by Kellie Magnus
The power of storytelling as a tool for liberation took center stage at the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival last week. The location was apt: the Weeksville Heritage Center in Central Brooklyn, an historic site and cultural center that uses education, arts and a social justice lens to inspire engagement with the history of Weeksville, one of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America.
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The panelists were prime: noted Caribbean academic Sir Hilary Beckles took the stage, in conversation with Dr. Richard Georges, the Poet Laureate of the British Virgin Islands and current president of the H. Lavity Stoutt Community College.
The event was presented as a partnership between the BCLF and the BVI Literary Festival.
What ensued was a wide-ranging conversation through matters personal and political. Georges led Beckles through a discussion of thechallenges of balancing being a university administrator with maintaining the curiosity required for writing and advocacy, from Beckles’ early mentors – his entrepreneurial grandfather to his history teacher in Barbados, whose lecture on Toussaint L’Ouverture stayed with him through his time in high school and university in the UK. The discussion also touched on his subsequent return to the Caribbean to teach at the University of the West Indies and his involvement in local social justice movements and the personal sacrifices and risks that brought.
With more than twenty books on Caribbean history and social justice to his credit, Sir Hilary’s dexterous command of history was expected. More notable is his ability to charm the crowd with humour and his capacity for telling stories with well-drawn characters and painterly imagery, befitting the BCLF stage.
Central to the conversation was the power of stories – how stories of the fights for freedom in one country sparked similar rebellions in other parts of the Caribbean and around the world, and how the work of young Caribbean intellectuals like Arthur Lewis and Claude McKay inspired activism through slave rebellions, fights for emancipation, fights for independence, and negotiations for support.
For Beckles, there wasn’t a rush to respond, but instead he reached back into history to set the context on how to engage in good faith in a conversation on reparations with a government that holds contradictory and (problematic) views on the reasons for and rewards from its colonial past. He touched on how well Caribbean people are prepared for the current phase of the fight for liberation; the value of examples, inspiration, action on regional solidarity and pooling the strengths of each country in the region; questions on climate change; progress on the CARICOM commission and reparatory justice.
Beckles always began by historicizing. This is the seventh iteration of the discussion on reparations – Emancipation in the 1820s-30s by the enslaved people; children born free to newly freed slaves; freedom movements of the 1870s; Garvey’s movement; independence movements.
“Reparatory justice is an inter-generational struggle. This isn’t about us. This is about those to come. Each wave we get closer.”
“Every generation produces a wave towards emancipation and sovereignty…There has to be a small group of people who are prepared to constitute a movement and spark the imagination of the majority,” Beckles said.
“I found Sir Hilary’s story intriguing,” says Andie Davis, Barbadian-American author whose newly released book, “Let Me Liberate You”, tackles a returning Barbadian’s involvement in local social justice issues.
“His regional perspective underscores that we’re all living the same liberation struggle, whichever island, family, social class or state of mind we happen to occupy. We may drift over oceans and generations but we’re still tethered. As a writer interested in how class, race and color shape our lives, I find his work to be a treasure trove of inspiration.”
Jamaican publisher, Tanya Batson Savage affirmed the BCLF’s role as a platform for uniting the Caribbean and diaspora.
“Living in Jamaica, one tends to feel cut off from the Caribbean’s archipelago. It was refreshing to listen to Sir Hilary point to ways in which the Caribbean is a space where ideas – often revolutionary ideas – refracted from one island to the next and created significant global impact.”
A warning that slavery always comes when there’s a new frontier to colonize, it begs the question – What will the colonization of space look like? As BCLF Founder, Marsha Massiah put it in her opening, “the work of moving forward has everything to do with the work of looking back.”
The conversation is available on the BCLF Instagram page @bklyncbeanlitfest
Kellie Magnus is the Executive Director of the Caribbean Culture Fund, a new initiative to raise
funds for creatives and cultural organizations in the Caribbean and its diasporas. Visit
caribbeanculturefund.org.
