooted in Caribbean culture. It serves as a melting pot of inspiring stories, light-hearted anecdotes, and stimulating perspectives that provoke thought and initiate conversations.
The podcast invites guests who enrich the narrative with their unique experiences and insights into Caribbean culture and identity. With an array of topics covered - from lifestyle and wellness to travel, entertainment, career, and entrepreneurship - it encapsulates the diverse facets of the Caribbean American experience. Catering to an international audience, Carry On Friends effectively bridges cultural gaps, uniting listeners under a shared love and appreciation for Caribbean culture.
Carry On Friends: The Caribbean American Experience
Building Legacy: Diana McCaulay on 'A House for Miss Pauline'
In this episode acclaimed Jamaican author Diana McCaulay to discuss her latest novel "A House for Miss Pauline."
Before we get to the book Diana and I discuss her journey from insurance professional to environmental activist; Jamaica's changing landscape, environmental challenges, the delicate balance between preservation and progress.
We dive into the inspiration behind the novel, "A House for Miss Pauline," which explores themes of land, legacy, and connection. We also discuss:
- The role of great houses in modern Jamaica'
- Intergenerational relationships in Caribbean culture
- The importance of storytelling and the vital importance of preserving our elders' stories.
Connect with Diana McCaulay: Website | Instagram
Get "A House for Miss Pauline"
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A Breadfruit Media Production
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Carry On Friends, the Caribbean American podcast, and with me today is Diana McCauley. Diana, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm fine. Thanks, carrie, and thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. I'm very excited to speak with Diana and we're also going to talk about her lovely book A House of Miss Pauline, which I will ask her if their A House of Mr Biss was an inspiration.
Speaker 2:No, no, I wouldn't say that was an inspiration, although I did that book at A-level.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I actually loved it. I was so impressed with it, you know, because somebody my age at school we didn't do much Caribbean literature. You know it was mostly English stuff.
Speaker 1:I remember.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this was the first time that I can remember us doing a, you know, a solid, a respected Caribbean work. It was only after the book had been finished and it had a different title that my publisher thought that it was actually in conversation with the host for Mr Biswas and suggested the name. So it was called Roots of Stone for most of its life.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is very fascinating. So as a sidebar, you know, like this story I feel like if I was going to school back in the day, because I grew up in Mobe, I went to Alvernia, so I did go through high school and I could count on one hand the Caribbean literature. I read the Jumbie Bird, you know like very specific books and you know I love to see where Caribbean literature is going. I'm very excited for that. So enough of me. Let's tell the audience a little bit about you, more about the work you do, caribbean country you represent, even though I think they might have a sense of that. But let's start with a little bit about you.
Speaker 2:So I am Kingston born and have lived in Kingston all my life, except for two years at school in the US, which happened very late in life. I tell everybody I'm living my life backwards the US, which happened very late in life. I tell everybody I'm living my life backwards, you know, late bloomer, I'm an Andrews girl. I went to St Andrew High School and I've had lots of different jobs. I could spend the hour talking about the various things I've done in my life, but the one probably I'm well known for is my environmental work. I was for about 30 years the founder and then I led the Jamaican Environment Trust for almost 30 years, because I grew up really loving the outdoors. I had a dad who took me hiking and swimming and you know just basically being outside, and I loved going to the beach and in the mountains and everything. And you know, when I was, I guess, closing on 40, I became aware that a lot of the places I'd loved as a child were disappearing or being destroyed in some way. And I didn't know anything about the environment, but I'm a reader, so I started to read about it and the more I read, the more concerned I got, and so I took some pictures of some things I, as a lifelong Kingstonian, had never seen, like the Riverton dump and the switch plants that didn't work invited my friends and the Jamaica Environment Trust was formed out of those at that time and eventually I left my job. I worked for the insurance industry in a pretty good job really to be a non-profit person and you know environmental loudmouth I used to say People used to call me. So that's what I did until I retired in 2017.
Speaker 2:But in terms of the writing, I declared I was going to be a writer when I was 13 and have written all my life and I still have in a trunk behind me. You know, a lot of the handwritten stuff I did as a school girl and teenager, young adult. But you know my dad, who was a big influence on me, he, and who was the one who encouraged me to read and to write, but he was a complicated person and he also said to me that you know, women couldn't write really, and they couldn't write great literature for sure, because they didn't do the only thing that was really worthy of great literature, which was go to war. So I kind of believed him and I wrote in secret for most of my life. So I have a whole pile of books that have never been finished and short stories that I've never seen the light of day.
