tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74908192024-03-23T10:52:34.147-07:00Womanish WordsLynn SweetingLynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.comBlogger171125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-20155892704454724082014-07-20T10:06:00.004-07:002014-07-20T18:58:41.540-07:00"For Colored Girls" at the Black Box Will Save Your Life<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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I went to see Ntzake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have
Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, presented by Ringplay Productions
and directed by Nicolette Bethel, at the brand new Black Box Theatre at the
Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts in Nassau on Friday night. How could I
miss it? I wanted to see this seminal womanish work performed at last, and
thrilled that my old pal Nicolette Bethel was directing. I was also
excited to see the new theatre space, the Black Box. I invited Chrissy Love to
come along with me and I went completely prepared to love the show.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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And I did love it. For many reasons.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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First of all, I love the Black Box. Sprung up behind the
dear old Dundas like a miracle, it provides a new kind of theatre experience
for Nassauvians. This is theatre in the round. There is no stage, or rather,
none that is separate and apart from you. The audience encircles the stage. In
fact, you are on the stage with the players. When you take your seat you
realize, you are in the play. The actors dance and fly around the room, in and
out of doors all around you, and sometimes they come right up to you till they
are inches away, they look in your eyes and you feel like you are supposed to
say something. The Black Box provides a
wonderfully unnerving, exhilarating new theatre experience for our town. Under
Nicolette’s inspired direction and Lawrence Carroll’s impeccable choreography
the cast inhabited the entire space, creating a stage all around us, just as we
circled round the stage. For ninety minutes (was it really that long?) we were
cast headlong into Ms. Shange’s mélange of poetry, dance and music and at the
end we emerged feeling all the feelings she intended us to feel. I’m certain
that Nicolette, the cast and the entire production team were assured on
opening night that this non-traditional play is the perfect inaugural piece for
the Black Box.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I know this is a play about race and gender, or rather,
racism and misogyny, but to me it is a song about womanish pain. Not about
getting over the pain, or healing the pain, or looking on the bright side of
the pain, or noble lessons learned from the pain, or being grateful for the
pain, or naming the pain anything other than pain. Seems to me the writing is
asking us to feel the pain. To hold steady and feel it. To be a witness to it, and to share in the
pain, the kind colored girls feel. I
believe Ms. Shange seeks to break open your cold, dead heart, shock it back to
bloody beating again with this play. She means to yuck up our deepest emotions,
the main one being compassion, for ourselves and for other women as we navigate
this misogynist, racist, patriarchal world. I got the feeling she is saying,
among other things, that the fearless act of telling the painful truths about
women’s lives, as well as the brave act of witnessing those truths, are exactly
the acts that empower us to continue to seek and create our womanish liberation
and joy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The ensemble cast features seasoned performers Claudette
Allens (Lady in Red)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and Theresa Moxey Ingraham (Lady in Yellow), as well as new
talents Michaela Forbes (Lady in Green), Myra McPhee (Lady in Blue) and Aleah Carey (Rainbow) and rising
stars Onike Archer (Lady in Purple), Arthellia Isaacs (Lady in Brown) and Erin
Knowles (Lady in Orange). The play calls for each to speak and dance their color into a single prism that shines a multicoloured light “on what it means to live full, joyful lives
in a world plagued with racism, sexism, cruelty and violence.” The cast
achieves this objective beautifully, delivering a cohesive performance that
will break your hearts, lift your spirits and open your minds to think
differently and anew about the womanish experience in these difficult times. Seeing For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When
the Rainbow is Enuf at the Black Box will also change your mind about what it
means to see a play in Nassau. Prepare to
be a changed person when you emerge from this show.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I am profoundly grateful to Philip Burrows, Nicolette Bethel and Ringplay
Productions for the Black Box and for choosing this play for the inaugural
production. I believe what they say, that “theatre saves lives.” I can now say,
I’ve been saved. You can be saved too. The play is on again July 24 to 26.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-4035257040500986572014-03-10T10:24:00.000-07:002014-03-10T10:24:13.663-07:00WomanSpeak Launches Issue 2014 at National Art Gallery of the Bahamas March 27
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<span style="font-family: Papyrus; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A
book launch celebrating the release of a limited edition of WomanSpeak, A
Journal of Writing and Art by Caribbean Women, volume 7/2014, edited by Lynn
Sweeting, will be held at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas on Thursday,
March 27, at 7pm, and the book loving public is invited.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Papyrus; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Seven
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>poets will read at the event, including noted
poet Marion Bethel, author of Bouganvillea Ringplay (Peepal Tree Press 2010), <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lelawattee Manoo Rahming, 2001 Commonwealth
Prize Winner and author of “Immortelle and Bhandaaraa Poems (Proverse, Hong
Kong), noted author Patricia Glinton Meicholas, Small Axe Poetry Prize winner Sonia
Farmer, and poet and WomanSpeak founding editor and publisher Lynn Sweeting of
The Bahamas, and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>new voice Attilah
Springer of Trinidad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Contributing
artist Carla Campbell of The Bahamas will show her paintings at the event. A
limited number of printed copies of the journal will be available for purchase.
</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Papyrus; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Voices
of Dissent: Women Writing and Painting to Transform the Culture,” is the theme
for this new collection from WomanSpeak Books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Editor Lynn Sweeting of The Bahamas gathers together another small but
powerful <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>collection of poetry, fiction,
fairy tales, essays, and art </span><span style="font-family: Papyrus; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">in
a <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>full colour, paperback edition designed
by Julia Ames and featuring the painting “The Butterfly Effect: The Duchess” by
acclaimed Bahamas painter Claudette Dean on the cover. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition to works by the noted and
prizewinning poets reading at the launch, also included in the new collection
are well known, noted author, poet, editor and teacher, Opal Palmer Adisa (Jamaica),
Vahni Capildeo (Trinidad) whose collection of poems “Dark and Unaccustomed
Words” was long-listed for the 3013 OCM Bocas Prize, Vashti Bowlah, (Trinidad)
who was shortlisted for the 2013 Inauguaral Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers
Prize, and Daniel Boodoo-Fortune, painter and poet, (Trinidad), winner of the
First Prize for Poetry in the 2012 Small Axe Literary Competition. </span>
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Papyrus; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Full
colour art by a small but powerful group of contemporary women painters is once
again a prominent feature of the new WomanSpeak journal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the center of the collected art are
Claudette Dean’s paintings from her collection, “The Buttefly Effect, four
achingly beautiful portraits of women, each one crowned with enormous flowers
that seem to emerge from the tops of their heads, like the power and beauty of
the feminine creative imagination when it springs from the womanish mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other
contributing painters include Danielle Boodoo Fortune of Trinidad, new voice
Cher Corbin of Barbados, and the radical feminist painter Maria Maria
Acha-Kutsccher of Mexico, and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bahamian
Carla Campbell who will show two of her paintings included in issue 2014 at the
launch.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Papyrus; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Founded
in The Bahamas in the 1990s, revived in 2010, WomanSpeak began as a personal
labour of love for founding editor Lynn Sweeting and a few local writer friends
in Nassau, a forum where they could publish their own creative work. In the new
era the journal began to attract the attention of international writers and
painters. The creative work of 30 women writers and painters from across the
Caribbean and the world make up the new collection. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Papyrus; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Today
WomanSpeak exists to provide a forum for Caribbean women’s creative work, to
nurture that creativity by publishing fine literature and art by women, to
discover and publish emerging and developing writers, to preserve publications
for future audiences, and to create a space where community and sisterhood
among contemporary women writers and painters of the Caribbean can be
cultivated and encouraged.</span></div>
Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-408870005718189412013-10-30T12:56:00.001-07:002013-10-30T13:22:00.342-07:00Halloween is for the Children<style>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Hey
good people of the Bahamas, lets bring back the secular Halloween traditions of
costumes and trick or treating for our little ones. Dressing up and pretending
to be someone else is good for their creative imagination. Remember, trick or
treaters are not criminals, just little children trying to trick or treat like
Dora does on tv, for goodness sake, lets be nice to our children. Lets create a
safe holiday for the little ones, lets be kind and generous to one another.
