Guyanese OnlineThis is a reminder to register via eventbrite for the next Guyana SPEAKS on Sunday, 26th March at 3.30pm UK time [11.30 New York, Toronto & Guyana]:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walter-rodney-guyana-history-and-politics-tickets-510204484347
This month’s GS aims celebrates the birth of Walter Rodney on 23rd March 1942 with a presentation by distinguished academic and activist, -presentationby Cecil Gutzmore.
By Rosaliene Bacchus -March 12, 2023
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Radical social change is possible. I saw it unfold as a teenager growing up in Guyana, a former British colony caught in the tight grip of the rich and powerful white sugar plantation owners. Such change demands courage, persistence, and self-determination. It means pushing upstream against the flow, ignoring the voices of naysayers, and not succumbing to discouragement and hopelessness when faced with setbacks and defeats. Winifred Gaskin (1916-1977) was a woman who displayed such traits to the fullest measure. |
To celebrate my 88th birthday on the 23rd November 2022. I felt it would be good to share this history of the tenement yard, a cooperative environment that contributed much to my formative and subsequent years.
132 Carmichael Street was the location of a tenement yard on the eastern side of the street one lot away from Church Street on the south. I was born in the Georgetown Public Hospital to the sound of the six o’clock cannon in Kingston. A royal welcome but the only throne I ever occupied was a humble object found in working class homes that was given that honorific title. The cannon located in the Kingston Ward took the place of an alarm clock for the working class, signifying that it was time to “drink tea” ( bush tea with bread or Wieting and Richter “edger boy” biscuits, origin of the name is unknown) as breakfast was referred to and be off to work. Continue reading
You are warmly invited to view the third in an occasional series of readings and recitals in which we introduce you to Guyanese writing and poetry that you may not know or reacquaint you with favourite authors and poets.
Tomorrow (Friday 16th December) is the writer Edgar MittelholzePreview Changes (opens in a new tab)r’s birthday. He was born in New Amsterdam in 1909 and died in 1965. He began to write at the age of about 20 and self-published his first book in 1937. He moved to Trinidad in 1941 and the UK in 1948. From 1951 to 1965 he published 21 novels, an autobiography and a travelogue.
By Geoff Burrowes
I’ve dredged up from the recesses of memory a story of my first camping trip that I hope you’ll find interesting:
Red Water Creek – Atkinson Field. Guyana
I woke up excited. This was the day! I was a member of Scout Troop 39 but had never been camping. Today that was going to change forever!
Once a year the Scout Association in British Guiana held a rally to which all Scouts were invited. It took the form of a large camp, with space reserved for every troop’s tent and cooking fire and latrine, as well as a meeting place in a central location for all the Scouts. This year it was being held at Redwater Creek a creek in the bush, about 35 miles South of Georgetown, our city and the capital of our country, BG which was abbreviated from British Guiana. For those who don’t know BG was a British colony on the North shoulder of South America, and still today, the only English speaking nation in South America. Continue reading
The sequence is as follows:
Black Friday1962 (‘were some who ran one way…’)
After One Year (‘So jail me quickly, clang the illiterate door…’)
What Can a Man Do More (‘How utter truth when falsehood is the truth?’)
Where are Free Men? (‘O we have endured such absurd times’)
Childhood of a Voice (‘Imagine it, the childhood of a voice…’)
The recital has been pre-recorded and lasts half an hour. It will air on YouTube at the time stated and be available to view at any point after that.
Dr Gemma Robinson provides an introduction to the collection and insights into each individual poem.
Readers are Konyo Addo, Jasper Adams, Stephanie Bowry, Stanley Greaves and Lloyd Marshall.
Moray House Trust has spent a decade working to promote Guyanese culture and public discourse. We believe that a culture thrives and
develops where ideas circulate and are robustly debated and interrogated.
Event: Poetry Recital
Title: Jail Me Quickly
Date: Tuesday 7th June 2022
Time: 11.00 AM Guyana
YouTube: https://youtu.be/T7GjxmpWaDk
Regards,
Moray House Trust
Scaling New Heights: 2022 Pakaraima Writers Anthology
In this, their first collection, Pakaraima Writers have produced a vast array of poems and short pieces, by poets, short story writers and novelists, some already published in prior journals, some relatively new, all engaging enough to hold the reader spellbound.
There are pieces that remind us of our Guyanese Heritage from poets in poems like Trails of Treasures by Janet Naidu, Guyana’s Seawall by James Richmond, The Petal Shivers by Ian McDonald, and the folksy Faaty-Leven by Petamber Persaud, Hard Ears Pickney by Shabeena Ramjohn, along with Granny Gone by Ray Williams and I Am Who I Am by Ken Puddicombe. Continue reading
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Guyana: How Did My European Ancestors Migrate to Guyana? – Rohlehr family
Henry Louis Gates Jr. and NEHGS Researcher Meaghan Siekman
Dear Professor Gates: RE the Rohlehr family
I am a first-generation American whose family hails from Guyana (and, further back, Germany). My father has a German last name: Rohlehr (pronounced “Rohlair”). I would like to know more about my ancestors in that line who first came to Guyana from either Germany or the Netherlands.
The story goes that during the Bismarck era in Germany, my ancestor Gertrude Rohlehr had seven sons. Six were killed in war, so she sent her remaining son, Swartz, away from Germany to save him. He made his way to New Amsterdam, Guyana, from Holland, where he ended up having two sons, Peter and John, with an unknown African woman. Continue reading →
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