March 4, 2025 • 47 mins
In this episode acclaimed Jamaican author Diana McCaulay to discuss her latest novel "A House for Miss Pauline."
Before we get to the book Diana and I discuss her journey from insurance professional to environmental activist; Jamaica's changing landscape, environmental challenges, the delicate balance between preservation and progress.
We dive into the inspiration behind the novel, "A House for Miss Pauline," which explores themes of land, legacy, and connection. We also discuss:
- The role of great houses in modern Jamaica'
- Intergenerational relationships in Caribbean culture
- The importance of storytelling and the vital importance of preserving our elders' stories.
Connect with Diana McCaulay: Website | Instagram
Get "A House for Miss Pauline"
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of
Carry On Friends, the CaribbeanAmerican podcast, and with me
today is Diana McCauley.
Diana, how are you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm fine.
Thanks, carrie, and thanks forhaving me.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Wonderful.
I'm very excited to speak withDiana and we're also going to
talk about her lovely book AHouse of Miss Pauline, which I
will ask her if their A House ofMr Biss was an inspiration.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
No, no, I wouldn't say that was an inspiration,
although I did that book atA-level.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, and I actually loved it.
I was so impressed with it, youknow, because somebody my age
at school we didn't do muchCaribbean literature.
You know it was mostly Englishstuff.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
I remember.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, so this was the first time that I can remember
us doing a, you know, a solid, arespected Caribbean work.
It was only after the book hadbeen finished and it had a
different title that mypublisher thought that it was
actually in conversation withthe host for Mr Biswas and
suggested the name.
So it was called Roots of Stonefor most of its life.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Wow, that is very fascinating.
So as a sidebar, you know, likethis story I feel like if I was
going to school back in the day, because I grew up in Mobe, I
went to Alvernia, so I did gothrough high school and I could
count on one hand the Caribbeanliterature.
I read the Jumbie Bird, youknow like very specific books
(01:37):
and you know I love to see whereCaribbean literature is going.
I'm very excited for that.
So enough of me.
Let's tell the audience alittle bit about you, more about
the work you do, caribbeancountry you represent, even
though I think they might have asense of that.
But let's start with a littlebit about you.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
So I am Kingston born and have lived in Kingston all
my life, except for two years atschool in the US, which
happened very late in life.
I tell everybody I'm living mylife backwards the US, which
happened very late in life.
I tell everybody I'm living mylife backwards, you know, late
bloomer, I'm an Andrews girl.
I went to St Andrew High Schooland I've had lots of different
jobs.
I could spend the hour talkingabout the various things I've
done in my life, but the oneprobably I'm well known for is
(02:20):
my environmental work.
I was for about 30 years thefounder and then I led the
Jamaican Environment Trust foralmost 30 years, because I grew
up really loving the outdoors.
I had a dad who took me hikingand swimming and you know just
basically being outside, and Iloved going to the beach and in
(02:42):
the mountains and everything.
And you know, when I was, Iguess, closing on 40, I became
aware that a lot of the placesI'd loved as a child were
disappearing or being destroyedin some way.
And I didn't know anythingabout the environment, but I'm a
reader, so I started to readabout it and the more I read,
the more concerned I got, and soI took some pictures of some
(03:05):
things I, as a lifelongKingstonian, had never seen,
like the Riverton dump and theswitch plants that didn't work
invited my friends and theJamaica Environment Trust was
formed out of those at that timeand eventually I left my job.
I worked for the insuranceindustry in a pretty good job
(03:25):
really to be a non-profit personand you know environmental
loudmouth I used to say Peopleused to call me.
So that's what I did until Iretired in 2017.
But in terms of the writing, Ideclared I was going to be a
writer when I was 13 and havewritten all my life and I still
have in a trunk behind me.
(03:46):
You know, a lot of thehandwritten stuff I did as a
school girl and teenager, youngadult.
But you know my dad, who was abig influence on me, he, and who
was the one who encouraged meto read and to write, but he was
a complicated person and healso said to me that you know,
women couldn't write really, andthey couldn't write great
literature for sure, becausethey didn't do the only thing
(04:08):
that was really worthy of greatliterature, which was go to war.
So I kind of believed him and Iwrote in secret for most of my
life.
So I have a whole pile of booksthat have never been finished
and short stories that I'venever seen the light of day.
But you, you know, as you startto get on and as sometimes
happened, you know, I had alittle health scare and I
(04:29):
thought, you know, if I heard Iwas dying.
The only thing I'd be reallyannoyed about is I never really
tried to publish a book, and soI vowed to do it, and that was
Dog Heart, my first book, whichcame out in 2010.
And I was determined.
I was just going to send it out.
I knew it would be rejected,and I was going to send it out
again and again, and again andagain, until finally I'd find a
(04:51):
publisher, you know.
And so that's how I startedwriting, and Miss Pauline is now
my sixth book, one of those six.
I self-published because Iwanted to see what that journey
was like, and the answer was geta publisher.
So I wanted to see what thatjourney was like, and the answer
was get a publisher.
So, yeah, so that's my story.
I'm a Bonnier and, you know,have loved Jamaica all my life
(05:13):
and right, right really, to theplace.
You'll often hear us all,whether we live here or live
overseas.
You'll hear us say I loveJamaica, whether we live here or
live overseas.
You'll hear us say I loveJamaica, but sometimes I think
we love the idea of Jamaica, butthe actual place itself, which
don't treat it very well.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I love that you say that, and I want to pull on the
environmental string for alittle bit.
Could it be that we feel like,oh, it's always going to be here
, so we don't really take theenvironment seriously?
And do you think environmentalimpact of Jamaica varies based
(05:52):
on whether you live in theinterior of the island versus if
you live on the coast?
Coming from Moby, I grew upseeing Deden, which is you know
how that beach we all love goingto, you know.
(06:15):
It's just one thing you know,you really see erosion and what
that means and what coming up.
You know.
Or I remember my mom went toMount Alvarena and she took a
picture by the library wall andyou could see there was nothing
there, which is now Howard CookBoulevard, and there was nothing
there.
And so I think, in some ways,because we didn't have a lot of
pictures to archive how thelandscape has changed over time,
(06:38):
to really be a very starkreminder that, no, this land is
changing and if we don't becareful, um, it go, disappear in
front of our eyes.
And some of that is for our ownfault, like even the way that
we build up concrete house.
No, no, breadfruit tree in theyard, everything cut down.
So, um, I said enough of mylittle rant about that in in
(07:02):
your time.
The j Jamaica EnvironmentalTrust.
What has been your observationabout our relationship to the
land and the role we play ordon't play in where the land
itself, this land of wood andwater, this idea that we keep
Jamaica is the land of wood andwater, but if we're not careful,
there will be only water, nowood.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Maybe not even water.
You know it's complicated,kerri-ann, that's the thing I
can say.
Most it's somewhat related tooccupation.
So if you are a yam farmer oryou're a fisherman, you may have
a greater appreciation ofthings like the rainy season,
(07:45):
that the rainy season ischanging.
Or if you're a fisherman, youmight have a greater
appreciation that your fishcatches are declining or places
where you used to be able tocatch fish you can't do it
anymore.
Certainly, if you're afisherman, you're aware that the
beach is eroding.
If you're a fisherman, you knowthat mangroves play this vital
role for healthy fish and thehotels are destroying the
(08:07):
mangroves.
So to a degree it's related tooccupation.
It's also related tosocioeconomic class, because if
you are somebody struggling forsurvival, you really have no
time to know whether theatmosphere is all right or even
whether the beach is eroding.
Right, because you're veryfocused on survival.
(08:30):
And then there's also something,I think, in our folklore, in
our storytelling, where weequate bush with things being
backward.
So we do equate concrete withprogress.
So great many Jamaicans willlook at Howard Cook Boulevard
(08:51):
and, whether they remember whatwas there before or not, regard
it as progress.
You know, I think we sort ofcollectively have in our minds
an image of South Florida thatthat is good and that is where
we would like to go.
So I see it differently.
I see that Jamaica is, I think,a unique place, a very special
(09:14):
island with a complicatedhistory.
It's a very diverse island.
You know, I've traveled aroundthe Caribbean quite a bit and
there are other beautifulislands, but they tend not to be
as diverse as Jamaica.
And so I think Jamaica is thisspecial place and it saddens me
that we are apparently willingto just get rid of its
(09:35):
authenticity, its realness, youknow, the thing that is itself,
and make it over in this imageof this other place.
I mean, I think South Floridais fine for South Florida, but
why would we want to emulatethat?
So that's what saddens me.
And then, of course, it's aboutthe health of the natural
environment, which we start toappreciate what it was giving us
(09:57):
when it already starts todegrade.
And a good example of that isthe coral reefs which are badly
degraded along the north coastand they are our first line of
defense against storms.
So we start to see greaterimpact from storms.
The same fisherman we weretalking about earlier he has
less fish to catch because thefish live on the reef.
So by the time we start toappreciate the way it directly
(10:23):
affects us, it might be too late.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
I agree.
So my granduncles, mygrandmother's brothers, they're
fishermen.
So we grew up by the seaside,on White House, you know, over
by the airport where the firstsandals is.
So he would say, yeah, man, nofish, now come again.
The wall of the dirt from thehotel will build up forever, run
down.
But also, a few years ago I wentto jamaica for my father's
(10:47):
funeral and I remember mystepfather was like I was like,
oh, this water look nice andclean.
Him said, no, sir, this waterdirty, man, rainfall or whatever
.
