Oh, baby, it’s a wide world: A Grand Place Book Review by TheWordyPhoenix

Sneak peek at my FAVORITE page from this beauty!

Grenada's intimate relationship with an extended family connection is put onto the map of the literary landscape by Grenadian creators, in the new children’s book 'A Grand Place'

Written by Leighan Renaud and illustrated by Elizabeth Lander this short story picture book, set on the island of Grenada, is a story of a young West Indian girl on a grand adventure. The reader is taken on a journey through rhyming words and vivid pictures, as the central character encounters old and new experiences, in the search for a beloved member of the book's cast. There are elements of mystery within it too, that keep the reader turning pages, in order to find out what or who, the young protagonist will encounter before reaching the goal.

The story embraces the captivating call to exploration found in youth. It enforces the importance of familial ties on a small island that nurtures the building of bonds through the treasured traditions of village play and family visitations.

The author's smooth, rhythmic, use of language is poised to capture the book’s target audience of ages 0-7. All while the illustrations, filled with lush curtains of pastoral grandeur, simultaneously work with the words to enhance the reader experience. Together, they put on display plot, character, and setting design, that are recognizable attributes of Caribbean lifestyle.

This story is buzzing with portrayals of Grenada through the use of its location, stylized in watercolor. The audience has to look forward to, on the page as they peruse the book: moments of unsullied landscapes, post-colonial architecture, familiar seasides, and even vendor populated marketplaces, filled with local fruit stands. This vibrant acknowledgment of people and place, birthed by Grenadian’s creatives, works to engage the eyes and mind of any curious reader at home or abroad.

It is literature that depicts West Indian life in its authenticity and is an opportunity for diverse young readers to see themselves depicted on the page, from a non-Eurocentric perspective. A fact that remains extremely valuable in a world market where the shelves are, more often than not, populated by much the opposite.

A Grand Place is, without a doubt, a fervent read for any literature enthusiast, yearning for a story of island life and the escapades bound to ensue. Filled with vibrant Caribbean colours on every page, it makes itself a pocketable presentation of elements of Grenadian culture. It is an enamoring tale of how big the world can be to a young person, no matter the size of their geographical location. The author manages by the story’s end to balance that longing to keep family close with the wonder of a world yet discovered. 

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Auntie of many that I am, I'm so excited about this new jem to add to the libraries of the young ones that I care about. Not to mention the beautiful teaching tool this will be!

If you are thinking about purchasing this gorgeous book you can pre-order A Grand Place here.Get a head start if you're already thinking about want to gift this beauty this holiday season, as we face this pending world wide shortage of goods. Capitalize on the link above! Pre-orders to a great job of telling publishers that there is an interest in the author's work so if you want to make the weight of your dollar count? Clickity click!

Peace. Love. Literature.

Well that escalated quickly

 

Hey,

Yeah, I know, it's been a long time but uh, the word kind of turned upside down for a year there. I'm making my way back. Watch this space. 

 

HELLO PHILLY! : Signs of Love and Rocky Balboa

So...turns out you can go to Philadelphia from NYC for $12 buck!
And if you book your trip on World Travel Day, you can go via  the comfort and eas of Amtrack for $30
Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you, who could pass that up?
Not Meeee!

In my ever chase for art around the world I also thought it would be wonderful to see the Statue of Rocky Balboa the city has proudly standing near their museum. I wanted to venture into the art museum too but alas there was a 25 dollar cover charge that day and I am a broke international student far from home. Never the less, the statue is a gorgeous and detailed piece!

 "It's not about how hard you can hit. It's about hard you can get hit and keep moving forward."

Did I ever need to be reminded of that just then...this semester of grad school is kicking my ass and it hurts y'all...

The last stop was The Victor's Bar, used in the film as Rocky's restaurant. I was not prepared for how this place blew my mind. The food was not only good but is was served by waiters and waitresses all classically trained as OPERA SINGERS! That night I heard Opera in Filipino, German,  Swiss and French just to name a few.

They also invited us to come in an hour early and see their music lounge which is one of the most beautiful rooms upstairs the restaurant. It's got it's own bar, a private bar tender, candle lighting, photographs of the staff  with the crew of Rocky and gorgeous Victorian style interior design.

I was smitten! Yes, this post was per-scheduled. I thought I'd share it with you as it happened exactly a month before the world went into lock down.

Also, boy oh boy has this editor changed...forgive me while I figure this out?

Peace. Love. Stay well friends!

A January Adventure :: Brunching and Adulting

I had the joy of going to Brunch with my favorite Grenadian illustrator this January. I was ever nervous what with not knowing this country as I'd like but it was easy enough to find the location. Something so simple turned out to be so lovely. Just a few Grenadians meeting up a' foreign. We shared some hot beverages and a little treat and talked about how much our country has changed for the better and for the worse in our life time.

