Jean Rhys

For one thing, there is the first line of the Do­mini­can au­thor’s sem­i­nal work Wide Sar­gas­so Sea: "They say when trou­ble comes close ranks, and so the white peo­ple did," which, be­yond mak­ing it to a 2006 list of 100 best first lines from nov­els, res­onates eeri­ly amidst the tur­bu­lence of the cur­rent so­cio-po­lit­i­cal cli­mate.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease, on Thurs­day the UK’s Roy­al So­ci­ety of Lit­er­a­ture (RSL) presents a spe­cial event in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Bo­cas Lit Fest recog­nis­ing the canon­i­cal writer and RSL Fel­low Jean Rhys, a Caribbean na­tive of Eu­ro­pean de­scent.

It is a joint cel­e­bra­tion of the RSL’s 200th birth­day and the Bo­cas Lit Fest’s 10th. "Notwith­stand­ing their enor­mous age dif­fer­ence, both in­sti­tu­tions are pre­ced­ed by their in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tions for en­abling and cul­ti­vat­ing lit­er­ary ex­plo­ration and ex­cel­lence," the re­lease stat­ed.

RSL pres­i­dent, prizewin­ning writer, lit­er­ary his­to­ri­an and NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest fre­quenter Dame Ma­ri­na Warn­er says "We’re the for­tu­nate in­her­i­tors of a tra­di­tion that al­lows writ­ers to speak their/our minds, and not many so­ci­eties around the globe en­joy that. We have in com­mon a com­mit­ment to writ­ing–and read­ing–and try­ing to do in­spir­ing, en­joy­able and ex­cit­ing things with words. The con­se­quences of a work of lit­er­a­ture, of a po­em, a play, a nov­el, a bi­og­ra­phy, an es­say, or any oth­er form of lit­er­a­ture are al­ways un­pre­dictable, but the ac­tiv­i­ty mat­ters."

Shivanee Ramlochan

Born in 1890 in Roseau, Do­mini­ca, Rhys is best known for her 1966 nov­el Wide Sar­gas­so Sea, which imag­ined the ear­ly life of Bertha Ma­son from Char­lotte Bron­të’s 1847 nov­el Jane Eyre. It is an ar­che­typ­al work of "writ­ing back" to lit­er­ary tra­di­tion, and a pop­u­lar clas­sic tack­ling hard ques­tions about his­to­ry and race. Less in­ves­ti­gat­ed is Rhys’ writ­ing ca­reer that spanned decades and forms, from her 1939 nov­el Good Morn­ing, Mid­night, to Smile Please: An Un­fin­ished Auto­bi­og­ra­phy, pub­lished in 1979, the year she died.

Rhys’ Wide Sar­gas­so Sea al­so ap­pears among the top 24 crowd-sourced books in the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest’s 100 Caribbean Books That Made Us cam­paign, one of the high­lights of the fes­ti­val’s 10th year with its ti­tle spon­sor, to be cel­e­brat­ed in 2021. Of 16 Caribbean au­thors whose books were most fre­quent­ly men­tioned, Rhys ranks high­est of the four women emerg­ing in this top tier of Caribbean writ­ing that has helped shape gen­er­a­tions of read­ers and writ­ers.

To­geth­er, US writer, trans­la­tor and aca­d­e­m­ic Lau­ren Elkin; UK nov­el­ist and jour­nal­ist Lin­da Grant; and T&T po­et and book blog­ger Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan dis­cuss the im­pact of Rhys on Caribbean lit­er­a­ture and across the globe, with mod­er­a­tor Shahid­ha Bari.

Cit­ing Rhys as her writ­ing ‘hero’, Grant de­scribes her as ‘a nov­el­ist of yearn­ing, rage and de­sire, whose un­adorned prose hits the so­lar plexus.’ Trinida­di­an Ram­lochan ‘thinks of­ten of Jean Rhys’ An­toinette, car­ry­ing her ar­son­ist’s can­dle through the emp­ty, cold halls of her op­pres­sor’s man­sion, ready to raze it.’ For Elkin, Rhys’ work has been un­der­val­ued ‘for decades’, her ‘re­liance on her life as in­spi­ra­tion for her fic­tion used to min­imise her artis­tic achieve­ment.’

Wide Sargasso Sea book cover.

Debra Wanser

Bo­cas Lit Fest founder and di­rec­tor Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown says "We can’t over­state the sig­nif­ican­ce of this op­por­tu­ni­ty to present the voice of one of our re­gion’s finest con­tem­po­rary po­ets in such crit­i­cal dis­course which ex­plores the con­tri­bu­tion of a woman who, giv­en her strug­gles with iden­ti­ty and be­long­ing, was com­pelled to rep­re­sent an au­then­tic ex­pe­ri­ence of a Caribbean woman all those years ago; and not least of all to share birth­day cel­e­bra­tions with an en­ti­ty 190 years our se­nior! What an ho­n­our!"

The event will be livestreamed from 3.30 pm through 4.45 pm GMT-4 on Thurs­day. In­ter­est­ed par­ties are in­vit­ed to book their spots via the British Li­brary web­site at https://www.bl.uk/events/whats-so-great-about-jean-rhys at a cost of GBP5. For more in­for­ma­tion, email in­fo@bo­caslit­fest.com or box­of­fice@bl.uk