“Bre­anne Mc Ivor is a tal­ent­ed Trinida­di­an au­thor and re­gion­al lit­er­ary prize-win­ner mak­ing her in­ter­na­tion­al de­but.”

—Oprah Dai­ly

FAY­OLA K J FRAS­ER

Her hum­ble and con­fi­dent pres­ence fills the room, and Bre­anne McIvor lights up when asked about her re­cent­ly launched de­but nov­el, “The God of Good Looks.” Revered by Pub­lish­ers Week­ly as a “pitch-per­fect nar­ra­tive of pow­er im­bal­ances,” McIvor’s nov­el, launched in May, has al­ready been in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed on Oprah Dai­ly’s “The Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2023,” and Good House­keep­ing’s “The 12 New Books to Add to Your Sum­mer Read­ing List.”

McIvor’s pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished col­lec­tion of short sto­ries “Where There Are Mon­sters” (2019) was al­so the re­cip­i­ent of ex­cel­lent re­views and was de­scribed as a deep dive in­to Trinidad folk nar­ra­tives that mir­rored con­tem­po­rary ver­sions of our deep-seat­ed trou­bles. Over the past few years, she has emerged as a bold voice in Caribbean fic­tion, ful­fill­ing her pas­sion for telling “our sto­ries.”

“I come from a long line of fe­male sto­ry­tellers,” McIvor says, “my moth­er, my grand­moth­er and aunt are all sto­ry­tellers.” Oral tra­di­tion is one of the most pow­er­ful tools of in­dige­nous doc­u­men­ta­tion of in­for­ma­tion and this means that many Caribbean peo­ple iden­ti­fy with old­er fam­i­ly mem­bers telling sto­ries of an era past. McIvor said that her moth­er even re­called that as a child, she would be fol­low­ing her around and telling her sto­ry af­ter sto­ry. She has now turned that pas­sion for sto­ry­telling in­to her ca­reer as a full-time writer. Re­call­ing her days in sec­ondary school at St Joseph’s Con­vent, Port-of-Spain, she said that in her year­book, pub­lished when she was a teenag­er, she has her fu­ture pro­fes­sion as “Nov­el­ist/Po­et,” and jok­ing­ly claimed, “Well at least I’m 50% there!”

An open schol­ar­ship win­ner, McIvor pur­sued her un­der­grad­u­ate and mas­ters’ de­grees in the UK at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ed­in­burgh, re­spec­tive­ly. In an ef­fort to per­form her du­ty ser­vice to the coun­try, she re­turned home and was a teacher for five years. Fol­low­ing that, she took an un­like­ly turn in­to the cor­po­rate realm, work­ing at the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce and then Massy Tech­nolo­gies. De­scrib­ing her­self as “risk averse,” McIvor re­mem­bered her strug­gle with the de­ci­sion to leave cor­po­rate work and write full-time. “Last year in June, al­though I had a lot of para­noia about free­lanc­ing, I de­cid­ed to leave my job and write full-time, as a birth­day present to my­self.” How has it been, one year on? “If I had known it would be so ex­cit­ing, I would’ve left a lot ear­li­er,” she says, with the en­thu­si­asm of some­one who has im­mersed them­selves in­to their truest pas­sion.

In the face of great suc­cess, McIvor ac­knowl­edged that her most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge has been to mon­e­tise her books by get­ting an agent and pub­lish­er while re­main­ing true to her­self and telling Caribbean sto­ries with re­al au­then­tic­i­ty. In an ar­ti­cle pub­lished on lithub.com, she as­sert­ed that “Caribbean fic­tion doesn’t need to be al­tered for Amer­i­can au­di­ences,” and that re­views from ear­ly read­ers and agents of her books “seemed de­signed to sand the rough edges off my coun­try and to present a ver­sion of Trinidad that would cater to an in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence’s con­cep­tion of the Caribbean rather than show­ing our con­tem­po­rary re­al­i­ties.”

She de­scribed “au­then­tic­i­ty as the hill I want­ed to die on,” and re­fused to col­lab­o­rate with agents who want­ed to al­ter her re­al, lived Trinida­di­an ex­pe­ri­ence that she tran­scribed in­to her short sto­ry col­lec­tion and her nov­el. Her com­mit­ment to au­then­tic­i­ty clear­ly paid off, and not­ed Caribbean book crit­ic and re­view­er Cindy All­man, known wide­ly as Book of Cinz, said that McIvor scored big with her pub­lish­er of “Where There Are Mon­sters”, Peepal Tree Press, as “they re­al­ly sup­port Caribbean lit­er­a­ture” and her pub­lish­ers of “The God of Good Looks”, William Mor­row/Harper­Collins, in the US, and Fig Tree/Pen­guin Ran­dom House, both known as “part of the big five pub­lish­ers.”

McIvor launched her new nov­el at the Bo­cas Lit Fest in Trinidad in May, per­fect­ly timed ahead of “Read Caribbean Month” which was launched five years ago by Book of Cinz. As June is con­sid­ered Caribbean Her­itage Month, All­man thought it would be well aligned to cel­e­brate Caribbean lit­er­a­ture dur­ing this month. All­man de­scribed the con­cept of Read Caribbean month as “a space for Caribbean read­ers, ‘book­sta­gram­mers’ and writ­ers to get to­geth­er and share their love for read­ing and writ­ing the Caribbean.”

She said that Bre­anne McIvor “has done so much work to ad­vance Caribbean lit­er­a­ture, host­ing pan­els and writ­ing books that stay true to who she is and cap­ture the spir­it and heart of Trinidad and To­ba­go.” Both McIvor and All­man shine as in­vestors in Caribbean cul­ture, ex­port­ing our lit­er­ary tra­di­tions world­wide, and be­liev­ing that our in­dige­nous sto­ries are wor­thy of be­ing told and cel­e­brat­ed by us and the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty. McIvor en­cour­aged us to “hold on to your sto­ries, al­though so­cial me­dia may make you feel small and in­signif­i­cant. Your sto­ry is beau­ti­ful, and your per­spec­tive is pow­er­ful.”

A key part of her au­then­tic­i­ty is that McIvor doesn’t shy away from of­fer­ing so­cial com­men­tary, both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive. In The God of Good Looks, she brings to light some sub­ver­sive is­sues of the en­grained pa­tri­ar­chal sys­tems that still blame and op­press young women to­day, and can be near-im­pos­si­ble to over­come. Fur­ther­more, she dis­cuss­es in the nov­el the com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of, and cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion on, fe­male beau­ty, per­pet­u­at­ed in pop­u­lar rhetoric by nar­row beau­ty stan­dards. She al­so ex­plores the rigid and de­mor­al­is­ing so­cial class bar­ri­ers that stymie and de­mor­alise peo­ple, pre­vent­ing them from reach­ing their full po­ten­tial.

Bre­anne McIvor is an award-win­ning, in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed au­thor, whose writ­ing has been de­scribed as “phe­nom­e­nal”, “daz­zling”, and “vi­brant”. Dri­ven by the pur­pose of “il­lu­mi­nat­ing Trinida­di­an sto­ries,” she has burst on­to the in­ter­na­tion­al scene buoyed by crit­i­cal ac­claim for her ex­cel­lent work. The God of Good Looks is avail­able both in lo­cal book­stores and on­line.

Fay­ola K J Fras­er is a pro­fes­sion­al in the in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment are­na. She has a BA in in­ter­na­tion­al (Mid­dle East­ern) Stud­ies and an MSc in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions & Diplo­ma­cy from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.

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