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