Speaker 2:But you, you know, as you start to get on and as sometimes happened, you know, I had a little health scare and I thought, you know, if I heard I was dying. The only thing I'd be really annoyed about is I never really tried to publish a book, and so I vowed to do it, and that was Dog Heart, my first book, which came out in 2010. And I was determined. I was just going to send it out. I knew it would be rejected, and I was going to send it out again and again, and again and again, until finally I'd find a publisher, you know. And so that's how I started writing, and Miss Pauline is now my sixth book, one of those six.
Speaker 2:I self-published because I wanted to see what that journey was like, and the answer was get a publisher. So I wanted to see what that journey was like, and the answer was get a publisher. So, yeah, so that's my story. I'm a Bonnier and, you know, have loved Jamaica all my life and right, right really, to the place. You'll often hear us all, whether we live here or live overseas. You'll hear us say I love Jamaica, whether we live here or live overseas. You'll hear us say I love Jamaica, but sometimes I think we love the idea of Jamaica, but the actual place itself, which don't treat it very well.
Speaker 1:I love that you say that, and I want to pull on the environmental string for a little bit. Could it be that we feel like, oh, it's always going to be here, so we don't really take the environment seriously? And do you think environmental impact of Jamaica varies based on whether you live in the interior of the island versus if you live on the coast? Coming from Moby, I grew up seeing Deden, which is you know how that beach we all love going to, you know. It's just one thing you know, you really see erosion and what that means and what coming up. You know. Or I remember my mom went to Mount Alvarena and she took a picture by the library wall and you could see there was nothing there, which is now Howard Cook Boulevard, and there was nothing there.
Speaker 1:And so I think, in some ways, because we didn't have a lot of pictures to archive how the landscape has changed over time, to really be a very stark reminder that, no, this land is changing and if we don't be careful, um, it go, disappear in front of our eyes. And some of that is for our own fault, like even the way that we build up concrete house. No, no, breadfruit tree in the yard, everything cut down. So, um, I said enough of my little rant about that in in your time. The j Jamaica Environmental Trust. What has been your observation about our relationship to the land and the role we play or don't play in where the land itself, this land of wood and water, this idea that we keep Jamaica is the land of wood and water, but if we're not careful, there will be only water, no wood.
Speaker 2:Maybe not even water. You know it's complicated, kerri-ann, that's the thing I can say. Most it's somewhat related to occupation. So if you are a yam farmer or you're a fisherman, you may have a greater appreciation of things like the rainy season, that the rainy season is changing. Or if you're a fisherman, you might have a greater appreciation that your fish catches are declining or places where you used to be able to catch fish you can't do it anymore. Certainly, if you're a fisherman, you're aware that the beach is eroding. If you're a fisherman, you know that mangroves play this vital role for healthy fish and the hotels are destroying the mangroves. So to a degree it's related to occupation. It's also related to socioeconomic class, because if you are somebody struggling for survival, you really have no time to know whether the atmosphere is all right or even whether the beach is eroding. Right, because you're very focused on survival.
Speaker 2:And then there's also something, I think, in our folklore, in our storytelling, where we equate bush with things being backward. So we do equate concrete with progress. So great many Jamaicans will look at Howard Cook Boulevard and, whether they remember what was there before or not, regard it as progress. You know, I think we sort of collectively have in our minds an image of South Florida that that is good and that is where we would like to go. So I see it differently. I see that Jamaica is, I think, a unique place, a very special island with a complicated history. It's a very diverse island. You know, I've traveled around the Caribbean quite a bit and there are other beautiful islands, but they tend not to be as diverse as Jamaica.
Speaker 2:And so I think Jamaica is this special place and it saddens me that we are apparently willing to just get rid of its authenticity, its realness, you know, the thing that is itself, and make it over in this image of this other place. I mean, I think South Florida is fine for South Florida, but why would we want to emulate that? So that's what saddens me. And then, of course, it's about the health of the natural environment, which we start to appreciate what it was giving us when it already starts to degrade. And a good example of that is the coral reefs which are badly degraded along the north coast and they are our first line of defense against storms. So we start to see greater impact from storms. The same fisherman we were talking about earlier he has less fish to catch because the fish live on the reef. So by the time we start to appreciate the way it directly affects us, it might be too late.