And I in that moment I was likethis water, I'm considered
dirty and I realized that I'velived away from the country so
long.
But what I lost in thatprogress is able to see the
environmental changes that hesaw, like he knew this water
(11:10):
wasn't clean because in the lastcouple of days it's been
raining.
So what looked clear to mecomparison to what's beach in
New York was not good water.
And he was able to look and seenot good water.
And he was able to look and seeand I thought of does the new
generation, are they able tolook at the environment or the
surroundings and tell the waythat?
(11:32):
You know, back in the daypeople could say well, no,
something wrong with this right.
We lose some of that in ourmodernization of the island and
that could also be why it's veryhard to take care of the
environment, because as wemodernize some of those things
that we can use to identify whatis not right about the elements
(11:54):
or the surroundings, we don'tpass that off to the next
generation.
To a certain degree, and I feltthat when my stepfather said,
no man, this water not clean itdirty, you know, and said no man
, this water not clean it dirtyyou know.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, to some degree it's lost.
Yeah, and I know White Housewell.
We did work with the fishers inWhite House over the hotels,
right.
There's a thing inenvironmental circles called
shifting baselines, where everygeneration thinks what it grew
up with is the norm and it'salways been like that.
(12:25):
And unless somebody tells you,like a grandparent or, as you
said earlier, their images, youthink that what was around when
you were a young person is thenorm and you don't really
appreciate the changes that havehappened Now.
Of course, changes happenanyway.
For a while I was quite obsessedwith when Columbus first came
(12:45):
to the Caribbean, which isreally the first time we have
written records of what was seenhere, and so we have Columbus's
logs of the animals that werein the sea in the Caribbean Sea
at the time and that has changedso greatly, and that changed
within about 50 years ofEuropean arrival.
So things do change.
(13:06):
But I think what's happeningnow is the rate of change is
extremely fast and it'shappening way too quickly
without enough considerationabout.
Well, hold on a little bit.
If we take out this stretch ofmangroves, what's that going to
mean for the stability of thebeach?
And when the beach goes, youhear oh well, we have to dredge
sand and that means taking itout of the sea and that means it
(13:29):
has impacts in the sea.
So it's like this snowballingset of problems, and I think
young people know you know I'mgoing to sound like a real old
person, because this is what oldpeople always say about young
people.
This is nothing new always sayabout young people, this is
nothing new but they're notreally so concerned about these
kind of issues, you know they're.
They're more concerned aboutmaterial things and I think
(13:50):
that's a change I've seen in mylife.
Um, you know more about the,about flashy cars and the latest
iPhone and whatever, although Iwill say that when I was with
the environmental group, Iworked with some really great
young people and they were veryconcerned about what we were
doing to their home place, but Iwould say they're not as many
(14:13):
of them as I would like and thechanges that need to happen at
the young level because thisreally is a problem for young
people I won't be around, youknow it hasn't happened in as
wide a scope and or as quicklyas I'd hoped.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Okay, well, thank you for that.
We could always go on about theenvironment, but I want to shift
to Miss Pauline, which, thankyou, this was such a delightful
read.
I will share at the end mynotes on how I connect to it
personally.
But I wanted to ask how much ofthe environment did you factor
(14:49):
in in the story about MissPauline?
Before that, if you can givethe audience a little gist
because me, we spoil it for them.
Get on the whole thing.
So if you could, you know, givea little synopsis about A House
of Miss Pauline.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
So Miss Pauline is a woman, a rural woman.
She's lived all her life inrural St Mary and she's had a
difficult life and she'sapproaching her 100th birthday
and she's taken the stones of anearby plantation ruin, an old
slave house that was lost in theforest, which she finds by
(15:25):
accident, and she's taken thosestones to build her own house,
after her own house wasdestroyed in a hurricane,
because she wants something safewhere she and her family can
live.
And just as she's approachingher 100th birthday, the stones
of her house start to shift inthe night and make these noises
and eventually start to speak.
(15:46):
And she knows at that pointthat there are atonements she
has to make in her own life andshe sets out to do that by
enlisting the help of agranddaughter who lives in the
US to try and make thesereparations, these atonements
that she knows she wants to makebefore she dies.
So it's basically about herjourney to do that and the
(16:10):
secret that she has kept formost of her life.
And you ask about theenvironment in the book, her
real connection to this placewhere she has spent her entire
life, how she feels about it,what it looks like, her love for
where she spent her life andher wish to make sure she sets
(16:32):
things right before she dies.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
I love that summary.
I would agree with the wholething.
But what I do enjoy aboutreading Caribbean literature, as
I said at the top of theepisode, is being able to
connect with the location or theplace where the story is set,
first and foremost.
That's always, for me, it's onething to read a book that's set
in Jamaica, it's one thing tohave a connection to the place,
(16:58):
and for me that's always rarebecause most stories they tend
to set it in Kingston, soanything that's set in Moby,
where I'm from and in this case,while I'm not from St Mary, my
maternal grandfather is from StMary I spent a lot of summers in
Highgate and so when I read itand I was like, oh yeah, st Mary
, that's nice, you know, theonly thing missing was the holy
(17:21):
banana walk conversations.
But it was so good to connect,you know, with the scene and how
they described it at a point,even the hurricane that you
mentioned here.
I would visit St Mary beforethat hurricane and I remember
the difference.
But yeah, not all, diana, ifit's the 88 one, absolutely.
(17:43):
I remember going to St Mary 87,86 and then going back the year
after and just like how thelandscape in my grand aunt's
property had changed because ofthe hurricane, and you know.
So hearing Miss Pauline tellthe story was so moving for me
because, as I was telling myfriend's mom, you know I was
(18:07):
still a child, you know I waswell, maybe I can't remember the
age at this point, but I wasstill a child, but not
understanding the grasp that myparents have to deal with the
shortage of food like shortageof food, me never hungry.
To deal with the shortage offood like shortage of food, me
never hungry.
And I guess I didn't appreciateall the work that she had to do
to make sure I didn't feelhungry.
To me it was, oh, it's funbreeze, blow down everything.
(18:36):
So it is fun time versus, youknow, hearing or reading all
that she had to do to ensure thesurvival of ourself and our
families.
I really appreciated thattelling and I also appreciated
hearing a story from anotherpart of Jamaica that's not
always included in literatureright, like a parish, like St
Mary.
I mean, we might hear about StMary but people may not realize
it's St Mary in the other booksabout James Bond and all these
(19:00):
things, other books about JamesBond and all these things.
I really appreciated that youwent to a parish like St Mary.
That is absolutely beautiful,especially when you drive down
to Port Maria.
But anyway, you know, just totell that.
So I just wanted to say that Iconnected and after this
recording I'll tell you all theother stuff because I'm going to
give the book if I tell theother things that I appreciate.
So when you came up with thecharacter of Miss Pauline, what
(19:25):
was the inspiration for hercharacter?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
So books have a long gestation, or certainly for me
anyway, and I would say MissPauline was a long time coming,
but in no particular order.
I had a great aunt who was bornin 1896.
And she lived until she was 102.
And I knew her well and I usedto think about the changes she
(19:49):
had seen in her whole life.
So as a young woman so one sideof my family is from Black
River so as a young woman shecame to Kingston in a buggy and
I used to think about her beingin the buggy at the bottom of
Spur Tree Hill, you know, whichshe would have called man Bump,
and how that journey might havetaken her two or three days and
she would have been staying inyou know little roadside taverns
(20:13):
or whatever at the time.
And then towards the end of herlife I sat with her and showed
her how to use a computer andyou know she'd flown on an
airplane the whole communicationrevolution with cell phones and
all of that.
I remember we had to get her acell phone with a huge dial
because she couldn't really seeto use a small phone.
So I used to think about thechanges that she had lived in
(20:37):
her life and my experience withher was kind of teasing me in my
mind.
That was one piece, anotherpiece.
So I'm a little obsessed withthe plantation great houses
because, as I explained in anauthor's note at the back of the
book, this story is partlyabout my own ancestry, which I
only discovered relativelyrecently.
I had a family story that myfamily came to Jamaica because
(21:00):
my great grandfather was aBaptist missionary.
He was Scottish and this was mybackground and I used to.
You know people look at me andsay, ah, slave owner.
You know, and I used to, almostbefore the words were out of
their mouth.
But you're not Jamaican, areyou?
I would be telling them, oh, mygreat grandfather was a Baptist
missionary.
Right, leave me alone.
Kind of thing you know, ofthing you know.
(21:21):
So, relatively recent I foundout about this other aspect of
my family on my mother's side,where indeed there were slave
owners in my ancestry.
Even before I knew that, I'vebeen somewhat uncomfortable and
uncertain about what should bedone with the plantation great
houses because some of them arein the most well, most of them
actually are in the mostbeautiful places you can imagine
(21:42):
.
It was hard for me to standthere and think they should be
burnt to the ground.
You know, we should get rid ofthem.
They speak of an atrocity, aterrible crime.
They should be gone.
It was hard for me to standthere.
Anyway, I have a friend whoknew of my writing aspirations
and invited me to a writingworkshop at a great house and I
(22:03):
was in a little tiny room thatwas under the front stairs of
the great house and sleepingthere, I felt like this room had
belonged to a woman, and awoman who was probably some kind
of enslaved woman who lookedafter the people in the house
because she was there to beclose to them, and she took root
(22:28):
in my mind.
So I had this older relativeand then this imaginary woman
who I felt had visited me, ifyou like, or began to speak to
me, although not in an audibleway, from my experience at this
great house.
