she be like, damn

she be all tired.
she be like a flattened house shoe
she be full of compunction
she be remembering what was said.
she be told what she deserves.
she be believing everybody.
she be weepin’ in the bathtub
she be like her momma,
she be lying.
she be saying it’s the arthritis
she be talking like it ain’t her head
she be actin’ like hurt don’t bother her.
she be actin’ like she foolin’ somebody.
she be foolin’ no damn body.
she be scattered.
she be slidin’ across marbles.
she be grabbin’ onto nothin
she be almost breakin’ her wrists.
she be lying on the floor
she be holdin’ her stomach
she be trying not to vomit soggy cake
she be wishin’ she ate almonds instead.
she be losin’.
she be wantin’ rest.
she be told she ain’t gettin’ shit she want
and she be still wantin’ shit.

 

 

juanita

juanita put on her tap shoes and danced in her kitchen,
in her living room, she composed. and into her gilded bathroom
mirror, she gave monologues before powering on
her home recorder that, in those days, weighed a sailor’s duffel bag.
debuted films at thanksgiving, after feeding a houseful.  she, in a
form-fitting black dress made of sturdy garbage bags.

“i am more than wife, mother of ten, church organist.”
then, she started with captain and tennille, followed by neil diamond.
nieces, nephews elated.  her children  feigned embarrassment,
but devotees, nonetheless.

a woman from disbanded and reshuffled peoples. owned by a
garden variety, bearing traces of many countries,
the dominant, the birthplace of black magic.
what might have been if they hadn’t
made us afraid of our gods? she could have
been another brooklyn starlet, sing stormy
weather like lena horne in the movies.  what if we harnessed
the power of our goddesses?

you favor her.  nearsighted. prone to excessive
pounds in mid-life, obsessed with communing
with the dead.  her grandfather, angel, the cuban cigar maker,
joined in the chorus of guantanamera, and when she strummed
like memphis minnie, nada, rocked  back and forth

the way grandmothers do when they are stirred.
all principle and heart–that one. sung time
in a bottle with sam, her second husband.
sam on guitar, juanita at piano.  time was
a real question for those graying lovers.
never enough time for a woman
whose first husband tried to reduce her
like soup stock.  being mad took more time
than she could give. so she produced.

wrote about an urgency for peace,
though we were not the ones who begged for war
but in 1984 she scribbled in “jesse.” argued
about the virtues of speaking one’s mind
to punks who called it a wasted vote.

you hold onto the ways that you might be like
juanita, though you know you are dot’s child.
in a family large enough populate three small towns. you
were never one to be known in these townships.  not like aunty,
who mailed everyone copies of her latest records,
performed at all family gatherings, taught whosoever will how to play.

when there are so many, there are so many  to lose.
juanita weeped the longest over all bodies–ah, yes,
another way you are like her.  your spirit, too, is made
of blown glass. at the last burial before her own,
she warned those within the sound of her voice that she was tired.
you were young but old enough to know the weight of words.

juanita is a starlet. it is time for another moment under glaring lights.
it is quiet on the set, a recreation of 1943. she is small-wasted again,
and in high heels. she looks directly into the camera, then up,
when studio rain hits her face.

 

hot tea

precious one, emancipate your feet. stretch
your soles from here to far from here,
across acres of african moons.
young dignitary, miles of highway
know the impression of your shoe
by heart. it is tender at your core.
the injured hum their names in
your ear like seraphim. faces soaked
up by the cortex for sight cannot
be unseen like the ground where
they last stood cannot not absorb
a life poured out. this agony, you
haul with all subtle movements
and speak at movements of
national proportions. in squares,
your voice expands beyond
itself and crescendos into a whispers.
hot chamomile with lemon and honey
will help. i have prepared this for you.
sit as we remember our future. rest
until you are well again. and you
will be well again to move us further.

 

tony

this father’s son is loved not only by this father
but by the holy angels too, and by a few demons
who step to him on the street to give him what-up
jabs on the shoulder. i do not mean to compare
this father’s son to the son of the father, but that is
what this father’s son had been to sisters.

one came to him at night spooked by utterances
in her own head. one saved for him her best jokes.
another came when broken by a boy. the last placed her
report cards on the table just before he sat down to eat.
all waited for his perfect response, better than imagined.

to sisters, this father’s son was close to the son of the father
when this father/a daddy departed. not to be with the father,
but to be with a woman he met in night school.

to sisters, the one who gabs with the unseen, the formerly broken,
now zealot, the first to die, a comedian and especially, the last,
the critic of religious patriarchy, who loved showing off
her report card, this father’s son, a shepherd. for that moment
in time, sisters, not yet knowing what else they could be, were lamb.