Speaker 1:I agree. So my granduncles, my grandmother's brothers, they're fishermen. So we grew up by the seaside, on White House, you know, over by the airport where the first sandals is. So he would say, yeah, man, no fish, now come again. The wall of the dirt from the hotel will build up forever, run down.
Speaker 1:But also, a few years ago I went to jamaica for my father's funeral and I remember my stepfather was like I was like, oh, this water look nice and clean. Him said, no, sir, this water dirty, man, rainfall or whatever. And I in that moment I was like this water, I'm considered dirty and I realized that I've lived away from the country so long. But what I lost in that progress is able to see the environmental changes that he saw, like he knew this water wasn't clean because in the last couple of days it's been raining. So what looked clear to me comparison to what's beach in New York was not good water. And he was able to look and see not good water.
Speaker 1:And he was able to look and see and I thought of does the new generation, are they able to look at the environment or the surroundings and tell the way that? You know, back in the day people could say well, no, something wrong with this right. We lose some of that in our modernization of the island and that could also be why it's very hard to take care of the environment, because as we modernize some of those things that we can use to identify what is not right about the elements or the surroundings, we don't pass that off to the next generation. To a certain degree, and I felt that when my stepfather said, no man, this water not clean it dirty, you know, and said no man, this water not clean it dirty you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to some degree it's lost. Yeah, and I know White House well. We did work with the fishers in White House over the hotels, right. There's a thing in environmental circles called shifting baselines, where every generation thinks what it grew up with is the norm and it's always been like that. And unless somebody tells you, like a grandparent or, as you said earlier, their images, you think that what was around when you were a young person is the norm and you don't really appreciate the changes that have happened Now. Of course, changes happen anyway.
Speaker 2:For a while I was quite obsessed with when Columbus first came to the Caribbean, which is really the first time we have written records of what was seen here, and so we have Columbus's logs of the animals that were in the sea in the Caribbean Sea at the time and that has changed so greatly, and that changed within about 50 years of European arrival. So things do change. But I think what's happening now is the rate of change is extremely fast and it's happening way too quickly without enough consideration about. Well, hold on a little bit. If we take out this stretch of mangroves, what's that going to mean for the stability of the beach? And when the beach goes, you hear oh well, we have to dredge sand and that means taking it out of the sea and that means it has impacts in the sea.
Speaker 2:So it's like this snowballing set of problems, and I think young people know you know I'm going to sound like a real old person, because this is what old people always say about young people. This is nothing new always say about young people, this is nothing new but they're not really so concerned about these kind of issues, you know they're. They're more concerned about material things and I think that's a change I've seen in my life. Um, you know more about the, about flashy cars and the latest iPhone and whatever, although I will say that when I was with the environmental group, I worked with some really great young people and they were very concerned about what we were doing to their home place, but I would say they're not as many of them as I would like and the changes that need to happen at the young level because this really is a problem for young people I won't be around, you know it hasn't happened in as wide a scope and or as quickly as I'd hoped.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, thank you for that.
Speaker 1:We could always go on about the environment, but I want to shift to Miss Pauline, which, thank you, this was such a delightful read. I will share at the end my notes on how I connect to it personally. But I wanted to ask how much of the environment did you factor in in the story about Miss Pauline? Before that, if you can give the audience a little gist because me, we spoil it for them. Get on the whole thing. So if you could, you know, give a little synopsis about A House of Miss Pauline.
Speaker 2:So Miss Pauline is a woman, a rural woman.
Speaker 2:She's lived all her life in rural St Mary and she's had a difficult life and she's approaching her 100th birthday and she's taken the stones of a nearby plantation ruin, an old slave house that was lost in the forest, which she finds by accident, and she's taken those stones to build her own house, after her own house was destroyed in a hurricane, because she wants something safe where she and her family can live.
Speaker 2:And just as she's approaching her 100th birthday, the stones of her house start to shift in the night and make these noises and eventually start to speak. And she knows at that point that there are atonements she has to make in her own life and she sets out to do that by enlisting the help of a granddaughter who lives in the US to try and make these reparations, these atonements that she knows she wants to make before she dies. So it's basically about her journey to do that and the secret that she has kept for most of her life. And you ask about the environment in the book, her real connection to this place where she has spent her entire life, how she feels about it, what it looks like, her love for where she spent her life and her wish to make sure she sets things right before she dies.
