At various points in his writing career, Earl Lovelace has asked a necessary question: What have we done with what we have done?

“It’s a question that may at first sound simple,” noted Nicholas Laughlin, festival and programme director of the Bocas Lit Fest, in May at a Bocas event marking the Trinidadian writer’s 90th birthday. “But it truly isn’t. It requires us in the first place to consider who we are, who is and is not encompassed in that plural pronoun. It requires us also to define the concepts of agency and achievement.”

At a time of great geopolitical upheaval, Lovelace’s question seems as relevant as ever. To ask what the Caribbean has done with its independence is to question whether the region, with its uneasy amalgam of distinct small-island states, has achieved the ideals of regional integration. It is also to question the myriad ways in which independence might be defined, including political, economic and cultural. As regards the latter, Lovelace’s novels, While Gods Are Falling, The Schoolmaster, The Dragon Can’t Dance, The Wine of Astonishment, Salt and Is Just a Movie, stand as proof of what is possible from a writer rooted within the Caribbean space. It is a space still subject to ongoing illumination, as demonstrated by this month’s launch, at the recently concluded BVI Lit Fest, of Akashic Book’s Virgin Islands Noir, a major new anthology of fiction that delves into the darker secrets of the islands and includes the likes of Tiphanie Yanique, Richard Georges, Traci O’Dea, Tobias S Buckell and Celeste Rita Baker.

In addition to a raft of new work showcasing what is being done by writers of the global Caribbean diaspora, this issue of Moko contains a special section devoted to writing published, whether through budding imprints or as small-scale self-published zines, within the region by writers who live and work in the space. Such writing includes selections from authors recently published by Peekash Press, the imprint started by Peepal Tree Press in the UK and Akashic in the US and now administered by Bocas in Port of Spain, as well as from zine-makers who in August in Trinidad took part in UN|FOLD, an ongoing collaboration between Alice Yard and SPEC*, which for the last two years has provided a space for DIY/micro-publishers, zinemakers, and artists experimenting with print media to show, swap, and sell their work on a small scale.

Also featured are the recent winners of the BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean. Named after the late Trinidadian-American novelist, who died in November 2024, the award acknowledges the different circumstances of writers who choose to remain in their backyards. These pieces, by Brandon Mc Ivor and Diana McCaulay, can stand as tributes to Nunez, and I extend my gratitude to the Brooklyn Caribbean Lit Fest organisers for their continued collaboration. I would also like to thank Hassan Ali for some editing assistance and Cindy Allman for generously pointing to one of the titles in our reading roundup. Special thanks to Kvita Mongroo for Issue 25’s cover art.

This issue is overdue but nonetheless arrives just in time. It is published in a year in which not only has Lovelace been commemorated but also in a year in which Peepal Tree Press, the pioneering publisher based in Leeds, celebrates its 40th anniversary. For decades, the press has been engaged in the ongoing discourse of what it means to be Caribbean, a discourse in which writers have been central. I participated in a special anniversary celebration at the Writer’s Centre, Port of Spain, home of the Bocas Lit Fest, on November 8, in which the writers James Aboud, Danielle Boodoo-Fortune, J Vijay Maharaj and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw were each asked to select a Peepal Tree title of personal significance to them. In a reminder of the remarkable breath of this publisher, Chinese Lanterns from the Blue Child by Anthony McNeill, Approaching Sabbaths by Jennifer Rahim, Here by Raymond Ramcharitar, and Sic Transit Wagon by Barbara Jenkins were selected by these authors respectively. Chosen by me was Breanne Mc Ivor’s Where There Are Monsters, a book which is infused with the past through its vein of folklore and its references to traditional Trinidadian Carnival characters. It is a book which also looks, much like the Peepal Tree project, unflinchingly at the present, something which Lovelace’s question invites us to do.

 

–Andre Bagoo, managing editor