 

inflammation

1.
something almost remembered
then, pushed away for a later date
only to finds its way into the body, dawdle there
and hope to be recognized, assessed, sifted through
for what good it carries, then separated from its waste.

if left alone for too long it splinters
into the convolution gray matter
latching onto cells weakening them

sometimes it arrives as a simple  question
while listening to gossip radio, while not
wanting to be bothered by anything too
onerous like separating sewage from my
cells while driving home from a hard-day’s work

the words link together and i remove them
like a chain from the bottom of my belly,
straight out of my mouth—

“what do i do with the men?”

2.

i know what the question means.
you get rid of them.  i said “rid” motherfucker, rid of you.  praise be to–
well, not all of them, of course.
i love daddy.  he was forty when I was born.
when i turned forty i was the adult daughter.
tenacious. never falling apart for too long, anyway
since enacting my three day rule
three days to be dumbfounded, three
days to panic, three days to flounder
full recovery occurs on the fourth day.
too goddamn much to do to flounder four whole days.

so by the fourth day I  am fortified,
and so daddy shares with
one part regret, one part pride
in his accomplishments of bedding women
sometimes a handful in one weekend.  some
served with him on neighborhood watch. most
were the mothers of the pta, he was president, and
a poor man with classical tones resounding from his
long,_, thick cords; like blues from a cello
and, women moved to the sound of him.
bed became a verb that broke my mother.
but she’s dead now, so what does it matter. daddy’s nearly ninety.
growing older provides perspective.  distance
dilutes notions about what to do with the men.

3.

the question is absurd.

4.

there were four of us girls. i was the baby.
the others had me my by eight, ten, and eleven
years so i benefitted from my sisters’ skill in hair braiding
and designing clothes. my favorite was the red jumpsuit with
shoulder ruffles.  i looked like  a five year old disco queen
the day i wore it for my birthday.  one sister picked my hair out.

i do not blame any of them for their lack of warning
about life in a girl’s body;  the ownership some feel they have.
to take without permission.   they never spoke of rape by the
neighbor or by nana’s boyfriend.  “it’s just the way it was,” one sister
told me.  “it was our job to be okay.”

I do not want to answer. I’m done being a traitor
It is difficult to defend this place where I enter the story.
I am middle aged, not a helpless girl.

real women grow up and care for the most devastated among us
and I already decided a long time ago that I would be the giver
not the taker of care.  not the interminably wounded
and, I love a woman so what does any of this matter to an old dyke like me?
feminine discomfort is an act of treason.

5.

I know the forces against my man-child–

6.

the one long gone was the easiest of all.
a stack of papers, a hearing or two, the crack of a gavel
and it was done.   i did not wish a brother dead.
and every day, i am reminded, i forgive him and
every day i am reminded, i am the one who is sorry.

7.

i have chosen the path of the giver.

Shh…i will only say this once. do not repeat this to anyone. the leading cause of death for
young black women between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five is intimate partner
violence.  Four times greater for black than it is for white.  The consequences for
perpetrators of intimate violence is less when the victim is black than when she is white.
shh…  i will only say this twice. the leading cause of death for young black women between
the ages of fifteen and thirty-five is intimate partner violence.  one last time, i will say, the
leading cause of death for young black women between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five is
intimate–

Brie Golec trans woman of color stabbed by her father,
Yazmin Vash Payne trans woman of color stabbed by her boyfriend,
Ty Underwood trans woman of color shot by her boyfriend
within days of each other—
debbie and i once made soup out of dirt and rain.
as teens, she had ramell.  i had an on again,
off again, thing with jesus.  between debbie and ramell,
were ramell’s hands that behaved any which way they pleased
especially when clenched into spherical solids.
my hands secured notes in white envelopes.
“god loves you,” my hands  told the pen to tell the paper
to tell debbie. no wonder debbie cut her eyes at me
whispered loud enough for me to hear her talk about my
whack old lady clothes to the other girls.   ramell and i both lost
the battle against our powerless hands.  i was outcasted.
ramell and debbie made a baby.
when debbie’s little brother became a teen his hand held heavy
steel to the face of his pretty boo across the street. when the steel
exploded with one motion of a rogue finger little brother’s hand
brought the steel to his own face. however, that time the rogue finger
refused.  it triggered the same dumb ass question.

long before any documents were filed, i recognized
the man i married had hands like ramell,

but the righteous knows what’s up.
race matters.  gender belongs to somebody else.
i know men who want to reclaim their innocence.
deemed guilty without due process.  I will speak their cause,
but speaking mine  would perhaps pose a conflict of interest as
the earth collapses between us.

