I had been there before ........

Singerman

An article on slave quarters reminded me of an experience I am sharing publicly for the first time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/arts/confronting-slavery-at-long-islands-oldest-estates.html?src=me&_r=1

   Many years ago when I was at CPTC in Jamaica, I went with a video crew to interview the owner of one of our old plantation estates Good Hope in Trelawny. As executive producer, I wasn't part of the production crew. I went along out of curiousity and was therefore free to make my own observations of what I saw. 
   The tour was intensive and extensive and our guide, Patrick Tennyson, whose family owned the estate at that time was very knowledgeable about the estate. 

   He took us all over the estate, some parts in ruins, but he give us the history of intriguing old buildings, the old slave hospital, old stone walls, beautiful landscape, the well preserved Great House.

MY EXPERIENCE

   There was a section with just rubble with the remains of one or two rusty old iron implements. This was the slave quarters. I have no explanation of what I experienced on this site after he informed us that this was the area where the slaves were housed. There are a couple seconds of my life that time reversed and I 'met' a slave called Jacob who instructed me to tell his story. I still get goose pimples when I recall the incident. I felt as if I actually was transported into past time seeing huts and people dimly – everything ghostly. It could only have been a brief time because nobody sensed that anything was wrong with me.

   For the rest of the day I followed the crew and our guide around in a daze. But all that I saw burned into my imagination, so some time later I wrote Jacob's story. It was published, in1991, in my collection of short stories titled Singerman by Peepal Tree Press as Jacob Bubbles.  

   This is a very scary story for which I have absolutely no explanation. I re- read the story just now. It still scares me, and I am sad that so much of it can still be considered contemporary, for Jacob's story got mixed up with his descendant, Bubbles.

 See review page: http://www.peepaltreepress.com/review_list.asp?au_id=10

Ban 'vagina' and 'penis' - Censorship in Christian lit

 I found this article on  Rachel Held Evans's blog.from which I have quoted below:

A lot of folks have been expressing outrage and surprise over the fact that LifeWay Christian bookstores recently banned the movie "The Blind Side" from their shelves due to language and objectionable content.  The 2009 biographical film about a black high school student adopted by a white Christian family is rated PG-13 and became something of an evangelical darling when it released, receiving endorsements from Christianity Today and Focus on the Family.

But Florida pastor Rodney Baker of Hopeful Baptist Church submitted a resolution to the Southern Baptist Convention, demanding that LifeWay pull the film. Lifeway bowed to the pressure from Baker, and removed the movie from their shelves—a response that Baker saw as obedient yielding to the Holy Spirit.

Those of you who followed “vaginagate”—in which I was asked to remove the word “vagina” from my upcoming book in deference to Christian bookstore standards—will know that I’m not at all surprised by this story.

For all the amazing people who work in Christian publishing, and for all the amazing books they produce every year, there is this undercurrent of fear and insecurity that undoubtedly stifles our collective creativity. And this fear and insecurity is a direct result of the unreasonable standards held up by Christian bookstores.
But here's the thing...
Christians are not called to create a subculture untouched by the beauty and ugliness of this world. No, Christians are called to speak the truth, even when it is uncomfortable....especially when it is uncomfortable.

 Here's another comment form another blog   her.meneutics  at    http://blog.christianitytoday.com/women/2012/03/when_christian_bookstores_ban.html

The problem with Vagina-gate and similar forms of “censorship” is that, in an attempt to protect customers, publishers and bookstores are making it a lot harder for writers to tell the stories God has called them to write. And when Christians are barred by other Christians from serving God, it dishonors God. In fact, it’s sin.

I found the arguments interesting because I am in the process of writing what I would describe as a Christian novel. I plan to put it out as an ebook on Amazon, so I won't get into any hassles with bookstores, but presumably I would want to attract a Christian readership and if censorship is such a strong part of the culture,(the articles mention other taboos) then I know I won't be getting any readers there.

