Ira Math­ur

Af­ter decades of be­ing brain­washed to be­lieve on­ly ‘the Queen’s Eng­lish’ was ac­cept­able, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s writ­ers (along with writ­ers in our re­gion) are find­ing their own voice and be­ing cel­e­brat­ed and court­ed for it.

The unique Trin­ba­go Eng­lish per­co­lat­ed be­tween peo­ple of four con­ti­nents has cre­at­ed a lan­guage that has with­stood slav­ery and in­den­ture, found hu­mour in the sad­dest, most un­just spaces, and brought rhythm and depth to the Eng­lish lan­guage.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bumper crop of re­cent ti­tles is tes­ti­mo­ny that the Caribbean has edged its way out of the side­lines and found its right­ful space in the cen­tre of the lit­er­ary world.

Trinidad-born Sir VS Naipaul, Sam Selvon, Earl Lovelace and Jen­nifer Rahim, among oth­er cel­e­brat­ed writ­ers, in­tro­duced the world to our unique Trin­bag­on­ian Eng­lish.

One such re­cent voice is that of Trinidad-born writer In­grid Per­saud (who de­scribes her­self as a ‘late bloomer to Lit­er­a­ture’ af­ter ca­reers in law and art).

 Per­saud’s short sto­ries ti­tled More Chron­i­cles of Burke Street, com­mis­sioned by BBC pro­duc­er Jus­tine Wil­lett, are be­ing aired on BBC Ra­dio 4 at19.45 week­ly (voiced by Trinidad-born ac­tress Mar­ti­na Laird) and pod­cast­ed on BBC Sounds.

Wil­let says the se­ries com­pris­es “fun­ny and mov­ing short sto­ries by In­grid Per­saud set on a seem­ing­ly or­di­nary street in Trinidad. We com­mis­sioned her to write her first se­ries a few years ago and re­turned to Burke Street for a sec­ond se­ries. It’s packed with hu­mour and un­for­get­table char­ac­ters.”

Per­saud joins a glit­ter­ing lit­er­ary cast. Wil­let has pro­duced oth­er se­ries with writ­ers in­clud­ing Jon Mc­Gre­gor, Daisy John­son, David Sza­lay, and Sarah Moss and is cur­rent­ly work­ing on a se­ries with William Boyd for Oc­to­ber 2023.

Per­saud’s vi­gnettes set in a fic­tion­al Burke Street in Trinidad in­clude a woman whose dog is be­ing wooed by her dog sit­ter, a man ar­riv­ing at his own fu­ner­al af­ter be­ing pre­sumed drowned, and a woman who could not leave the scene of her home gut­ted by a fire.

Speak­ing from her home in South Lon­don, In­grid Per­saud is un­apolo­getic about her de­ci­sion to write these sto­ries in Tri­ni Eng­lish.

 “Our way of speak­ing Eng­lish is as valid as any oth­er Eng­lish spo­ken in Wales, Scot­land or Man­ches­ter. Tri­ni Eng­lish has found its way to the in­ter­na­tion­al scene. The de­ci­sion by pub­lish­ing hous­es like Blooms­bury, Faber and Pen­guin Ran­dom House to buy and pub­lish ti­tles writ­ten in Tri­ni Eng­lish is tes­ti­mo­ny to how our ca­dence, joy, and lyri­cism ap­peal to peo­ple be­yond our re­gion.

“We ( writ­ers) do not be­lieve that, as a mi­nor­i­ty, we can­not en­joy the priv­i­leges of lan­guages that the ma­jor­i­ty en­joy. We should as­sume them and en­joy them with all the ben­e­fits.”

For the BBC Chron­i­cles of Burke Street  Per­saud says she drew on the Caribbean lit­er­ary canon, in­clud­ing Jen­nifer Rahim’s Cur­few Chron­i­cles Naipaul’s Miguel Street, and Sam Selvon’s sto­ries for in­spi­ra­tion.

“The no­tion of com­mu­ni­ty is strong with­in me. I went with a fic­ti­tious street. It evokes Miguel Street but is not Miguel Street. It’s my own street.”

I asked Per­saud how she keeps her strong con­nec­tion to Trinidad ev­i­dent in the sto­ries.

“I ask friends and fam­i­ly to alert me to in­ter­est­ing sto­ries and dip in­to lo­cal news­pa­pers. I read BC Pires’s columns. Yours is a touch­stone. I go to YouTube and lis­ten to jokes, cook­ing pro­grammes, pod­casts - any­thing to re­ceive the beau­ty of lan­guage. It keeps me ground­ed in Trinidad.”

When hear­ing Per­saud speak, one is struck by the catch in her voice, the love in it when she spoke of Trinidad.

“I miss hear­ing Tri­ni’s voic­es around me con­stant­ly though I’ve not lived there since I was eigh­teen, the ca­dence and rhythm of Tri­ni’s speech bring me the great­est joy.

“When I’m stuck in the mid­dle of win­ter in Lon­don. I get on the phone with friends and fam­i­ly just to hear a Tri­ni voice.

“I will al­ways be writ­ing about Trinidad. It’s where my heart is, where my soul is root­ed. My navel string is buried in San Fer­nan­do. When you live far away, you are con­stant­ly nav­i­gat­ing the space be­tween what is home and what is ex­ile.

“I’ve lived in south Lon­don much longer than Trinidad, yet I feel I am not at home here. I think about home, get rid of the bi­na­ry no­tion of home and ex­ile, ac­cept that I live in these spaces be­tween those two no­tions, and move eas­i­ly be­tween them, which has in­formed who I am to­day.”

Per­saud won the 2020 Cos­ta First Nov­el Award, the Au­thor’s Club First Book Award 2021 and the In­die Book Award for Fic­tion 2021.

In­grid Per­saud’s new nov­el will be pub­lished in 2024 by Faber.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian colum­nist and the win­ner of the OCM Bo­cas Prize for Lit­er­a­ture in the cat­e­go­ry prize of non­fic­tion ( 2023).