Roume de St. Laurent – A Memoir

Gérard A. Besson

Historical Novel. Partly historical account, partly a fictional tale, Roume de St. Laurent … a Memoir takes the reader into the confidence of Marianne, or Soubise as she becomes, and allows glimpses at Philippe Rose Roume de St. Laurent’s life through her diaries. The memoir of his lover and later wife bursts with the excitement of two adventurers sailing through life together, criss-crossing the Atlantic as the winds of revolutionary change blew them, trying to hold on to each other, to a dream of the future, or just for dear life itself.
In this book, Besson continues his exploration of the French presence in the Caribbean in the 18th and early 19th century and of the formation of a Creole identity in these islands at a time when Atlas truly shrugged in terms of European history, a quest that he began with his previous books The Voice in the Govi, The Cult of the Will and From the Gates of Aksum.

From the Gates of Aksum

Gérard A. Besson

Historical Novel. From the Gates of Aksum weaves Freemasonry and European religious and political intrigue into the tapestry of Caribbean and South American political history.
The book begins in late 18th century Port-d’Espagne, Trinidad, and is told by several narrators. The story spans centuries, from a time when a company of adventurers recovers a mysterious object of an antediluvian science from the secluded kingdom of Aksum in the Ethiopian highlands, on to the first anguished years of the 19th century.
In the riotous wake of the American, French and Haitian Revolutions, the collapse of the Spanish empire in the New World and the rise of the British empire, François de Gurvand, a French colonist, must transport the object from his ancestral home in France to a specific geographical position — the island of Trinidad. A Vatican secret society, the Holy Hermandad, the Emperor Napoleon, various factions of Freemasonry, and another ancient secret society all vie for possession of the object.
From the Gates of Aksum speaks of the role that the early Trinidadians played in that epoch-changing period when the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment altered the course of the history of the world. While the plot and most of the characters are fictitious, the reader familiar with West Indian, South American and European history will find old acquaintances who come to life in this book — such as Francisco de Miranda, Simón Bolívar, and a heroic band of Trinidadians remembered as the Immortal 45.

The Voice in the Govi

Gérard A. Besson

Fictional Novella. A Magical Visit to the Realms of Imagination of Those Who Lived in the 19th Century Caribbean.
The Voice in the Govi whispers to the reader of generations of beautiful Caribbean women, scintillating the lines between life, death, and the in-between. Listen to its murmurs of adventurous voyages between islands, continents and worlds, to its sighs of love and passion, to its rumours of magic both evil and good. Hark! and your Gros Bon Ange will speak in tongues—in French, Patois or English—about a time when a beautiful new race of women was born in the plaçage of the Antilles, la femme de couleur, to whom male pa ka chanjé kon lapli (mistfortunes do not happen like rain). A time when the imagination of those who lived in these islands was inspired by folklore and religion, by petro and rada, by the ever-thinning veil between life and afterlife, when souls had to be brought back from beneath the waters, retirer d’en bas de l’eau.
The story told by Gerard Besson in the tradition of Caribbean Magical Realism follows several generations of Afro-French-Creole girls and women (and their men) throughout the 19th century, out from the times of slavery and across the Caribbean Sea, from Saint-Domingue to Trinidad. Devoted to the Orisha of Love, Erzulie, and possessed of intoxicating beauty and of innate goodness, these women inherit the powers of healing and of clairvoyance. Lifelong companions and lovers, La Sirène Rosa and Amélie Eugénie fight a battle against the main-gauche sorcerer’s tricks of the boy Naza and his evil-minded secret society of cochons sans poils, pigs without hair, whereby they have to bring back zombis from literally a fate worse than death, and ultimately fight a terrifying battle against a murderous soucouyant.
In his Antillean novella, Besson pulls his reader into a past that shimmers like a butterfly’s wing, blending together shades of magic and of history in one captivating tale that radiates the sights, sounds and scents of a time when times were changing in these islands below the wind.

The Cult of the Will

Gérard A. Besson

Non-Fiction. This study deals with the complex issues of race, history and politics in Caribbean society. In its first part, “François Besson”, it examines the fortunes of a French creole family between the mid-18th and early 20th centuries, and describes their experiences against the backdrop of the social and political conflicts occasioned by the excesses of plantation slavery and the upheavals of the French revolution. It looks at Julien Fédon’s revolution of 1795 in Grenada, examines the nature of the relationship between master and slave, the children of these unions, and the deadly divisions that were at times engendered as a result of the custom of the plaçage (concubinage), causing ‘victors’ or ‘victims’ of “The Cult of the Will” to emerge; thus influencing at times the destiny of these islands.

