When po­et, writer and uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er in lit­er­ary and cul­tur­al stud­ies Jen­nifer Rahim died sud­den­ly at 60 on March 13, her pub­lish­er Je­re­my Poynt­ing, founder of Peepal Tree Press, wrote that we had lost “one of the re­gions very best writ­ers”.

This month as Peepal Tree Press pub­lish­es Rahim’s posthu­mous nov­el, Good­bye Bay, Poynt­ing has pro­nounced it among “best Caribbean nov­els to have been writ­ten”, tack­ling ques­tions of “so­ci­ety and per­son­al be­ing asked by great nov­el­ists from George Eliot to Earl Lovelace.”

Ex­clu­sive ex­tract of Good­bye Bay by Jen­nifer Rahim with per­mis­sion from Peepal Tree Press:

CHAP­TER 1 – AN AR­RIVAL

I ar­rived in Macaima in Sep­tem­ber, 1963. Pe­tit Careme sea­son. The is­land was one year a na­tion, free to prac­tice what it meant to have a flag to hoist and an an­them to sing. We had a prime min­is­ter, a gov­ern­ment sit­ting in­side the Red House; our Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al be­came a cit­i­zen. That year, too, we had re­trench­ment in the oil sec­tor and dis­grun­tled sug­ar work­ers trig­gered a se­ries of union-led strikes not seen since the Wa­ter Ri­ots. The PM, in an ef­fort to take con­trol, or­dered a Com­mis­sion of In­quiry to sniff out sub­ver­sion in the ranks of the trade union move­ment. That Sep­tem­ber, four girls died in the bomb­ing of a Bap­tist church in Birm­ing­ham, Al­aba­ma, and hur­ri­cane Flo­ra mashed up To­ba­go. In Oc­to­ber, Man­dela went on tri­al in South Africa; Cu­ba was in the midst of the mis­sile cri­sis; nine Viet­namese monks were killed for fly­ing their Bud­dhist flag; Mar­tin Luther King de­liv­ered his I Have a Dream speech at the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al; John F. Kennedy was as­sas­si­nat­ed; C.L.R. James pub­lished Be­yond a Bound­ary; the Mighty Spar­row was crowned king of Car­ni­val with “Dan is de Man”; the Bea­t­les and Doris Troy had num­ber one hits with “Love Me Do” and “Just One Look”; Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor starred in Cleopa­tra; a woman was ar­rest­ed and re­leased with­out charge for sell­ing souse and black pud­ding on a pave­ment in San Fer­nan­do; and a man was mur­dered on his hos­pi­tal bed.

It was Sun­day, mid­morn­ing. The vil­lage was de­sert­ed. I had no clue what I was com­ing to, but Macaima was where I had land­ed the job as tem­po­rary post­mistress. Peo­ple from town would be quick to ask: Macaima, where on earth is that? No place on this is­land call by that name. Maybe so, but I was there. See me, Annabelle Bridge­mo­han, who had spent all my life in bright-lights Port of Spain, wait­ing on a junc­tion for a Mr El­ton, whom I had nev­er met but who had promised to get me set­tled in the rental where I would spend the agreed-up­on year.

I had done a three-year stint at the Port of Spain head of­fice, though it seemed like an age. I need­ed more than a change of scenery or pace; whether Macaima would give it I hadn’t a clue. Life is a de­ci­sion to live my moth­er said to me when I told her I had ac­cept­ed the Macaima post. She col­lect­ed max­ims like that. Maybe she had dis­cov­ered what they meant. I did not want to live her life. When I land­ed the job at head of­fice, the first thing I did was to rent a one-bed­room apart­ment on the edge of the city; small, but it was my space.Un­til my ar­rival on Macaima Junc­tion with noth­ing but my two suit­cas­es, I hadn’t re­alised that those words were still mine to learn. I was twen­ty-four and adrift. My re­la­tion­ship with my boyfriend Miles had come to a painful end; he had be­come in­creas­ing­ly bit­ter about my de­ci­sion to end things be­tween us and what he con­sid­ered my un­for­giv­able crime in choos­ing not to have our ba­by; my friend Thea had left the is­land for grad­u­ate school in the States and I could no longer put up with the con­spir­a­to­r­i­al cli­mate in the of­fice as man­age­ment tried to fend off union­i­sa­tion with di­vide and rule tac­tics. When I ar­rived in Macaima, I felt no more re­al than a ghost left over from an­oth­er life.

End of Ex­cerpt

Of Good­bye Bay, Poynt­ing says Rahim “brings the past, a whole com­mu­ni­ty and its dy­nam­ics alive through the high­ly skilled cre­ation of a dozen char­ac­ters who each have their own dis­tinc­tive, vivid be­ing.”

Poynt­ing calls it a “Trinida­di­an nov­el for Trinida­di­an read­ers mak­ing no con­ces­sions to the met­ro­pol­i­tan mar­ket­place ask­ing prob­ing ques­tions about in­de­pen­dence and its fail­ures on race, class, gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, the han­dling of pow­er and per­son­al in­tegri­ty.

“It does this through telling the sto­ry of a young woman learn­ing to live with her­self and past de­ci­sions, with room for sur­prise, hu­mour, tragedy and re­demp­tion treat­ing in­ter-sex­u­al iden­ti­ty, abor­tion and LGBTQ de­sire as mat­ters of pos­si­bil­i­ty, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and moral choice.”

The late Jen­nifer Rahim pub­lished five col­lec­tions of po­et­ry, in­clud­ing Ap­proach­ing Sab­baths, ( Casa de Las Amer­i­c­as prize) two works of fic­tion, Song­ster and Cur­few Chron­i­cles, a col­lec­tion of linked short sto­ries about the 2012 state of emer­gency, which won the over­all OCM Bo­cas prize in 2018. Good­bye Bay will be avail­able in T&T book­shops in mid Au­gust.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian colum­nist and the win­ner of the non-fic­tion OCM Bo­cas Prize for Lit­er­a­ture 2023.