People sometimes ask me why did i become a writer or why did you write this story? Why is your stories laced with social commentary and elements of life among the Jamaican working class? Don't you grow tire of such themes? Are you writing about your life?
Response :
I once said i wrote books for every Woman with a the girl trapped inside that some man once told that she was not good enough. My aim is to create rather powerful heroines. Women who irrespective of their everyday struggles manage to be successful. Success does not necessarily mean glamour,their success could be transitory, a working progress, a dream on its way to coming true. My heroines are the women i have been, the women i am now and the women i would love to become. They are not me, they are a part of me. They are my realities.
Did i have an unhappy childhood? Yes, I have spent most of my life feeling completely out of sync with the world and growing up in a semi-literate community did not help. People saw my smart as meaning i was crazy, my anomie behavior as madness and to give legitimacy to their beliefs, they spent their time painting my intellect as weird and occult. I have since dumbed down around them so as not to make them uncomfortable. My success is unknown to many in my natal district, this kind of accomplish would scare the hell out of them.
I think the scariest part of writing is when you know that publishing exposes you. People will readily assume things about you and what you are about based on what you wrote. They will attack you if your writing does not reflect their viewpoint because it is so much easier to make it personal than to rationalize what you wrote.
My deviation from the standard caribbean or Jamaican literature has not really brook any respect from my peers. I am not a good writer. I am a novelist. I write what i feel. I do not know anything about technique than what i learnt at Sixth Form doing my A-levels. I write stories. I write about life. I have no other glamorous accomplishment to speak of so in my interviews do not ask me about what i have done with my life or if my writings are justified by a piece of paper a professional handed me stating i am licensed to do this.
My stories are not entirely fictional, they are for the most part influenced by real life events. My overactive imagination compensates for the banality of my existence and i suppose some other soul within my culture, children of my own socialization would benefit from a respite from this reproached reality.
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