tisdag 9 juli 2013

En kärleksförklaring till Trinidad





Lord Kitchener's "My Pussin" was the road march. We were standing at the top of the hill near the hospital when a stunning black woman, her eyes glazed with the night's rum, danced out of the band and up to Da-Da singing, "Is my pussin/Is my pussin/ Is my pussin/ Is my pussin/I bathe her, feed her, clothe her from small/ Man take way yuh hand from she/ Doh touch my pussin at all."

Vill man lära sig mera om Karibien ska man absolut läsa "Stories From Blue Latitudes- caribbean writers at home and abroad"- sammanställd av Elizabeth Nunez och Jennifer Sparrow.

Ramabai Espinet kommer från Trinidad. Hon representeras av ett kapitel från romanen "The Swinging Bridge"( "In the Minor Key"). Det handlar om calypso och kärleken till staden San Fernando på Trinidad.

San Fernando år 1890

The city of San Fernando housing its twin but separate population, African and Indian, each lacerating the other, each tolerating the other's crossovers, the strayaways, the inveterate mixers seduced by curiosity and a taste for difference, whose blood and semen and juices would solidify and from the rickety bridge across which others might begin to cross the rapids that they feared would wash them out into the open sea. My place, this fertile, exuberant, wounded city. Its lovely shadowed hill; its stinking warf.

Textutdragen är tagna från "In the Minor Key". (i romanen The Swinging Bridge av Ramabai Espinet. Boken är utgiven av HarperCollins).

Aldwyn Roberts (18 April 1922 – 11 February 2000), better known by the stage name Lord Kitchener (or "Kitch"), was one of the most internationally famous calypsonians. (information från Wikipedia).

2 kommentarer:

Hanneles bokparadis sa...

Det svänger!

Ingrid sa...

Hannele: Ja, är det inte härlig musik!