It warmed my heart so deeply.

Being far from home only cements for me the civic responsibility thrust into the hands of so many of us. This is a unique thing when you are a creative. You see maybe the way your impact will not be immediately recognized like the lawyer, the doctor or the politician. Maybe people will look at you and say, ah, but there is so much life without you. As though art has never healed. As though art has never defended or accused. As though art has never lead.

It was a soul fueling conversation with these ladies at the lovely little shop we brunched at and I'm grateful for their time and encouraging words. I truly understand now the phrase women support women in a way that it's never been so clear to me. I understand it more and more as I grow and achieve and am blessed with the mentor-ship of successful women who have struggled and won before me.

Here's to more women supporting women in 2020!

Peace. Love. Support.

Little Women 2019 Adaptation :: Own Your Story

 

 So I saw Little Women the 2019 adaptation with these wonderful, powerful, beautiful ladies recently! I was so teary eyed so much of the time too because this adaptation focuses on Jo's narrative i thought very well and her story means SO MUCH to me personally.

Little Women serves as a reminder that every woman's idea of a fulfilled future can be and is likely different but is still equally valid. 

It reminds us that yes, you can like dresses or romping, exploring the bushes with your platonic male friends or sewing fine silks into ballroom dresses. You can be a stay at home mom in a sweet cottage with your husband or want to tour Europe and live a life of worldly artistic appreciation or a  life as a woman chasing her professional passions or all of the above. Why judge a woman for wanting any of these choices is what the film seems to ask.

When I read the book of course I felt deeply connected with Jo. The march sister who wanted to climb trees, tour Europe for it's ascetic qualities as fuel, be a writer and who eventually moves to New York City in this crazy move to do just this. As I grow older, watching this adaptation it was interesting to see how my friends felt connected to different March sisters and how even I, appreciated the other March sisters in an entirely different way.

This adaptation brings a great contemporary lens the the cause and effect of living as a woman in a world that does not respect womanhood as equally valuable. A world that places constraints on what a woman should look like and how she should spend her life. What she should be passionate about and what should make her whole. A world that policies women's bodies and then tells them to work as everyone else works even knowing that they have set up systematic constraints that make this not impossible but incredibly unequal...

My favorite part about this rendition of Jo March is that she yells in the face of the audience the secret pain of many modern women. It is a pain of responsibility. To know that you deserve more and to understand that your journey towards more is likely to be a lonely trudge. To understand that the world sees a woman's loneliness as a weakness or as her punishment for wanting more. The successful woman is not supposed to admit to being lonely. She is supposed to be comforted by her success. As if loneliness is not a human emotion. She is expected to be superhuman to be given the respect of humanity. Again here is the tipping of the scales towards an inequality we have not yet managed to fix or even look holistically in the face without blushing. 

I love that the story of Little Women reminds us that every story, every secret dream and dared for hope informs us that there is no one right way to be a woman. There is just the bittersweet beauty of growing into womanhood in a world that pushes back on it. 

Rest assured, it might be hard to be a woman then and now but it can still be beautiful after all.

If you're really really blessed? Maybe you'll get to do it with women who will support your struggle and your dreams and not judge you for not 'doing it right' Women who know too there isn't necessarily a right way...just A WAY at the end of it all to be a woman and that way is linked to being the truest version of yourself you can manage.

I'll tell you something else, I cannot wait to see what happens when woman dares to take on the task of betraying Jo through an inter-sectional feminist lens. What of a multiracial Jo? Jo as a person of colour? A non-binary Josaphine March? What will Jo of the gen Z look like? Now there is a question...there, is a thought.

Peace. Love. Equality.

20 Adventures in 2020!

So I haven't done much in the way of yearly goals on here yet. I thought I'd start with one first and not put to much pressure on myself as I continue my MFA. This year I will be attempting to have 12 adventures in 2020. Once I get that out of the way, as I suspect I will, I am going to up this goal to 20 because I mean, come on, 20 in 2020! Who could resist?

If you're wondering what exactly they are the truth is I do not know...yet. I'm embracing the unknown this year in this way.I'm letting myself do more than plan Truly crazy for me but hey, onward ever right?

I will be cataloging them here.
Watch this space.
The first one will be posted soon

Happy New Year y'all!

Christmas in NYC 2019

So what does Christmas in New York City look like exactly?

Well, when you're away from home, largely dependent when you're not used to so being, submerged in a completely different culture than your own, it looks like excitement and loneliness wrestling for top rank.

