Er­line An­drews

It's not easy be­ing a his­to­ri­an in T&T.Jer­ry Besson has been chron­i­cling the his­to­ry of the coun­try as a pub­lish­er and writer for more than three decades. This is tough enough but it be­comes even more so be­cause of the at­ti­tude many cit­i­zens have to­wards the task."The most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge has been the in­sti­tu­tion­alised in­dif­fer­ence to the main­te­nance of the his­to­ry of the is­land," Besson said of his ex­pe­ri­ence over the years."If you were to go to the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al's of­fice to­mor­row morn­ing and try to find out any­thing about your great-grand­moth­er, you think it easy?" he said. "It's one of the most dif­fi­cult things in the world for you to be able to do, be­cause of the dis­in­te­gra­tion and the bad keep­ing of those his­tor­i­cal records."

Besson, 71, per­sists in spite of the ob­sta­cles. His Paria Pub­lish­ing, found­ed in 1981, prints his books and the books of oth­er his­to­ry stal­warts like Michael An­tho­ny and Fr An­tho­ny de Ver­teuil. Last month, he re­leased his third his­tor­i­cal nov­el, From the Gates of Ak­sum, a mys­ti­cal ad­ven­ture saga span­ning the 18th and 19th cen­turies. He was sched­uled to read from it yes­ter­day at an­Evening of Tea and Read­ings at Pa­per Based, a book­shop in The Nor­mandie Ho­tel in St Ann's which spe­cialis­es in Caribbean lit­er­a­ture."He did a lot of im­por­tant books," said Pa­per Based own­er Joan Day­al, talk­ing about Besson's con­tri­bu­tion to Caribbean lit­er­a­ture. "He's one of the very few pub­lish­ers in Trinidad. He al­so sup­plies a lot of in­for­ma­tion to peo­ple who are writ­ing. He's a wealth of in­for­ma­tion. And he's a great sto­ry­teller, too."From the Gates of Ak­sum is the third in a se­ries of his­tor­i­cal nov­els Besson said he plans to con­tin­ue."It's im­por­tant to do his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, be­cause many peo­ple can­not take on the weighty propo­si­tion of read­ing aca­d­e­m­ic his­to­ry," he said. "so it is some­times eas­i­er to take the his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive and ro­man­ti­cise it by ar­rang­ing it in terms of ac­tion and ad­ven­ture. It makes it more ac­ces­si­ble."

He added, tongue-in-cheek: "But you have to make sure you get your facts right, oth­er­wise Brid­get Br­ere­ton would point you out."Br­ere­ton is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor and news­pa­per colum­nist with whom Besson col­lab­o­rat­ed on the pop­u­lar Book of Trinidad.She has giv­en Ak­sum a thumbs up, writ­ing in a re­view that it was "def­i­nite­ly a book to get hold of."De­spite the ob­sta­cles, Besson–who has al­so es­tab­lished a num­ber of mu­se­ums, in­clud­ing the po­lice mu­se­um and the City-of-Port of Spain Mu­se­um–calls what he does grat­i­fy­ing.While still too many peo­ple don't ap­pre­ci­ate it, enough do to keep him mo­ti­vat­ed.He de­scribes be­ing greet­ed with awe by the young work­ers at the Na­tion­al Li­brary, who ap­par­ent­ly as­sumed his books were writ­ten clos­er to the pe­ri­ods they were set in."They said: 'You is Jer­ry Besson? We thought you was dead!'" he re­called with a laugh.Besson is hop­ing to reach even more peo­ple and share with them his en­thu­si­asm for lo­cal his­to­ry. It's im­por­tant for rea­sons oth­er than the en­joy­ment it can bring."Trinidad has a very in­ter­est­ing, very com­pelling his­to­ry," he said. "And if peo­ple knew it more they would un­der­stand the so­cial process­es and the po­lit­i­cal process­es that they're go­ing through."