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BCLF Cocoa Pod
Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival
18 episodes
1 week ago
Twelve year-old Serenity Noah has never told anyone about her recurring nightmares -- the haunting images of silver butterflies whose flapping wings drive away all sound, leaving only suffocating silence in their wake. Her parents already favor her "perfect" younger brother, Peace, and she doesn't want to be seen as the "problem" child. Instead, Serenity's found a productive way to channel her fears: creating a horror movie as scary as her nightmares. When Peace suddenly becomes afraid of th...
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All content for BCLF Cocoa Pod is the property of Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Twelve year-old Serenity Noah has never told anyone about her recurring nightmares -- the haunting images of silver butterflies whose flapping wings drive away all sound, leaving only suffocating silence in their wake. Her parents already favor her "perfect" younger brother, Peace, and she doesn't want to be seen as the "problem" child. Instead, Serenity's found a productive way to channel her fears: creating a horror movie as scary as her nightmares. When Peace suddenly becomes afraid of th...
Show more...
Books
Arts
Episodes (18/18)
BCLF Cocoa Pod
Nightmare Island - Shakira Bourne (Barbados)
Twelve year-old Serenity Noah has never told anyone about her recurring nightmares -- the haunting images of silver butterflies whose flapping wings drive away all sound, leaving only suffocating silence in their wake. Her parents already favor her "perfect" younger brother, Peace, and she doesn't want to be seen as the "problem" child. Instead, Serenity's found a productive way to channel her fears: creating a horror movie as scary as her nightmares. When Peace suddenly becomes afraid of th...
Show more...
2 weeks ago
15 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
The Fix - Alexia Tolas (Bahamas)
Winner 2022 BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean “The Fix” is a story of love, obsession, and obeah that follows a young woman as she seeks advice from an obeah practitioner. She has fallen in love with her neighbor, but rather than compete with his current lover directly, she looks to magic to steal him for herself. The obeah woman teachesthe young woman how to infuse her food with stronger and stronger spells until she fixes her man for good. Alexia Tolas is a Bah...
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2 weeks ago
12 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
A Million Aunties - Alecia Mc Kenzie (Jamaica)
Alecia McKenzie is a Jamaican writer based in France. Her first collection of short stories, Satellite City, and her novel Sweetheart have both won Commonwealth literary prizes. Sweetheart has been translated into French (Trésor) and was awarded the Prix Carbet des lycéens in 2017. Her most recent novel is A Million Aunties - longlisted for the 2022 Dublin Literary Award. Her work has also appeared in a range of literary magazines and in anthologies such as Stories from Blue Latitudes, The Ox...
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2 weeks ago
10 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
Episode 49 | Traveling Freely Essays - Roberto Carlos-Garcia (Dominican Republic)
In Traveling Freely: Essays, Roberto Carlos Garcia explores intersecting topics such as race, identity, American socioeconomic inequality, police violence, our inability to partake in our culture as innocents, and our complicity as Americans in all that’s wrong with the United States from the author’s specific vantage point as a Black Dominican American man. The voice in these essays is both clear and nuanced, and as readers move through the collection, the various themes cohere into a multil...
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1 month ago
15 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
Episode 48 | The Price of Two Pence - Jason Allen-Paisant (Jamaica)
"What you’re about to hear is the opening of my novel-in-progress, The Price of Two Pence. It begins in Battersea, January 1975, on the Number 77 bus, where Ronald Jones — a Jamaican bus conductor — asks two young men for a two-pence fare for their dog. What happens next alters his life, and the life of his sister Nancy, forever. The novel traces the aftermath of that moment across London and rural Jamaica, exploring the grief and rage of a family, the silences of a city that tried to forget...
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1 month ago
18 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
Episode 47 | Getting Through - New & Selected Poems by Mervyn Taylor (Trinidad & Tobago)
We at the BCLF are proud to mark the release of “Getting Through: New and Selected Poems” by Mervyn Taylor, an extraordinary collection which gathers decades of lyrical mastery into one definitive volume, with this special episode of Cocoa Pod. Described as “a treasure trove… capturing the beauty and nuances of ordinary and extraordinary lives,” this poetry collection is a profound offering of Caribbean life, exploring themes of love, death, migration, aging, and grief with Taylor’s signatur...
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1 month ago
15 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
Episode 46 | Ever Since We Small - Celeste Mohammed (Trinidad & Tobago)
Ever Since We Small – A Reading by Celeste Mohammed In this episode of BCLF Cocoa Pod, award-winning writer Celeste Mohammed reads from her second novel-in-stories, Ever Since We Small. Spanning generations of an Indo-Trinidadian family, the book follows the Gopauls from Jayanti’s journey as a girmitiya to the struggles of her descendants in modern Trinidad. Along the journey of these ten interconnected stories, the alchemy necessary to turn the Gopauls' inheritance of pain into a "generati...
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2 months ago
20 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
Episode 45 | Let Me Liberate You - Andie Davis (Barbados)
This episode of BCLF Cocoa Pod was made possible with the support of funds from the Brooklyn Arts Council Local Arts Support Grant In Let Me Liberate You, a restless New York artist searching for purpose returns to Barbados and stumbles into the role of activist in this scathingly funny and brilliantly observed satire about privilege, family discord, and performative do-gooding. Let Me Liberate You was written by Andie Davis whose curiosity about other people’s lives inspired her love for lan...
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2 months ago
20 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
A Million Aunties - Alecia McKenzie (Jamaica)
After a personal tragedy upends his world, American-born artist Chris travels to his mother's homeland in the Caribbean hoping to find some peace and tranquility. He plans to spend his time painting in solitude and coming to terms with his recent loss and his fractured relationship with his father. Instead, he discovers a new extended and complicated "family." The people he meets help him to heal, even as he supports them in unexpected ways. Told from different points of view, this is a compe...
