All posts by sinistra

smi, BSc International Relations, journalist, wordspinner, Trinidadian, Londoner, New Yorker, limer, music-obsessed, drastic sarcastic, Soca Warrior, work in progress.

Flash Fiction Friday

“3.. 2.. 1..”
“Happy new year,” J quipped, rolling her eyes.
I quirked an eyebrow in her direction. “Oh, come on. Humour me.”
“Face it M, the phone is not going to ring. And your endless countdowns are – well, they kinda sad actually.”
“Har de har.” I tossed the cell phone onto the bed and arranged myself on the floor of the bedroom.
“He said he was going to call.”
“And God said let there be light. Get over it, he”s not going to call, you”re not going to get back together and Creationism is a charming myth.”
“You still go to church though.”
“True. Damned Catholic guilt.”

Continue reading Flash Fiction Friday

The Power of the Pen

When in the course of human events, the oppressed find it necessary to dissolve the political and psychological bonds which have joined them to the oppressor, revolutionaries have a choice to pick up either a pen or a gun. The true revolutionaries pick up a pen because they realize that violence truly begets violence and that any solution that is brought about by bloodshed will only be temporary; the powerful will change positions and the gorillas are in charge again.

[Geoffrey Philip, “Happy Birthday Sam Selvon“, May 20 2006]

That paragraph hit me for six.

Guns and Gramaxone

Based on police records from 1991-2000, the study shows that 68.2 per cent of the homicides perpetrated in Trinididad and Tobago during that period were by Afro-Trinidadians and that 79.2 per cent of the suicides were by Indo-Trinidadians.

[Source: Trinidad Express, April 23 2006]

Ooh. Softly, softly.

The study in question was conducted by one “Dr Gerard Hutchinson of the Mt Hope Psychiatric Unit.”

This is hugely interesting and massively political.

Continue reading Guns and Gramaxone