Nneka Nicholas 10/30/20 Nneka Nicholas 10/30/20

Naima

She would not allow the creeping doubts from the previous months to dampen her spirit. Not while she had the rum in her system. She bobbed and weaved to make her feathers dance some more and so the stage lights could pick up the glitter on her skin

Majella Mark 10/30/20 Majella Mark 10/30/20

West Indian parenting style…

One of the participants was an American woman of Haitian descent who expressed her trouble dealing with depression due to the struggle of sharing mental and emotional concerns with her mother.

Majella Mark 10/30/20 Majella Mark 10/30/20

How a Small Island Gave Birth to Giants. Malcom X, Audre Lorde, and Amanda Seales.

#ADOS is a hashtag you will find on Twitter and Instagram that means “American Descendants of Slaves”. You will find many comments from cyber participants addressing their concerns for the wellbeing of their community…

Majella Mark 10/30/20 Majella Mark 10/30/20

The Objectification of Young Girls

One of the most heinous crimes that constantly gets dismissed in the Caribbean and has gone on for generations is the exploitation of young girls by adult men.

Majella Mark 10/30/20 Majella Mark 10/30/20

The hostility between Afro and Indo Caribbean Women may be about Featurism not Colourism

The Caribbean has a long history of multiculturalism due to the migration that occurred voluntarily and by force. This history includes the division of Afro Caribbean and Indo Caribbean people, predominantly in Guyana, Jamaica, Grenada and Trinidad & Tobago. The same system that was held in the United States, separating house slaves from field slaves based on their shade of brown was also implemented in the Caribbean between the Indians and the Africans.

Maëlla Kancel 10/30/20 Maëlla Kancel 10/30/20

Ti Fanm An Mas-la (Young girl playing Mas)

Soca takes over my body. Dressed in black and white, teenagers and young adults from all around the island are there to celebrate the death of King Vaval. Doing the helicopter with a small towel, singing and dancing behind the music truck, my cousin and I enjoy these last free-spirited moments.

Janielle Browne 10/30/20 Janielle Browne 10/30/20

Hookin’ Me

Imagine being 13 still just a little sprat

But the men you grow up ‘round

Can’t seem to see that

Your uniform ready for school

kevanté a.c. cash 10/30/20 kevanté a.c. cash 10/30/20

Today I am six years from 30

da bishop daughta in foreign

marrit to woman wit no babies?

Janielle Browne 10/30/20 Janielle Browne 10/30/20

Calypso Tingz

Imagine being 13 still just a little sprat

But the men you grow up ‘round

Can’t seem to see that

Your uniform ready for school

Nastassia Rambarran 10/30/20 Nastassia Rambarran 10/30/20

GET IN YUH SECTION

I never really took part in Mash again, either as a participant or bystander, until University. You see, despite what the Wikipedia article on Mash says, the celebration was a very racially divided one. Sure, many ethnicities lined the parade route, although conservative families didn’t do even this, but the persons in the parade were largely Guyanese of African heritage

Amelia Badri 10/30/20 Amelia Badri 10/30/20

Purple Thyme: A Pantoum Poem

She wants to say something to him about how pretty the purple thyme grows this time of year.

Neisha Etienne 10/30/20 Neisha Etienne 10/30/20

Tout Pour Plaire

J’ai été conditionné à être un objet.

Il fallait à tout prix appartenir à quelqu’un. Mon

quotidien consistait à faire le beau, en espérant qu’on

me remarque et qu’on me choisisse.

Shannon Meade 10/30/20 Shannon Meade 10/30/20

my old foe

you make me a foreigner in my own country

where disbelieving citizens welcome me with open arms

because they think I bring tourism dollars.

you rear your sinister head every time i return

and make me wonder if this is why i left.

Carl Augustus 10/30/20 Carl Augustus 10/30/20

Live Free

Your thoughts and words are of no consequence to me.

I am free.

MX Leo 10/30/20 MX Leo 10/30/20

Blue Dream (I am just a descendant)

Inna mi dream -

a blue dream,

where we

trod through tanks of indigo

years upon years

with paddles,

hands wrinkled

bodies being burnt,

like your tar babies,

Kelia/Kelie 10/30/20 Kelia/Kelie 10/30/20

I am that little Black Girl

I can also vividly remember being told by somebody I loved that I was beautiful for a black girl. I can honestly say that I did not fully understand the implications of this comment. I now understand.

Denise Westfield 10/30/20 Denise Westfield 10/30/20

She Who Has Found Herself

Sitting straight-backed on a cluster of smooth rocks, not too far from Jonita, was a breadnut-brown woman with a sprawling afro enclosed in a circle of plaits decorated with iridescent shells at the base, and a lush body with a waist that curved into…

Jourdan "Riv-Ryker" Lobban 10/30/20 Jourdan "Riv-Ryker" Lobban 10/30/20

Don't Marry Us. Instead, Stand By Us.

The worst part of it all, is that there are deep roots of trauma still plaguing our families yet the outsiders only care about the resorts, the plantain, or the reggae that is overplayed on certain radio stations.