Paula Lindo – Our histories, stories, present, future.

Laughter and camaraderie were the hallmarks of the T&T launch of Side by Side We Stand, the third book in the Savanoy Series by Nathalie Taghaboni, or Queen Macoomeh, as she is known by admirers of the series. The launch took place on April 23 at the Big Black Box on Murray Street, Port of Spain.

The convivial atmosphere gave the impression that everyone present knew each other, as many did in some way, having met on the author’s Facebook page as “studients” of Commess University, Taghaboni’s self-publishing company and virtual space for interaction with her friends, fans and family.
The readings from the trilogy of books – Across from Lapeyrousse, Santimanitay and Side by Side We Stand – brought laughter, tears, raised eyebrows and nods of recognition from the audience as they listened to Sharon Boodoosingh, Franka Philip and Yvonne Bobb-Smith bring the characters to life.
Publicist and writer Ian Royer thanked Taghaboni for writing the books, which he said filled a void for him in terms of seeing the T&T he knew on the pages of Caribbean literature.
Nathalie said being a writer calls to mind the quotation by sports columnist Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith, “writing is easy, all you have to do is open a vein and bleed.” She said being an author wasn’t like anything she’d ever done before. “You are turned inside out, everything is exposed and painful, especially when you write this type of true-to-life fiction that makes people feel. I wanted to write a book I would want to read. I had read a lot of Caribbean authors but I didn’t see enough of me in the pages. I didn’t hear my accent, I didn’t see my Mas, and I am a Mas baby. Someone told me that Mas was a character by itself in the books. We are folks too, what about our drama, our love, our music and our culture? It is easy to write us, once you pay attention, and I don’t think we should be writing anybody else, nobody else writes about us, so we have to do it.”
Her advice to young creatives was to keep creating. “Don’t let anybody tells you no, because a lot of people told me no. Publishers I approached told me it would never sell, the accent is too strong, it’s a niche market, it was too out there, it was not enough of their formula that they use, etc.”
There are no neat plots in the book, she said. “No one wakes up beautiful in the morning, there is death of surprising characters because people die, and if I’m going to write real fiction, there’s going to be pain in it, because that’s how life is. I think I’ve dealt with almost every problem that T&T has, there is illness, incest, death, jealousy, drugs and the fact that family doesn’t mean they’re your friends. The things in the books are things we have all dealt with at some time or the other, there is nothing in the books that are unbelievable.”
The author said while she does not plan to write any more books in the Savanoy series, all her future work will have a common thread running through them. “The Savanoys are as real as any characters could be, and I think they came off the pages and people have said they’ve spotted the characters walking down the road or in the bank, etc.”
Nathalie revealed she is writing a new book, Dark Night and Lace, which incorporates the traditional characters and folklore of T&T. “This is a dark book I’ve started about our spirits and things that go bump in the night, like the La Diablesse, inspired by Tracey Sankar-Charleau’s portrayal of Erzulie, which evoked something for me. I’m going to scare myself in this book, because I’m going to go there in the dark, and if it’s one thing our culture has, it’s our characters in the dark and I intend to pull them out and see if I can’t shed some light on them.”