By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 15, 2021
It must have been in the early 1940s. My father slapped my mother.
She took him to court. Six months later the trial took place. The magistrate asked what had happened. My mother told him.
‘Have you made back up now?’ the magistrate asked.
‘Yes,’ my mother answered.
Continue reading When love ceases
By Dr Selwyn Cudjoe
February 23, 2021
Some people described the killing of Andrea Bharatt as “monstrous”, “brutal”, “horrible”, and “barbarous”. Those responsible for her death were called “monsters” or “Lucifers in the flesh”.
An autopsy showed the horrendous manner in which Andrea was killed. Rich and poor, Africans and Indians, urban and rural folks, were all repulsed by the barbarity of her killers.
Continue reading Who really are the monsters?
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 15, 2021
“Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
—Toni Morrison, Beloved
Faris Al-Rawi was in a fighting mood last Monday. He was not afraid to outline the depths to which we, as a people, had descended. Calling on the Opposition to support the Evidence Amendment Bill to deal with the “monsters” who had committed a heinous act against Andrea Bharatt, he declared: “Today, we have an opportunity… to stop monsters.”
Ascending to rhetorical heights, he chastised citizens who were trying to salvage a sliver of their humanity by speaking out against an inhuman strain that had arisen in our society:
Continue reading Monsters & Monstrosities
By Raffique Shah
February 15, 2021
I was wondering how many more candlelight vigils that seemed to be a genuine groundswell of public opinion on violent crimes against women would be staged in the name of abduction and murder victim Andrea Bharatt before two-by-two politicians sought to hijack what they would see as a mass movement they could ride for narrow self-interests, from photo-opportunities and media coverage to the prospect of political power.
Continue reading Do not pollute protests with politics
By Aileen Alexis
February 11, 2021
The kidnapping and murder of a young court clerk, Andrea Bharratt has evoked strong emotions from a wide cross-section of the Trinibagonian population. Protests, vigils and calls for legislation regarding the use of non-lethal weapons such as pepper spray and tasers, and the resumption of hangings have all become some of the manifestations of these emotions.
Continue reading Candles, tears and selected outrage
By Raffique Shah
February 08, 2021
THE outrage expressed by many people over the most recent case of the abduction and murder of a young woman is understandable.
We cannot believe that there exist among us depraved people who are capable of committing atrocities, inflicting extreme violence on women with seemingly consummate ease and callous detachment. It’s as if they are cast in some science fiction horror movie, acting out their darkest obsessions and cruellest fantasies, except the victims are real live people who end up very dead, sometimes mutilated and tortured before they die.
Continue reading Be careful when you hunt rapists
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 09, 2019
Trinidad and Tobago is a difficult, contradictory society. Every time we take one step forward, we also take two steps backward. Imagine a progressive leader saying that she won’t invite a man or woman to a government function unless he/she is accompanied by his/her married partner. One would have thought our foremothers had solved that problem two hundred years ago but one of her great granddaughters is doing her best to turn the clock back to even darker days.
Continue reading Turning the Clock Backward
By Raffique Shah
September 04, 2019
They will cremate Miss Eileen sometime today somewhere in Florida where most of her daughters and only surviving son live. I hope the passage of hurricane Dorian does not disrupt the final rites for one of the matriarchs of the village of Bokaro (now “Frenchified” to Beaucarro) where I grew up and spent my formative years. She was one of two surviving women who were bred-and-born in Bokaro, the other being Lucille Warrick who also migrated to the USA, and who is, give or take, of similar age to Mrs. Eileen Prince, 93, when the latter breathed her last two Thursdays ago.
Continue reading Ordinary people, extraordinary lives
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 08, 2019
“Know you not that love, when firmly established, is priceless?”
—Nana Asma’u, “Lamentation for ‘Aysha.'”
I met Margaret Busby in the 1980s just after her press (Allison & Busby) published three volumes of C. L. R. James’s collected work (The Future in the Present [1977], Spheres of Existence [1980], and At the Rendezvous of Victory 1984]). It was an exciting time for James scholars. The assembled pieces were important parts of James’s intellectual corpus.
Continue reading New Daughters of Africa
By Stephen Kangal
August 21, 2018
I find that there is a disturbing dysfunctional disconnect between what the PM Rowley said initially in cheap and embarrassing defence of the Sari Skit, the several reasons for his retraction/backing down of those ill -thought out statements, his conditional but confusing apology directed to a deliberately selective audience/aggrieved party and his continuation of his diatribe on associated matters against so-called saboteurs.
Continue reading Selective Apology from PM Rowley on Sari Skit