8.

the body becomes inflamed in the protection
of itself swelling occurs while the question is held in the nerves.
i sit on the floor of my bedroom and in four square breathing
i release the question back out into the air to revisit at a later date
man-child barely knocks.  i struggle to my feet.  open the door.
taller than me, he  lowers his head to my shoulder. “goodnight mom,”
he says.  n four counts, i release the question and hold him.
i hold him as the question finds its way back into my body.

demands to be answered demands to be answered demands to be answered demands to be answered demands to be answered demands to be–shhh…. do not repeat this to anyone.

We are of Trinidad—my grandmother, my mother, and I.

Our island is located in the Lesser Antilles of paradise, a dot on the map that is often forgotten. It like ah drop ah oil, some say, as doh somebody forget to wipe it ahwey.

The bodies of water that seep into the island are as much a part of the island’s identity as they are a part of ours, and everywhere we have come to settle after abandoning home has been with the proximity of the seaside in mind. Perhaps the openness of the sea soothes the inner turmoil of us island women, or perhaps it shows the island’s inability to contain us.

While attending school in Trinidad—hwome, as we will call it for the rest of our lives, though we are all now settled in America—we’re taught how Christopher Columbus discovered it in 1498. That the Carib and Arawak tribes were indigenous didn’t stop historians from calling it a discovery. In conversation with Americans, I’ve heard my grandmother and mother draw the same facts from our elementary education, the same ones I mention to others today. Do you know why it’s called Trinidad? It’s because of the three hills along the southern coast of the island—Morne Derrick, Gros Morne, and Guaya Hill. When Columbus first spotted the land on July 31 in 1498 he was inspired to name it after the three hills—La Trinidad, the Trinity. These ternate hills that peak above the clouds in mottled greens, picturesque, majestic, form a wall that breaks the patterns of the most ferocious hurricanes, a natural protection that no other island in the Caribbean owns. The Trinity represents our most powerful guardians.

Rising with elegance along the bluffs, the supple branches of immortelle trees stretch wide, their leaves on fire against the backdrop of a perfect Caribbean sky. Native to Venezuela, just off the coast of Trinidad, these mountain trees shine emerald all year round in their natural habitat. Once they were brought to Trinidad to cast shade over the cocoa plantations in the 19th century, they too, like all else touched by the islands, changed. Their roots burrowed deep, and they exchanged their greenery for fire petals that flicker orange and red along the regions of Trinidad and Tobago. Sown into the very history of the terrain, we choose what of the island we will share with others, and so the beak of a hummingbird dipping into the beaded nectar of an immortelle flower creates the ambiance for the stories we choose to tell. And so, like the fingers of a hand skimming the water of a glassy tide pool, you touch but the surface.

What we never say is how historians call the naming of Trinidad a “historical hoax.” Columbus had every intention of baptizing the next land he found La Trinidad. Its having three hills was either mere coincidence or a miracle. It depends on how one chooses to tell the story.

Most people shake their heads in confusion when we tell them where we’re from. Where? they ask. Where exactly is that? And sometimes those who have a vague familiarity with the Caribbean will say, I thought everyone there was black.

On our islands you will find descendants of the Carib and Arawak tribes, Europeans, Venezuelans, Chinese, Syrians, French, Portuguese, and Lebanese, but of them all, the two largest groups by far are East Indians and Africans. Centuries before Trinidad became a British colony, before Sir Walter Raleigh discovered the natural Pitch Lake that gleamed the blackest blue along spools of water on Trinidad’s knee, before Columbus spotted the island, Amerindians called it home. They called it Ieri— Land of the Hummingbird. But when Columbus sailed upon them, these people were captured, enslaved, and littered along the coasts of other Caribbean islands, forced to work for Spain.

