Celeste Mohammed With Tracey Baptiste: A Conversation

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 very different, and in Pleasantview: A Novel in Stories, Trinidadian lawyer-turned-writer Celeste Mohammed reveals a society where poverty and patriarchy savagely rule – and love and revenge often go hand in hand. Writing in a combination of English and Trinidad Creole, she sets the stories in a fictional town in Trinidad. There we meet a political candidate who sets out to slaughter endangered turtles for fun, a rival candidate who beats his “outside woman” so severely that she loses their baby, and a young boy with a gun. Moderating is Tracey Baptiste,  New York Times bestselling author of Minecraft: The Crash.