“That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn’t like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn’t think it...
“Peace to our neighbours. But anathema to the French name. Hatred eternal to France. This is our cry.” – from the Haitian proclamation of independence from France. The Black Jacobins is an enlightening and thought-provoking tome which is a must-read...
In a recent blogpost about authenticity in writing historical fiction I mentioned that I would elaborate more about how the Garifuna language has evolved since the 1790s. It has indeed been quite a dramatic transformation which has its roots in the tragic deportation...
The ideas of the French Revolution reached the shores of St. Vincent in 1795 due to the concerted efforts of one man. Victor Hugues, French revolutionary commander and Commissioner of Guadeloupe. Hugues, who was officially sent out to the Windward Islands to implement...
When I was a young boy, about nine years old, I first learned about slavery in the Caribbean and the Middle Passage in Social Studies class in primary school. What most disturbed me about slavery, apart from it’s obvious abhorrent cruelty and depravity, was the...