Our island changed hands, and when the British captured it from Spain, they brought enslaved Africans to work the leafy grounds of the sugar plantations. This was the only group of people to exist on the island as slaves, and when slavery was abolished in England, the wealthy landowners in Trinidad then brought indentured laborers from India to replace the Africans on the plantations.

At least we geh pay, the Indians now say, dem niggas an dem come as slave. They know the history but continue to etch in these lines drawn for them. They perpetuate a war, the East Indians and Africans, one group thinking they are better than the other, East Indian children rhyming in the schoolyard, Nigga nigga come foh roti, all de roti done, when de coolie raise e gun, all de nigga run. And Africans taunting, Eenie meenie miney mo, ketch ah coolie by e toe, when e ready let im go, eenie meenie miney mo.

And so this enmity between Africans and Indians led them, and others, to maintain the perceived purity of their bloodlines, further carving hatred into our islands’ history. Interracial couples and their multiracial children are still shunned as they were in my mother’s childhood and my grandmother’s. The blended are labeled mulatto, dougla, cocopanyol. These words are hissed and spat at my family: my grandmother is mixed, my Indian grandfather is not.

The shorelines of the islands are still unmarred by cement skyscrapers, but throngs of tourists trample lands natives can no longer afford, and boardwalks, chlorinated pools, and lobbies adorned with plastic plants have been cropping up with the image of paradise being sold.

But the republic of Trinidad and Tobago is where coconut trees rise out of the land, their backs braced against the breezes, spines curved into C’s all along the shores, and coconut husks ripped from their mother trees dot the sand on every coast.

Our stories are rooted in the Caribbean, our histories woven into its bougainvillea trellises with their paper-thin petals; the lone road winding round and round the mountain like a serpent strangling a tree, coiling up and down again to the virgin beaches untouched by hotels and tourists, crowds, and money; the foliage so dense and green it’s a prismatic shade of malachite, almost as though the vegetation itself is choking the life out of the island. This is a place where the intoxicating aroma of curry drapes itself around you in layers; where bake and shark sandwiches are fried on the beach; where the main ingredient for every dish is the heady bandanya, our word for culantro—no, not cilantro, it is much stronger than that. Here, people devour every part of every animal from the eyeballs to the guts and lick their fingers and pat their bellies when they are through.

The island can be traversed in a day, less than that if you know what you’re doing. A mere ten degrees north of the equator, it is a place of heat so intense it can drive a person insane, and yet the waves curling against the seashore deep in the valleys between mountains and the luminous rivers that seem to fall from the sky itself can quench that same person’s soul for eternity.

Trinidad is our fears and our loves. There we discovered our beings, we dug deep and planted our roots assuming we would never leave, sucking on the armored cascadura with its silver-plaited shell, devouring the sweet flesh beneath, the only fish the legend says ties you to the land forevermore, smacking our lips when we were done. We never thought we would have to leave this place, since our mothers and fathers planted our placentas beneath mango and plum, pomegranate and coconut trees.

But in the end we choose to flee.

We leave. We do. With no intention of turning back, we embrace America for everything Trinidad was not.

From Secrets We Kept by Krystal A. Sital. Copyright © 2018 by Krystal A. Sital. Courtesy W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 

In her debut memoir, Krystal A. Sital paints a vivid picture of life in Trinidad, which to any tourist’s eyes must seem like something of a paradise. Blue-green waters, intersected by rapid streams and jungle vegetation: the inhabitants of Trinidad are surrounded by the call of the Caribbean filled with carnivals, rum, calypso, and soca music.

For the people born and raised in this island paradise, of course life is littered with far more harsh realities. Extreme poverty, land unsuitable for farming or sustaining life, lack of education or opportunity, a caste system determined by money, race, ethnicity, religion, sex, and other accidents of birth.

The book begins as Krystal and her family, now living in the United States, learn that her grandfather, Shiva Singh, has suffered from a life threatening brain aneurism. As the reality of his condition grows more critical, Krystal is confused by her grandmother’s reluctance to immediately approve of the suggested procedures recommended for his survival. In contrast, Krystal’s mother, Arya, the daughter of Shiva, seems devoted to him and sits day and night by his side.

As the entire family grows more weary and distraught over the multiple surgeries and the harsh reality that Shiva will never fully return to normal, Krystal wants to know why her mother and grandmother have such wildly divergent emotions for him. One evening, she finds a way to question her mother.

