FUN FACTS: Although I was born in Brooklyn, NY, I moved to Trinidad when I was nine to live with my mother’s family. I lived there for seven years before moving back to the United States, but my formative years were definitely there.
THE HUMMINGBIRD WARRIOR
When sixteen-year-old Roran’s saintly and light-skinned older brother falls ill in 1963 Trinidad, people in his village, Sapo, blame obeah. Blaming dark sorcery, the same kind believed to have sunk the southern half of Sapo thirty years prior, is ludicrous to Roran. He’s a boy of science and his brother is just ill, albeit the doctors aren’t quite sure with what. But when Roran hears the cries of those who died in southern Sapo, he seeks out Father Basdeo, a man rumored to have eyes that can see the living and the dead. Father Basdeo explains to Roran that Roran has the eyes on him, too, and only Roran can save his brother by communing with the spirits. He just needs to put his jealousy aside and risk the one thing most people in his village would never dare risk—having his soul trapped in Sapo’s sunken side.
THE HUMMINGBIRD WARRIOR draws on tales told to me by my relatives who lived in the Caribbean when magic, to many, was a part of daily living. It also is stepped in a bit of truth, Danny based off my mother’s cousin who was rumored to be afflicted with a curse in the 1960s.
Image Downloads
Characters name
Characters name
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
–Anaïs Nin