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5 months ago
10 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
River Sing Me Home - Eleanor Shearer (St. Lucia)
River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer River Sing Me Home is a beautiful, page-turning and redemptive story of a mother’s gripping journey across the Caribbean to find her stolen children in the aftermath of slavery. Eleanor Shearer is a mixed-race writer and the granddaughter of Windrush generation immigrants. She splits her time between London and Ramsgate on the English coast so that she never has to go too long without seeing the sea. For her Master's degree in Politics at the Univ...
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5 months ago
17 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
The God of Good Looks - Breanne McIvor (Trinidad & Tobago)
THE GOD OF GOOD LOOKS SUMMARY Combining the honesty, warmth, and humour of Queenie and a modern-day Bridget Jones’s Diary, award-winning writer Breanne Mc Ivor’s entertaining, transportive, and luminous debut novel follows a young Trinidadian woman finding her voice and a new kind of happy ending. Bianca Bridge has always dreamt of becoming a writer. But Trinidadian society can be unforgiving, and having an affair with a married government official is a sure-fire way to ruin your prospects. ...
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5 months ago
51 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
The Stranger Who Was Myself - Barbara Jenkins (Trinidad & Tobago)
Barbara Jenkins writes about the experiences of a personal and family-centred life in Trinidad with great psychological acuteness, expanding on the personal with a deep awareness of the economic, social and cultural contexts of that experience. She writes about a childhood and youth located in the colonial era and an adult life that began at the very point of Trinidad’s independent nationhood, a life begun in considerable poverty in a colonial city going through rapid change. It involves a fa...
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5 months ago
14 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
Episode 44 | An Unending Search by Ryan Bachoo (Trinidad & Tobago)
"An Unending Search", by Ryan Bachoo is a novel set in South Trinidad in the late 1970s. It follows the story of Tar, a young man who dreams of escaping poverty and systemic racism. Inspired by Uncle Sundar, Tar's journey is one of hope and ambition, ultimately leading him to New York or London. The novel explores themes of identity, racism, and classism, painting a vivid picture of life in Trinidad during that era. To commemorate Indian Arrival celebrations in the month of May, this episode...
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5 months ago
46 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
Episode 43 | Trouble With The Dog - Stefan Bindley-Taylor (Trinidad & Tobago)
“The Trouble with the Dog” by Stefan Bindley-Taylor was awarded the 2024 BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writer’s Prize. This category was judged by Lauren Francis-Sharma, Desmond Hall and Wandeka Gayle. From the judges: ‘It is, at first, an exploration of a twisting familial relationship that embodies the hopes and expectations that live between perception and actuality. But with a sure hand, “The Trouble with the Dog” takes us through the perspectives of an uncle and his niece grap...
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7 months ago
20 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
Episode 42 | Ibis by Justin Haynes (Trinidad & Tobago)
There is bad luck in New Felicity. The people of the small coastal village have taken in Milagros, an 11-year-old Venezuelan refugee, just as Trinidad’s government has begun cracking down on undocumented migrants—and now an American journalist has come to town asking questions. New Felicity’s superstitious fishermen fear the worst, certain they’ve brought bad luck on the village by killing a local witch who had herself murdered two villagers the year before. The town has been plagued since h...
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8 months ago
21 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
Episode 41 | A House for Miss Pauline by Diana McCaulay (Jamaica)
Set in the heart of rural Jamaica, A HOUSE FOR MISS PAULINE (Algonquin Books), from award-winning author Diana McCaulay, tells the captivating, tender tale of Pauline Sinclair—a fiercely independent 99-year-old Jamaican woman who built her own home from the ruins of a plantation. As she faces her 100 th birthday, the old stones of her house begin to rattle and shift and call out mysterious messages, prompting her to reckon with long-buried secrets from her past. Lyrical, funny, eerie, and urg...
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8 months ago
14 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
Episode 40 | Casualties of Truth by Lauren Francis-Sharma (Trinidad & Tobago)
Casualties of Truth, inspired by Francis-Sharma’s time at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation’s Amnesty Hearings, is a gripping tale that explores themes of justice, revenge, race, parenting, and of course, the complications of friendship. It is a riveting literary novel with the sharp edges of a thriller about the abuses of history and the costs of revenge, set between Washington, D.C., and Johannesburg, South Africa. Her third offering, Casualties of Truth is published by Grove Atlant...
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8 months ago
16 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
Episode 39 | A Christmas Origin Story: Anancy & Sorrel Told by Velma Pollard (Jamaica)
Love sorrel at Christmas? Thank Anancy, that trickster spider, for the drink all West Indians eagerly enjoy during the festive Yuletide season! In this episode, Ms. Velma Pollard, revered Jamaican author and oral storyteller, shares the backstory of sorrel’s infamous association with Christmas in a folktale that originated in Jamaica. This telling is adapted from a story by Ms. Louise Bennet, Jamaican poet, folklorist, writer, educator whose pioneering work in performing her poems in ...
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10 months ago
6 minutes

BCLF Cocoa Pod
Twelve year-old Serenity Noah has never told anyone about her recurring nightmares -- the haunting images of silver butterflies whose flapping wings drive away all sound, leaving only suffocating silence in their wake. Her parents already favor her "perfect" younger brother, Peace, and she doesn't want to be seen as the "problem" child. Instead, Serenity's found a productive way to channel her fears: creating a horror movie as scary as her nightmares. When Peace suddenly becomes afraid of th...