"We cannot continue to view ourselves through the shattered lenses of the past." Dr Kris?Rampersad, author of LiTTscapes Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago, made this comment at LiTTribute to the Republic. The launch was also twinned with Tea Readings with the First Lady Dr Jean Ramjohn-Richards. She was joined by her daughter Maxine Richards and daughter-in-law Dr Maryam Abdool-Richards.
Rampersad said: "The creating of the society we want has to begin with us. It is not reinventing the wheel. "It is taking charge and setting for ourselves our own benchmarks of public action and accountability. We are taking this (literature) into all our communities. "We are asking them to claim their writers, recognise their heroes and respect their elders for the repository of knowledge and wisdom that they are...and yes, set up monuments, too, to them so the visitors will come honour them and honour us too, as our ancestors did in their land before coming here, so we do not have to go too far to look for our heroes."?
On a lighter note, the launch featured readings by Saiesh Rampersad, five, an appraisal by cultural activist Pearl Eintou Springer, Chibale Drumming Ensemble and invocation by Kadie Edwards, Jolie Wong and Josiah Persad.