Speaker 1:I love that summary. I would agree with the whole thing. But what I do enjoy about reading Caribbean literature, as I said at the top of the episode, is being able to connect with the location or the place where the story is set, first and foremost. That's always, for me, it's one thing to read a book that's set in Jamaica, it's one thing to have a connection to the place, and for me that's always rare because most stories they tend to set it in Kingston, so anything that's set in Moby, where I'm from and in this case, while I'm not from St Mary, my maternal grandfather is from St Mary I spent a lot of summers in Highgate and so when I read it and I was like, oh yeah, st Mary, that's nice, you know, the only thing missing was the holy banana walk conversations. But it was so good to connect, you know, with the scene and how they described it at a point, even the hurricane that you mentioned here.
Speaker 1:I would visit St Mary before that hurricane and I remember the difference. But yeah, not all, diana, if it's the 88 one, absolutely. I remember going to St Mary 87, 86 and then going back the year after and just like how the landscape in my grand aunt's property had changed because of the hurricane, and you know. So hearing Miss Pauline tell the story was so moving for me because, as I was telling my friend's mom, you know I was still a child, you know I was well, maybe I can't remember the age at this point, but I was still a child, but not understanding the grasp that my parents have to deal with the shortage of food like shortage of food, me never hungry. To deal with the shortage of food like shortage of food, me never hungry. And I guess I didn't appreciate all the work that she had to do to make sure I didn't feel hungry. To me it was, oh, it's fun breeze, blow down everything. So it is fun time versus, you know, hearing or reading all that she had to do to ensure the survival of ourself and our families.
Speaker 1:I really appreciated that telling and I also appreciated hearing a story from another part of Jamaica that's not always included in literature right, like a parish, like St Mary. I mean, we might hear about St Mary but people may not realize it's St Mary in the other books about James Bond and all these things, other books about James Bond and all these things. I really appreciated that you went to a parish like St Mary. That is absolutely beautiful, especially when you drive down to Port Maria. But anyway, you know, just to tell that. So I just wanted to say that I connected and after this recording I'll tell you all the other stuff because I'm going to give the book if I tell the other things that I appreciate. So when you came up with the character of Miss Pauline, what was the inspiration for her character?
Speaker 2:So books have a long gestation, or certainly for me anyway, and I would say Miss Pauline was a long time coming, but in no particular order. I had a great aunt who was born in 1896. And she lived until she was 102. And I knew her well and I used to think about the changes she had seen in her whole life. So as a young woman so one side of my family is from Black River so as a young woman she came to Kingston in a buggy and I used to think about her being in the buggy at the bottom of Spur Tree Hill, you know, which she would have called man Bump, and how that journey might have taken her two or three days and she would have been staying in you know little roadside taverns or whatever at the time. And then towards the end of her life I sat with her and showed her how to use a computer and you know she'd flown on an airplane the whole communication revolution with cell phones and all of that. I remember we had to get her a cell phone with a huge dial because she couldn't really see to use a small phone. So I used to think about the changes that she had lived in her life and my experience with her was kind of teasing me in my mind. That was one piece, another piece.
Speaker 2:So I'm a little obsessed with the plantation great houses because, as I explained in an author's note at the back of the book, this story is partly about my own ancestry, which I only discovered relatively recently. I had a family story that my family came to Jamaica because my great grandfather was a Baptist missionary. He was Scottish and this was my background and I used to. You know people look at me and say, ah, slave owner. You know, and I used to, almost before the words were out of their mouth. But you're not Jamaican, are you? I would be telling them, oh, my great grandfather was a Baptist missionary. Right, leave me alone. Kind of thing you know, of thing you know. So, relatively recent I found out about this other aspect of my family on my mother's side, where indeed there were slave owners in my ancestry.