Lets especially look kindly on the little children who have no costumes, who
dress up as best they can <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with what they
have, lets be most generous to them. Lets stop complaining about how unsafe it
is and let us put a pumpkin in the window and turn our house into a safe place
to trick or treat. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anglos, lets stop
hiding behind our drawn drapes talking about crime when black little kids are
trick or treating outside, stop “canceling” or “postponing” trick or treat<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>night in your neighbourhood because you are
“afraid of crime”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>because this boils
down to refusing to open your door to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>black little children who come to your door on Halloween night proper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can’t cancel or postpone Halloween. (To
the people in the overly decorated<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>house
who wouldn’t answer the door to my eight year old son a few years back because
your neighbourhood association decided to cancel Halloween, I say, you are bad,
bad people.) This is so 1980s and not in a good way, this is so racist. And fundamentalists,
stop demonizing a harmless secular tradition for children, stop using the
“pagan roots” of Halloween for an excuse to deny our kids some safe
neighbourhood fun in 2013, remember, all your Christian traditions have pagan
roots. I don’t like what American pop culture does with Haloween, I don’t allow
monsters and zombies, though I will tolerate a dashing vampire, a good witch
and a friendly ghost. I don’t like the way mainstream culture makes Halloween
gory and scary, or the way costumes for women these days are all sexed up. I
don’t like the exploding fireworks. I love little children in costumes
trick or treating, I focus on them. I love putting on my witch’s hat and doing a little
neighbourhood theatre for them. The modern secular Halloween traditions celebrate
childhood, our children desperately need to be celebrated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Low self esteem is killing us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The simple tradition of dressing up and trick
or treating on Halloween is a little way we can teach our children that their
lives are worth celebrating, that we think they are worth celebrating<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a way to create family and
neighbourhood togetherness, a way to create community, the kind centered around children. So come on people,
receive the little trick or treaters with some generosity, some
creativity, some grace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let them have some
fun, for Christ’s sake. Lets all have some fun. Have (create) a happy Haloween!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-12931574587211223342013-10-16T05:17:00.000-07:002013-10-16T05:17:52.734-07:00A Human Rights Poem for Blog Action Day 2013
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Seeing What
Cannot Be Seen</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">(A Human
Rights Poem for Blog Action Day 2013)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Squadrons of
government </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">soldiers in
riot gear, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">massed and
ready </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">behind the
white man</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">confronting
the forest man,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">looking</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">for any
reason</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">to begin
firing,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">nation of
mothers, fathers, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">children,
grandfathers, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">grandmothers,
The People, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">behind the
forest man,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">their bodies,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">their voices,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">their stories
all</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">outside the
shot,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">the forest
under fire,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">fields of
burning stumps,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">dead bodies,
murdered chiefs</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">laying in
their graves,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">violated
treaties, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">stinking
mines,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">cattle
ranches worked</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">by Indian
slaves, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">missing
children,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">dying
animals,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">all these are</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">what cannot
be seen</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">in the
photograph,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">nor the
citizen journalist</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">aiming the
camera,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">nor the face</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">of the blog
writer</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">who published
the picture,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">or that of
the Global Voices</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">online editor
who reported</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">the report</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the last</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">on the rain
forest Indians</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">taking to the
streets</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">to save their
land,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">to save their
lives, nor</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">the face</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">of the forest
man </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">willing</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">to die rather
than step aside</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">for the
bulldozers</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">because
without the forest</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">he will die
anyway, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">we cannot see
ourselves</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">in the
picture</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">until now.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-47406755506614706572013-09-19T15:58:00.000-07:002013-09-19T16:20:17.113-07:00Imagining These Words Matter<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">I am blogging
in the Crab Grass Garden. It begins to rain. I laugh. Then think of them. The
mother and daughters murdered in Pakistan a few weeks ago for making a film of
themselves outside in the rain laughing. The mother showed the film she made
of her daughters to a friend who showed it to her male relatives. The men were
outraged, broke into her home in the middle of the night and shot them all dead.
Mainstream (patriarchal) culture called it an honour killing. The mainstream
press never covered it. Bloggers wrote about it and I read about it at Global
Voices Online. The rain keeps misting down and I wonder, what exactly was it
about the film that drove the men to murder? I remember a clip of the offending
film on Global Voices. In it the girls were dressed conservatively though their
faces were uncovered. As for laughing, they barely cracked a smile, they giggled
then stopped. I realize, it wasn’t what was in the film that pissed them off. It
wasn’t the creative act either. Not the mother’s act of picking up the camera,
or turning it on her daughters and encouraging them to smile. It was not that
she archived the little film, not even that she showed it to friends that
enraged them. The rain keeps on falling lightly around me and I realize with
certainty, it was the <i>idea</i> of creating the film that got them killed.
They died because of that single, fleeting moment when one of them said,
Imagine making a film of ourselves! Imagine seeing ourselves in a film!
Imagine! In the patriarchy the womanish imagination is illegal and the penalty
is death. I am blogging in the rain in the Crab Grass Garden, imagining these
words matter, imagining bringing this blog back to life with writings that say
something about the power of writing to challenge an unjust status quo,
imagining the new poems I will write, the ones to protest misogyny, hyper-fundamentalist
father god religions and the 200 million girls gone missing in the world that
no one talks about. Imagining poems I will write to protest my own government’s
failure to pass laws and implement policies that improve women’s lives.
