Throughout history, groups of writers have formed their own publications where they felt their words were not being heard, creating a space for history to be made. In the 1990s, writers Lynn Sweeting and Helen Klonaris found a kinship in each other for the idea they shared about the lack of Caribbean women writer's voices in society. Out of that came one of the well-known literary journals being published in the Caribbean today: The WomanSpeak Journal.
"We knew that transformation was going to take place, changes," remembers co-founder Lynn Sweeting. "We knew that writing of any kind was political and transforming, and we knew that our project especially had the potential to change everything -- to transform our worlds, change us, to reunite us with each other as women, and to reconnect ourselves to ourselves so that we could exist fully and authentically. All of that came out in a couple of conversations between Helen and I, we bumped into each other and met and spoke for a couple of hours, we had talked about all of this and decided we would make a book."
The book--that first scotch-taped WomanSpeak Journal -- filled a void felt by many women in Bahamian society then. As Lynn points out, men's voices where everywhere -- in politics, in churches, in the media and in the art world. Women were scattered and divided, and the journal created a focused space for them to come together in an act of community and resistance to change the ontological landscape of language in the Caribbean.
"It was about creating community among women writers, because Helen and I, to begin with, believed that to do so was an act of feminist resistance against the patriarchy's way of teaching us to be divided against each other as women," Lynn says.
"We asked ourselves, why does the patriarchal culture work so hard to stop us from gathering together and hearing each other's voice? And it was because there was enormous empowerment to be found it that type of gathering. When we gathered together we knew that we could be able to realize that we exist, that we matter, that our stories and our experiences matter, and we would remember that we never came here to be victims, we came here to live creatively, and as Helen wrote, 'to be our sister's keeper.'"
Language, after all, is power. It cannot be said enough that the pen is mightier than the sword; one just needs to think about all of the laws in place for writing -- criminal libel, for example, means that someone can go to jail for the act of writing.
When one group wants to damage another, they take language away -- slaves were often not allowed to speak in their language on foreign soil and were denied to learn how to read and write, and even today we complain other languages are "taking over" societies where they once never existed. It may be said that victors always write the history -- but perhaps it is those with language that do. Why is this? Because when you give something language, you give it power. Language is a dangerous tool in the wrong hands, but in the right hands, it is unapologetically revolutionary. Language helps us remember, and doesn't allow us to forget what we may chose to ignore. But without language, there are no stories, and with no stories there is no culture.
"WomanSpeak always wanted to gather together the stories that mainstream culture would rather us not speak; we want to break silences, tell secrets and, as Helen always used to say, 'spill the beans'," says Lynn. "We knew too that history being written by men had all but erased the story of the feminine and the divine feminine from human culture, so we were asking ourselves, 'What is it costing us as women, this nothingness where our stories are supposed to be? How is this adversely affecting us? And how will we be transformed when we break the silence?'"
This desire is perhaps most evident in their special "Myth and Lore" section. After sections of poetry, fiction and playwriting, the journal provides a section to pay tribute to feminine and Caribbean myths and memory; stories where "once upon a time" have an audience. At the time of creating that first journal, Lynn was affected by the text "Women Who Run with the Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, which inspired her and Helen to encourage women writers to give voice to myths of their past and present cultures, essentially remythifying them with a womanish view as a way to find wholeness in fragmented psyches of female being.
"I believe fairytales have magical power and I believe they were told in centuries past for the sake of causing magical transformation to occur. I love that and I wanted to encourage it," she says. "It's about memory. It's about honoring it -- these old stories, what if we remembered them? There are African myths to remember, to bring back and retell, there are also European fairytales to remember, and to really realize as writers, we have the power to tell these stories, they belong to us and we are obligated to tell them and change them and add our voices to them, this is what they're for--to talk and think and come together as a community and have a world and a culture and a society, this is what stories do."
And, as Lynn points out, there are myths of the Lucayans and the Amerindians to remember and share, as well as retelling or reimagining our current Bahamian stories.
"In our Bahamas, there's a lot of talk about old story and how we revere old story, and I love them too, but they're all male-centered and told and retold by males and told in male voices by male readers," she says. "So I think our Caribbean myths are in need of retelling in women's voices from our womanish view."