Then, years passed and during myenvironmental work, a friend
took me to see a ruin in CockpitCountry where I was doing my
(22:51):
environmental work, because itwas built over a sinkhole.
And that's what interested himand I thought built over a
sinkhole, that is so weird, whywould anybody do that?
And what did they do?
Did they drink the water, didthey use it as a toilet, you
know?
And he took me to this placeand it was fallen down and, yes,
indeed, it was built over thesinkhole, and that stuck in my
(23:14):
brain.
And then the final thing was Iwas out for dinner one night and
I heard a story of a foreigner,a man from overseas, who had
come to the same ruin.
That was really a ruin.
It was by then just stonesscattered around the landscape
and had taken the stones of thegreat house to build his own
house.
And I started thinking, well,why a white man, why not a black
(23:39):
woman, a black rural woman fromthat area?
And why is that not a kind ofreparations, a kind of restoring
what was really hers?
And that's a long story aboutthe inspiration for a host for
Miss Pauline.
But I will also say to you andyour listeners that I started
(24:00):
writing this book in thepandemic.
It was during lockdown, Ishould say, and it was
entertainment for myself,because by then, book number
five, I was kind of done withpublication.
I had written all my life and Iwas going to do it just for me,
and I really sat at my computerand started writing what was
then Roots of Stone, no Housefor Miss Pauline to entertain
(24:21):
myself, and I called it my LongStrip of Knitting, so that's
another name it had.
I wasn't bothered with plot, Iwasn't bothered with anything.
I was just going to have funwith this character and let her
onto the page.
She was in my mind.
She'd been in my mind for solong.
Here you go, let me see whatyou do.
And so the book was my longstrip of knitting and I really
(24:42):
wasn't going to send it anywhere.
And then a friend, justineHensel, who is one of the
producers of the CalabashLiterary Festival in Treasure
Beach, sent me this opportunityfor writers over 50.
By then I was well over 50.
I thought, oh well, it's justlike the 5,000 words, nothing
will happen.
Here we are.
It won that competition andthrough that I found an agent
(25:03):
and a publisher and the book'sabout to come out.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Thank you for that.
I think that is such afascinating story and even this
idea of the plantations and whatto do with it.
I think now, in the age that welive in, you know I've seen a
lot of commentaries about peoplehaving weddings at, you know,
former great houses and theyshouldn't do that because
(25:29):
they're dancing on the grays ofyou know all of that.
It could be very contentious,but from your view and from Miss
Pauline's view, you know, missPauline says what is my right
basically to do this, and I'mstill kind of processing because
(25:50):
I think it's easy to say thatwhen you're at such a distance
from these structures, rightLike you don't interact with
them.
You know growing up in Mubei,you know every school trip.
Where are we going, anipama?
You know.
Rosa you know, and you know itwas something that you did not
thinking of.
(26:11):
You know the slavery and andwhat that is.
And I I feel like at some pointthere there are different
narratives we can see it's not.
At some point there aredifferent narratives we can see
it's not.
Yes, there were some atrocitiesand all these other things on
there, but if this is the onlyview that we have of it, then we
may be missing up.
(26:31):
I think we're missing a pointof that story as well.
Right, the tenacity and thesurvival and what happens to the
slaves that were on thatplantation, especially and this
is all coming from my book of,you know, the White Witch of
Rose Hall and how everythinghappened, right.
But I also think it's importantin the retelling of the stories
(26:51):
of these structures and whatthey represent.
And you know, I found myselfsaying I don't see why Ms
Pauline was wrong or anybody inMearsen Hall was wrong for that
point, because it was there andthey should take it.
But what would you say toanyone who's still having
conflicted feelings about thesestructures and how they should
(27:16):
view them as parts of oursociety?
Should view them as parts ofour society or should they
remain as reminders?
Should they be glorified asthese fancy places to go visit?
You know what are your thoughtson these?
Speaker 2 (27:28):
So I'm conflicted too , you know, actually and I say
in the author's note at the endthat I don't really have an
answer to those questions.
I think we should talk about it, though, and I don't stand in a
place where they should bedestroyed.
I also don't stand in a placewhere there should be weddings
either, or, you know, a mentorband and a drink with an
umbrella in it.
It's not that kind of placeeither, although I will say, my
(27:52):
friend who invited me to thatwriter's workshop, she points
out, you know, that thatparticular great house provides
employment for a rural communitywith few opportunities for
employment.
So it is a complicated question.
I would like to see them, Iguess, as more as memorials, and
(28:14):
if we are going to use them inany kind of celebratory way,
such as like a wedding way, suchas like a wedding, that there
absolutely must be some part ofthe whole grounds and the whole
house experience that reallypays tribute to the people who
died there, who labored and diedthere.
I mean, our history, kerri-ann,is complicated, and I don't
(28:35):
think we should shy away fromthat, and it is tragic.
I don't want to see it expunged, you know.
I don't want to see it to notexist at all.
So you know there's, forinstance, there's Vale Royal,
which is near where I live inKingston, that's falling down
and I am sorry to see that.
You know, I'm sorry to see theold buildings from the Hope
Plantation up at Hope Zoo thatare falling down because I would
(28:59):
like to see them used.
I would like to see them usedin a way that benefits current
generations, that recognizeswhat happened there.
If they can provide employmentto people, great.
While we understand theatrocities that happened, if we
can also celebrate the beauty ofthe places, if we can celebrate
(29:21):
the craftsmanship and the skillof the people who built it.
There was no white people thatbuilt it, you know.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, that I know.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
And.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
I think that's where I was going, like, in addition
to the tenacity, that's what Imeant, like the skill it took to
build, because I've been toRose Hall so many times.
Right, or even it could be asource of education, and I think
that's what gets lost when wevillainize the property.
Right, I learned so much.
It's one thing to readsomething in a book, but having
(29:51):
walked through it and seeing itfor yourself and having a lay of
the land, I think it's veryimportant.
They're as close to museums aswe can get and I think they
create an opportunity forlearning that maybe we discount
because they don't look likeagain going back to our earlier
(30:13):
conversation aboutenvironmentalism they don't look
like like the global North'sversion of what is a museum.
You know this is a slave masterhouse and it should be
condemned.
It's part of our history andit's an opportunity to teach the
next generation, especially.
(30:33):
My view is as more peoplemigrate from the region or their
kids.
So my kids, they've never beenthere.
You know it would be anopportunity for them to go there
and learn in a different way,and you know kids learn
differently.
They may not read it in a book,but you have them experience a
space and tell a story in thatway they will remember.
(30:54):
So I think that's how I seethem as a place of learning, a
place of remembering.
You know, this is where we havecome from.
We no longer about there, so welearn from.
You know these things.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
So maybe that's a good way to put it actually,
that we can villainize theevents that took place without
villainizing that place itself.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Maybe that's a good way to look at it, you know, and
that there is an aspect of itfor celebrating the
craftsmanship, the resilience,the determination, the survival,
without celebrating the eventsthat took place.
There's a way for this to be amemorial.
You know, there's a place onthe north coast I don't know if
you ever went to it it's calledSeville Great House, which is
(31:39):
interesting because it has bothTaino, Spanish, English
settlements there, and whatthey've done there is the sort
of English great house is amuseum, so it has artifacts that
were found.
There's a space that is Africangraves that are memorialized,
(32:01):
and then they have built arecreation of a Taino village
because, you know, Tainos didn'tuse stone, they used mud and so
forth, so they didn't surviveand I always thought that was a
good way of doing it.
So, you know, it memorializesthe place without, as I say,
having a mental band and thatkind of thing.
So something like that I alwaysthought was a good way to make
(32:23):
sure these places just don'tfall into ruin.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah, one of the other themes that I think is
also very important in the storyA House of Miss Pauline is what
we've lost in intergenerationalrelationships.
You're a good reader, thank you.
Well, I, my husband and I, wejoke all the time that we did
(32:47):
always hang out with the oldpeople and so we, we, we
understood their language and we, we also, we liked the
relationship with them becausethey were cool people.
You know, there was justsomething that we learned and we
observed and we enjoyed and, aswe're older, we saw the benefit
of.
I was my grandmother Hanbag.
(33:09):
I go everywhere with mygrandmother, every panaka church
, clearly, that's where I was.
I was in more pictures with mygrandmother than I was with my
mom, but I learned so much fromher and her church sisters and
the relationship that I havewith my grandmother.
I love my mom, but myrelationship with my grandmother
(33:30):
is she's a son, you know, and Ivalue that so much.
And so you know when the eldersare around, I know, I know
which joke to tell, I know whichtune to pull, I know whatever
it was to make them happy andthey would tell a story.
And you want to hear thestories and I think that was
(33:51):
Miss Pauline.
I would love Miss Paulinebecause I know Miss Pauline has
some good story to tell.
I just have to get her on agood day and just sit down and
talk to Miss Pauline.
But my experience growing upwith all of the elders isn't
what everyone else's experienceis and we lose so much of our
history and culture becausethere's not that relationship or
(34:15):
connection anymore.
And that is accelerated whenkids go off foreign and leave
the grandparents behind.
And so for me, the story withLamont Poppy, you know, and even
the granddaughter, were thingsthat I liked because I felt like
(34:37):
, you know, in Miss Pauline'sarms length.
You know, don't get close toMiss Pauline in her own way.
You know she was showing hercare, but if you and I think
maybe that's the impatience ofbeing a youth you can't see that
she might come off miserablebut she really cares in her own
way, it just looked and show updifferently and that's what I
(34:58):
really loved about the storywith Miss Pauline.