Speaker 2:Even before I knew that, I've been somewhat uncomfortable and uncertain about what should be done with the plantation great houses because some of them are in the most well, most of them actually are in the most beautiful places you can imagine. It was hard for me to stand there and think they should be burnt to the ground. You know, we should get rid of them. They speak of an atrocity, a terrible crime. They should be gone. It was hard for me to stand there. Anyway, I have a friend who knew of my writing aspirations and invited me to a writing workshop at a great house and I was in a little tiny room that was under the front stairs of the great house and sleeping there, I felt like this room had belonged to a woman, and a woman who was probably some kind of enslaved woman who looked after the people in the house because she was there to be close to them, and she took root in my mind. So I had this older relative and then this imaginary woman who I felt had visited me, if you like, or began to speak to me, although not in an audible way, from my experience at this great house.
Speaker 2:Then, years passed and during my environmental work, a friend took me to see a ruin in Cockpit Country where I was doing my environmental work, because it was built over a sinkhole. And that's what interested him and I thought built over a sinkhole, that is so weird, why would anybody do that? And what did they do? Did they drink the water, did they use it as a toilet, you know? And he took me to this place and it was fallen down and, yes, indeed, it was built over the sinkhole, and that stuck in my brain. And then the final thing was I was out for dinner one night and I heard a story of a foreigner, a man from overseas, who had come to the same ruin. That was really a ruin. It was by then just stones scattered around the landscape and had taken the stones of the great house to build his own house. And I started thinking, well, why a white man, why not a black woman, a black rural woman from that area? And why is that not a kind of reparations, a kind of restoring what was really hers? And that's a long story about the inspiration for a host for Miss Pauline.
Speaker 2:But I will also say to you and your listeners that I started writing this book in the pandemic. It was during lockdown, I should say, and it was entertainment for myself, because by then, book number five, I was kind of done with publication. I had written all my life and I was going to do it just for me, and I really sat at my computer and started writing what was then Roots of Stone, no House for Miss Pauline to entertain myself, and I called it my Long Strip of Knitting, so that's another name it had. I wasn't bothered with plot, I wasn't bothered with anything. I was just going to have fun with this character and let her onto the page.
Speaker 2:She was in my mind. She'd been in my mind for so long. Here you go, let me see what you do. And so the book was my long strip of knitting and I really wasn't going to send it anywhere. And then a friend, justine Hensel, who is one of the producers of the Calabash Literary Festival in Treasure Beach, sent me this opportunity for writers over 50. By then I was well over 50. I thought, oh well, it's just like the 5,000 words, nothing will happen. Here we are. It won that competition and through that I found an agent and a publisher and the book's about to come out.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that. I think that is such a fascinating story and even this idea of the plantations and what to do with it. I think now, in the age that we live in, you know I've seen a lot of commentaries about people having weddings at, you know, former great houses and they shouldn't do that because they're dancing on the grays of you know all of that. It could be very contentious, but from your view and from Miss Pauline's view, you know, miss Pauline says what is my right basically to do this, and I'm still kind of processing because I think it's easy to say that when you're at such a distance from these structures, right Like you don't interact with them. You know growing up in Mubei, you know every school trip. Where are we going, anipama? You know.
Speaker 1:Rosa you know, and you know it was something that you did not thinking of. You know the slavery and and what that is. And I I feel like at some point there there are different narratives we can see it's not. At some point there are different narratives we can see it's not. Yes, there were some atrocities and all these other things on there, but if this is the only view that we have of it, then we may be missing up. I think we're missing a point of that story as well.
Speaker 1:Right, the tenacity and the survival and what happens to the slaves that were on that plantation, especially and this is all coming from my book of, you know, the White Witch of Rose Hall and how everything happened, right. But I also think it's important in the retelling of the stories of these structures and what they represent. And you know, I found myself saying I don't see why Ms Pauline was wrong or anybody in Mearsen Hall was wrong for that point, because it was there and they should take it. But what would you say to anyone who's still having conflicted feelings about these structures and how they should view them as parts of our society? Should view them as parts of our society or should they remain as reminders? Should they be glorified as these fancy places to go visit? You know what are your thoughts on these?
Speaker 2:So I'm conflicted too, you know, actually and I say in the author's note at the end that I don't really have an answer to those questions. I think we should talk about it, though, and I don't stand in a place where they should be destroyed. I also don't stand in a place where there should be weddings either, or, you know, a mentor band and a drink with an umbrella in it. It's not that kind of place either, although I will say, my friend who invited me to that writer's workshop, she points out, you know, that that particular great house provides employment for a rural community with few opportunities for employment. So it is a complicated question. I would like to see them, I guess, as more as memorials, and if we are going to use them in any kind of celebratory way, such as like a wedding way, such as like a wedding, that there absolutely must be some part of the whole grounds and the whole house experience that really pays tribute to the people who died there, who labored and died there.
