After receiving a few e-mails requesting information on books about Trinbagonians' experiences in the diaspora, I decided to research the subject and read literary works that may be of interest to visitors of this page. So far, I've found five books related to the subject. Three are represented on this page. I'm still in the process of reading two books that I hope to feature next month. Enjoy!

I love this book!! Most Trinbagonians who emigrated to foreign shores as children will be able to relate to it. This book was written for children between the ages of 7 and 10, but I think that adults, especially people like me who like collecting Trinbagonian children's books, will find it informative as well as enjoyable. Coming to England is an autobiographical account of Floella Benjamin's childhood in Trinidad and her family's subsequent move to England. She recalls the prejudice she encountered and how she eventually learned to cope with her new surroundings. In the books' Afterword, Benjamin states that she wrote this book to give "young people, both black and white, an insight into the circumstances that brought a whole generation of West Indians to Britain."

Floella Benjamin, Trinidad born, English raised, has written more than 20 books for children and many articles for magazines. As well as being a TV presenter and running her own TV company, she is Deputy Vice Chair (TV) of the British Academy of Film and TV Arts.

Customer Comments from Amazon.com
A reader from England, December 15, 1998
I believe that historically this is a very important book- since it descibes the author's experiences in leaving her beloved Trinidad as a young child and resettling in England. I will not forget the prejudice and malice the girl suffered in the country she had been brought up to believe was the 'Motherland'. The description of life through a child's eyes in Trinidad is very beautiful and evocative.

I really related to this book, and I think other Trinbagonians will as well. It's about a young Trinidadian woman who travels to America (Wisconsin) in the mid-'60s to attend a predominantly white college. She finds herself in an awkward position, trying to be accepted by her white counterparts and trying to relate to the struggles of black Americans in the Civil Rights movement. Here are some reviews that may entice you into reading this book.

From Booklist, October 15, 1998
A beautifully delineated novel, with elements of magic and fable, about a storied time. Sara, at age 20, leaves the succulent green of Trinidad to take a scholarship at a Catholic women's college in Oshkosh. The year is 1963. Sara is reserved and intelligent, sees her father's accepting humiliation as the price of polio vaccine for his family, and her mother's pain in trying to bear more children. In Oshkosh, she meets two other girls who are integrating the school: Angela from British Guiana, who has found her own ways of accepting her place among the white girls; and Courtney from St. Lucia, who still lives the Vodoun rituals of her ancestors. Through the prism of Sara's isolation, her growing understanding and horror of what happens to black people in America, and her relationship with Sam, a young black man who finds he must go to Mississippi, we see the civil rights movement, the Kennedy assassination, Malcolm and Martin. The deaths of the civil rights workers take Sam from her, but not before the spirit of the child she aborts plays a magical role in the FBI search of the Mississippi mud. Nunez makes the cold of a Wisconsin winter a harsh, living presence to one used to the deep warmth of Trinidad. This powerful illumination of race and culture by the light of dreams, ritual, and Vodoun will remind many of Toni Morrison or Alice Walker.

Customer Comments from Amazon.com
A reader from Orono, ME, May 18, 1999
This book was so good that I don't even know what to say about it. First of all, Nunez is a phenomenal author with an excellent talent for weaving a beautiful and intricate tale while simultaneously offering the reader a great deal of knowledge. I felt as though I learned a great deal about West Indian culture and the Civil Rights movement in the United States. The characters were very well developed. I felt their truimphs and their short falls as my own. Sarah is a brilliant character, and her relationship with fellow exchange student Courtney, although strange and disturbing, was intriguing as well. This one comes highly recommended to all.

Walk In My Shoes includes a diverse group of amusing and melancholy anecdotes inspired by Rodney Foster's childbood in Trinidad and his experiences in New York and California. This book is just one of many which seeks to record the seemingly blissful years spent in Trinidad and the sometimes turbulent, sometimes successful lives of Trinbagonians abroad. Foster states in the foreward that Walk In My Shoes "is an attempt to perserve some of the rich heritage of Trinidad and Tobago and also the experiences of Caribbean people who have settled abroad. The book is an educational tool to inform the, so called, "outside world" that we [West Indians] are a diverse people."

Customer Comments from Amazon.com
F. E. Brassington
...this little book is remarkable, among many things, for its own helpful glossary of creolese words and expressions, which we all know and which has nevertheless escaped the notice of the Oxford work referred to. That apart, Foster sings more eloquently than most the virtues and pains of negritude and of being Trinidadian: "O Trinidad, why do I love you so? Why do I see your virtues, while others see your faults? Why do I see your beauty while others see your ugliness? I love you for so many reasons, too numerous to list"... Foster not only expends his feelings on themes of love and country, but takes up a number of questions vexing society everywhere today: "Modern man is a coward/So quick to pick up a gun/And shoot his opponent down"... In Helen Pyne Timothy's prologue to the present work, she says "Walk In My Shoes" will be very appealing to Trinidadians because it will remind them of their youth and of the particularities of that special experience of that place."