So when we talk aboutintergenerational relationships,
what were you trying to pullout there and what's the lesson
for the rest of us?
Because I think this book waslike this is a walk-in lesson of
we need to do a bunch of things.
So what was the lesson or thetakeaway you want the audience
to get from the time we haveleft with the elders we have
(35:22):
here, whoever they are in yourfamily, and what should we be
doing with them?
And culturally?
Speaker 2 (35:29):
My father's mother was a big influence in my life
as well.
So I had a grandmother likeyours, you know, and she was a
very strong woman and sheinfluenced me greatly and I
think that's quite a feature ofJamaican life.
You know, a lot of us arereally raised by our
grandmothers feature of Jamaicanlife.
You know, a lot of us arereally raised by our
grandmothers and, if notdirectly raised, they're strong
(35:50):
influences and in literature yourarely find an older woman as a
protagonist, as a hero.
So I wanted to do that.
You know, as I get up in years,I wanted to push back against
this idea that, oh gosh, you'rean older woman, you're invisible
, you don't have a contributionto make anymore.
Just consider that you're alsounder some knitting, which I was
pretending to do when I waswriting the book, you know.
(36:11):
So that was one thing I wantedto give some space for an older
protagonist and I wanted her tobe different.
I wanted her to be, you know, areally atypical Jamaican woman
and not in any way some kind ofstereotype, you know about what
(36:31):
kind of woman she was.
I wanted her to be strong, Iwanted her to overcome these
many odds.
I wanted her to be colorful.
I mean, truthfully, it soundslike I went into this with a
plan and that really is not whathappened.
It was more that she revealedherself to me as I sat down and
let her, and I know that soundscrazy, but it's really my
(36:56):
experience of how these thingshappen.
I don't actually usually startwith a place in my books.
I start with a person, and allof my main characters have come
to me in strange ways, in dreams, in just somehow, you know like
you're staying in this placeand this woman moves into your
head and they start to revealthemselves to me.
(37:17):
And mostly they have not had mylife.
You know these are people thatI have not lived their lives.
I know that.
But I trust them.
I trust what they're telling meis the truth and I hope that
comes out in the pages.
You know that I'm doing justiceto their lives.
And that's not to say I didn'tread quite a bit about rural
(37:37):
Jamaica, you know, at the time,because I grew up in Kingston
and you know I didn't have thatkind of life, so I did read, you
know, books about fiction,about what things were like
there, and hopefully you knowsome of those details are
correct.
So as to what to do with ourelders.
(37:58):
I think we're losing some ofour stories, you know, and these
people have these amazingstories to tell.
Now I know I'm getting likethis myself.
You know, when you're talkingto old people they repeat
themselves, and a lot of medon't hear that story 25 times
about the time you went to themarket and you forgot to bring
(38:18):
back the change, and, to adegree, young people get a bit
impatient with that.
But I think the richness ofthose stories is really
something that we should notlose, and I try to do it in the
way that I do things in books.
But you know there are otherways oral histories, film, what
you're doing here with thisinterview.
I think that's really, reallyimportant because they have such
(38:41):
rich stories and these days weneed a lot of different ways to
tell those stories.
You know it can't always be thewritten word.
It has to be many, manydifferent things, and so I hope
that Miss Pauline will sparksome interest in that, in
talking to old people,especially old women, and
learning about how they actuallyraised families in these, you
(39:03):
know, very, very difficultcircumstances and how, in fact,
they will often tell you, youknow, that they had a happy life
, despite what you look at fromthe outside and say, oh my gosh,
you know he didn't have anyrunning water and he didn't have
an inside bathroom.
They are going to tell you howit was great, and I think that's
(39:25):
something that we regardourselves as modern Jamaicans
need to hear.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Yeah, I was going to ask about the research because
you know there were so manyspecific things particularly
with Clive, the building on theroads and all these other things
that I was like how muchresearch did you do?
But you kind of said you triedto get as specific as possible
with how rural living is, evengrowing up, like visiting St
(39:51):
Mary, I understand, like youknow going into Highgate and you
know it was.
To me it felt like, oh yeah, Iknow what she's talking about,
like my, my grandfather'sbrother, he also lived in
Islington, so you know we'regoing to go up on Uncle Sonny
Farm and it was just a wholetrek.
So to me it felt as realisticas I can remember as a
(40:13):
nine-year-old going to St Maryand visiting.
The other thing that I lovedabout the story was the
juxtaposition with old and new.
Like the post office, the localPA is still there but we have
internet, right, I said ofcourse this makes sense.
Somebody still go and send aletter, even though you know
(40:35):
nobody really does that anymore,and I think that's for me,
going back to Jamaica.
It's always these modern andthings that represent the past
that still coexist in a way, andmaybe because people are in the
space, they don't think of it,but me, returning as a visitor
to home, I see it more clearlyand they remind me of a time
(40:58):
that no longer exists exists.
So, um, I don't know how muchthought you put into like making
those specifics to the storyabout a library where even here
in America, who go to thelibrary anymore, you know with
the internet, you know um.
So I I wanted to know if thatwas like intentional of having
the library and the post officeagainst all these modern
(41:23):
amenities even in a rural place.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
So I think you know, if you want to write
successfully, you've got tostart to look, you have to
observe, right.
So and if you pay attention towhat's around you, then the next
step is you ask yourself, whatdoes it mean?
And I have really observed lifehere in lots of different ways.
I mean, my first book was setin Kingston, you know again, a
(41:47):
life I did not live.
So you look first and then youthink what does it mean?
And to me, this sort ofcoexistence of what was with
what is and also what is comingbut not yet here, is good, it's
a valuable thing.
That's why I don't want the oldthings to be pulled down and
(42:10):
forgotten, right.
And I have a thing that I saythat Jamaica is a place, a
country, that is both dying andbeing born at the same time.
So I think, all around us we seethat.
We see buildings that arefalling down, we see new
buildings, we see billboardsthat are moving because of, you
(42:34):
know, some really complicatedtechnology and right next to it,
a stoplight that's not workingand hasn't worked for three
weeks, you know.
We see markets that I meanmarkets have been such a feature
of our life going way back intohistory, but many of our
markets.
The roof has fallen off andit's a tarpaulin, and then it's
(42:55):
right next to this really shinyoffice building.
You go down to downtownKingston and that's what you
will see.
You will go to the fishingbeach at White House, which is
still there, and right next doorto it is an all-inclusive hotel
, you know.
So I think there's this conflictthat is and I don't even know
if I want to say it's a conflictthis commentary on a country
(43:16):
that is moving from one stateinto another state.
That is just ever-present forme and that's what I gravitate
to describing and, like I say, Ithink it's a valuable thing.
I think it's a city that I love, london, where my son lives.
I think that's one of thethings I've done so well,
because all over London thereare these old buildings, you
(43:38):
know, and they're all inbeautiful repair and it's got a
little plaque outside sayingsome man lived there and next to
it now is some skyscraper thatlooked like a picture and it's
just the latest in everythingand I like that.
I think it's interesting, it'svaried, it asks questions of you
(43:58):
, you know, and I see some ofthat here and I want to keep it.
I want to keep the library.
I'd like them to fix thetraffic light as well, but I
want to keep the library.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Yeah, I feel the same way.
Whenever I go back to Jamaica,I want to go to Sangster's and
buy books, because I can onlyget books there and I don't want
to buy them online.
I want to go to, you know,certain bakeries.
You know it's because theyconnect me to memories.
(44:32):
My grandmother is no longerhere, so you know they are part
of memories.
You know, you see them and youknow I can't explain it.
It's like it's just a tangiblememories.
You touch it, you know, youknow where this is, even Creek
Street, if I pass by and whenthey're growing up they say, oh,
river, mumma under the dome andall these things, right, like I
(44:53):
don't care.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Definitely she's under the dome.
I just want to say that.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Right.
So you know the idea of goingup the steep steps, you know,
through barracks, road to infantschool, like those are
important aspects of memory andmemory in that way they trigger
stories and for me, I love thestorytelling that the old folks
do.
I absolutely love it.
So, on that note, what is yourfinal takeaway for anyone who's
(45:22):
thinking of reading it butthey're not sure, even though I
think they'll to read it becausethey're going to like Miss
Pauline?
But any last words for theaudience before we go to the
after show where I can ask youall my wonderful questions.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Oh man, they must read it.
They must read it.
I mean, I find this part ofbook writing hard where you've
got to go up to people and tellthem to buy a book, right, and
how it's wonderful and the best.
I'm not very good at it, but Ithink of all and, like I said,
this is my sixth book I lovedMiss Pauline.
I loved spending time with her.
I wanted to see what she wasgoing to do.
(46:07):
I loved her, her feistiness,her directness, her strength,
but also her kindness, you know,and the way she would take no
nonsense.
She was such a role model forme, right?
I want to be that kind of oldperson if I'm given that length
of time.
I think my book is, as all ofmy books have been, a tribute to
Jamaica, you know, a sort ofputting into words how I feel
about it, what a special placeit is.
Yes, of course, difficult, it'sdifficult, and yes, it has a
(46:28):
difficult history, but it's alsounique and interesting and
fascinating and, yeah, I hopeyou love it.
Read it, man.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
It's good.
It's good and for me I thinkMiss Pauline is, like I said, an
amalgamation of plenty Jamaicanwomen.
You can see aspects of them inMiss Pauline and those women
don't get to go in the historybook and I think Miss Pauline is
a good way to kind of payhomage to these strong
(46:58):
matriarchs that exist in most ofour lives in Jamaica.
