Ten­nille Al­leyne

"Hon­est" would most like­ly be the first word that comes to mind when one de­scribes Khami­ni Le­ston's style of writ­ing. The twen­ty-four year old au­thor is due to of­fi­cial­ly launch her first chil­dren's book en­ti­tled 'Grand­pa Take me to T &T' on April 30th. Re­sid­ing in Brook­lyn, New York, the Trinida­di­an na­tive and self de­scribed "cul­tur­al am­bas­sador" said that she has been a lover of lit­er­a­ture since child­hood. "At six years

old I re­mem­ber I wrote a sto­ry called The Thrown Away Pep­pers. My mom read it and bought me a note­book and I have been writ­ing ever since," she re­called. As Le­ston grew old­er, she be­came more in­ter­est­ed in po­et­ry whose themes cen­tred around fam­i­ly, love and God. Le­ston, who de­scribes her style as "raw" de­vel­oped her craft even fur­ther af­ter mi­grat­ing to the US in 2007. "When I moved here I met Damion Gon­za­les who be­came my men­tor. Much of my po­et­ry start­ed to re­flect my life in the U.S. and the need to go back home," she said. Work­ing as a babysit­ter when she first im­mi­grat­ed, Le­ston re­vealed that she was around lit­er­a­ture a lot since she would of­ten read to her charges. The idea of cre­at­ing a re­lat­able chil­dren's book from her own ex­pe­ri­ence then be­came the im­pe­tus to pen her first chil­dren's book. "There are many Amer­i­cans who are im­mi­grants, not just from the Caribbean but from every­where. How­ev­er a lot of the tele­vi­sion shows and lit­er­a­ture are about the Amer­i­can ex­pe­ri­ence. That made me want to write some­thing that our kids could have for them­selves," she em­pha­sised. Hav­ing emerged from a Trinida­di­an cul­ture and up­bring­ing, it took Le­ston just an hour to com­plete the sto­ry about a lit­tle boy who lives in the U.S. with his grand­fa­ther who is from Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Sto­ries of the Trinida­di­an ex­pe­ri­ence be­queathed to the young boy then pro­pels his de­sire to vis­it the is­land. Ac­cord­ing to Le­ston, the char­ac­ters were formed around her own fa­ther Er­rol Le­ston and her nephew Khai Web­ster. "The book is writ­ten to tar­get those be­tween the ages of 6 and 10 but it's a book for every­one re­al­ly. It's an in­for­ma­tive book about Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der the guise of a chil­dren's book," she said. The book is al­so self pub­lished and is be­ing il­lus­trat­ed by Rhad­i­ca Boyce from Trinidad. It will be ready for on­line pur­chase by April 30th and will be avail­able in stores soon there­after. Le­ston is plan­ning a pro­mo­tion­al tour for her book when she vis­its in late Feb­ru­ary this year. The young au­thor ad­mit­ted that the com­ple­tion of this task has gar­nered a lot of pos­i­tive feed­back and is in­deed a hall­mark of her lit­er­ary ca­reer. "I've had a si­mul­ta­ne­ous fear of fail­ure and suc­cess, and do­ing this book is a tri­umph for me. Its some­thing I'll al­ways be proud of be­cause it's a per­son­al goal ac­com­plished" Le­ston said. She has al­so com­plet­ed an­oth­er chil­dren's book en­ti­tled "Mom­my's Mu­si­cal Ban­gles" and is cur­rent­ly work­ing on a nov­el. Le­ston, who de­scribes her lit­er­ary scope as broad, prefers to write about ex­pe­ri­ences that are rel­e­vant and per­son­al to her at the time. She would al­so like to re­turn to school to pur­sue her pas­sion one day. "Lit­er­a­ture is me. I would like to pur­sue this for­mal­ly be­cause I am a firm be­liev­er in ed­u­ca­tion and mas­ter­ing your craft," she ad­mit­ted. For now Khami­ni Le­ston is fo­cus­ing on her book's up­com­ing launch and de­scribes her "mas­ter­piece" as a keep­sake. "I would want the for­eign­ers who read it to want to vis­it and those who are Trinida­di­an to smile that know­ing smile."