JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, March 15, 2025

A Different Energy–Bocas-winning writer tackles non-fiction on women in oil

by

Ira Mathur
412 days ago
20240128

IRA MATH­UR

This Sun­day’s Book­shelf presents prize-win­ning Ce­leste Mo­hammed’s Non-Fic­tion De­but, “A Dif­fer­ent En­er­gy: Women in Caribbean Oil and Gas” (Pub­lish­er: Words Mat­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, De­cem­ber 2023). Us­ing a se­ries of in­ter­views with women in a male-dom­i­nat­ed oil in­dus­try, Ce­leste Mo­hammed has pro­duced a bril­liant and nec­es­sary book that deft­ly criss-cross­es acad­e­mia, es­say, sto­ry­telling, and jour­nal­ism.

The Trinida­di­an lawyer-turned-writer de­but nov­el-in-sto­ries, Pleas­antview (Jacaran­da, 2021), won the 2022 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture. She says she wrote the book to record how women in oil have sur­vived in a male-dom­i­nat­ed in­dus­try.

“As a pro­fes­sion­al woman–a cor­po­rate lawyer–who has en­dured the scorch­ing dis­com­fort of be­ing the on­ly fe­male try­ing to lean in at a board­room ta­ble of males and who is al­so a writer and con­nois­seur of good nar­ra­tive, I went seek­ing the undi­lut­ed sto­ries of Caribbean oil women and the wis­dom of how they sur­vived hav­ing their feet held to the fire.”

Ini­tial­ly, Mo­hammed, whose writ­ing ca­reer be­gan with fic­tion, was un­sure if she could tack­le “long-form non-fic­tion.”

“Fic­tion writ­ers play the role of in­ven­tors, where­as non-fic­tion au­thors act as in­ter­preters and con­vey­ors of fact.” She wasn’t sure if she had the “right skill set.” But Mo­hammed said ‘the work flowed’ when she fo­cused on sto­ry­telling, adding that the ‘tools’ of both gen­res are the same–” us­ing com­pelling char­ac­ters and ef­fec­tive pac­ing to cap­ti­vate the read­er” and train her gaze up­on a truth.

Mo­hammed says with non-fic­tion, “sen­si­tiv­i­ty” is crit­i­cal: “I’m han­dling the emo­tions and egos of re­al peo­ple. In this case, eight pow­er­ful women. I had to walk the line be­tween con­vey­ing their per­cep­tion of them­selves and my per­cep­tion of them. Calm re­as­sur­ance was cru­cial.”

Mo­hammed adds that she worked hard to en­sure this book was tak­en se­ri­ous­ly and es­caped the la­bel of navel-gaz­ing. “To avoid that, I tacked every­thing they said against the ob­jec­tive re­al­i­ties of the glob­al en­er­gy in­dus­try. Through ex­ten­sive re­search, I of­fered analy­sis and in­for­ma­tion that cor­rob­o­rate their sto­ries.”

In the process of writ­ing, Mo­hammed is a “be­liev­er in the heal­ing pow­er” of sto­ry­telling.

“As James Bald­win once said, ‘You think your pain and your heart­break are un­prece­dent­ed in the his­to­ry of the world, but then you read.’ Nar­ra­tives pro­vide a plat­form for ex­press­ing and pro­cess­ing com­plex emo­tions, en­abling in­di­vid­u­als to make sense of their ex­pe­ri­ences and find so­lace in shared hu­man strug­gles. I hope this book was cathar­tic for the women in­volved and en­cour­ag­ing for every woman who reads it.”

Ex­cerpt from A Dif­fer­ent En­er­gy: Women in Caribbean Oil and Gas” by Ce­leste Mo­hammed with full per­mis­sion from the Pub­lish­er–(Words Mat­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions–De­cem­ber 2023)–ex­clu­sive­ly for the Sun­day Guardian:

Chap­ter 1

Her-sto­ry of Oil & Gas in Trinidad

“Oil is to the is­land of Trinidad what blood is to the body of a man–or a woman. The first oil well in the West­ern Hemi­sphere was drilled in Trinidad in 1857, by the Mer­ri­mac Com­pa­ny. Al­though that well is of­ten re­gard­ed as the start of the Caribbean oil in­dus­try in the mod­ern age, one might say Trinidad’s petro­chem­i­cal ex­ports be­gan cen­turies ear­li­er, in 1595 when the Eng­lish pi­rate-ex­plor­er Sir Wal­ter Raleigh came look­ing for El Do­ra­do–the fa­bled city of gold–and was shown in­stead, by the Amerindi­ans, the “black gold” of bi­tu­men or piche at Tier­ra de Brea (now La Brea Vil­lage); he used the stuff for caulk­ing his ships. He found our oily de­posits to be “most ex­cel­lent good and melteth not with the sunne as the pitch of Nor­way, and there­fore, for ships trad­ing the south partes very prof­itable.”