So I love it.
Go read A House in Miss Pauline, please, and thanks, and so on
that note, until next time, walk.
Good, but guess what?
Me and Diana is going into theafter show.
We're going to elaborate alittle bit.
So make sure say you come intothe community and hear what
(47:20):
we're laughing about.
All right,
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of
Carry On Friends, the CaribbeanAmerican podcast, and with me
today is Diana McCauley.
Diana, how are you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm fine.
Thanks, carrie, and thanks forhaving me.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Wonderful.
I'm very excited to speak withDiana and we're also going to
talk about her lovely book AHouse of Miss Pauline, which I
will ask her if their A House ofMr Biss was an inspiration.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
No, no, I wouldn't say that was an inspiration,
although I did that book atA-level.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, and I actually loved it.
I was so impressed with it, youknow, because somebody my age
at school we didn't do muchCaribbean literature.
You know it was mostly Englishstuff.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
I remember.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, so this was the first time that I can remember
us doing a, you know, a solid, arespected Caribbean work.
It was only after the book hadbeen finished and it had a
different title that mypublisher thought that it was
actually in conversation withthe host for Mr Biswas and
suggested the name.
So it was called Roots of Stonefor most of its life.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Wow, that is very fascinating.
So as a sidebar, you know, likethis story I feel like if I was
going to school back in the day, because I grew up in Mobe, I
went to Alvernia, so I did gothrough high school and I could
count on one hand the Caribbeanliterature.
I read the Jumbie Bird, youknow like very specific books
(01:37):
and you know I love to see whereCaribbean literature is going.
I'm very excited for that.
So enough of me.
Let's tell the audience alittle bit about you, more about
the work you do, caribbeancountry you represent, even
though I think they might have asense of that.
But let's start with a littlebit about you.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
So I am Kingston born and have lived in Kingston all
my life, except for two years atschool in the US, which
happened very late in life.
I tell everybody I'm living mylife backwards the US, which
happened very late in life.
I tell everybody I'm living mylife backwards, you know, late
bloomer, I'm an Andrews girl.
I went to St Andrew High Schooland I've had lots of different
jobs.
I could spend the hour talkingabout the various things I've
done in my life, but the oneprobably I'm well known for is
(02:20):
my environmental work.
I was for about 30 years thefounder and then I led the
Jamaican Environment Trust foralmost 30 years, because I grew
up really loving the outdoors.
I had a dad who took me hikingand swimming and you know just
basically being outside, and Iloved going to the beach and in
(02:42):
the mountains and everything.
And you know, when I was, Iguess, closing on 40, I became
aware that a lot of the placesI'd loved as a child were
disappearing or being destroyedin some way.
And I didn't know anythingabout the environment, but I'm a
reader, so I started to readabout it and the more I read,
the more concerned I got, and soI took some pictures of some
(03:05):
things I, as a lifelongKingstonian, had never seen,
like the Riverton dump and theswitch plants that didn't work
invited my friends and theJamaica Environment Trust was
formed out of those at that timeand eventually I left my job.
I worked for the insuranceindustry in a pretty good job
(03:25):
really to be a non-profit personand you know environmental
loudmouth I used to say Peopleused to call me.
So that's what I did until Iretired in 2017.
But in terms of the writing, Ideclared I was going to be a
writer when I was 13 and havewritten all my life and I still
have in a trunk behind me.
(03:46):
You know, a lot of thehandwritten stuff I did as a
school girl and teenager, youngadult.
But you know my dad, who was abig influence on me, he, and who
was the one who encouraged meto read and to write, but he was
a complicated person and healso said to me that you know,
women couldn't write really, andthey couldn't write great
literature for sure, becausethey didn't do the only thing
(04:08):
that was really worthy of greatliterature, which was go to war.
So I kind of believed him and Iwrote in secret for most of my
life.
So I have a whole pile of booksthat have never been finished
and short stories that I'venever seen the light of day.
But you, you know, as you startto get on and as sometimes
happened, you know, I had alittle health scare and I
(04:29):
thought, you know, if I heard Iwas dying.
The only thing I'd be reallyannoyed about is I never really
tried to publish a book, and soI vowed to do it, and that was
Dog Heart, my first book, whichcame out in 2010.
And I was determined.
I was just going to send it out.
I knew it would be rejected,and I was going to send it out
again and again, and again andagain, until finally I'd find a
(04:51):
publisher, you know.
And so that's how I startedwriting, and Miss Pauline is now
my sixth book, one of those six.
I self-published because Iwanted to see what that journey
was like, and the answer was geta publisher.
So I wanted to see what thatjourney was like, and the answer
was get a publisher.
So, yeah, so that's my story.
I'm a Bonnier and, you know,have loved Jamaica all my life
(05:13):
and right, right really, to theplace.
You'll often hear us all,whether we live here or live
overseas.
You'll hear us say I loveJamaica, whether we live here or
live overseas.
You'll hear us say I loveJamaica, but sometimes I think
we love the idea of Jamaica, butthe actual place itself, which
don't treat it very well.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I love that you say that, and I want to pull on the
environmental string for alittle bit.
Could it be that we feel like,oh, it's always going to be here
, so we don't really take theenvironment seriously?
And do you think environmentalimpact of Jamaica varies based
(05:52):
on whether you live in theinterior of the island versus if
you live on the coast?
Coming from Moby, I grew upseeing Deden, which is you know
how that beach we all love goingto, you know.
(06:15):
It's just one thing you know,you really see erosion and what
that means and what coming up.
You know.
Or I remember my mom went toMount Alvarena and she took a
picture by the library wall andyou could see there was nothing
there, which is now Howard CookBoulevard, and there was nothing
there.
And so I think, in some ways,because we didn't have a lot of
pictures to archive how thelandscape has changed over time,
(06:38):
to really be a very starkreminder that, no, this land is
changing and if we don't becareful, um, it go, disappear in
front of our eyes.
And some of that is for our ownfault, like even the way that
we build up concrete house.
No, no, breadfruit tree in theyard, everything cut down.
So, um, I said enough of mylittle rant about that in in
(07:02):
your time.
The j Jamaica EnvironmentalTrust.
What has been your observationabout our relationship to the
land and the role we play ordon't play in where the land
itself, this land of wood andwater, this idea that we keep
Jamaica is the land of wood andwater, but if we're not careful,
there will be only water, nowood.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Maybe not even water.
You know it's complicated,kerri-ann, that's the thing I
can say.
Most it's somewhat related tooccupation.
So if you are a yam farmer oryou're a fisherman, you may have
a greater appreciation ofthings like the rainy season,
(07:45):
that the rainy season ischanging.
Or if you're a fisherman, youmight have a greater
appreciation that your fishcatches are declining or places
where you used to be able tocatch fish you can't do it
anymore.
Certainly, if you're afisherman, you're aware that the
beach is eroding.
If you're a fisherman, you knowthat mangroves play this vital
role for healthy fish and thehotels are destroying the
(08:07):
mangroves.
So to a degree it's related tooccupation.
It's also related tosocioeconomic class, because if
you are somebody struggling forsurvival, you really have no
time to know whether theatmosphere is all right or even
whether the beach is eroding.
Right, because you're veryfocused on survival.
(08:30):
And then there's also something,I think, in our folklore, in
our storytelling, where weequate bush with things being
backward.
So we do equate concrete withprogress.
So great many Jamaicans willlook at Howard Cook Boulevard
(08:51):
and, whether they remember whatwas there before or not, regard
it as progress.
You know, I think we sort ofcollectively have in our minds
an image of South Florida thatthat is good and that is where
we would like to go.
So I see it differently.
I see that Jamaica is, I think,a unique place, a very special
(09:14):
island with a complicatedhistory.
It's a very diverse island.
You know, I've traveled aroundthe Caribbean quite a bit and
there are other beautifulislands, but they tend not to be
as diverse as Jamaica.
And so I think Jamaica is thisspecial place and it saddens me
that we are apparently willingto just get rid of its
(09:35):
authenticity, its realness, youknow, the thing that is itself,
and make it over in this imageof this other place.
I mean, I think South Floridais fine for South Florida, but
why would we want to emulatethat?
So that's what saddens me.
And then, of course, it's aboutthe health of the natural
environment, which we start toappreciate what it was giving us
(09:57):
when it already starts todegrade.
And a good example of that isthe coral reefs which are badly
degraded along the north coastand they are our first line of
defense against storms.
So we start to see greaterimpact from storms.
The same fisherman we weretalking about earlier he has
less fish to catch because thefish live on the reef.
So by the time we start toappreciate the way it directly
(10:23):
affects us, it might be too late.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
I agree.
So my granduncles, mygrandmother's brothers, they're
fishermen.
So we grew up by the seaside,on White House, you know, over
by the airport where the firstsandals is.
So he would say, yeah, man, nofish, now come again.
The wall of the dirt from thehotel will build up forever, run
down.
But also, a few years ago I wentto jamaica for my father's
(10:47):
funeral and I remember mystepfather was like I was like,
oh, this water look nice andclean.
Him said, no, sir, this waterdirty, man, rainfall or whatever
.
And I in that moment I was likethis water, I'm considered
dirty and I realized that I'velived away from the country so
long.
But what I lost in thatprogress is able to see the
environmental changes that hesaw, like he knew this water
(11:10):
wasn't clean because in the lastcouple of days it's been
raining.
So what looked clear to mecomparison to what's beach in
New York was not good water.
And he was able to look and seenot good water.