It means classmates and people asking you "So what do you miss about Christmas at home?" and you opening your mouth to tell them but not being able to put it to words in a way they could relate to just then. Understanding in that moment as you feel the absence that Christmas at home is sensational. It is the smell of cakes in homes and shops. It is people in the market desperately searching for sorrel. It is stores all lit up and more people in the city than usual, speeding along, looking and looking and planning for feasts with friends and family. It is eggs gone scares and upped in price  It is stepping into a bus and sighing as you exclaim 'prang already!?" but singing along before you know it. It is Christmas music over the radio system of your favorite grocery store.

It looks like sitting back and realizing that you are an adult who has spent the last decade establishing traditions and happy habits that are now across the ocean. It means missing watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer or Home Alone for the gazillionth time with your mom as you eat lunch at dinner time because you did more laughing than cooking in the kitchen that day.

It means missing your big brother's laughter as he comes barreling down the steps of your home with sweet cakes, yelling Merry Christmas over excitedly.

It means not running into friends you haven't seen all year, on the streets or more importantly, in the grocery store, bonding over the exorbitant prices of turkey hams.

It means missing your dog and your cactus plant and your miniature Christmas tree and the bedding, pillows and lights you got yourself, with money you worked for that you put up just once a year to decorate your room. Decorations that you'd been so proud of putting together in a space that is yours.

And it means doing this alone, in the dark. Not telling anyone because you understand that you also have religious affiliation with this holiday and you're in a country where they'd rather you keep your beliefs to yourself thank you very much.

It also means your friends will go out with you on eve of eve and see the city of New York fantastically alight.

It means eggnog for the first time.

It means red, green and Christmas lights used and appreciated in a new way.

It means Christmas dinner with an aunt you spent a large part of your teen years missing. Laughing with her and eating cranberry sauce with turkey.

It means the extra ordinary kindness of strangers.  Like a sweet new friend buying you a Rudolph plushie to keep you company while you miss your mom. Your friend giving you a journal to remind you that this too is part of your story and you've got to write it down.  Live it in the moment and appreciate the moment because this moment too will end.

It means being homesick for your best friends and telling them and feeling connected to them even from far away because the solid true friendships you built cannot be shaken by space. It means Caribbean new friends giving you warm bottie socks because they thought of you and how you would struggle through your first Winter because they know that struggle well. It means your Puerto Rican friend sharing his cultural, home made drink with you after telling you about it for years! It means...so much.

It is a melancholia...knowing that no backwards step will ever fill this spacing where something is newly missing and no forward step will ever compare. It is understanding and accepting that they don't have to do that that they don't need the weight of that responsibility. It is coming to grips with the fact that change is okay even though it is bitter and sweet both.

Christmas, away from home, has the ability to make you cherish your intangible national treasures.

Peace. Love. Appreciations.

Sometimes You've got to Take A Chance on Yourself first || Big Changes || JULY 2019 Catch Up

So what have I been up to let me tell you!

Writing and writing and writing.
Getting ready to self publish.
Getting into grad school.
Realizing that I have no way to make that dream happen and having to defer.
Loosing the ability to defer and having to make big decisions about my future, my job, moving, being a student again but this time in a foreign country while low visioned.
Doubting E V E R Y T H I N G
Waiting on God.

So....I got into Grad school y'all! I am about to start the degree of my dreams in a matter of days! I...cannot tell you what I am thinking. I just keep chasing my dreams, ending up in bigger and scarier situations than the last.

Is this the summary of life??

I have been packing and praying and trying to stay calm and failing and filling out form after form. I've sought scholarships and loans and done so much searching and asking question after question that just keeps leading me to dead ends.

I have come face to face with people in the position to help and have been forced to come to terms with the reality that they will not because "I just don't believe in you."  Yeah, that sucks to hear doesn't it? It sucks to live too.

Now don't get me wrong, I have a score of wonderful people who believe in me. So many people who have kept me feeling empowered. There are people in my life who have done all they can to help me take a step forward and I wish there was a bigger, weightier word than 'Thankful' and 'grateful' to express to them how I feel...

You see in this life it's already hard enough to get someone to believe in your ability. It is even more so when you HAVE a disability. This is why it has taken me so long to write about this...because it's hard to go here. It's hard to have this conversation about what a disability is, what an INVISIBLE disability is, why disability is not a bad word. Why because you know me and you've seen me adapt to get by successfully in some case or another, that does not disqualify me from that term and why, that term does not belittle me or box me into being a person who is not able to succeed. I want you to understand how saying to a person "Yeah but you are not reeeeally disabled though" says more about what you think about people who have disabilities and their ability to achieve and live normal, happy, lives than it does about me or that word.

I know we've come far but people get very defensive with words like those. As if you are belittling someone else's struggle when you imply that you too have an uneven footing to get past.  That is a whole different discussion however, I am not hear to fight over disability, what it looks like, what you think it should look like to gain your seal of approval.

