“Our Beautiful and Corrupted Islands”: Pamela Mordecai, Mc. Donald Dixon & Celeste Mohammed

Pamela Mordecai is a poet, novelist, storyteller, playwright, and children’s writer. Born and raised in Jamaica, her family immigrated to Canada in 1994. She has published eight collections of poetry, five children’s books, and a collection of short fiction, Pink Icing. Her debut novel, Red Jacket, was shortlisted for one of Canada’s top prizes for literary fiction. Her previous poetry collection, de book of Joseph, completes her New Testament trilogy in Jamaican patois. She also has written a play for children, El Numero Uno or the Pig from Lopinot. A Fierce Green Place: New and Selected Poems (New Directions) brings together 30-plus years of Mordecai’s work. It’s a voice that speaks in a vibrant mix of Jamaican Creole with standard English, profanity, and reverence with dub and blues, the oral and vernacular, with metrical virtuosity. The collection draws from her acclaimed first collection Journey Poem published in 1989, and includes the moving elegy for her murdered brother in the true blue of islands, the stories of freed slaves in subversive sonnets, and her dazzling reimaginings of biblical stories.

Celeste Mohammed is a Trinidadian lawyer-turned-writer. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. Pleasantview (Ig Publishing) is her novel-in-stories debut. Coconut trees. Carnival. Rum and Coke. To outsiders, these idyllic images represent the so-called easy life in Caribbean nations such as Trinidad and Tobago. For those who live there, the reality is far different, and Mohammed reveals a society where poverty and patriarchy savagely rule – and love and revenge often go hand in hand. It’s the dark side of the Caribbean dream. Writing in a combination of English and Trinidad Creole, she sets the stories in a fictional town in Trinidad. We meet a political candidate who sets out to slaughter endangered turtles for fun, while his rival candidate beats his “outside woman” so severely that she loses their baby. On the night of a political rally, the abused woman exacts very public revenge, the trajectory of which echoes through Pleasantview, ending with one boy introducing another boy to a gun, and an ideology that will help him aim the weapon.

Kellie Magnus is a writer and development consultant, living in Kingston, Jamaica. Her passions are global Black creativity and philanthropy. She is the Jamaica country lead for Fight for Peace, an NGO that supports young people living in communities with high levels of violence to realize their full potential. The program brings together more than 40 local partners to co-deliver programs for youth, their parents and organizations that serve youth. Outside of work, Magnus writes a series on creativity, Jamaican creatives and the creative economy. She spends most of her free time interviewing and writing about creatives, running, reading. and traveling around Jamaica. Her writing has appeared in local and regional publications, and she has authored more than 15 children’s books, several of which are included in the Jamaican school system under the Literacy 123 program spearheaded by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information. She currently serves on the National Commission on Violence Prevention, coordinated by the Office of the Prime Minister. She is a graduate of Harvard and Columbia universities.

Mc. Donald Dixon is a playwright, poet, painter, and photographer born in St. Lucia, West Indies. He is the author of three previous novels – Season of Mist, Misbegotten, and Saints of Little Paradise: Book One ‘Eden Defiled’ – a short story collection, Careme and other Stories; and several volumes of poetry, including Beloved country and other poems and Collected Poems 1961-2001. A Scream in the Shadows (Papillote Press) is a crime story set in the rural Caribbean. Here, traditional allegiances and a flawed criminal justice system provide a backdrop to the rape and murder of a young girl. When her father is accused of the crime, her brother joins the police to try and clear their father’s name. While the suspect languishes in jail on remand, the young detective investigates other suspects. His mother remains loyal to her husband, but does anyone else and who – if anyone – knows the truth?