The second part of the book, “Eric Williams”, studies the manner in which an historian-turned-politician, tragically afflicted by “The Cult of the Will” and perhaps convinced that history is destiny, used, in Trinidad and Tobago, the politics of inherited guilt and inherited victimhood to create scapegoats in an attempt to assuage his “Inward Hunger”, while making clever use of ‘Black Nationalism’ that was becoming popular in the 1950s. Revisionist in its scope, this book undertakes to change our understanding of the past, so that we may create a more useful future. It examines the points in time when the historical narratives of the country changed, occasioned by a shift in moral values, bringing about a different interpretation of its history. It ponders the question whether the presidency of Barack Obama may mark the end of the Eric Williams narrative of victimhood, scapegoating and irresponsibility as expressed in its politics, and herald the start of a new, New World narrative endowed with empowerment and responsibility.

“Your thesis comes across as logical, though speculative at times, but put together with the deprivations he (Eric Williams) admittedly experienced at Oxford and at the Caribbean Commission, the victimhood narrative is plausible, and indeed has become disruptive of this country’s civility, democracy and ethnic harmony . . . You have created a serious challenge to orthodoxy. You have broken up quite a few myths, and in fact forcefully argued how the passion for psychic compensation and restoration by Williams has led to an intensely institutionalized culture of victimhood. A victimhood now challenged by Obama, a challenge which not only shifts the paradigm but holds better promise for spiritual growth and the shaping of a common humanity.”

(Professor Emeritus Ramesh Deosaran)

Folklore & Legends of Trinidad and Tobago

Gérard A. Besson

Fiction.

Folklore stories that make your hair stand on end!

The folklore of Trinidad and Tobago has pan-Caribbean appeal, as it is shared in common with many former French territories in the region from Louisiana to Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica and St. Lucia.The beautifully illustrated book has been celebrated as a milestone publication in Trinidad and Tobago.

The Book of Trinidad

Bridget Brereton and Gérard A. Besson

Non-Fiction. The Book of Trinidad, a perennial favourite with Trinidadians all over the world, is an eclectic mix of travelogues, recipes, newspaper reports, official records, the seminal work of historians and, perhaps more importantly, the oral traditions of the very old whose memories link back to the turn of the century. Fully illustrated with rare pictures from a wide range of sources, The Book of Trinidad has sold thousands of copies since its first publication in 1986.
The history of beautiful Trinidad is a relatively short but multi-faceted one in comparison to its neighbouring islands in the Caribbean. The Book of Trinidad travels through centuries of Trinidad’s life, exposing an experience in which the changing of seasons was the only constant in an otherwise timeless world.
The remarkable thing in the development of Trinidad has been the make-up of its population. Literally, people from all over the world found a home in the island by virtue of their Catholicism or other considerations. Truly antique strains, such as the Rada from West Africa and Maronite Christians from the Ottoman Empire, Brahmins from India, French aristocrats, Corsican revolutionaries, Portuguese converted to Protestanism from Madeira, Chinese peasants, liberated Africans, and Shiite Muslims who have continued to the present to celebrate Muharrum (Hosay) were all poured into the mould of British colonialism and stamped by the prejudices of the time. Writers Bridget Brereton and Gerard Besson bring together the people of Trinidad by commemorating the memory of shared experiences among this plethora of cultures in the development of our beloved country.
Brereton and Besson’s collaboration in The Book of Trinidad draws together the collective experience of the nation’s people to put together the colourful mosaic that is, in truth, our national patrimony.

Tales of the Paria Main Road

Gérard A. Besson

Fiction. For Paria Publishing’s 35th anniversary and in honour of Gérard A. Besson being awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of the West Indies, we are presenting a limited second edition of his first published work, Tales of the Paria Main Road. First published in 1973, this whimsical book began Gérard’s journey into publishing, which lead to the formation of Paria Publishing Company Limited. Tales of the Paria Main Road is comprised of three short stories loosely based on the mis-adventures of Jerry and his friends as a young men in Trinidad during the 1960/70’s. It touches on the folklore of Trinidad and Tobago’s Afro French culture and introduces the reader to some of the characters who still inhabit to this day the forest of the Paria Main Road. Not all is folklore and tall tales, however. At the time, Trinidad, like much of the world, was changing and this was ever present in the growing social awareness of the “Black Power Movement” which played a big part of our nation’s growth, as seen through Besson’s eyes.

The Rada Community in Trinidad

Andrew Carr

Non-Fiction. Trinidadian Anthropologist Andrew Carr had a deep and abiding love for “Ole Time” Trinidad. In this scholarly study, written in the early 1950s and first published in 1955, he traces the cultural beliefs, traditions and practices of the Rada, a group of African settlers from Dahomey (now Benin), in Belmont, Port of Spain, Trinidad, in the 19th and early 20th century. Carr describes the founding of the Rada Compound in the 1870s and how he experienced it in the 1950s, with the attendant changes in the religious practices and ceremonies, the musical and dance expressions, the sacrifices to the particular pantheon of the inhabitants, their food and their memories. “The existence, up until recently, of the Belmont Rada Community has helped in no small way to mould the personality of that very parituclar part of our capital city,” writes Publisher Gérard A. Besson in his Note to the first edition in 1989.

Trinidad’s Doctors’ Office

Vincent Totthill

Non-Fiction. Picture this: San Fernando, Trinidad, 1920. Longing for the tropics, the young medicus Dr. Vincent Tothill signs up with the Colonial Service and comes to southern Trinidad, where he first works in the oilfields, then in the sugar factory, and eventually sets up private practice in San Fernando. With Scottish wit and a subtle feel for the local parlance, this young man describes the people he meets and the events that mark the highlights of his sojourn in Trinidad, and while he obviously fell in love with the people of the island, he does not spare criticism of the Medical Service of the colony. And while he will make you laugh out loud with his sometimes picaresque adventures, his diary is also a valuable anthropological and historical document, describing the language and customs of Trinidadians in that period.
This book was first published by Blackie & Sons in Scotland and is lavishly illustrated with contemporary photographs, some taken by Dr. Tothill himself, and others added from Paria Publishing’s extensive archives.

Beloved

Thelma Seheult

Non-Fiction. The Yseult Bridges of the 1920s

Thelma Seheult’s personal story, written simply, captures a moment in time that no longer exists. Like Yseult Bridges in her classic Victorian memoir “Child of the Tropics”, Thelma, a generation later, describes with great charm and warmth her life in 20th century Trinidad: the houses she lived in, the family members and servants in whose midst she was raised, the small and the large adventures of growing up in the tropics, falling in love, raising a family. A unique and nostalgic account of a vanished world in which life was lived at a slower pace, and in which not all was rosy, as Thelma often points out with a critical eye, but in which being “Beloved” was the most important aspect of all relationships.

Archie

Archie McDonald

Non-Fiction.

In this companion volume to “Beloved”, Thelma Seheult’s memoir, we now meet her husband Archie. From the origins of the McDonald clan in the misty heights of Scotland, to roaming the hills of Northern Trinidad on horseback to examine cocoa plantations for witches broom, to the matter of how to win Thelma’s heart and hand: Archie’s memoir gives us a glimpse into the life and love of a young man in Trinidad and Antigua in the early decades of the 20th century.

Inheritance

Ian & Robin McDonald

Non-Fiction.

West Indian poet Ian McDonald journeys down the generations of his family, describing with a loving and fascinated eye his ancestors, including warriors, poets, actors, doctors, merchants, sportsmen and civil servants, and concluding with his grand-parents and beloved parents.

“Delve a little deeper get to know the people more, what they did and tried to do, their dreams and desires and hurts and joys, how they lived and loved and worked and fought and played and died, their triumphs and tragedies: that is no foreign country of the heart and soul – that is home to all of us. What one inherits, and what one in turn passes on, is the stuff of life itself and always will be.”

Western Isles of Trinidad

Anthony de Verteuil

Non-Fiction. Fr. Anthony de Verteuil, a well-known author about Trinidad’s history with a large number of titles published over several decades, wrote this charming and interesting book about “Down the Islands”. The small and tiny mountaintops that peep out of the ocean between Trinidad’s westernmost tip and Venezuela’s Paria peninsula have traditionally been the place for weekend homes of many of the country’s old families, and generations of children virtually grew up there, learning about the sea and about boats. But there is more to the history of the Western Isles: historical battles were fought between them, pirates hid their loot there in sheltered coves, and the largest centipedes ever beheld by mankind live in their undergrowth!

