By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 08, 2022
There can be no doubt about the cruelty of —Thomas Picton, the first British governor of Trinidad and Tobago (1797-1803), and the resilience of Luisa Calderon, one of the persons he tortured during his governorship.
It is important that we applaud Shabaka Kambon and other patriots who have called for the renaming of streets and monuments that carry his (and other tyrants’) names.
Continue reading Picton’s cruelty: Luisa Calderon’s resilience
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 01, 2022
PART III
On Friday, July 21, 2021, around 1.30 p.m., PM Keith Rowley was preparing for his golf game when a senior golf services coordinator sustained an ankle injury from a golf cart he was driving. Nothing untoward seems to have happened to the woman. An hour later, Rowley confirmed, “While I was playing golf I heard from my lawyer that the woman was taken to the hospital, was checked out and cleared to go… Nobody was ‘run over’.” (Express, October 27, 2021).
Continue reading Keith Rowley’s failed leadership
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 25, 2022
PART I — PART II
The Hatter asks Alice: “Why is a bird like a desk?”
Alice was pleased. She enjoyed playing word games, so she said, “That’s an easy question.”
“Do you mean you know the answer?” said the March Hare.
“Yes,” said Alice.
“Then you must say what you mean,” the March Hare said.
“I do,” Alice said quickly. “Well, I mean what I say. And that’s the same thing, you know.”
“No, it isn’t!” said the Hatter.
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
On April 21, 2022, the prime minister commented on the close to 20 murders that took place while he was in Barbados. Asked if T&T was losing its fight against crime, the PM responded: “I don’t notice anybody running away from the fact that we are a violent society and in recent years a number of persons have gotten their hands on firearms, handguns in particular.” (Express, April 22.)
Continue reading Keith Rowley’s Failed Leadership
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 18, 2022
PART I
Why boaseth thyself, oh evil man
Playing smart and not being clever.—“Small Axe” by Bob Marley
As I listened to a recent message that Mother Bernie sent to Keith Rowley, I appreciated anew why Eric Williams paid so much attention to the wisdom of the leaders of the Spiritual Baptist faith. In her tour de force, she informed Rowley of some truths about leadership that laid bare his shortcomings as our political leader.
Continue reading Keith Rowley’s Failed Leadership
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 11, 2022
PART III
It was a hot July day in the late 1990s when I received a call from a young man, full of enthusiasm, who wanted to make a difference in the lives of young people. He wanted me to address the members of an organisation he led. His name was Foster Cummings. I have never forgotten the devotion he applied to what he was doing.
Continue reading The politics of redemption
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 04, 2022
We must never forget that there is something within human nature that can respond to goodness, that man is not totally depraved; to put it in theological terms, the image of God is never totally gone.
—Martin Luther King, Jr, A Testament of Hope
PART II
I had hoped to write about another aspect of the Foster Cummings debate, but other questions arose since last week which means I have to clear a lot of ground before I continue these observations.
Reading (or the explication of texts) is not so easy as many people believe it to be. A theologian goes to theology school to learn how to interpret theological texts (we call it exegesis). The lawyer goes to law school to learn how to read legal texts (whether the original intention or from a contemporary setting). Literary scholars go to graduate school to learn the most fortuitous way to examine literary texts.
Continue reading The politics of redemption
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 27, 2022
Old pirates, yes, they rob I / Sold I to the merchant ships/ Minutes after they took I / From the bottomless pit / But my hand was made strong /By the hand of the Almighty / We forward in this generation / Triumphantly.
—Bob Marley, “Redemption Song”
PART I
In the 1970s I had the privilege of teaching the late Fr Henry Charles at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He was one of the most brilliant students I have ever taught. In fact, he was more brilliant than I in certain respects. I taught a course on West Indian literature, and he seemed to know everything about the writers we were discussing. I deferred to him on many occasions when difficult questions came up in class.
Continue reading The politics of redemption
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 20, 2022
The controversy started when Camille Robinson-Regis called Kamla Persad-Bissessar out of her name. Kamla responded by casting aspersions on Camille’s “slave name”, which played right into a deep cultural fissure that exists within our fragile social structure. Whatever the merits of either argument, as my mother would have said, “Is de answer does bring the row.” Hopefully, in this case, the answers should allow us to see our cultural blindness.
Continue reading What’s in a slave name?
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 13, 2022
Akan people of Ghana, from which my lineage springs, have a naming ceremony eight or ten days after a child is born. It is called the Outdoor Ceremony, where the child is brought into the outdoors to see the light of day.
During that ceremony, the child is given a name that confers a specific identity upon him or her. Not a tear is shed if that child dies before the naming ceremony. It is as if that entity never existed, so precious is a person’s name in that society.
Continue reading Doh mess with ma name
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 06, 2022
On the celebration of Indian Arrival Day, May 31, an Express editorial recounted: “On this day 177 years ago the Fatel Razack entered the Gulf of Paria with over 200 Indians aboard, the first of 143,939 citizens of India to be brought here under a British scheme to deal with a shortage of labour following the emancipation of enslaved Africans in 1834–38.”
Continue reading Origin of Indian indentureship in Trinidad