<PERSON>, shortlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction, was born to be a ‘Trinidad writer’ · Global Voices
Trinbagonian writer <PERSON>, whose book ‘The Bread the Devil Knead’ has been shortlisted for the 2002 Women's Prize for Fiction. Photo by <PERSON>, used with permission.
The Trinidad and Tobago-based author <PERSON> has been writing ever since she's known herself. Yet, despite her skill and substantial body of work, mainstream publishing recognition mostly eluded her, that is, until her most recent novel, “The Bread the Devil Knead” (released almost a year ago and published by the independent UK publishing house Myriad Editions), was shortlisted for the 2022 Women's Prize for Fiction.
In it, Trinidad comes to life. Scenes that are both colourful and real, that you can only see playing out in a post-colonial city like Port of Spain, are rife throughout the book. It also helps that the novel is written in local parlance: Trini-isms abound, submerging the reader in a vernacular that feels so authentic it's like you're there with the characters. Whether it's the complicated and spirited heroine, <PERSON>, who is a victim of domestic abuse, her violent live-in boyfriend <PERSON>, the boss man she's sleeping with or her motley crew of friends, the reader lives through the experience with them.
In an April 9 BBC Front Row interview, <PERSON> talked about writing cinematically, and it's true; reading her book, my muscles tense up at the possibility of <PERSON> turning ugly; my breath catches in my throat when <PERSON> comes to terms with the truth of her past — I might as well be watching a <PERSON> film. Over the course of the next few days, <PERSON> and I chat, WhatsApp and email about the book, the shortlist and more …
<PERSON> novel ‘The Bread the Devil Knead,’ which has been shortlisted for the 2002 Women's Prize for Fiction. Photo by <PERSON>, used with permission.
<PERSON> (JMF): Congrats on the book — not your first by any means, but the first for which you’ve been shortlisted for such a prestigious writing prize. What does the honour mean to you?
<PERSON> (LAA): As my friend and fellow writer <PERSON> said, even if I don’t win, forever after I’ll be a writer whose book was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction! I’m in the same category as <PERSON>, who was also shortlisted for this prize in the past. I’m waiting to see what happens. 550
<PERSON> promised the book would go far, and stay in print for a long time. I think he’s very keen on getting its message out: that women don’t have to stay in abusive relationships, that they can be delivered, that they can find loving support and change their lives. The shortlisting helps that happen and so I’m grateful for it.
<PERSON>: You’ve said that the character of <PERSON> came to you while doing a writing workshop with author <PERSON> in the mid 2000s. I think it’s brilliant that you’ve cast the “red woman,” who in Caribbean culture is typically put up on a pedestal thanks to her fairer skin, as a victim of horrific violence — but you don’t particularly like her. Why?
<PERSON>: She’s blunt and bitchy— I mean, the things she says about the other characters are really awful and she’s kind of cold and distant in some ways. And I’ve always felt that for a woman to walk away from her family as she did seems to make her less sympathetic even when she’s doing it to save her own life. I am shocked when people say she’s one of their favourite characters. And yes, the point of the story is that she looks like this “browning with tall hair,” which Professor <PERSON> has theorised as the epitome of sexualised Caribbean femininity — men want her and women want to be her — but in private she has had this terrible family history and she lives in hell. But she red, so nobody sees that. The novel is a way to show that our assumptions about a woman’s life may be wrong, and that we may all possibly be living through terrible things, and that all women can be subject to abuse, regardless of class, caste or colour. 460