Grenada in Wartime

Beverley Steele

Non-Fiction. With Grenada being a British colony at the time, many Grenadians went off to fight in the war, with relatives never knowing if they would ever see them again. The greatest tragedies during the war, however, happened close to home. On what turned out to be a baneful day – August 5th, 1944 – two boats left on an excursion from Grenada to St. Vincent. Only one, the Providence Mark arrived at its destination. The Island Queen disappeared with 67 passengers and crew and over 60 years later, there are still no answers to comfort those who lost relatives on that unlucky boat.

Steele’s Grenada in Wartime tells the collective story of what happened to the people of Grenada during World War II- their tragedies and remarkably resilient nature – in one steady breath. Steele acts as the voice of Grenada’s population as she records the experiences of Grenada during World War II – the sacrifices, the hardships, the strength, the compassion, the innovations, and the Grenadian strength of will to keep on going. Grenada in Wartime also documents an admirable response to national tragedy. No one can ignore the disasters and hard times in their history, but they can keep them close to their hearts while they continue to do what they have to do to keep the society moving forward.

Gillie’s World

Gillian McDonald Howie

Non-Fiction.

Short Stories from Trinidad and Antigua by Gillian McDonald Howie

“I have been writing memories of events in my life since I was a teenager and all these ‘stories’ are to be found jotted down in bits and pieces of my diaries throughout the years.
The stories, based on very young childhood memories, though not written out in any diary, are events that still stand out clearly in my mind. They formed a deep impression on me when they occurred.” (Gillian McDonald Howie)

Longing to Belong

Mark Tierney, Filip Vandenbussche

Non-Fiction.

Published on the occasion of the Centenary of the Mount St. Benedict Monastery in Trinidad and Tobago, “Longing to Belong” is the fascinating story of the founder of this, the first Benedictine Monastery in the Caribbean and Central America. It is a compelling and at times tragic story of a man, a human being, with all his virtues and imperfections. Peter De Caigny (Dom Mayeul De Caigny) was first and foremost an “unwavering general” in all the battles he fought for the Church and for the Benedictines. Born in Belgium in 1862, his relentless search for a place to belong brought him to several countries in Europe and to Latin America, the Caribbean and North America. He was always “Longing to Belong” somewhere else. His innate restlessness led to a constant questioning of his current position. His life was punctuated by a series of successes and accomplishments, often to see them taken away by, what some would suggest, his own making. Saddled with a headstrong personality and a lack of diplomacy, Peter De Caigny was nevertheless highly intelligent with an analytical mind. His brilliance as a scholar is attested by the publication of several books and an unpublished three-volume work on his life, which is the basis for this biography. This book, “Longing to Belong” is an attempt to understand and explain his ambition and passion as well as his actions which were often controversial and misunderstood. His extreme sensitivity led him to react strongly to anything and anyone who criticised his good intentions or attacked his honour. Peter sought the solitude of being in harmony with nature. His mind was in a constant state of flux between solitude and activity. He was a leader who took on challenges as they presented themselves, while his soul, his inner being, longed for solitude… Painstakingly researched, beautifully written, fully illustrated, this book is a treasure for everybody interested in Caribbean history, Catholic religious history, or just looking for inspiration in the successful lives of those who have gone before us …

The Birth of the Kabir Panthi Movement in Trinidad

Colbert Nepaulsingh

Non-Fiction.

This book documents, for the first time, that the role of the Kabir Panthi Movement in the development of Trinidad from the mid-nineteenth century onward should not be underestimated. Despite their small numbers, it is clear that the impact of the Kabir Panthis has been by no means small. Because they are persistent non-violent practitioners of “Truth” and the “Equality” of all human beings as one family, the Kabir Panthis were able to undermine intolerance not only among the Christians, Hindus, and Muslims around them but also among all denominations of Catholic and Protestant Christians, among all Hindu castes, and between the major Muslim sects, all the above without compromising their own Kabir Panthi beliefs. By quietly working against prejudice and intolerance, Kabir Panthis played a significant role in building the nation.