I am here to say that I got into grad school.
This legally blind girl from the Caribbean who has had over 10 cancer cell removal surgeries.
Who is the first of her family to get this far.
This girl who learned to read at nine years old because she couldn't see the blackboard or the books.
This girl, who survived it, you don't need to know what it is.
This girl someone took a chance on and let into primary school.
This girl who squinted at too small printed in a primary school exit exams and passed it independently on her first go.
This girl who was told by her then secondary school principal that she would never amount to anything less than a month before graduation.
This girl who got an Associated Degree in humanities anyway.
This girl who even after being told by that same principal who ended up being her first boss, that he would "Never allow her to teacher" taught for thirteen years, reading and literature and self worth to every student she met.
This girl who saved every dime and financed her self through university and finished with a Bachelors in English and Literature with Education.

This writer girl turned woman. This one, who wrote these words you are reading and has wrote words you've read before. Who has loved and mentored and fought to make her country better with both her hands and still been told I just don't believe in you. when it came to taking the next bold step by every bank and credit union in the country she loves, when it came time to take the next step.

This girl is going to get a Masters Degree in Creative Writing anyway...somehow. Scared and all.

So for the next two years of my life I can honestly tell you I have no idea what is in store and I, a type A, engram one, stubborn Aries hate the unknown. When you're visually impaired it's like living in a pool of unknown around the clock already for goodness sake. Your very foot step is a step into the unknown because is that a step or is that a shadow and will I be safe and how and-

Watch this space because this girl? This girl is going to take another crazy chance on herself.

Will you route for me? I hope you'll route for me friend. I'll be honest, for as much as I just said, there are NO grantees. I could fail. I have only saved enough money for the first semester of this big crazy dream and...I could fail pretty bad. But I'm getting on a plane, I'm leaving everything I know and love behind anyway and I'm going to chase my dreams like my life depends on it because I'll be honest, it kind of does.

Want to help?DM my facebook page thewordyphoenix and lets talk about it!

Peace. Love. Let's Go get'em!
This post was written in July 2019

Grenada Chocolate Festival 2019 | Brunch At the Tower & The Magic of Old Houses

I had the pleasure of attending Brunch at The Tower as well as be part of a Garden tour there during this year's Grenada Chocolate Festival; 2019. I don't know about you but for me being in extremely old houses has an air of magic. There is a mysticism in the reality that generations of people walked and worked these halls. Especially, since this house has a colonial past. There is history here, in every brick that was carried over on slave ship, then made part of this house's foundation. There is life energy in every flower planted by hands willing and unwilling both.

The Tower Brunch grows a plant seen all about Grenada called Butterfly Pea Flower. I admittedly, had never heard of it before attending the brunch. I am so glad that changed! Of course I looked it up and what did I find? Small island beauty as it is the Butterfly Pea Flower is famous and has been used in many a drink due to it's vibrant blue coloring!

 The Butterfly Pea Flower, when used for tea releases a richly hued dye that gives The Tower's signature blue ice tea it's mystique. It's an experience worth having to be handed a brightly brewed blue ice tea . I suggest strongly that you have a visit to The Tower and request it!

Brunch was an island mix of locally grown, organically tended, unique dishes. From warm dark chocolate doused savory dishes to juicy, fun shaped fruit salad that lavished your tongue in sweet fruit flavor, the moment you bit down.

And of course, tea, always tea! We are not, regardless of Columbus's fabricated ledgers, savages after all. Har har, see what did there?

Did the awe of this property stop there? No dear friends, it was just beginning! Onward, to the garden tour!!

 

The garden is alive and is felt all over the property, not just in it's designated section. It grows, extending leaves, branches, hands of praise to the sky. It embraces pillars and stairs, benches and pathways.  You cannot escape it in a way that you do not want to do.

I have come to understand that, at least in the case of my people, when we say that we are islanders people do not hear it all. They do not hear that we feel it. That we are saying we are part of this fertile soil, that we fill ourselves on this sweet, sacred Caribbean air. That we grow food with our hands and bent backs and knees. That we are kissed by freedom on the breeze.

Maybe they would understand better if they took a slow stroll through a living, breathing garden too...

Or maybe they still wouldn't understand. Maybe there is no understand the bones of a culture...there is experiencing though that I know for sure, in smiles, silence, skips and laughter like these...

I hope you get to feel that too some day. Maybe even at the next Grenada Chocolate Festival?!

Thank you to The Grenada Chocolate Festival for having me for yet another year! It was my extraordinary pleasure to be there and to be provided and opportunity to share these moments of magic with you dear reader. For date of the next Grenada Chocolate Festival 2020 click here!

Do you think old houses have a life of their own?

Peace. Love. Brunch!!
All photos taken by Grenada Chocolate Festival