Secrets We Kept is the story Krystal draws out in her gentle interviews with her mother and grandmother. The story is brutal and nuanced and unfortunately, timely. In the first pages, I am immediately reminded of the Rob Porter domestic abuse scandal in the White House, the #metoo movement, and even my own family’s history we avoid thinking and speaking about—those times when our father beat the crap out of our mother and us, and how that treatment made life and love of him so confusing.

Q: Did you have any idea that the release of your first memoir would come at a time when the topics it addresses would make it so political? Even if that timing wasn’t taken into consideration, there must be some feeling that it lands when conversations around it bring it into a political space. How does that make you feel? What if any reaction have you had from it in this caustic political time?

Krystal: It’s both fortunate and unfortunate that this book comes out during such a politically charged time. Unfortunate because, as human beings, we are still viciously fighting about things like immigration, domestic abuse, and women’s rights and health; and fortunate because since there is still so much silence and inequality, a book like this helps sharpen the focus on important discussions and hopefully laws around these topics.

Now looking at it as a work of art in this particular political sphere is maddening. Arts and humanities are being obliterated across the US and so it makes it extremely difficult for books that deal with issues like violence against women and children, immigration, colonialism, race, and class to make it into the hands of the right people. The political climate we’re caught up in right now is detrimental to the arts from every angle and so it’s important we all fight for it. Art, at its most micro level, is a voice being heard and we need to make sure we never squelch that.

Q: When I think of a Caribbean island, I imagine the beauty as a place to go to as an escape from the harshness of everyday life. That picture might serve as somewhat of a metaphor for the relationships your mother and grandmother lived. Strong, beautiful women who make choices they think will most help them escape the poverty of their circumstance, but instead land them in ugliness they cannot escape. Is that an accurate way of seeing this story?

Krystal: That’s such a lovely insight! Can I use that as though I’d planned it the entire time? I’m just kidding. It’s very interesting hearing and reading how others interact with the characters and the islands, what readers bring to the table and what they thought my intent was.

Having lived in America now for more than half my life, I see how people here view the Caribbean. From here it is this place of intense beauty, a place you want to escape to, not from. And Trinidad is a beautiful island, the kind of beauty that absolutely takes your breath away, the colors so vibrant you wonder if what you’re seeing is actually real. But the islands—both Trinidad and Tobago—are so much more than that and so I wanted to use the island as both a character and a backdrop. While divine in its appearance, here was this island where horrific things happened and these horrific things were never spoken about except when passed from mother to daughter, this cycle of storytelling that’s never been broken but also never recorded. And I think that’s what bothered me the most about this—is that the stories of women by women were always lost in the Caribbean while men were the ones who dominated and dictated history and we, as women, didn’t take our rightful place in the history of the Caribbean, of Trinidad and Tobago.

Questions like this is so fantastic for a classroom setting because it explores a body of work on multiple levels. My students and I often discuss the reader’s interpretation of literature versus the authorial intent. How you manage those two becomes a very individual choice but I strive to find some kind of harmony there when I read books, balancing the author’s purpose with my own response and history as a reader.

Q: Some would read this story as a cautionary tale about the violence of men and yet, in the second to the last sentence in the acknowledgements of your memoir, you write; “My beautiful partner, my husband, Pawel Grzech, I love you. Thank you for creating a beautiful family with me.” That line makes me believe that you have been able to carve out a loving and respectful relationship with your husband which is so different from that of the older women in your life. How did their experiences help or hinder the family life you now have?

 Krystal: I have indeed been able to find love; respectful, honorable, egalitarian love, and the person with whom I spend my life with is everything I’ve said. While people often tell us we’re lucky, I don’t think luck has anything to do with it. I am with him for many reasons—too many to ever list—but my grandmother’s and mother’s stories played a vital role in my decision when I chose my life partner. Their tales were, as you’ve said—cautionary. As much as we were working together to write women into Caribbean history, their first instincts were to arm and warn me. My grandmother didn’t want to settle for what was prescribed for her, shunned to the outskirts of society, so she left and spent her life paying for her decision but she was able to make a choice, one that was completely hers and that is what she shared with her daughter. I won’t give anything away from the book but those moments where Arya bears witness to her mother time and time again, are isolated and incredibly important because those are the moments that shape Arya and influence the decisions she makes when choosing a husband and then later on as a mother.

