Winner of the 2022 CLMP Firecracker Award for Fiction
Winner of the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature
Coconut trees. Carnival. Rum and coke. To many outsiders, these idyllic images represent the supposed easy life in Caribbean nations such as Trinidad and Tobago. However, the reality is far different for those who live there—a society where poverty and patriarchy savagely rule, and where love and revenge often go hand in hand.
Written in a combination of English and Trinidad Creole, Pleasantview reveals the dark side of the Caribbean dream. In this novel-in-stories about a fictional town in Trinidad, we meet a political candidate who sets out to slaughter endangered turtles for fun, while his rival candidate beats his “outside-woman,” so badly she ends up losing their baby. On the night of a political rally, the abused woman exacts a very public revenge, the trajectory of which echoes through Pleasantview, ending with one boy introducing another boy to a gun and to an ideology which will help him aim the weapon.
A Different Energy stands as a testament to the enduring wisdom and strength of Caribbean women. It sounds a call for a more diverse, inclusive and equitable development of one of the world's most male-dominated domains: the oil and gas industry.
Over the last decade, as global energy has become hyper-focused on the Southern Caribbean, the role and opinions of local women have too often been overlooked. In this compelling, first-of-its-kind book, award-winning lawyer-turned-writer Celeste Mohammed remedies that omission.
In powerful, eye-opening portraits of eight Trini, Surinamese and Guyanese women who are employed in the Caribbean oil and gas industry, Mohammed uses a range of styles to keep the gender conversation refreshingly candid, often humorous, and always thought-provoking.
With a voice both earnest and confiding, intellectual and intimate, this book's commentary and analysis extract from the women's stories lessons for any woman seeking to defy odds, shatter stereotypes, and forge paths in a business culture which underestimates her.
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