ArtsEtc’s second annual Independence book list adds to Bajan landscape

For the second year running, ArtsEtc Inc., in collaboration with its art partners, has released a reading list for Independence.

The List, which it is also called, contains 12 titles.   All are by Barbadian authors or those Barbadians may rightly claim. 

That’s one book to be read a month from here to next Independence, according to Linda M. Deane of ArtsEtc.

“Some are found in our bookstores, others in the National Library or second-hand bookshops or online.  Wherever you find these books—our books—it is about savouring them, treasuring them, challenging them.  Then going out and finding more!” said Deane, herself an award-winning poet.

This year’s reading list will be appearing in ads in the Nation newspaper’s Easy magazine, on ArtsEtc’s own website and on thebajanreporter.com.  It includes such classics as Timothy Callender’s How Music Came to the Ainchan People: A Novel and Christopher by Geoffrey Drayton as well as newer works by Thomas Armstrong, P. Antonio Rudder, Nailah Folami Imoja, and Winston Farrell.

“We’d encourage people to cut out the ad and paste it onto some cardboard for better use,” said Robert Edison Sandiford, the other half of ArtsEtc.  “It’s in the shape of a bookmark, very practical.”

In last year’s ads, the publishers suggested Barbadians think of their Independence in terms of their reading habits: How can you be free if you aren’t reading the writers who give voice to your freedom, namely your own?

This year’s ads remind Barbadians that with every story their authors write, they are adding to the cultural landscape of their people, to their greater sense of self.

Back again as sponsors of The List are Days Books, the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment, the University Bookshop, the National Library Service, and the Barbados Association of Reading.

“This, too, is very much part of our mandate,” said Annette Smith, the director of the National Library Service, “to make people more aware of our writers and their work.”

The List first appeared on November 30, 2011.  It came about as the result of someone at a book launch expressing an interest to Deane and Sandiford in reading more books by Barbadian authors but claiming not to know where to start.