I very much feel as though I owe these women and the women before them, my life. This book, a small gesture in the grand scheme of things, is to honor and thank them for helping me become who I am today and allowing me to have choices, to grow up in a space where I don’t feel forced into a decision because it’s the best one at the time. They’ve endured everything for me and while there are narratives and lives that follow unbreakable and inescapable cycles, they’ve worked their entire lives to make sure I’m outside of that. That kind of altruism is powerful.

Q: I grew up in a household where my father’s violence made loving him extremely complicated. After my parents divorced, they both became happier people, but it was difficult to square the man he became without remembering the man he was, especially since he never admitted the violent and terrifying world he had created. After hearing the stories, how would you describe the emotions you have for your grandfather and father now?

Krystal: Thank you for sharing that with me. I need to acknowledge your story because our voices and stories as women are often separate and though many of us hail from different cultures and places, when we come together, we realize how universal they also are.

My emotions for both men remain complicated. Even after writing this book and writing through some very difficult questions I found myself asking and attempting to answer, I’ve come to understand that we are not only shaped by our experiences but by that of our family members as well. That is something I would have vehemently disagreed with twelve years ago but now I bear the burden of inherited violence, history, and loss. At the same time, I’ve learned to step back and allow my mother and grandmother to narrate the experiences and relationships they’ve had with my father and grandfather. Those experiences have helped to mold me through their re-telling but cannot define or influence my thoughts completely. Just as I give them space to be, they must understand that as a being wholly separate from them, the same people we’ve known throughout our lives can be very different to each of us.

I feel like I need to say I love my father dearly. We have a wonderful relationship and a very unique bond, quite similar to the type of bond I have with my mother but that can’t come through in a book like this because in this book I am part historian, part daughter, part granddaughter, part storyteller (to name a few!), and there are only so many perspectives I was willing to take on. Our story—mine and my father’s—is for another time.

Q: Not only is this story about the highly charged domestic violence issue, it touches on the equally charged issue of immigration. By the end of the book, you ask your mother if she ever thinks she would live in Trinidad again. She answers with one word. Never. I know you wrote a piece that was published by the New York Times, When Agents Came Knocking. As an immigrant in the U.S. today, how does the current climate make you feel about the America?

 Krystal: As an immigrant, I’m terrified! The US is not a very welcoming place right now and because I am a first-generation immigrant, I constantly feel as though I’m a part of several worlds which doesn’t help because I don’t feel completely anchored here. But then I remind myself that the people who are making immigrants feel this way are no more native to this land than I am. Sure many of them were born here but their history with this place is much more explosive than mine ever will be. They are the descendants of immigrants and it’s a fact that they keep forgetting. The only natives America has are the Native Americans. These two groups of people (one of which I am a part)—Native Americans and immigrants—are being attacked, murdered, mutilated, and forgotten. The thunderstorm of immigration, as you so poetically put it, is something that should touch us all. What is happening in this country right now has happened in other parts of the world throughout history and the reason we study history is to understand, learn, and prevent, something we’re clearly not doing at the moment.

As someone who has lived here as an undocumented immigrant for a long time, I do feel a particular responsibility to others, especially to the DREAMERs. I could easily be them and they are frightened. Circumstances and political climates change but the fear of a child being left behind, a mother being ripped from her children, a father being torn from his family, remains the same. No one would want that for themselves regardless of how they came to be in that desperate situation so instead of carelessly throwing around blame, we need to stand by immigrants and Native Americans. As a race—the human race—we need to rediscover our humanity because I think we’re losing it.

Q: The cruelty of the violence is sometimes displayed as something through which the men experience pleasure. There are hidden smiles and other indications that these are not just bouts of temper. Have you come to any conclusions as to the source of this violence? Any opinions of what Trinidad or even the US can do to reduce or prevent such violence in men?

Krystal: I have some theories. My grandfather was a product of the time, culture, society, history and that’s not said to excuse him in any way. He was also mentally unstable. It’s just that no one was equipped with the language or skills to name it or treat it at the time. Acts of violence like beating your wife and children are things that are taught at home because children see their father or uncle or brother doing it. But my grandfather did it tenfold, with a grotesque intensity and satisfaction that no one should try to understand because then you run the risk of empathizing with his actions and his actions are and will always be wrong. He needed help and because of his status in the society he lived in and also the time, no one could offer that to him.