Imagining my words had the power to change things. Where I live, I can imagine
myself writing and publishing a blog, then do it, and no one will want to kill
me for it. But I don’t take my freedom for granted. Not for one minute.I dedicate these words to that mother and her daughters, because perhaps they knew what was going to happen. Perhaps they decided it was worth it. </span>Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-14966336133942536782013-09-19T09:49:00.001-07:002013-09-19T16:11:27.306-07:00WomanSpeak, Vol.7/2014 Soon Come
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I spent the summer putting together the new issue of
WomanSpeak, Vol.7/2014 and at the time of this writing we are in the
final stages of editing. It should be in print by the end of October. I am
humbled, excited and a little terrified to see my little kitchen table
publication, a personal labor of love, a forum for me and my friends, now
growing into an international journal with writing and art by contemporary
Caribbean women writers and painters from around the world. It is a tiny volume
as international journals go, thirty contributors, 150 pages. But in it are the
creative expressions of an emerging new school of
feminist/womanist/wombanist/womanish writers and painters who in this
collection at least direct the power of their art toward challenging the unjust
status quo, in the world and in our heads, at work to diminish the freedom,
autonomy and empowerment of women. This is a special community, the
contributors all understand that we are creating something new together. They
know it is a small journal from a small place. They know it is still invisible,
that the readership is small. But they also seem to know they are the voices of
a new school of women's lit and art coming out of the Caribbean. there is a
renewed consciousness of the woman writer as activist that infuses many of
these works. WomanSpeak is becoming a gathering place for such writers and
painters. I am grateful to them all for for their good work, for their literary
and painterly activism and for believing in this journal, and for believing in
me. I want to let them know, the new issue soon come.</span><span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";"></span></div>
Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-17696330542622386202013-09-16T04:02:00.002-07:002013-09-17T18:38:57.440-07:00Security of Person<style>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Security of
Person</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">That I am
here</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">writing,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">not running</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">from bombs</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">of chemicals</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">or fire,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">not hiding</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">from soldiers</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">for whom rape</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">is a weapon</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">of war,</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">not afraid</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">of going to
jail</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">or dying</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">in a genocide</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">if I say</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">in this poem,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">my government</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">fails me,</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">not silenced</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">to keep from</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">getting
killed</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">by male
relatives</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">hell-bent</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">on calling
murder</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">a matter </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">of honour,</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">of death</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">by land
theft,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">unmanned
drones</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">or a wall</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">going up</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">between me</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">and the
fields</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">where I grow
my </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">family’s
food,</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">not in a tent</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">facing the
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">in a refugee
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">in a country</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">that doesn’t
want me</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">because my
country</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">is getting</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">blown away,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">not
kidnapped,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">trafficked to
God</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">knows where,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">not enslaved.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">that I am
here</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">at my desk by
the window,</span></div>
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poetry</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">for this
moment,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">I am safe.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">So this poem</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">must be
written</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">too busy surviving</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">to write,</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">for mothers</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">in the
millions</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">who’ve never
known safety </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">in their
entire lives,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">to bear them
witness,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">to demand</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">the human
right</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">to security of person</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">be upheld</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">for all
people</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">of the earth</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">at last,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">because the
safe ones</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">aren’t really
safe</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">and poets</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">can’t be
counted</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">among the
silent ones.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-80247627798634223482013-09-12T14:39:00.000-07:002013-09-12T15:22:34.561-07:00Who Cares?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Who Cares?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Who cares <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">about the
Indians of Honduras, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Chile, Venezuela,
Brazil, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Guatemala,
Panama, Peru?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">The ones who
have cared for the rainforest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Since Adam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Was a little
girl?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">The Indians of
South America are dying in massacres, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Their leaders
are being murdered,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Their lands
are being stolen from under their feet,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Their
children are vanishing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">They are
menaced every day by military police,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Shot down if
they refuse to leave <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Or be
enslaved<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">In the mines
or cattle ranches<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Corrupt
governments and corporations will build <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Where their
ancestral forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Used to be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">The Indians
of South America are fighting for their lives<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">(land is
life)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">while the
world press looks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">at Syria,
Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">(but not the
honour killings) India<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">(but not the
missing girls), China<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">(but not the
missing girls),<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">The Indians
of South America are blocking the roadways,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">throwing
themselves in front of bulldozers,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">facing down
the bullets,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">(land is
life)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">while the
local papers in my town devote<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">entire pages
to pastor politics, fashion shows,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Hollywood
scandals and wire stories<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">About how to
safely remove snow<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">From the
driveway (ignorance is bliss)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Or the latest
bullshit Pat Robertson said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">The Indians
of South America are storming the assemblies, demanding to be seen, heard,
considered while i<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">sit here<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in middle class, disconnected<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">comfort making
poems ,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">up to my
fingers in guilt and remorse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">for taking so
long to say,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">stop the
genocide .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">stop the
genocide!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">STOP THE
GENOCIDE!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">I give my
voice to the resistance but<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";">Who cares?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-44451599595824005372013-08-17T11:06:00.002-07:002013-09-19T16:22:29.084-07:00Blog Action Day 2013<div class="MsoNormal">
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div.WordSection1
{page:WordSectio</style><span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I am taking part in Blog Action Day 2013. Join me for a
global conversation on Human Rights on October 16. Human rights is the theme
for this year's event. I'm quite sure my post will be titled "Women's
Rights Are Human Rights." And I am quite certain that I will write about
Article 3 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that
"all human beings have the right to life, liberty and security of
person." It is that "security of person" part that strikes me.
Surely too many millions of women (and children) of the world do not enjoy the
human right to security of person. Violence against women, rape, child sex
abuse, trafficking, enslavement, acid attacks, FGM, all these are violations to
women's rights to security of person. So is living in fear of these crimes,
committed against women because we are women. I'm grateful for the chance
to write for this event. Blog Action Day was founded in 2007, bringing together
bloggers from around the world to bog about one important global topic in the
same day. Last year 4000 bloggers from 111 countries participated, and though I
registered to participate, I didn't, probably because I didn't properly manage
my time. This year I am determined to make my contribution to the effort.