And he was able to look and seeand I thought of does the new
generation, are they able tolook at the environment or the
surroundings and tell the waythat?
(11:32):
You know, back in the daypeople could say well, no,
something wrong with this right.
We lose some of that in ourmodernization of the island and
that could also be why it's veryhard to take care of the
environment, because as wemodernize some of those things
that we can use to identify whatis not right about the elements
(11:54):
or the surroundings, we don'tpass that off to the next
generation.
To a certain degree, and I feltthat when my stepfather said,
no man, this water not clean itdirty, you know, and said no man
, this water not clean it dirtyyou know.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, to some degree it's lost.
Yeah, and I know White Housewell.
We did work with the fishers inWhite House over the hotels,
right.
There's a thing inenvironmental circles called
shifting baselines, where everygeneration thinks what it grew
up with is the norm and it'salways been like that.
(12:25):
And unless somebody tells you,like a grandparent or, as you
said earlier, their images, youthink that what was around when
you were a young person is thenorm and you don't really
appreciate the changes that havehappened Now.
Of course, changes happenanyway.
For a while I was quite obsessedwith when Columbus first came
(12:45):
to the Caribbean, which isreally the first time we have
written records of what was seenhere, and so we have Columbus's
logs of the animals that werein the sea in the Caribbean Sea
at the time and that has changedso greatly, and that changed
within about 50 years ofEuropean arrival.
So things do change.
(13:06):
But I think what's happeningnow is the rate of change is
extremely fast and it'shappening way too quickly
without enough considerationabout.
Well, hold on a little bit.
If we take out this stretch ofmangroves, what's that going to
mean for the stability of thebeach?
And when the beach goes, youhear oh well, we have to dredge
sand and that means taking itout of the sea and that means it
(13:29):
has impacts in the sea.
So it's like this snowballingset of problems, and I think
young people know you know I'mgoing to sound like a real old
person, because this is what oldpeople always say about young
people.
This is nothing new always sayabout young people, this is
nothing new but they're notreally so concerned about these
kind of issues, you know they're.
They're more concerned aboutmaterial things and I think
(13:50):
that's a change I've seen in mylife.
Um, you know more about the,about flashy cars and the latest
iPhone and whatever, although Iwill say that when I was with
the environmental group, Iworked with some really great
young people and they were veryconcerned about what we were
doing to their home place, but Iwould say they're not as many
(14:13):
of them as I would like and thechanges that need to happen at
the young level because thisreally is a problem for young
people I won't be around, youknow it hasn't happened in as
wide a scope and or as quicklyas I'd hoped.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Okay, well, thank you for that.
We could always go on about theenvironment, but I want to shift
to Miss Pauline, which, thankyou, this was such a delightful
read.
I will share at the end mynotes on how I connect to it
personally.
But I wanted to ask how much ofthe environment did you factor
(14:49):
in in the story about MissPauline?
Before that, if you can givethe audience a little gist
because me, we spoil it for them.
Get on the whole thing.
So if you could, you know, givea little synopsis about A House
of Miss Pauline.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
So Miss Pauline is a woman, a rural woman.
She's lived all her life inrural St Mary and she's had a
difficult life and she'sapproaching her 100th birthday
and she's taken the stones of anearby plantation ruin, an old
slave house that was lost in theforest, which she finds by
(15:25):
accident, and she's taken thosestones to build her own house,
after her own house wasdestroyed in a hurricane,
because she wants something safewhere she and her family can
live.
And just as she's approachingher 100th birthday, the stones
of her house start to shift inthe night and make these noises
and eventually start to speak.
(15:46):
And she knows at that pointthat there are atonements she
has to make in her own life andshe sets out to do that by
enlisting the help of agranddaughter who lives in the
US to try and make thesereparations, these atonements
that she knows she wants to makebefore she dies.
So it's basically about herjourney to do that and the
(16:10):
secret that she has kept formost of her life.
And you ask about theenvironment in the book, her
real connection to this placewhere she has spent her entire
life, how she feels about it,what it looks like, her love for
where she spent her life andher wish to make sure she sets
(16:32):
things right before she dies.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
I love that summary.
I would agree with the wholething.
But what I do enjoy aboutreading Caribbean literature, as
I said at the top of theepisode, is being able to
connect with the location or theplace where the story is set,
first and foremost.
That's always, for me, it's onething to read a book that's set
in Jamaica, it's one thing tohave a connection to the place,
(16:58):
and for me that's always rarebecause most stories they tend
to set it in Kingston, soanything that's set in Moby,
where I'm from and in this case,while I'm not from St Mary, my
maternal grandfather is from StMary I spent a lot of summers in
Highgate and so when I read itand I was like, oh yeah, st Mary
, that's nice, you know, theonly thing missing was the holy
(17:21):
banana walk conversations.
But it was so good to connect,you know, with the scene and how
they described it at a point,even the hurricane that you
mentioned here.
I would visit St Mary beforethat hurricane and I remember
the difference.
But yeah, not all, diana, ifit's the 88 one, absolutely.
(17:43):
I remember going to St Mary 87,86 and then going back the year
after and just like how thelandscape in my grand aunt's
property had changed because ofthe hurricane, and you know.
So hearing Miss Pauline tellthe story was so moving for me
because, as I was telling myfriend's mom, you know I was
(18:07):
still a child, you know I waswell, maybe I can't remember the
age at this point, but I wasstill a child, but not
understanding the grasp that myparents have to deal with the
shortage of food like shortageof food, me never hungry.
To deal with the shortage offood like shortage of food, me
never hungry.
And I guess I didn't appreciateall the work that she had to do
to make sure I didn't feelhungry.
To me it was, oh, it's funbreeze, blow down everything.
(18:36):
So it is fun time versus, youknow, hearing or reading all
that she had to do to ensure thesurvival of ourself and our
families.
I really appreciated thattelling and I also appreciated
hearing a story from anotherpart of Jamaica that's not
always included in literatureright, like a parish, like St
Mary.
I mean, we might hear about StMary but people may not realize
it's St Mary in the other booksabout James Bond and all these
(19:00):
things, other books about JamesBond and all these things.
I really appreciated that youwent to a parish like St Mary.
That is absolutely beautiful,especially when you drive down
to Port Maria.
But anyway, you know, just totell that.
So I just wanted to say that Iconnected and after this
recording I'll tell you all theother stuff because I'm going to
give the book if I tell theother things that I appreciate.
So when you came up with thecharacter of Miss Pauline, what
(19:25):
was the inspiration for hercharacter?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
So books have a long gestation, or certainly for me
anyway, and I would say MissPauline was a long time coming,
but in no particular order.
I had a great aunt who was bornin 1896.
And she lived until she was 102.
And I knew her well and I usedto think about the changes she
(19:49):
had seen in her whole life.
So as a young woman so one sideof my family is from Black
River so as a young woman shecame to Kingston in a buggy and
I used to think about her beingin the buggy at the bottom of
Spur Tree Hill, you know, whichshe would have called man Bump,
and how that journey might havetaken her two or three days and
she would have been staying inyou know little roadside taverns
(20:13):
or whatever at the time.
And then towards the end of herlife I sat with her and showed
her how to use a computer andyou know she'd flown on an
airplane the whole communicationrevolution with cell phones and
all of that.
I remember we had to get her acell phone with a huge dial
because she couldn't really seeto use a small phone.
So I used to think about thechanges that she had lived in
(20:37):
her life and my experience withher was kind of teasing me in my
mind.
That was one piece, anotherpiece.
So I'm a little obsessed withthe plantation great houses
because, as I explained in anauthor's note at the back of the
book, this story is partlyabout my own ancestry, which I
only discovered relativelyrecently.
I had a family story that myfamily came to Jamaica because
(21:00):
my great grandfather was aBaptist missionary.
He was Scottish and this was mybackground and I used to.
You know people look at me andsay, ah, slave owner.
You know, and I used to, almostbefore the words were out of
their mouth.
But you're not Jamaican, areyou?
I would be telling them, oh, mygreat grandfather was a Baptist
missionary.
Right, leave me alone.
Kind of thing you know, ofthing you know.
(21:21):
So, relatively recent I foundout about this other aspect of
my family on my mother's side,where indeed there were slave
owners in my ancestry.
Even before I knew that, I'vebeen somewhat uncomfortable and
uncertain about what should bedone with the plantation great
houses because some of them arein the most well, most of them
actually are in the mostbeautiful places you can imagine
(21:42):
.
It was hard for me to standthere and think they should be
burnt to the ground.
You know, we should get rid ofthem.
They speak of an atrocity, aterrible crime.
They should be gone.
It was hard for me to standthere.
Anyway, I have a friend whoknew of my writing aspirations
and invited me to a writingworkshop at a great house and I
(22:03):
was in a little tiny room thatwas under the front stairs of
the great house and sleepingthere, I felt like this room had
belonged to a woman, and awoman who was probably some kind
of enslaved woman who lookedafter the people in the house
because she was there to beclose to them, and she took root
(22:28):
in my mind.
So I had this older relativeand then this imaginary woman
who I felt had visited me, ifyou like, or began to speak to
me, although not in an audibleway, from my experience at this
great house.
Then, years passed and during myenvironmental work, a friend
took me to see a ruin in CockpitCountry where I was doing my
(22:51):
environmental work, because itwas built over a sinkhole.
And that's what interested himand I thought built over a
sinkhole, that is so weird, whywould anybody do that?
And what did they do?
Did they drink the water, didthey use it as a toilet, you
know?