Strangely, I didn't see 'penis' mentioned. Presumably Cristian writers don't write about penises OR maybe only vaginas are evil.

Anyway, the argument reminded me of a personal experience.

Many years ago, when he was alive, my husband developed a problem with haemorrhoids.Too embarrassed to go to the doctor, he asked me, when I was going in for my checkup, to ask our family doctor to send a prescription for him.

I duly made the request and the doctor was immediately annoyed. I still remember his response. "If his elbow was hurting him he would come in. I don't understand why people behave as if God made only some parts of the body and Satan the rest."

He gave me the interim prescription with a strong message to tell my husband to "get his___ into the office for examination and treatment."

The doc's statement stayed with me and with this as the premise, I wrote a story which I called Version OR the Devil Made Some Parts published in my collection of short stories  Singerman by Peepal Tree Press some years ago.

It is a version of the Adam and Eve story. If you are squeamish don't read it. Naturally, some readers were not happy with it.One man observed: why does it always have to be sex. You couldn't choose something else? Others simply said that it gave them a problem. Really, it calls for an examination of this attitude that makes parts of our bodies taboo and unmentionable . It's not as if we are using street names or writing pornography.

Anyway, if I am fearfully and wonderfully made; if I am made in God's image; if He knew me before I was born and in my mother's womb, how come He used these parts to initiate me. Are we saying He should have chosen some other way of getting us here OR some other parts? (which we would then have quickly made unmentionable anyway).

Found this listing for the genre on Amazon

• Christian Romance
• Christian Fiction
• Christian Science Fiction & Fantasy

• Children's Christian Fiction Books
• Christian Mysteries
• Christian Poetry

  buy a copy of my ebook on amazon My Darling You (love stories-sort of) by Hazel Campbell

Singerman published by Peepal Tree Press

A couple of years back I had a website with geocities. They discontinued their free service and since then I haven't had the energy to make a new website, instead I have been concentrating on my blogs. Here's one of the entries I had on the website. It's an an extract from Singerman my book of short stories published by Peepal  Tree Press. Still available here. 

This extract is actually from the title story and my favourite in the collection.

http://www.peepaltreepress.com/books/singerman

SINGERMAN (extract)

Once there was a black Starliner, a floating ship in the Caribbean Sea to which history gave power long before anybody in western seas would think that power could be black.

The Starliner sailed proudly, flying its black flag. But it had to make its way in a hostile white-foamed sea. Its course was a lonely one and its isolated existence helped to breed excesses among certain of its officers.

Successive captains lost their way in the uncharted waters of the Caribbean. From time to time the crew mutinied. Once or twice pirates plundered the Starliner, and as the years passed the ship grew shabbier and shabbier, and the crew got poorer and poorer. Nothing, not even the the proud memory of the ancient black moorings from which it had been so crudely cut off; not even the beauty of the ancestral art; not even the mixed-up memory worship of the gods of the forefathers could save them from the storms which the sea god put in their path year after year after year.

One day, after a long spell of foul weather,the crew mutinied again,and the baby-faced captain was forced to abandon ship.

As the ship seemed to be floundering , once again on the brink of disaster, other ships surrounded it and threw leaky rafts and bad rations to the crew.

"Steer this way," some of the onlookers shouted.

"No! That way," others directed.

Some only looked on, because they thought they had no right to interfere in the ancient Starliner's business. But some modern day pirates watched in the hope that,although it was only a very poor ship flying a black flag, perhaps, just perhaps, there might be booty.

 Haiti, I'm sorry,
We've misunderstood you,
One day we'll turn our heads
And look inside you ......... (chorus from Haiti by David Rudder 1987)


From the Peepal Tree Press website 

"Realistic and magical, sombre and deeply comic, heroic and full of ironies, these stories explore the complexities of Caribbean reality through a variety of voices and forms."
http://www.peepaltreepress.com/books/singerman