I'm realizing as I write that the Blog Action Day piece will be poetry,
it is the only kind of writing I want to do these days. See you on the
sixteenth.</span><span style="font-family: "Lucida Handwriting";"></span></div>
Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-55028855010065746362013-04-18T06:05:00.000-07:002013-04-18T06:05:43.635-07:00WomanSpeak Calls for Personal Essays, Art and Photography by Caribbean Women"When a woman tells the truth about her life the world splits open." MURIEL RUKEYSER<br />
<br />
WomanSpeak , a Journal of Writing and Art by Caribbean Women, has always been about cultivating and collecting the writing that tells the truth about the lives of women in and of the Caribbean. We are committed to the idea that our personal stories of survival and transformation are the most powerful and political of all. We are especially in search of personal essays by the truth-tellers of our generation for vol. 7/2013 themed, "Voices of Dissent: Writing to Transform the Culture." We especially want essays that confront and challenge the powerful forces at work around us and within us trying to convince us that our womanish lives are not worth fighting for, or that our struggle for equality, enlightenment and empowerment in our own lives and in the world as Caribbean women is not the stuff of fine literature. What is your story? We want to hear it.<br />
<br />
We are also calling for submissions of art and photography for the upcoming issue of the journal. Where are the conscious, political, Caribbean women artists of our generation who dare to make paintings that speak to the political and social concerns we have as women? Yes, it is true, we think, that every stroke of the brush, every sploosh of colour is political, because the creative act is always political, no matter the subject of the art. But these are the days of a new Feminist awakening in the Caribbean, the new movement is in need of not only writers but painters too whose work explores the truth of Caribbean women's lives, the way we struggle, survive, transform, emerge and carry on, we need the images and renderings that express our outrage and then too our visions of hope and renewal. We are in search of images that depict and inspire our new revolution, that connect us to the sacred grandmothers of activism, that will serve as letters to future generations of Caribbean women, so they never forget, we were here, and we put our best creative energies toward making the world a better place for them. <br /><br />Here are the submission requirements for art and photography. The camera should be set at the highest resolution setting for the largest images. Images need to be at least 2400 pixels x 3000 pixels or 8 x 10 inches at 300ppi resolution or higher. They can be supplied from the camera as jpg's. Please send them in an email attachment to lynnsweeting@gmail .com with WSJ submission in the subject line.<br />
<br />
WomanSpeak is also accepting poetry, short fiction and fairy tales. Deadline is April 30. Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-74353654268758668972013-03-16T11:40:00.000-07:002013-03-17T10:50:39.083-07:00Call for Fairy Tales for WomanSpeak Vol. 7/2013 <div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14.0pt;">I love fairytales. As a child my favourite one was The Twelve
Dancing Princesses, who got locked in their room but escaped through a magic
door to a place where they danced till dawn, then returned in the morning to be
found in their beds, their shoes mysteriously muddy and torn to shreds. As a
little girl I was also "locked" in my room, bed-ridden, unable to
move, recovering from injuries I sustained in an experimental orthopedic
surgery gone wrong. When I eventually learned to walk I tore my own shoes to
shreds. When I read the story as a young teen, I was in the story, I was the
thirteenth dancing princess, together with them I too made my escape.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14.0pt;">Very special to this journal is the section devoted to fairy
tales. We are especially in search of new tellings of traditional Caribbean
folk tales with a womanish twist. (Anansi as a woman, anyone? Did Brer Rabbie
have a sister? What's she up to these days? Did the Gaulin Wife leave a
daughter behind when she turned into a big black bird and flew away? And we
love brand new tales too, with new characters and quests entirely of your own
imagining, as long as they are full of the wondrous magic that exists only in
the world of fairy tales, folk tales and myths, and "take us on a descent
to find something that was lost and bring it back to consciousness again."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14.0pt;">What have we lost as Caribbean women in the patriarchy? What do
we have to do to get it back? We're calling for the fairytales and myths by a new generation of writers that
show us the way for the upcoming WomanSpeak. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14.0pt;">Please send your stories and art in an email attachment to lynnsweeting@gmail.com. Deadline for submissions is April 30, 2013.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14.0pt;">I cannot wait to read your wonderful stories.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 16.0pt;"></span></div>
Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-72621396812989122082013-03-08T10:43:00.001-08:002013-03-08T13:13:25.144-08:00Poem for International Women's DayPoem for the Goddess of the Invisible Ones<br />
(For International Women's Day 2013)<br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When her car finally went down the embankment to the sea<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and she was sitting in the middle of the road, cars flying
by,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
hair on end, eyes wild, pouring tears for blood, screaming,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman Italic";"><i>I just
need some help</i></span>, and no one was slowing down, much less<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
stopping, because this was Eastern Road and she was rough<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
around the edges, crazy with despair, maybe dangerous,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
you were riding shotgun with me and you said, stop.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I pulled over, heart slamming, this was just the sort of
thing<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
that could land a woman like me in trouble. She stared<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
straight through us into the black sky of her madness,
silent now.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We stood by the car calling to her, Hello, come out of the
road!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She paid no mind. Traffic rose up around her like afternoon
tide.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ll stay with her, you said, you go and call the police.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Minutes<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>down
the road I saw cruisers coming east,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
three of them with lights flashing. Would there be a single<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
compassionate cop in any one of those cars to <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
rescue that woman with kind word medicine, a cup of tea,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a doctor, a drive home? I tried to believe yes, only
comforted<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
by the fact that you had remained with her, Goddess<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
of the Invisible Ones, when they took her away to no one<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
knows where. You held her like a hurt child, whispering<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
in her ear, I see you,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I see what you’ve been going through.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You listened when she told you the whole story that led<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
up to the car wreck, you stayed up through the long night<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
as she talked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the sun rose<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>you gave
her a mirror, she looked, <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
saw herself,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>rising. You didn’t mind when to thank you<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
she called you by another god’s name, all that mattered was<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
that one more invisible woman had become visible to herself,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
one more woman struggling in the island patriarchy had
remembered,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
she was real, she was good, she was someone worth fighting
for.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-1929519894794954092013-03-04T19:44:00.000-08:002013-03-04T20:00:18.610-08:00Calling for Rights for Persons With Disabilities in The Bahamas<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I am standing with the President of the
Bahamas National Council for Disability and calling for a constitutional
amendment that protects the fundamental human rights of and prohibits the