And he took me to this placeand it was fallen down and, yes,
indeed, it was built over thesinkhole, and that stuck in my
(23:14):
brain.
And then the final thing was Iwas out for dinner one night and
I heard a story of a foreigner,a man from overseas, who had
come to the same ruin.
That was really a ruin.
It was by then just stonesscattered around the landscape
and had taken the stones of thegreat house to build his own
house.
And I started thinking, well,why a white man, why not a black
(23:39):
woman, a black rural woman fromthat area?
And why is that not a kind ofreparations, a kind of restoring
what was really hers?
And that's a long story aboutthe inspiration for a host for
Miss Pauline.
But I will also say to you andyour listeners that I started
(24:00):
writing this book in thepandemic.
It was during lockdown, Ishould say, and it was
entertainment for myself,because by then, book number
five, I was kind of done withpublication.
I had written all my life and Iwas going to do it just for me,
and I really sat at my computerand started writing what was
then Roots of Stone, no Housefor Miss Pauline to entertain
(24:21):
myself, and I called it my LongStrip of Knitting, so that's
another name it had.
I wasn't bothered with plot, Iwasn't bothered with anything.
I was just going to have funwith this character and let her
onto the page.
She was in my mind.
She'd been in my mind for solong.
Here you go, let me see whatyou do.
And so the book was my longstrip of knitting and I really
(24:42):
wasn't going to send it anywhere.
And then a friend, justineHensel, who is one of the
producers of the CalabashLiterary Festival in Treasure
Beach, sent me this opportunityfor writers over 50.
By then I was well over 50.
I thought, oh well, it's justlike the 5,000 words, nothing
will happen.
Here we are.
It won that competition andthrough that I found an agent
(25:03):
and a publisher and the book'sabout to come out.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Thank you for that.
I think that is such afascinating story and even this
idea of the plantations and whatto do with it.
I think now, in the age that welive in, you know I've seen a
lot of commentaries about peoplehaving weddings at, you know,
former great houses and theyshouldn't do that because
(25:29):
they're dancing on the grays ofyou know all of that.
It could be very contentious,but from your view and from Miss
Pauline's view, you know, missPauline says what is my right
basically to do this, and I'mstill kind of processing because
(25:50):
I think it's easy to say thatwhen you're at such a distance
from these structures, rightLike you don't interact with
them.
You know growing up in Mubei,you know every school trip.
Where are we going, anipama?
You know.
Rosa you know, and you know itwas something that you did not
thinking of.
(26:11):
You know the slavery and andwhat that is.
And I I feel like at some pointthere there are different
narratives we can see it's not.
At some point there aredifferent narratives we can see
it's not.
Yes, there were some atrocitiesand all these other things on
there, but if this is the onlyview that we have of it, then we
may be missing up.
(26:31):
I think we're missing a pointof that story as well.
Right, the tenacity and thesurvival and what happens to the
slaves that were on thatplantation, especially and this
is all coming from my book of,you know, the White Witch of
Rose Hall and how everythinghappened, right.
But I also think it's importantin the retelling of the stories
(26:51):
of these structures and whatthey represent.
And you know, I found myselfsaying I don't see why Ms
Pauline was wrong or anybody inMearsen Hall was wrong for that
point, because it was there andthey should take it.
But what would you say toanyone who's still having
conflicted feelings about thesestructures and how they should
(27:16):
view them as parts of oursociety?
Should view them as parts ofour society or should they
remain as reminders?
Should they be glorified asthese fancy places to go visit?
You know what are your thoughtson these?
Speaker 2 (27:28):
So I'm conflicted too , you know, actually and I say
in the author's note at the endthat I don't really have an
answer to those questions.
I think we should talk about it, though, and I don't stand in a
place where they should bedestroyed.
I also don't stand in a placewhere there should be weddings
either, or, you know, a mentorband and a drink with an
umbrella in it.
It's not that kind of placeeither, although I will say, my
(27:52):
friend who invited me to thatwriter's workshop, she points
out, you know, that thatparticular great house provides
employment for a rural communitywith few opportunities for
employment.
So it is a complicated question.
I would like to see them, Iguess, as more as memorials, and
(28:14):
if we are going to use them inany kind of celebratory way,
such as like a wedding way, suchas like a wedding, that there
absolutely must be some part ofthe whole grounds and the whole
house experience that reallypays tribute to the people who
died there, who labored and diedthere.
I mean, our history, kerri-ann,is complicated, and I don't
(28:35):
think we should shy away fromthat, and it is tragic.
I don't want to see it expunged, you know.
I don't want to see it to notexist at all.
So you know there's, forinstance, there's Vale Royal,
which is near where I live inKingston, that's falling down
and I am sorry to see that.
You know, I'm sorry to see theold buildings from the Hope
Plantation up at Hope Zoo thatare falling down because I would
(28:59):
like to see them used.
I would like to see them usedin a way that benefits current
generations, that recognizeswhat happened there.
If they can provide employmentto people, great.
While we understand theatrocities that happened, if we
can also celebrate the beauty ofthe places, if we can celebrate
(29:21):
the craftsmanship and the skillof the people who built it.
There was no white people thatbuilt it, you know.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, that I know.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
And.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
I think that's where I was going, like, in addition
to the tenacity, that's what Imeant, like the skill it took to
build, because I've been toRose Hall so many times.
Right, or even it could be asource of education, and I think
that's what gets lost when wevillainize the property.
Right, I learned so much.
It's one thing to readsomething in a book, but having
(29:51):
walked through it and seeing itfor yourself and having a lay of
the land, I think it's veryimportant.
They're as close to museums aswe can get and I think they
create an opportunity forlearning that maybe we discount
because they don't look likeagain going back to our earlier
(30:13):
conversation aboutenvironmentalism they don't look
like like the global North'sversion of what is a museum.
You know this is a slave masterhouse and it should be
condemned.
It's part of our history andit's an opportunity to teach the
next generation, especially.
(30:33):
My view is as more peoplemigrate from the region or their
kids.
So my kids, they've never beenthere.
You know it would be anopportunity for them to go there
and learn in a different way,and you know kids learn
differently.
They may not read it in a book,but you have them experience a
space and tell a story in thatway they will remember.
(30:54):
So I think that's how I seethem as a place of learning, a
place of remembering.
You know, this is where we havecome from.
We no longer about there, so welearn from.
You know these things.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
So maybe that's a good way to put it actually,
that we can villainize theevents that took place without
villainizing that place itself.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Maybe that's a good way to look at it, you know, and
that there is an aspect of itfor celebrating the
craftsmanship, the resilience,the determination, the survival,
without celebrating the eventsthat took place.
There's a way for this to be amemorial.
You know, there's a place onthe north coast I don't know if
you ever went to it it's calledSeville Great House, which is
(31:39):
interesting because it has bothTaino, Spanish, English
settlements there, and whatthey've done there is the sort
of English great house is amuseum, so it has artifacts that
were found.
There's a space that is Africangraves that are memorialized,
(32:01):
and then they have built arecreation of a Taino village
because, you know, Tainos didn'tuse stone, they used mud and so
forth, so they didn't surviveand I always thought that was a
good way of doing it.
So, you know, it memorializesthe place without, as I say,
having a mental band and thatkind of thing.
So something like that I alwaysthought was a good way to make
(32:23):
sure these places just don'tfall into ruin.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah, one of the other themes that I think is
also very important in the storyA House of Miss Pauline is what
we've lost in intergenerationalrelationships.
You're a good reader, thank you.
Well, I, my husband and I, wejoke all the time that we did
(32:47):
always hang out with the oldpeople and so we, we, we
understood their language and we, we also, we liked the
relationship with them becausethey were cool people.
You know, there was justsomething that we learned and we
observed and we enjoyed and, aswe're older, we saw the benefit
of.
I was my grandmother Hanbag.
(33:09):
I go everywhere with mygrandmother, every panaka church
, clearly, that's where I was.
I was in more pictures with mygrandmother than I was with my
mom, but I learned so much fromher and her church sisters and
the relationship that I havewith my grandmother.
I love my mom, but myrelationship with my grandmother
(33:30):
is she's a son, you know, and Ivalue that so much.
And so you know when the eldersare around, I know, I know
which joke to tell, I know whichtune to pull, I know whatever
it was to make them happy andthey would tell a story.
And you want to hear thestories and I think that was
(33:51):
Miss Pauline.
I would love Miss Paulinebecause I know Miss Pauline has
some good story to tell.
I just have to get her on agood day and just sit down and
talk to Miss Pauline.
But my experience growing upwith all of the elders isn't
what everyone else's experienceis and we lose so much of our
history and culture becausethere's not that relationship or
(34:15):
connection anymore.
And that is accelerated whenkids go off foreign and leave
the grandparents behind.
And so for me, the story withLamont Poppy, you know, and even
the granddaughter, were thingsthat I liked because I felt like
(34:37):
, you know, in Miss Pauline'sarms length.
You know, don't get close toMiss Pauline in her own way.
You know she was showing hercare, but if you and I think
maybe that's the impatience ofbeing a youth you can't see that
she might come off miserablebut she really cares in her own
way, it just looked and show updifferently and that's what I
(34:58):
really loved about the storywith Miss Pauline.
So when we talk aboutintergenerational relationships,
what were you trying to pullout there and what's the lesson
for the rest of us?
Because I think this book waslike this is a walk-in lesson of
we need to do a bunch of things.
So what was the lesson or thetakeaway you want the audience
to get from the time we haveleft with the elders we have
(35:22):
here, whoever they are in yourfamily, and what should we be
doing with them?