Despite the drive by this group of women to continue their stories, after four successful issues, the WomanSpeak journal underwent a dormant period as Helen traveled abroad for school and the community scattered. However, Lynn points out, that very core community still supports each other today, still helps and encourages each other in their times of need. Though she struggled to put a fifth issue together at a time of great change for her, in an age of no Internet and no print on demand publishing, the project had to wait for the right time.
The right time came just two years ago, when the writing community seemed to explode into a flurry of activity, with new writers and publishers emerging on the scene to cultivate a renaissance in Bahamian art. Helen, though not relocating home, started the Bahamas Writer's Summer Institute, gathering together another community of Caribbean writers to exchange and create and add to the rich Caribbean literary heritage.
"We struggled alone for several years until finally I had become exhausted. For several years it was on the shelf, I had even said out loud I was finished, I had quit, but then the BWSI happened, and the publishing world changed. It woke us up," Lynn remembers. "I thought well, look at these books coming out and this writing workshop going on; I can resurrect this book, put it out at last because there was a new revival in the community.
"Somehow I got a new graphic designer, a few dollars to pay for the printing and designer, and all my friends came together to overcome some obstacle or another, but once again it had become necessary, it was time. I had this work sitting on my desk for the past 15 years, the backbone of this last (fifth) issue, we just knew it was time to put it out. That same group of people, including my husband David who donated the money we needed, gave me a gift of something or the other that made it possible to print it again."
What resulted was the fifth volume, published last year, and a celebration among the community who remembered the special power and voice of the WomanSpeak Journal, and an opportunity for new writers to enter into that dialogue with fresh perspectives. The journal has indeed come a long way -- from scotch-taped and spiral bindings and operating in an Internetless world of disconnect, it now rises back onto the scene, a beautiful and vibrant collection of women writing from small places fragmented across the ocean.
Now Lynn looks towards the sixth volume with a specific goal -- environmental consciousness. It's the first themed issue for the WomanSpeak Journal, but a relevant and current one in a world full of environmental and natural disasters, and coming off the heels of the Fifth National Exhibition at the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas and their theme of "The Carbon Footprint." Artists in general -- whether visual, musical, language, etc -- keep society honest by speaking out against societal and global injustice, and Lynn believes this issue can be especially resonant in the voices of women due to their ancient connection with the mother earth.
"This theme is partly about resisting feeling overwhelmed and helpless because we women, we are never hopeless, we are the ones who have the hope," Lynn says. "I wanted to gather those voices together to speak in fine poetry and wonderful fiction and dynamite essays about our ideas for how to resist the destruction, how to heal the earth, how to make amends to her, and how to begin to find ways in our small places to begin to live in harmony with earth and nature once again.
"It's always been the woman's way," she continues. "We are deeply connected to the earth, she is female, like we are, she is raped and exploited and used and abused and maligned as woman are, but she is resilient and can heal herself the way women can, and she is a mother the way women are mothers; she is a living, breathing sentient being, in my opinion, and she is calling to us, and we women we are the ones who will hear her voice first, she will speak to us first, we are her daughters."
Now that the journal has been resurrected, Lynn hopes to publish one consistently every year and to continue to provide an avenue for marginalized voices and issues to take back their power. It may not be easy to put together a book from scratch in a place that can devalue your words, but the exciting environment for writing these days inspires her to push forward. After all, she had a whole community of like-minded individuals to help her along -- a community that is thankful for her and Helen's initial efforts to bring them all together.
"All we can do is sort of hold on to each other and push each other into these arenas, because we're not protected and we're not safe if we hide away, and we're not happy if we just sit politely and say, 'Well, our stuff isn't that good and our work isn't that important'," Lynn says. "It doesn't make people love us more to undersell our gifts and our contributions. We are supposed to be brilliant. Women especially need to encourage each other to be fabulous and brilliant, we must not be in competition with each other anymore over that, we need a sisterhood; we need to move together and not be intimidated."
See submissions details for this powerful environmental issue in this week's Arts Calendar.

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