In Trinidad, the US, anywhere in the world, the only way to prevent or reduce violence is to always have a conversation about it. And that is definitely something I adore about the US—there is always open dialogue. Sometimes that dialogue can get a bit crazy and out of control but the freedom to have those conversations is always there. We need to provide a safe environment to address these conflicts and situations way before college. Women and gender study departments are crucial but they come too late in education. As a student who minored in that area my mind was blown when I realized that these things are talked about and studied. And now as a teacher of that as well, I can see my students feel the same way I did and I don’t want that for them.

The key is in the literature. Choosing engaging and important texts that speak to our students and their experiences is one of the best ways to tackle this issue of violence and I know I’m not alone when I say we need to change the way schools are structured right now—to move away from testing and toward critical thinking. A step in the right direction is to change the assigned reading materials. Get some more diversity for one. That’s always been lacking but also choosing books and texts that deal with the world we occupy. It’s one way but I am certain it will make an impact and a difference. I see it in my own classrooms every semester.

 Q: All of the dialogue in this book is written in complete island dialect. While at first it helped set the flavor of the story, it also made it difficult at times to understand what was being said. In a space where we are often told to stay away from dialect, how did you come to the decision to handle the dialogue in this way? Did you receive any pushback from your editors?

 Krystal: You’re actually the first person to say it was difficult to read at times. And your reaction is what I expected every time someone came into contact with my dialogue. I kept waiting for someone to object or try to change it but it never happened. In the meantime I studied Caribbean authors like Edwidge Danticat, Junot Diaz, Audre Lorde, Zadie Smith, Jamaica Kincaid, and Andrea Levy alongside African American authors like Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston all of who paved the way for me to feel free when writing dialogue. I read and studied these authors and many more like them while at school and then I taught them to my own students. These writers teach us that our voices are important and they come in all different forms and should be celebrated.

I teach in the most diverse city in the US—Jersey City—so my classroom is a rainbow of faces, representative of my true America and I get to observe how my students react to language in these texts. They played a large role in helping me decide how much of it I wanted to use and where. For example, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God remains one of those books that changed my life from the language to the characters to the plot to the masterful storytelling. I accepted this as a fact until I taught the book years after reading it for the first time. Some students just couldn’t read it the way it was written so they turned to listening to it and even then couldn’t immerse themselves. I had to respect that this book and the way it was written was not for everyone. There were choices I would have to make about dialogue that would alienate some. In the end I wrote it the way I did because the most important thing was the voices of the women. I couldn’t claim to give voice to the voiceless if I didn’t allow the women to speak for themselves.

Q: Food plays an immense role in this story. Every major scene is laced with spices and flavors that stick to you in the same way the smells must conjure up so many memories for you. It also starkly illustrates how Indian and Hindu your family’s culture is, something many people probably don’t understand about Trinidad. I found myself wanting the recipes. How did food influence the writing of this story?

Krystal: Food makes the world go round! At least my world. My mother loves to cook. It’s like meditation to her and I understand this because she’s passed that on to me. If I’m in the kitchen cooking up a storm my husband will ask no questions until I’m all finished and then reap the benefits of whatever was bothering me.

People often bond over and around food. Enticing and intoxicating, food takes away inhibitions and once I understood this, I helped create this environment for my mother and grandmother so they could tell me their stories. This proved the most effective way for me to help them open up. And along the way, I learned tons of new recipes.

Now I find it very interesting that you say it’s definitively Indian. It’s true that a lot of the food is Indian because it’s just a fact of what they cooked but at the same time it isn’t. Trinidad’s cuisine, like many other places around the globe, is unique because cultures have come together to create something new and I was mindful of this. Many of the dishes I write about are the product of Indian, African, French, Spanish, English, etc. coming into contact in one place over time. Examining any one dish on the island from the way it is seasoned to the way it is prepared, then cooked, is fascinating because sometimes that one dish can have as many as five cultures coming into contact with one another.

As for the recipes, perhaps that’s a future project. Wink. Wink. (Though I’m not sure who I’m winking at).

 Q: Are there any other questions I didn’t ask that you wish I had? Topics you would like to cover?  

Krystal: You didn’t ask if I had any fun! Because while this was one hell of an emotional roller coaster ride, it was also so much fun. The characters you read about are people I created with so much care and they are people I hold close to my heart. As serious as this book is, it is also reflective of the life and desire and fun that exists in Trinidad and Tobago.

Secrets We Kept by Krystal A. Sital. Copyright © 2018 by Krystal A. Sital. Courtesy W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.