And culturally?
Speaker 2 (35:29):
My father's mother was a big influence in my life
as well.
So I had a grandmother likeyours, you know, and she was a
very strong woman and sheinfluenced me greatly and I
think that's quite a feature ofJamaican life.
You know, a lot of us arereally raised by our
grandmothers feature of Jamaicanlife.
You know, a lot of us arereally raised by our
grandmothers and, if notdirectly raised, they're strong
(35:50):
influences and in literature yourarely find an older woman as a
protagonist, as a hero.
So I wanted to do that.
You know, as I get up in years,I wanted to push back against
this idea that, oh gosh, you'rean older woman, you're invisible
, you don't have a contributionto make anymore.
Just consider that you're alsounder some knitting, which I was
pretending to do when I waswriting the book, you know.
(36:11):
So that was one thing I wantedto give some space for an older
protagonist and I wanted her tobe different.
I wanted her to be, you know, areally atypical Jamaican woman
and not in any way some kind ofstereotype, you know about what
(36:31):
kind of woman she was.
I wanted her to be strong, Iwanted her to overcome these
many odds.
I wanted her to be colorful.
I mean, truthfully, it soundslike I went into this with a
plan and that really is not whathappened.
It was more that she revealedherself to me as I sat down and
let her, and I know that soundscrazy, but it's really my
(36:56):
experience of how these thingshappen.
I don't actually usually startwith a place in my books.
I start with a person, and allof my main characters have come
to me in strange ways, in dreams, in just somehow, you know like
you're staying in this placeand this woman moves into your
head and they start to revealthemselves to me.
(37:17):
And mostly they have not had mylife.
You know these are people thatI have not lived their lives.
I know that.
But I trust them.
I trust what they're telling meis the truth and I hope that
comes out in the pages.
You know that I'm doing justiceto their lives.
And that's not to say I didn'tread quite a bit about rural
(37:37):
Jamaica, you know, at the time,because I grew up in Kingston
and you know I didn't have thatkind of life, so I did read, you
know, books about fiction,about what things were like
there, and hopefully you knowsome of those details are
correct.
So as to what to do with ourelders.
(37:58):
I think we're losing some ofour stories, you know, and these
people have these amazingstories to tell.
Now I know I'm getting likethis myself.
You know, when you're talkingto old people they repeat
themselves, and a lot of medon't hear that story 25 times
about the time you went to themarket and you forgot to bring
(38:18):
back the change, and, to adegree, young people get a bit
impatient with that.
But I think the richness ofthose stories is really
something that we should notlose, and I try to do it in the
way that I do things in books.
But you know there are otherways oral histories, film, what
you're doing here with thisinterview.
I think that's really, reallyimportant because they have such
(38:41):
rich stories and these days weneed a lot of different ways to
tell those stories.
You know it can't always be thewritten word.
It has to be many, manydifferent things, and so I hope
that Miss Pauline will sparksome interest in that, in
talking to old people,especially old women, and
learning about how they actuallyraised families in these, you
(39:03):
know, very, very difficultcircumstances and how, in fact,
they will often tell you, youknow, that they had a happy life
, despite what you look at fromthe outside and say, oh my gosh,
you know he didn't have anyrunning water and he didn't have
an inside bathroom.
They are going to tell you howit was great, and I think that's
(39:25):
something that we regardourselves as modern Jamaicans
need to hear.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Yeah, I was going to ask about the research because
you know there were so manyspecific things particularly
with Clive, the building on theroads and all these other things
that I was like how muchresearch did you do?
But you kind of said you triedto get as specific as possible
with how rural living is, evengrowing up, like visiting St
(39:51):
Mary, I understand, like youknow going into Highgate and you
know it was.
To me it felt like, oh yeah, Iknow what she's talking about,
like my, my grandfather'sbrother, he also lived in
Islington, so you know we'regoing to go up on Uncle Sonny
Farm and it was just a wholetrek.
So to me it felt as realisticas I can remember as a
(40:13):
nine-year-old going to St Maryand visiting.
The other thing that I lovedabout the story was the
juxtaposition with old and new.
Like the post office, the localPA is still there but we have
internet, right, I said ofcourse this makes sense.
Somebody still go and send aletter, even though you know
(40:35):
nobody really does that anymore,and I think that's for me,
going back to Jamaica.
It's always these modern andthings that represent the past
that still coexist in a way, andmaybe because people are in the
space, they don't think of it,but me, returning as a visitor
to home, I see it more clearlyand they remind me of a time
(40:58):
that no longer exists exists.
So, um, I don't know how muchthought you put into like making
those specifics to the storyabout a library where even here
in America, who go to thelibrary anymore, you know with
the internet, you know um.
So I I wanted to know if thatwas like intentional of having
the library and the post officeagainst all these modern
(41:23):
amenities even in a rural place.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
So I think you know, if you want to write
successfully, you've got tostart to look, you have to
observe, right.
So and if you pay attention towhat's around you, then the next
step is you ask yourself, whatdoes it mean?
And I have really observed lifehere in lots of different ways.
I mean, my first book was setin Kingston, you know again, a
(41:47):
life I did not live.
So you look first and then youthink what does it mean?
And to me, this sort ofcoexistence of what was with
what is and also what is comingbut not yet here, is good, it's
a valuable thing.
That's why I don't want the oldthings to be pulled down and
(42:10):
forgotten, right.
And I have a thing that I saythat Jamaica is a place, a
country, that is both dying andbeing born at the same time.
So I think, all around us we seethat.
We see buildings that arefalling down, we see new
buildings, we see billboardsthat are moving because of, you
(42:34):
know, some really complicatedtechnology and right next to it,
a stoplight that's not workingand hasn't worked for three
weeks, you know.
We see markets that I meanmarkets have been such a feature
of our life going way back intohistory, but many of our
markets.
The roof has fallen off andit's a tarpaulin, and then it's
(42:55):
right next to this really shinyoffice building.
You go down to downtownKingston and that's what you
will see.
You will go to the fishingbeach at White House, which is
still there, and right next doorto it is an all-inclusive hotel
, you know.
So I think there's this conflictthat is and I don't even know
if I want to say it's a conflictthis commentary on a country
(43:16):
that is moving from one stateinto another state.
That is just ever-present forme and that's what I gravitate
to describing and, like I say, Ithink it's a valuable thing.
I think it's a city that I love, london, where my son lives.
I think that's one of thethings I've done so well,
because all over London thereare these old buildings, you
(43:38):
know, and they're all inbeautiful repair and it's got a
little plaque outside sayingsome man lived there and next to
it now is some skyscraper thatlooked like a picture and it's
just the latest in everythingand I like that.
I think it's interesting, it'svaried, it asks questions of you
(43:58):
, you know, and I see some ofthat here and I want to keep it.
I want to keep the library.
I'd like them to fix thetraffic light as well, but I
want to keep the library.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Yeah, I feel the same way.
Whenever I go back to Jamaica,I want to go to Sangster's and
buy books, because I can onlyget books there and I don't want
to buy them online.
I want to go to, you know,certain bakeries.
You know it's because theyconnect me to memories.
(44:32):
My grandmother is no longerhere, so you know they are part
of memories.
You know, you see them and youknow I can't explain it.
It's like it's just a tangiblememories.
You touch it, you know, youknow where this is, even Creek
Street, if I pass by and whenthey're growing up they say, oh,
river, mumma under the dome andall these things, right, like I
(44:53):
don't care.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Definitely she's under the dome.
I just want to say that.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Right.
So you know the idea of goingup the steep steps, you know,
through barracks, road to infantschool, like those are
important aspects of memory andmemory in that way they trigger
stories and for me, I love thestorytelling that the old folks
do.
I absolutely love it.
So, on that note, what is yourfinal takeaway for anyone who's
(45:22):
thinking of reading it butthey're not sure, even though I
think they'll to read it becausethey're going to like Miss
Pauline?
But any last words for theaudience before we go to the
after show where I can ask youall my wonderful questions.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Oh man, they must read it.
They must read it.
I mean, I find this part ofbook writing hard where you've
got to go up to people and tellthem to buy a book, right, and
how it's wonderful and the best.
I'm not very good at it, but Ithink of all and, like I said,
this is my sixth book I lovedMiss Pauline.
I loved spending time with her.
I wanted to see what she wasgoing to do.
(46:07):
I loved her, her feistiness,her directness, her strength,
but also her kindness, you know,and the way she would take no
nonsense.
She was such a role model forme, right?
I want to be that kind of oldperson if I'm given that length
of time.
I think my book is, as all ofmy books have been, a tribute to
Jamaica, you know, a sort ofputting into words how I feel
about it, what a special placeit is.
Yes, of course, difficult, it'sdifficult, and yes, it has a
(46:28):
difficult history, but it's alsounique and interesting and
fascinating and, yeah, I hopeyou love it.
Read it, man.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
It's good.
It's good and for me I thinkMiss Pauline is, like I said, an
amalgamation of plenty Jamaicanwomen.
You can see aspects of them inMiss Pauline and those women
don't get to go in the historybook and I think Miss Pauline is
a good way to kind of payhomage to these strong
(46:58):
matriarchs that exist in most ofour lives in Jamaica.
So I love it.
Go read A House in Miss Pauline, please, and thanks, and so on
that note, until next time, walk.
Good, but guess what?
Me and Diana is going into theafter show.
We're going to elaborate alittle bit.
So make sure say you come intothe community and hear what
(47:20):
we're laughing about.
All right,
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