Very prof­itable in­deed. But for whom? Every­where oil is dis­cov­ered, that’s al­ways the ques­tion. Who should prof­it? To whose ben­e­fit should this wind­fall re­dound? The for­eign multi­na­tion­al oil com­pa­nies, the gov­ern­ment? The ex­pa­tri­ates, the lo­cals? Not many of us, though, ques­tion whether the ben­e­fits should flow more to men or to women be­cause we as­sume that oil should and does be­stow wealth equal­ly, re­gard­less of gen­der. But that’s not true. Oil and gas is one of the largest, most lu­cra­tive, and most po­lit­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful in­dus­tries in the world. Yet, it em­ploys very few women, tends to lose the women it does hire, and in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, it dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly bur­dens women.

Ask any­body work­ing in the petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try, and they will tell you, “It’s a man’s world”. Aca­d­e­mics have used more nu­anced phrase­ol­o­gy, re­fer­ring to the “pro­found­ly gen­dered na­ture of oil work.” I saw this with my own eyes while grow­ing up in San Fer­nan­do, “the in­dus­tri­al cap­i­tal” of Trinidad and To­ba­go, dur­ing the 1980s–1990s. Through­out my sec­ondary school years, I had many friends who lived “on camp”, one or oth­er of the oil com­pa­ny res­i­den­tial camps along the south­ern oil belt of Trinidad. Then there were oth­er friends who had a par­ent “work­ing in the oil” but didn’t live on camp–al­though their fam­i­ly still got to dri­ve past se­cu­ri­ty and go up to the club and play at the pool. But, in ei­ther case, the par­ent whose em­ploy­ment al­lowed ac­cess to oil’s priv­i­leges was al­ways a man. No­body’s “Mum­my” was ever the one “work­ing in the oil” or on se­nior staff. It was al­ways the fa­ther.

Male hege­mo­ny in the oil and gas in­dus­try was ac­cept­ed as nor­mal back then when I was grow­ing up–and I’m not that old–and we didn’t even won­der, Where are the women? We just ac­cept­ed that it had to be so. And here’s an­oth­er in­ter­est­ing irony: we–my con­tem­po­raries and I–con­sti­tute The No­to­ri­ous OBG, the “oil-boom gen­er­a­tion” who was born dur­ing Trinidad’s oil boom of the 1970s, but grew up in the 1980s dur­ing the deep­est eco­nom­ic re­ces­sion in Trinida­di­an his­to­ry, and as teenagers, ex­pe­ri­enced the re­sult­ing at­tempt­ed coup of 1990. Trau­ma, up­on trau­ma, up­on trau­ma. The mes­sage we re­ceived was that oil is a kind of liq­uid Zeus: a fick­le god who gives gen­er­ous­ly to male providers and then “raffs” away capri­cious­ly, leav­ing their women scram­bling to make ends meet at home, or ex­iled in Amer­i­ca clean­ing toi­lets and babysit­ting oth­er peo­ple’s pick­ney.

Now, as the moth­er of a daugh­ter liv­ing through this cru­cial Decade of Ac­tion, where the UN has set a 2030 dead­line for the achieve­ment of gen­der equal­i­ty and the em­pow­er­ment of all women and girls, I do won­der how many OBG girl-chil­dren, like my­self, might have as­pired dif­fer­ent­ly and made dif­fer­ent life choic­es if we had known that all this time, there were in­deed women suc­ceed­ing in the oil and gas in­dus­try. “

–End of Ex­cerpt

Mo­hammed holds an MFA in Cre­ative Writ­ing from Les­ley Uni­ver­si­ty, Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts. Mo­hammed won the 2018 PEN/Robert J Dau Short Sto­ry Prize for Emerg­ing Writ­ers. In 2022, she won the CLMP Fire­crack­er Award for Fic­tion and was a fi­nal­ist for the UK So­ci­ety of Au­thors McKit­t­er­ick Prize.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian colum­nist and win­ner of the non-fic­tion OCM Bo­cas Prize for Lit­er­a­ture 2023 win­ner. www.iras­room.org.

Email: iras­room@gmail.com


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored