We agree with Morgan Freeman. And encouraged by his conviction as well as by the memory of George Santayana’s wise words that “those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it”, CaribbeanTales staff set about researching the history of Black History Month. How did this phenomenon come about?

We found out that it was the brainchild of Carter Godwin Woodson who originally established it in 1926 in America, as Negro History Week. And who was Woodson? He was the son of a slave, born in America in 1875, who began high school at the age of twenty and then went on to study at the University of Chicago, ending up at Harvard University with a Ph.D. in 1912. He believed that Blacks in America should know their past in order to participate intelligently in civic affairs. He selected February in deference to Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln who were both born in that month.

So now we understand clearly that Black History Month is an African-American tradition invented to meet African American needs – much like Kwanza, that was invented in 1966 by Dr. Maulana Karenga as an African American cultural holiday.

And what might Black History Month have to do with CaribbeanTales? Well, specially for Black History Month, we are highlighting two different strategies undertaken by enterprising Caribbean-Canadian pioneers to achieve results similar to those for which CaribbeanTales aims. That is, to tell all the rich and diverse Caribbean-Canadian stories that ordinarily would go unrecorded and unpublished.

The first strategy is described through excerpts from Stephanie Martin's panel presentation at the 1996 American National Black Writers Conference when she spoke about Sister Vision Press, co-founded by Makeda Silvera and herself in 1985. As with many other small presses, it was plagued by financial difficulties and eventually closed its doors after about fifteen years. But during its existence, Sister Vision published more than fifty works from a diverse group of Caribbean, Asian, Aboriginal and mixed race women writers. It gave several writers who are with mainstream  publishers today, the initial chance to see their work in print. 

For the second strategy, we feature Tisha Marajh's interview with Raynier Maharaj, the genial Managing Editor of Caribbean Camera that was founded in 1990 and is still going strong. This weekly community-based newspaper has a distinctive Caribbean-Canadian orientaion and focuses on political, economic, recreational and entertainment issues, analysis and stories.

We should also tell you about another CaribbeanTales strategy -- our  newest  website Literature Alive Online that is currently still in development. It should be up by April 2006. It will complement Literature Alive, the Leda Serene Films / Caribbean Tales thirteen-episode series of documentaries on Caribbean-Canadian writers that BRAVO originally broadcast late last year. It will include many of the featured writers such as Andre Alexis, Ramabai Espinet, Nalo Hopkinson, Tessa McWatt, Pamela Mordecai, Olive Senior, Dwayne Morgan, Shani Mootoo, d'bi young, Dany Laferriere, Richardo Keens Douglas, Jemini and Louise Bennett.

This unique Literature Alive Online website will provide easy access, free of charge to information about twenty-six Caribbean-Canadian authors through biographical and bibliographic material, along with brief excerpts from their published works; related video and audio interview clips; and critical reviews, articles and links to other literary sources. There will also be Study Guides that will be especially geared to meet the needs of high school and university students.

We hope you enjoy the February 2006 edition of our CaribbeanTales E-Newsletter! We look forward to your feedback. It always helps us to improve our standards.  

Click here to listen to an interview clip with Shana Calixte on CHRY

Click here for Miss Lou performing 'Walk Good'

Shana became the Designer and Project Manager of our first CaribbeanTales website project: caribbeantales.ca. In 2004, she also took on the role of Editor of the multimedia E-Newsletter. This is now the ninth E-newsletter that she has been responsible for producing. The feedback that we receive from our readers continually testifies to what we already know -- that CaribbeanTales has an avid and expanding readership that appreciates the quality and scope of our multimedia projects. Shana has done an excellent job of building and sustaining the high quality and variety of our content.

I know that all our readers will join with me in thanking her for a job well done, and wishing her all the best as she moves forward.

Walk good on your way
and good duppy walk with you,
Walk good every day,
and good duppy walk with you
Every day, on your way
Walk good, good follow you
If you just walk good!
Walk good!

The Honourable Louise Bennett-Coverly ("Miss Lou")

Welcome to the November newsletter issue of CaribbeanTales!

These past few months have seen a whirlwind in our offices as we prepared to launch three new projects aimed at celebrating the great traditions of Caribbean-Canadian storytelling.

They include the release of our new documentary series, Literature Alive, on October 6th on Bravo! The first screening, entitled Memory Places, featured Andre Alexis bringing viewers along on a journey to his various 'homes' of Toronto, Ottawa and Trinidad. Subsequent episodes featured Shani Mootoo and Tessa McWatt (you can read about her in this newsletter edition). The documentary series will continue to air on Thursday evenings on Bravo! at 8pm and includes the three storytellers featured in this issue, Dany Laferrière, Tessa McWatt and Jemeni.

Our most recent work realizes the convergence of projects that CaribbeanTales and our sister company, Leda Serene Films, have been working on. Firstly, there is the documentary series that profiles Caribbean-Canadian authors. This will be followed in January 2006 by a brand new website: Literature Alive Online. This website will bring you highlights from the documentary series, author profiles (including an extensive listing of publications, reviews and online links) as well as previously screened audio video clips, and some new ones as well!

Literature Alive Online will not only be a database of some of our most reputable Caribbean-Canadian authors, it will also have sections for teachers and students who are interested in learning all about the storytelling tradition with various curriculum resources and book lists. It will also provide many new media downloads, games and quizzes as well as a book club message board to chat about the newest fiction from Caribbean-Canadian writers. Our next newsletter in February will be sure to introduce you to all of these new items, so stay tuned.

In addition, CaribbeanTales will be launching five audio books in a project that brings together the written and the spoken word. Gemini Nominee Leonie Forbes who brought to life the character of Sister Hope in Lord Have Mercy is producing this project. Look out for highlights of this project in our next newsletter, early in 2006. These three projects that reflect a range of various media, all work as one to showcase the remarkable and incredible talent of Caribbean-Canadian storytellers. Using the Internet, television and audio/cd delivery methods, CaribbeanTales and Leda Serene Films are promoting the breadth and diversity of Caribbean-Canadian literature and making use of the new ways in which stories are being communicated.

Please enjoy our latest newsletter, with stories on the launch of the documentary series, our three featured storytellers, a review of one of our currently available Audio Books, I is a Long Memoried Woman, and more creative work from one of our newsletter readers.

In this issue, we offer a review of Calabash, with video clips highlighting some of the powerful performances of the festival. Our Storyteller of the Month, Calabash festival co-organizer Kwame Dawes is profiled in this edition, and we also showcase some of his poetry in our new section, Poetry Corner.

Staceyann Chin, energetic and engaging spoken word poet is also profiled in our Author Blog section. Check out our stunning clips from her performance at Calabash, and a link to her on line blog where you can read Staceyann, “in her own words”.

Around the Fire, the section of our newsletter aimed at highlighting "Tales from the African Diaspora" brings you a review of Afrofest, Toronto's African cultural festival. Editor Tumelo Phali also introduces filmmaker and professor, Manthia Diawara, who was also in attendance at the Calabash festival.

We hope you enjoy our latest newsletter! We are always looking for your thoughts, so please do share them in our instant comment feature!

CaribbeanTales is excited to share the news that we have received funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation to produce 5 Audio Books of works by Caribbean-Canadian authors.

Audio books bring out the very real importance of the 'oral' in Caribbean storytelling culture and will also provide great learning tools for many – both inside and outside of the classroom.

As Ramabai Espinet, our featured storyteller this month puts it, “The Audio Books project will provide a much needed resource in the classroom. As an educator I will be able to use them to bring to life the tonal aspects of a text, the sound system of Creole languages, a novelty to those who have not learnt to listen beyond a standard Canadian delivery, and to utilize dramatic excerpts to heighten the impact of a text. Audio books also maximize reading time because of the different environments in which books can be 'read'”.

Look for our first Audio Book Project in the fall, as we bring Nalo Hopkinson's award winning book of short stories, Skin Folk to your ears.

Among our offerings this month we've got some great clips from Ramabai Espinet's recent trip to Trinidad to launch her novel The Swinging Bridge for the first time in her home town San Fernando; Around the Fire, our special section on Tales from the African Diaspora features the final instalment of an interview with South African dramaturge and writer Mtutuzeli Matshoba; and, in Meet The Team we give you a peek into the financial engine room at CaribbeanTales, in an interview with Susan Panchan.

Finally, we have 2 tickets to give away to An Island Style Fete at Tropical Nights on the Danforth featuring DJ Wild Apache on June 18th. The first person to send an email and answer the skill testing question below, will win these tickets.

Which Featured Canadian Caribbaen author calls “home” Toronto, Ottawa and Trinidad?

Good luck!

This month, I think about the many submissions we have received, and the variety of stories that we all have to tell. When I recently sat with Jennilyn Fiddler, to discuss my own thoughts about the CaribbeanTales project, I was asked about my own conception of storytelling and how it has come to shape my life, my history.

Click here to listen to an interview clip with Shana Calixte on CHRY

Of course, initially, I had thought that I really didn't have a story to tell. That my experience was just one that was not at all noteworthy. But through reading your submissions, feedback and email, I have begun to think about the experiences that we share as Caribbean peoples, the universal stories and tales that come out of our diversity. I often see myself in bits of each story, to hear your words, as if they came from my own voice.

Many of you have commented on that shared history, especially last month's story poem from Sandy Macintyre about Mahal – who many of you remember in your childhood days. These are the stories that don't get on the front pages, but that are shared within and across families, passed down through generations, and of course have resonance many years later. The power of storytelling rests in its accessibility, its transformative power, its ability to be shared, over generations, and across continents. CaribbeanTales hopes to continue to honor those stories.

In this issue, we continue on our theme of the accessibility of storytelling, and the importance of realizing and verbalizing your own story. Shani Mootoo, our Storyteller of the Month, shares with us some of her thoughts on writing, and on creating a space that challenges and pushes the boundaries of Caribbean identity. We also feature the lyrical writing of p! Barrington, in his article, Wey mi madda ‘ouda sey …an’ addaz tu! In this piece, p! seeks translations for sayings in languages that are part of his history, words passed to him by his mother and many other 'wise saws.' Our book review this month features Dominican Republic author Alan Cambeira's work called Azúcar! The Story of Sugar, excellently reviewed by Laurel Johnson.

We continue our theme of inviting you to get to know the people behind this project with our latest team member, Denise Herrera Jackson. She answers a few questions for us about her own work in the Caribbean community, and her thoughts on the CaribbeanTales project. CaribbeanTales was also present at the recent talk by film maker Spike Lee at Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto, and we have few thoughts about the evening that has been widely covered in local media.

Finally, Around the Fire editor Tumelo Phali speaks with playwright, novelist and film producer, Mtutuzeli Matshoba, part one of a powerful conversation about history and why the past really does matter.

We hope you enjoy this installment of the CaribbeanTales newsletter. Again, we are always looking for new and diverse stories for our pages. We know that many of you out there have interesting things to say, so please send them in. As once again, we all have stories to tell!

We would also like to note that in our last issue, we mistakenly misprinted the article ‘Nappiness’ Is A Gift, You Give Yourself, by Onika Nkurmah, starting it in the middle rather than at the beginning. CaribbeanTales would like to apologize for the error and invite you to read the full version of the wonderful story in the previous issue of our newsletter.