discrimination against persons with disabilities.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Mrs Sheila Culmer spoke on behalf of an
estimated 27,000 Bahamians with disabilities on Thursday when she addressed the
Constitutional Committee meeting in Nassau demanding a provision in the
constitution prohibiting discrimination against persons with disabilities. She
said the clause should cover both direct and indirect discrimination. She
advised the committee that there must be an inclusion of a provision
guaranteeing the rights of persons with disabilities to have access and be
provided with legal aid and affordable legal services to ensure they have
access to justice. And too, Mrs Culmer advised, the constitution must be
amended to include an express provision mandating persons with disabilities
have access to adequate transport, housing, healthcare and education.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">This is a big deal. It is unacceptable that
our constitution fails to define and protect the human rights of persons with
disabilities, ie, persons like me. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">This, combined with the fact that the
constitution also fails to protect me as a woman, means I am at risk every day
for a spectrum of human rights abuses in my country, both directly and
indirectly, in both small and enormous, devastating ways. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Why are we still having to petition our
governments for these kind of constitutional reforms in this day and age? Why
can’t one government or another simply fix these glaring human rights problems
with the constitution, without the whole referendum thing? Some amendments
should be made without being put to a public vote. We elect governments to
lead, so let them lead at times like these. At least, let them listen. I
remember Mrs Culmer advocating for human rights for persons with disabilities
since my reporting days back in the eighties. Why has her voice fallen on deaf
ears? </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Why haven’t I added my own voice to hers
until now?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Comfort. Privilege. Laziness. Selfishness. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">But recent events in my personal life have
shaken me out of my complacency. I am having to face the fact that I am indeed
at risk every day for human rights abuses because I am a person with
disabilities. Mrs Culmer’s statements in the middle of my current struggle are
a wake-up call for me, reminding me of my obligation to publicly join her in
the call for this constitutional amendment. Her statements have made me mindful
of all the many Bahamian citizens with disabilities who are also burdened with
poverty because for them the risks for human rights abuses are far greater. I
feel compelled to use my voice to speak for those who have lost their voices or
are ignored, to join mine with the other voices demanding human rights reform
in this country.</span>Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-39315130224115840052013-01-25T12:53:00.002-08:002013-03-12T09:29:14.211-07:00WomanSpeak Vol.7/2013 Call For Submissions<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">WomanSpeak, a Journal of Literature and Art by Caribbean Women, edited and published by Lynn Sweeting, is calling for submissions for volume 7/2013, an issue especially themed, "Voices of Dissent: Women Speaking to Transform the Culture."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am looking for the works of a new generation of Caribbean Feminist writers and painters who care about the lives of women and will dare to use their creative voices to shock us out of our complacency and into action. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I see a new Feminist consciousness struggling to rise up across the Caribbean these days. I see women organizing, they are naming the human rights issues facing Caribbean women and their children, they are gathering and disseminating the information, they are discussing the issues and commenting on them from a Feminist perspective. I see far flung pockets of Caribbean Feminists connecting with one another on the web and made hopeful by the enormous potential that holds for creating a real and powerful women's movement across our region. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But where is the literature and art of the new Feminist movement of the new generation? Where are the women poets who will articulate the struggle, nurture and grow it, give it movement, meaning and empowerment by addressing the issues in their highest and best work? Where are the writers who will redefine Feminism for a new generation of Caribbean women, and do it in fine literature and art? Where are the women writers and painters who feel an urgency to speak out in their work about the social issues that matter most to Caribbean women? </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Where are the feminist poets and writers speaking with each other about the roles they play and the responsibilities they bear in the struggle to uplift the lives of all Caribbean women? Where does the bookish young Caribbean woman turn when she wants to read works by the best womanish minds of her generation to inspire her, to give her the words she needs to get herself and her own voice free? </span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Feminist is someone who believes that women's rights are human rights. A Feminist woman is one who cares about the lives of other women and children and supports local and global efforts to uplift, liberate and transform those lives, because she understands her own freedom is incomplete until all women are free. Really, how can any of us say we are not Feminists? And yet so many women do. Women against women's rights are in the majority in my country, The Bahamas. Any doubt of that was laid to rest when in 2000 they voted overwhelmingly against correcting discrimination against women in the Bahamian constitution as the whole world </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">watched. Bahamian women again turned on their sisters in trouble last year when they voiced their absolute opposition to the proposed legislation that would have given battered wives the right to bring charges of rape against their abusive husbands. The majority of women I talk to avoid any involvement in the struggle for human rights for women because they have been trained by various father god religions to blame the devil, pray hard and leave it to their god to work out for them.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dissent is impossible to find among women in New Age circles too. I call it the cult of positive thinking, that whole Louise Hay methodology that says you can change your life by changing the way you think. (This is not new at all, just a new spin on patriarchy's founding tenant, "I think therefore I am," deifying thought (traditionally male) over emotion (traditionally female). It just isn't fashionable right now for women to get angry, to get an issue, to take a stand, to create an action or a movement to transform the culture. We are too busy being hyper-grateful to even acknowledge the ongoing war against women across the Caribbean and the world, too busy having positive thoughts and sending out good vibrations to acknowledge the discrimination women face because they are women, or to get an idea about an action they could take to change it. As for the women falling in the wars, they speak out but no one can hear them, and the women who've been working in the trenches thirty years tending to the wounded and the dead, they speak out but no one can hear them over the din of prayers and platitudes</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. Any woman who does speak out for other women from a Feminist point of view (or anything at all like it) will often look around and find herself standing alone. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are beginning to hear the voices of Caribbean women dissenters on the web. Writers like Simone Lied and associations like Code Red for Gender Justice are bearing witness to the persecution and suffering of women and actively protesting the patriarchal status quo in their work. But where are the poets, the fiction writers, the painters of the new generation of Feminists who work to articulate the struggle for equality, peace and justice for women? Whose works deliberately resist the powerful forces without and within at work to keep us in a second class state? I believe that when we make spaces for them, they will come. WSJ Volume 7/2013 is one of these spaces. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are seeking poetry, short fiction, fairy tales, essays, paintings and photographs for the new issue. Deadline (or, lifeline) for submissions is May 31, 2013. I'm planning for a September release. Please send submissions to lynnsweeting@gmail.com with "WSJ submission" and your name on the subject line.