All taxation reflects an assessment of social needs and priorities, as well as principles of who should contribute and how.įor example, VAT applies equally to all consumers, whether rich or poor, and is therefore inequitable. However, the cost of literature, even locally produced, was increased.Īt the time, the finance minister described the tax regime as fiscal policy, not social policy, but that’s merely a mirage. Educational materials such as school texts and exercise books are exempt. Perhaps if Caribbean books were more accessible, we might see each other’s outward violence and inner confusions more compassionately, finding characters in novels or descriptions in poems that enable us to recognise and forgive even ourselves.īooksellers may make sales, but their trade is a labour of love, hardly making the profit they should, perhaps explaining why we have more rum shops than bookshops - places to drown loneliness and sorrows rather than be steadied by the humanity of shared desires and fears.Ĭontributing to this situation is a senseless tax on books imposed by the present government in February 2016. Perhaps if they were more affordable, more men would buy them instead of guns, carrying smaller ones rolled in their back pocket to read instead of killing time rolling weed. I was like a child clenching precious pennies. However, deciding on the hard sweet or the soft toffee was also a matter of money. Such choices were a question of space I’ve no more empty bookshelves even after agonizingly whittling down by about seven boxes to mostly Caribbean literature. While the One Caribbean Media (OCM) award, symbolising the most commended book of the festival, went to Ayana Lloyd Banwo for her outstanding novel, “When We Were Birds,” the poetry prize went to Anthony Joseph for his recent collection, “Sonnets for Albert,” which captures his memories of his father in snapshots of vivid verse, and the non-fiction prize was awarded to Ira Mathur’s epic transnational autobiography, “Love the Dark Days.”Ĭircling the national library’s atrium in-between sessions, I pressed close to booksellers’ tables like a candy store window, trying to decide which books to buy. The connection to both writers and their work felt wonderfully intimate and familiar, so typical of us in these small islands.

In-person or online, one could hear readings from recent publications, and backstories from this generation of award-winning Caribbean authors as they are ascending a global stage. There was a glittering wealth of writing from the Caribbean. This article, originally published in the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, is republished below with permission.įrom April 28-30, the NGC Bocas Lit Fest - arguable the Caribbean's premier literary festival - gathered more than 100 novelists, short-story writers, biographers and poets to exuberantly celebrate books.

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