Michelle Loubon

"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.