Speaker 2:I mean, our history, kerri-ann, is complicated, and I don't think we should shy away from that, and it is tragic. I don't want to see it expunged, you know. I don't want to see it to not exist at all. So you know there's, for instance, there's Vale Royal, which is near where I live in Kingston, that's falling down and I am sorry to see that. You know, I'm sorry to see the old buildings from the Hope Plantation up at Hope Zoo that are falling down because I would like to see them used. I would like to see them used in a way that benefits current generations, that recognizes what happened there. If they can provide employment to people, great. While we understand the atrocities that happened, if we can also celebrate the beauty of the places, if we can celebrate the craftsmanship and the skill of the people who built it. There was no white people that built it, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that I know.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I think that's where I was going, like, in addition to the tenacity, that's what I meant, like the skill it took to build, because I've been to Rose Hall so many times. Right, or even it could be a source of education, and I think that's what gets lost when we villainize the property. Right, I learned so much. It's one thing to read something in a book, but having walked through it and seeing it for yourself and having a lay of the land, I think it's very important. They're as close to museums as we can get and I think they create an opportunity for learning that maybe we discount because they don't look like again going back to our earlier conversation about environmentalism they don't look like like the global North's version of what is a museum. You know this is a slave master house and it should be condemned. It's part of our history and it's an opportunity to teach the next generation, especially.
Speaker 1:My view is as more people migrate from the region or their kids. So my kids, they've never been there. You know it would be an opportunity for them to go there and learn in a different way, and you know kids learn differently. They may not read it in a book, but you have them experience a space and tell a story in that way they will remember. So I think that's how I see them as a place of learning, a place of remembering. You know, this is where we have come from. We no longer about there, so we learn from. You know these things.
Speaker 2:So maybe that's a good way to put it actually, that we can villainize the events that took place without villainizing that place itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Maybe that's a good way to look at it, you know, and that there is an aspect of it for celebrating the craftsmanship, the resilience, the determination, the survival, without celebrating the events that took place. There's a way for this to be a memorial. You know, there's a place on the north coast I don't know if you ever went to it it's called Seville Great House, which is interesting because it has both Taino, Spanish, English settlements there, and what they've done there is the sort of English great house is a museum, so it has artifacts that were found. There's a space that is African graves that are memorialized, and then they have built a recreation of a Taino village because, you know, Tainos didn't use stone, they used mud and so forth, so they didn't survive and I always thought that was a good way of doing it. So, you know, it memorializes the place without, as I say, having a mental band and that kind of thing. So something like that I always thought was a good way to make sure these places just don't fall into ruin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the other themes that I think is also very important in the story A House of Miss Pauline is what we've lost in intergenerational relationships. You're a good reader, thank you. Well, I, my husband and I, we joke all the time that we did always hang out with the old people and so we, we, we understood their language and we, we also, we liked the relationship with them because they were cool people. You know, there was just something that we learned and we observed and we enjoyed and, as we're older, we saw the benefit of. I was my grandmother Hanbag. I go everywhere with my grandmother, every panaka church, clearly, that's where I was. I was in more pictures with my grandmother than I was with my mom, but I learned so much from her and her church sisters and the relationship that I have with my grandmother. I love my mom, but my relationship with my grandmother is she's a son, you know, and I value that so much. And so you know when the elders are around, I know, I know which joke to tell, I know which tune to pull, I know whatever it was to make them happy and they would tell a story. And you want to hear the stories and I think that was Miss Pauline. I would love Miss Pauline because I know Miss Pauline has some good story to tell. I just have to get her on a good day and just sit down and talk to Miss Pauline.
Speaker 1:But my experience growing up with all of the elders isn't what everyone else's experience is and we lose so much of our history and culture because there's not that relationship or connection anymore. And that is accelerated when kids go off foreign and leave the grandparents behind. And so for me, the story with Lamont Poppy, you know, and even the granddaughter, were things that I liked because I felt like, you know, in Miss Pauline's arms length. You know, don't get close to Miss Pauline in her own way. You know she was showing her care, but if you and I think maybe that's the impatience of being a youth you can't see that she might come off miserable but she really cares in her own way, it just looked and show up differently and that's what I really loved about the story with Miss Pauline.
Speaker 1:So when we talk about intergenerational relationships, what were you trying to pull out there and what's the lesson for the rest of us? Because I think this book was like this is a walk-in lesson of we need to do a bunch of things. So what was the lesson or the takeaway you want the audience to get from the time we have left with the elders we have here, whoever they are in your family, and what should we be doing with them? And culturally?
Speaker 2:My father's mother was a big influence in my life as well. So I had a grandmother like yours, you know, and she was a very strong woman and she influenced me greatly and I think that's quite a feature of Jamaican life. You know, a lot of us are really raised by our grandmothers feature of Jamaican life. You know, a lot of us are really raised by our grandmothers and, if not directly raised, they're strong influences and in literature you rarely find an older woman as a protagonist, as a hero. So I wanted to do that. You know, as I get up in years, I wanted to push back against this idea that, oh gosh, you're an older woman, you're invisible, you don't have a contribution to make anymore. Just consider that you're also under some knitting, which I was pretending to do when I was writing the book, you know. So that was one thing I wanted to give some space for an older protagonist and I wanted her to be different. I wanted her to be, you know, a really atypical Jamaican woman and not in any way some kind of stereotype, you know about what kind of woman she was. I wanted her to be strong, I wanted her to overcome these many odds. I wanted her to be colorful. I mean, truthfully, it sounds like I went into this with a plan and that really is not what happened. It was more that she revealed herself to me as I sat down and let her, and I know that sounds crazy, but it's really my experience of how these things happen.
Speaker 2:I don't actually usually start with a place in my books. I start with a person, and all of my main characters have come to me in strange ways, in dreams, in just somehow, you know like you're staying in this place and this woman moves into your head and they start to reveal themselves to me. And mostly they have not had my life. You know these are people that I have not lived their lives. I know that. But I trust them. I trust what they're telling me is the truth and I hope that comes out in the pages. You know that I'm doing justice to their lives.
Speaker 2:And that's not to say I didn't read quite a bit about rural Jamaica, you know, at the time, because I grew up in Kingston and you know I didn't have that kind of life, so I did read, you know, books about fiction, about what things were like there, and hopefully you know some of those details are correct. So as to what to do with our elders. I think we're losing some of our stories, you know, and these people have these amazing stories to tell. Now I know I'm getting like this myself. You know, when you're talking to old people they repeat themselves, and a lot of me don't hear that story 25 times about the time you went to the market and you forgot to bring back the change, and, to a degree, young people get a bit impatient with that. But I think the richness of those stories is really something that we should not lose, and I try to do it in the way that I do things in books.
Speaker 2:But you know there are other ways oral histories, film, what you're doing here with this interview. I think that's really, really important because they have such rich stories and these days we need a lot of different ways to tell those stories. You know it can't always be the written word. It has to be many, many different things, and so I hope that Miss Pauline will spark some interest in that, in talking to old people, especially old women, and learning about how they actually raised families in these, you know, very, very difficult circumstances and how, in fact, they will often tell you, you know, that they had a happy life, despite what you look at from the outside and say, oh my gosh, you know he didn't have any running water and he didn't have an inside bathroom. They are going to tell you how it was great, and I think that's something that we regard ourselves as modern Jamaicans need to hear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to ask about the research because you know there were so many specific things particularly with Clive, the building on the roads and all these other things that I was like how much research did you do? But you kind of said you tried to get as specific as possible with how rural living is, even growing up, like visiting St Mary, I understand, like you know going into Highgate and you know it was. To me it felt like, oh yeah, I know what she's talking about, like my, my grandfather's brother, he also lived in Islington, so you know we're going to go up on Uncle Sonny Farm and it was just a whole trek. So to me it felt as realistic as I can remember as a nine-year-old going to St Mary and visiting.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I loved about the story was the juxtaposition with old and new. Like the post office, the local PA is still there but we have internet, right, I said of course this makes sense. Somebody still go and send a letter, even though you know nobody really does that anymore, and I think that's for me, going back to Jamaica. It's always these modern and things that represent the past that still coexist in a way, and maybe because people are in the space, they don't think of it, but me, returning as a visitor to home, I see it more clearly and they remind me of a time that no longer exists exists. So, um, I don't know how much thought you put into like making those specifics to the story about a library where even here in America, who go to the library anymore, you know with the internet, you know um.
Speaker 1:So I I wanted to know if that was like intentional of having the library and the post office against all these modern amenities even in a rural place.
Speaker 2:So I think you know, if you want to write successfully, you've got to start to look, you have to observe, right. So and if you pay attention to what's around you, then the next step is you ask yourself, what does it mean? And I have really observed life here in lots of different ways. I mean, my first book was set in Kingston, you know again, a life I did not live. So you look first and then you think what does it mean? And to me, this sort of coexistence of what was with what is and also what is coming but not yet here, is good, it's a valuable thing. That's why I don't want the old things to be pulled down and forgotten, right. And I have a thing that I say that Jamaica is a place, a country, that is both dying and being born at the same time.
Speaker 2:So I think, all around us we see that. We see buildings that are falling down, we see new buildings, we see billboards that are moving because of, you know, some really complicated technology and right next to it, a stoplight that's not working and hasn't worked for three weeks, you know. We see markets that I mean markets have been such a feature of our life going way back into history, but many of our markets. The roof has fallen off and it's a tarpaulin, and then it's right next to this really shiny office building. You go down to downtown Kingston and that's what you will see. You will go to the fishing beach at White House, which is still there, and right next door to it is an all-inclusive hotel, you know.
Speaker 2:So I think there's this conflict that is and I don't even know if I want to say it's a conflict this commentary on a country that is moving from one state into another state. That is just ever-present for me and that's what I gravitate to describing and, like I say, I think it's a valuable thing. I think it's a city that I love, london, where my son lives. I think that's one of the things I've done so well, because all over London there are these old buildings, you know, and they're all in beautiful repair and it's got a little plaque outside saying some man lived there and next to it now is some skyscraper that looked like a picture and it's just the latest in everything and I like that. I think it's interesting, it's varied, it asks questions of you, you know, and I see some of that here and I want to keep it. I want to keep the library. I'd like them to fix the traffic light as well, but I want to keep the library.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel the same way. Whenever I go back to Jamaica, I want to go to Sangster's and buy books, because I can only get books there and I don't want to buy them online. I want to go to, you know, certain bakeries. You know it's because they connect me to memories. My grandmother is no longer here, so you know they are part of memories. You know, you see them and you know I can't explain it. It's like it's just a tangible memories. You touch it, you know, you know where this is, even Creek Street, if I pass by and when they're growing up they say, oh, river, mumma under the dome and all these things, right, like I don't care.
Speaker 2:Definitely she's under the dome. I just want to say that.
Speaker 1:Right. So you know the idea of going up the steep steps, you know, through barracks, road to infant school, like those are important aspects of memory and memory in that way they trigger stories and for me, I love the storytelling that the old folks do. I absolutely love it. So, on that note, what is your final takeaway for anyone who's thinking of reading it but they're not sure, even though I think they'll to read it because they're going to like Miss Pauline? But any last words for the audience before we go to the after show where I can ask you all my wonderful questions.
Speaker 2:Oh man, they must read it. They must read it. I mean, I find this part of book writing hard where you've got to go up to people and tell them to buy a book, right, and how it's wonderful and the best. I'm not very good at it, but I think of all and, like I said, this is my sixth book I loved Miss Pauline. I loved spending time with her. I wanted to see what she was going to do. I loved her, her feistiness, her directness, her strength, but also her kindness, you know, and the way she would take no nonsense. She was such a role model for me, right? I want to be that kind of old person if I'm given that length of time. I think my book is, as all of my books have been, a tribute to Jamaica, you know, a sort of putting into words how I feel about it, what a special place it is. Yes, of course, difficult, it's difficult, and yes, it has a difficult history, but it's also unique and interesting and fascinating and, yeah, I hope you love it. Read it, man.
Speaker 1:It's good. It's good and for me I think Miss Pauline is, like I said, an amalgamation of plenty Jamaican women. You can see aspects of them in Miss Pauline and those women don't get to go in the history book and I think Miss Pauline is a good way to kind of pay homage to these strong matriarchs that exist in most of our lives in Jamaica. So I love it. Go read A House in Miss Pauline, please, and thanks, and so on that note, until next time, walk. Good, but guess what? Me and Diana is going into the after show. We're going to elaborate a little bit. So make sure say you come into the community and hear what we're laughing about. All right,