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span>Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-72802459076505421162012-12-27T18:02:00.001-08:002012-12-27T18:02:41.442-08:00Dakness Always Gives Birth to the LightIt was a rough summer. Lots of weird emotional stuff that I didn't have a clue how to properly handle. All Souls Night came and went with not even a jackolantern getting carved. I was numb and a little paralyzed. This frightened me. Then I got a little angry, you know, the positive kind that moves you out of your state of paralyses and into one where you ask yourself: what is to be done to make things better? So we painted the whole interior of the house Celtic Blue, all the wood furniture and doors went white, the furniture got slip-covered white, the bookshelves went white too, and I put a purple rug in the office and a lime green rug in the foyer, I began decorating the house at the beginning of November, beginning with the tree, all gold and silver with enormous chartreuse paper butterflies, then lots of green garland everywhere, another tabletop tree surrounded by my little Santa collection, the wirework angels, the papier mache stars everywhere, and we even managed to light a couple of the Victoria Palms outside the window,little Pyper was delighted, even my jaded sixteen year old son was impressed. They look beautiful in the window framing the tree inside. This is the first time ever in my lifetime for lighted trees in the Crab Grass Garden at Christmastime. It is a little thing that means the world to me. My children will remember the lights, and remember us and that we loved them, just as I remember my mother fondly at Christmas for the beautiful winter villages she created with miniature houses, cotton for snow, elves made of little pine cones, those little bottle brush trees, all very magical and beautiful in my five and six year old eyes, those happy young Christmases when the tree was real and strung with those enormous, multi-colour lights, gigantic red and purple balls and silver tinsel hung one strand at a time, when the house smelled like Granny's Date Loaf, and my mildly intoxicated father at 11.30 put on his one blue suit, got out his old, sweet-smelling hymn books and went off to midnight mass at St Anne's... I've got a handful of treasured memories that come to me every Christmas, usually when I am missing the ones who are gone, little things that meant so much, and still do now. So I've tried hard this year to do the same. For several years we've gone to friends' houses for Christmas dinner, but this year I had to do it myself, in our beautiful home. So I did. With lots of help from the housekeeper who chopped seven or eight bags of vegetables, and Dad too, who peeled potatoes, lifted pans in and out of the oven, and a thousand other things to help. I set the table on the patio, lit some candles, and the four of us actually sat down to Christmas dinner together. You have to understand. I don't think we've ever done this before. Pyper kept saying, Mama, you turned our house into a restaurant. A simple meal together, a couple of strands of lights in the trees, one happy childhood Christmas memory done. And so much inside of me that was wounded was healed on Christmas night. It wasn't perfect, the plates were ugly, but the stuffing was good, and there was peace and love in the air. Later I told everyone at our friend Sandra's house, We cooked dinner together! Really, I think it saved my life, and uplifted my family in a profound way. On Solstice night I lit the house with a thousand candles, turned up the Celtic music and shed a few ritual tears for all the people who've passed over, and for others who were lost to me for other reasons, and for good friends who are not lost but live far away in other countries. On Christmas night I celebrated with the ones I love who are with me now. And on Boxing Day we went to dear old friends Linda and Rick for boil fish, something I missed in recent years but was so glad to return to this year. There is something medicinal and even intoxicating about a good boil fish, isn't there, especially when good old friends make it for you. Now I've got my fiftieth birthday on the thirtieth, my present is four days in a beach apartment with family and friends, another miracle, another chance for big little memories to be made. I'm hopeful, I think it could really happen. I love Solstice and Christmas, I love my family, I love how darkness always gives birth to the light. And I love that I'm inspired to return to this blog with such a personal post. I have my friend the writer Nicolette Bethel to thank for some of that inspiration, I read her simple and honest expressions about the new kind of Christmas she experienced this year in her blog this morning and found the courage to write my own. Many thanks to her and bright and happy holiday blessings to you all, thanks for reading, thanks for being in my life this Christmas. Blessed Be.Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-7983124827543556312012-10-31T20:52:00.000-07:002012-10-31T21:18:12.572-07:00Quiet HalloweenThis must be the quietest Halloween night on record for Nassau. No explosions, no fireworks, no police sirens, not even one barking dog. There has not been one trick or treater, Only the cicadas are singing in the silence. I never carved the pumpkin, it is sitting mute and orange on the desk, maybe I'll take it to the club and ask them to make a pot of soup. I lit two candles, dressed Pyper up in her Cinderella ball gown and took a picture of her by the piano, she had her Halloween party on Sunday so I didn't feel too badly about doing next to nothing to mark this night. But I am amazed at the silence for as far as I can hear. Maybe the hurricane made everyone too tired to try. Maybe the fundamentalists have finally convinced everyone to believe that this ancient, Third Harvest celebration has something to do with that red guy with the pitchfork from their scripture. I grieve a little for the old days, when I'd fill the yard with torches and jackolanterns, the house with a thousand candles, crank up the Celtic music, drink wine and hand out candy to happy little children. An era has ended, just as summer did tonight. But doesn't that mean a new one has begun? Yes. Yes it does.Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-88925670794717244572012-10-25T16:36:00.001-07:002012-10-25T16:36:25.900-07:00Hurricane Sandy in New Providence: So Far, So Good.Hurricane Sandy is upon us in The Bahamas. But here in New Providence at 7.36 pm we are having only small, 20mph gusts, interspersed with moments of stillness, so far so good, I think the trees will hold. Meanwhile Florida television news is showing pictures of big winds and waves, putting their reporters in the surf or some other perilous ridiculous place to make their reports. Too funny. But a hurricane is a serious thing, and overly-dramatic reportage is better than no coverage at all. I haven't been able to tune in to a singe local TV station for live courage of the cat. 2 storm now tearing through the country, but there is none. The National Hurricane Center website is the best I can get. And of course, what I can see outside my window. Right now, another calm, another little 20 mph gust wooshing in the trees, its quite pleasant. For now.Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-30406427410122279532012-08-21T19:49:00.001-07:002012-08-21T19:49:16.679-07:00WomanSpeak vol 6/2012 Now Available at Lulu.ComWomanSpeak, A Journal of Literature and Art by Caribbean Women, vol. 6/2012, is now available for purchase at Lulu.com. The new anthology from WomanSpeak Books Nassau, The Bahamas, brings together 24 writers, poets and painters in a full colour volume edited by yours truly, designed by Julia Ames and featuring cover art by Chantal Bethel and Ashley Knowles.
Volume six is especially themed, Women Speaking for The Earth. In this collection writers are not just writing about nature but are giving voice to Mother Earth herself. They also address the environmental emergencies they face as Earthling women in the Caribbean, including the pollution of the ocean, the vanishing coastlines, deforestation, as well as the responsibilities we bear in it all.
As always WomanSpeak volume six/2012 is dedicated to providing a forum for women writers with diverse points of view, who break silences that need to be broken, who discuss taboo subjects, who challenge oppression by telling the truth about Caribbean women’s lives. Rape, homophobia, religious oppression and intolerance, sexuality, grief and loss are among the forbidden subjects they are bravely writing about.
New works by noted writers like Lelawattee Manoo Rahming, Marion Bethel, Nicolette Bethel, and Patricia Glinton Meicholas of The Bahamas and Joanne Hillhouse of Antigua are included in this collection, as well as the work of emerging writers like Sonia Farmer and Angelique Nixon of the Bahamas, Vashti Bowlah, Danielle Boodoo-Fortune and Simone Leid of Trinidad and Tobago. There are new voices too, including poet Anita L. MacDonald and fiction writer Keisha Lynne Ellis, and new artists like Carla Campbell and Ashley Knowles in the collection. Beautiful full colour art by established and new painters make the new WomanSpeak a literary journal unlike any other, an essential book not only for writers but for painters too and for all who love art by conscious Caribbean women.
WomanSpeak was founded in 1991 by Lynn Sweeting, Helen Klonaris and Dionne Benjamin Smith to provide a forum for Bahamian and Caribbean women’s creative work, to nurture that creativity by publishing fine literature and art by women, to discover and publish emerging and developing writers, to preserve publications for future audiences and to create a space where community and sisterhood among writers and artists of the Caribbean can be cultivated and encouraged.
Please click the Lulu.com badge at right and get your copy today, and thank you for supporting women writers and artists of the Caribbean!
Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-6837982524647723372012-07-09T09:14:00.001-07:002012-07-09T09:14:12.883-07:00Demand Justice for Jessie WilliamsWomen of the Bahamas, are you paying attention to domestic abuse victim Jessie Williams, on trial now in a Nassau court for the murder of her husband? I am reading the report of her testimony yesterday in this morning's paper and urge you to read it too. If anyone in this country deserves public outcry in their defense it is this woman. For eighteen years she was beaten, choked, pushed down the stairs, imprisoned, impoverished and abused by this man. He killed two of her dogs with his bare hands. He spent two years in jail for pushing her down the stairs when she was eight months pregnant. In the final altercation, when he was choking her in their van, she got her hands on the knife he always kept there and stabbed him in an attempt to save her own life. Jessie Williams, it is clear, killed this convicted abuser in self defense and should be cleared of all charges. She is the victim here. Her story should be headlines, not a cocaine bust, because the abuse of women and children is by far the biggest social and criminal emergency facing The Bahamas today. We as women are responsible for one another, and especially for our sisters who are in the most trouble. I believe we are obligated to speak out for justice for domestic abuse victims like Jessie Williams. And when someone asks us that question they always ask, "Why did she stay?" we answer this way: Stop preaching love and forgiveness in church then turn around and punish a domestic abuse victim for loving and forgiving an abusive husband. Jessie Williams cried over his dying body, she called for help. She told the court she never meant to kill him, that in spite of it all, she had loved him. She loved the wrong man. This is so sad. It is not a crime. It does not mean she deserved to be assaulted and forced to kill a man in order to save her own life. Who will speak out for justice for Jessie Williams, and for all the many thousands of women in The Bahamas she now represents? I will. I ask my conscious caring sisters to join me.Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-40004440437615675002012-07-03T11:12:00.001-07:002012-07-03T11:15:07.638-07:00Put Your Money Where WomanSpeak IsAlright, I made a decision. I will never again give my books to stores on consignment. I have no complaints about the stores who have over the years agreed to put the WomanSpeak journal on a shelf for me. It is just that as I continue editing volume six I am thinking about how many months of work has gone into this book, not to mention the excellent work in it, not to mention the cost of designing and printing these full colour, beautifully illustrated books, I am suddenly certain that WomanSpeak will only be carried at bookstores or fine art stores which pay for them up front. I dream of selling huge numbers of books directly to readers via the web, hopefully sooner rather than later. In the meantime, the very limited edition I am about to print, I will treat like the rare and precious treasures they are, and sell them for $30.00, $40.00 if they want them signed. The special bookstore that buys them will perhaps then be inspired to display them prominently, even feature them in some promotions and advertising. I believe there are one or two very special stores who will do this. Others will only value these books if I do. They are rare and miraculous creations in this land where most people never read a book in their lives other than the Bible. They are priceless because they are forums for the creative work of Caribbean women whose voices need to be heard. So, book buyers, I say to you respectfully, put your money where WomanSpeak is.Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-22368575821071405342012-05-31T20:29:00.001-07:002012-05-31T20:29:48.463-07:00O Very Rich, What Will You Leave Us This Time?Why is it so hard to find funding in this country for the Arts? And I'm not talking about government funding here, or the tiny cheques we manage to beg from the odd supporter of our creative endeavors. I'm talking about large gifts of financial support from the private citizens who dip into their multi-million dollar fortunes to create grants and foundations to support the development of the Arts in the communities where they live. Where, for example, is the Sir Stafford Sands Foundation for the Arts or the Tiger Finlayson Fund for the Literary Arts or the HG Christie Theatre for the Performing Arts or the Norman Solomon Arts Foundation? Where is the Rupert Roberts Endowment for the Arts, the Kelly Foundation, the Butler Foundation, the Lightbourn Fund for the Development of the Arts? Where are the libraries, museums and colleges the moneyed elite have created to nurture and enrich and give back to the communities that made them so wealthy to begin with? And it is not just the old guard moneyed elite who mean to take their multi-millions with them to the next world. The new generations of the super rich also refuses to part with more than a pittance if anything at all when it comes to gifts of financial support for the development of the arts in The Bahamas. They might on occasion give a few hundred to one scholarship fund or another, but would laugh out loud at the idea of putting down the first million to establish an arts endowment fund named after them that would support the development of the arts in their community. Why? I asked my friend, the writer Helen Klonaris, why our millionaire class refuses to invest in the Arts in a serious way. She said it was because they remain convinced that anything we create is shit and not worth the money. I wonder if they would continue to think that way if they understood that such gifts of financial support were not just about creating arts foundations, it was about creating communities where we nurtured and produced more painters, poets, writers, musicians, performance artists and great creative minds, and less murderers, rapists, robbers and other violent criminals who cannot resolve conflict without a gun.Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-53775414833018181472012-05-20T13:34:00.001-07:002012-05-20T13:34:03.902-07:00Nurture a Tree TodayI can't do everything but I know I can do something. So I'm on a mission to nurture the trees surrounding our house. I began with the enormous Australian Pine outside the writing room window. For years it was surrounded by a tangle of Crown of Thorns, full of debris because the thorny plants were impossible to take care of. We cleared away the debris and the thorny bushes in one afternoon. We planted pink Periwinkles, pink and yellow Hibiscuses, Snapdragons, Begonias and two little palms. I can see this new garden as I write, all green and blooming, loving the April rain, and am uplifted and inspired by the sight of it. My mother planted the pine tree when I was a baby and today it is enormous, towering into the sky. It has endured every hurricane, survived drought, flood, and neglect. I am sure I have endured the same because of her protection and good company. I am sure she is glad to be encircled in flowers.
In the weeks that followed we turned our attention to the tree outside the bedroom window, whose name I must find out, cutting away thirty years worth of Creeping Charlie vines to reveal a beautiful and scarred tree that now seemed much taller, all her graceful beauty fully revealed. And we uncovered a small but strong Pigeon Plum tree rooted in roots. I plan to put down fresh soil around them both, and wonder what it will be like to have pigeon plums in the yard next summer. Then we looked to saving the ailing Cassia tree, growing in the yard next door. My mother planted that tree when my parents moved into this neighbourhood more than sixty years ago. Again, decades of those vines were choking the life out of it. With them cleared away she is beginning to recover now, she will make some flowers this summer but next year she will have restored herself to her former glory. Today as I write, I look at the old grandmother Saffron tree which my parents told me was a wild tree they were careful not to cut down when they began to build. Now that I look I can see that it is full of debris, branches that were broken in the last hurricane. How could I have not seen this before? I can hardly wait for next weekend when we will clear them out and the beauty of the old Saffron is revealed again. Then I'll move on to the lovely old Poinciana across the street in another neighbour's front yard. I believe Mum and friends planted that one too. Her roots are exposed, we'll give her some fill and soil as soon as we can. She so
Saving the trees is serious business. I see it as an act taken to save my life and the lives of the people I love. It is an act of restoring our beloved old neighbourhood to its former beauty, before so many grand old trees were cut down. I am certain too that when we nurture trees we are fighting crime, violence, poverty and despair. Doing this work makes me think of one of my heroines, Nobel Laureate Professor Wangari Maathaii who said: "Women have become aware that planting trees or fighting to save forests from being chopped down is part of a larger mission to create a society that respects democracy, decency, adherence to the rule of law, human rights and the rights of women." She knew what she was talking about. She organized thousands of poor women to plant more than forty million trees across Kenya. Those women are not poor or hungry anymore and the Earth is a greener, more beautiful place for us all.
I know that today I am happier and more hopeful restoring the trees I can see from my window, I feel sure I am doing what I can to make this town and the world a better place for my children. Please join me and nurture a tree today.Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-60781107766210494582012-05-09T11:07:00.001-07:002012-05-09T11:07:08.980-07:00Election ReflectionAs an Anglo-Bahamian kid growing up in the sixties and seventies in Nassau, election time was an awful time in my house and in my world. My parents acted like a menace was approaching, something to fear, something to brace for, like a hurricane was heading straight for us that was going to tear up the world. There was a feeling we might get hurt, we might not survive. They grew tense, loud, desperate, like they knew something bad was going to happen and there was nothing we could do about it. They always seemed to be afraid that at any minute Mr. Pindling was finally going to take his revenge, send armed gangs into the street to kill all the white people, and this fear reached near-hysteria levels at election time. Election time was time to watch out, something threatening called "the masses" was on the move and it hated and wanted to hurt me. As the years went on and I became a voting adult in the 1980s elections were sad, angry times, like a game I had to play that I knew I'd lose. By then I thought voting was a ritual I performed so as never to admit utter powerlessness and defeat. I went to the polls with all my protections and defenses up and locked, I avoided eye contact, I rushed straight home afterward and locked all the doors, then waited for news of how badly the opposition had lost. Then for months and forever after we went back to our lives felt like I had a blinking sign around my white neck that said, powerless, unwanted looser. The heightened, "us and them" rhetoric subsided a little when elections were done, but it never went away for me. Not even when I became more conscious, more educated about all that had happened to cause the division and disconnection, not even when I matured enough to admit to myself that I had also been responsible for excluding myself from society and culture. Not until 1992 when Hubert Ingraham and the FNM I voted for won a term in government at last. The PLP had been in power my entire life. When the announcement came I remember feeling connected and important to the voting process for the first time in my life, like it really was possible that I could be a real contributing citizen after all. Since then my election experience has changed from a fear-ridden exercise in hopelessness to an empowering, hopeful experience, even when the party I voted for was defeated soundly, as it was in the elections this week. We were disappointed, not destroyed, we said, well, it was meant to be. There was no fear, no doomsday predictions, not in our house anyway. It no longer feels like hatred for me when the PLP wins, it no longer feels like time to panic. It no longer represents my personal exclusion or rejection. It simply means that when I begin calling the Cabinet Office with my concerns I will now be asking for Mr Christie's secretary instead of Mr. Ingraham's. The same struggles as before, continue on today. But these days I have reclaimed my voice, and my identity as a contributing member of the citizenry, and learning how to forgive my parents who were also terrorized and miseducated by the racist culture of their day. These days I understand the value and and necessity of the dissenting voice and have tried to be one of them. These days I'm glad to have reached an age where I know an election is not the end of the world. There is the school run to do, supper to make, poems to write. I know that no matter who we elect, the power to transform our country remains in the hands of the people.Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-12879665844574701202012-01-08T12:42:00.000-08:002012-01-08T13:22:46.610-08:00Hey Patriarchy, Get Out of Our UterusesThis morning I signed a petition demanding justice for the 346,219 Peruvian women forcibly sterilized by the Fujimori regime in a supposed birth control programme supported by the United States and the United Nations, carried out in that country throughout the 1990s. The Care2 petition states that “aggressive and forceful tactics used by medical staff and police made it clear this was not a programme that allowed women to choose whether or not they were sterilized.” The awfulness of this is stunning, but really it is old hat to the Patriarchy which knows well that Invading, colonizing and controling the wombs (and bodies) of women is the first step toward absolute domination. I went over to Global Voices On Line to find out more about former Peru President Alberto Fujimori (where did we get our information before this place?) and an article written by Isabel Guerra the ex-president is serving a 25 year prison sentence, having been convicted of crimes against humanity in his own country, (this has never happened anywhere before) including attempted murder, murder and aggravated kidnapping . He was never made to face charges for what amounts to the rape and permanent injury of these many thousands of women who were forcibly sterilized. In their names, Fujimori should serve out his sentence.Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490819.post-87131471683064229462012-01-07T12:20:00.000-08:002012-01-07T13:18:13.338-08:00Save the Indians: Don't Buy Sugar, Soy From BrazilToday my thoughts are filled with a grieving solidarity with the Guarani-Kaiowa Indians of Brazil. Global Voices Online coverage of indigenous rights is reporting they are being gunned down on the Amambai indigenous reserve, after years of seeing their ancestral lands stolen and destroyed by agri-business. Their wilderness has been replaced by cattle ranches, soybean plantations and sugar mills where the Indians are forced to cut sugarcane from sunrise to sunset for pitiful wages and in slave-like conditions. Now they are being massacred with impunity. According to the article by Yohana de Andrade, a hoard of gunmen attacked the reserve last November, executing the chief and causing students of a university to write a letter on their behalf in which they said they hold the state, the politicians and the Brazilian society responsible for the deaths because they say and do nothing to stop the Indian genocide. Apparently about 250 Guarani Kaiowa have been killed in Mato Grosso do Sul in the past eight years. “These attacks take place at the same time as Brazil consolidates its position as one of the leading exporters of agricultural goods and biofuels in the world,” Yohana de Adrade wrote, “with Mato Grosso do Sul being one of its most productive states.” She quotes the current chief who said his homeland has now become a place where “ the cane stalk is worth more than the Indian, a cow more than an indigenous community, a bean sprout more than an indigenous child.”<br /> <br />Of course this story makes me think of the Caribbean Indians we lost, and of the ones that remain among us, invisible to our eyes, in spirit and in the flesh. They too were masacred, their genocide was also for the sake of money and the seizure of ancestral lands. I’ve long been convinced that so much of the sadness and hopelessness that grips my city is the result of the lingering trauma of genocide. Because even if the people forget, the land remembers, the Earth herself remembers what happened and she is still grieving. There was no one around to speak for the Lokono Indians of the Bahamas all those five hundred years ago, when the invaders were mowing them down and throwing their bodies into the sea. I am trying to speak for them now in the poems that I write. Today I feel obligated to speak for the Guarani-Kaiowa Indians of Brazil, to tell you about them and their struggle to stay alive today, to encourage you to pay attention to what is happening to them. Their stories need to be heard, we should listen and hear them, and all the other Indigenous peoples of the world who continue to be under similar attack every day. Lets bring the invisible ones into our sight again. Because they are us. When they strike down the Indigenous peoples of Mother Earth in this way we are all injured. When we say nothing about it we are in collusion with the bad guys. So I say to Brazil, in the name of my Lokono ancestors, stop the genocide of the Indians. <br /><br />What else can we do? We can stop buying Brazilian sugar and soy products, and we should look again at the whole corn-for-fuel thing that sounds like a good green idea until you learn that human lives and the planet itself are being sacrificed in order to produce it.Lynn Sweetinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11961544928890612432noreply@blogger.com0