Founder and executive director of the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival (BCLF) Marsha Massiah is guided by Haitian-American author Ibi Zoboi’s words: “Build the table and they will come.”
This idea was central to the festival’s start. It coexisted with also wanting to share her cultural legacy with her son.
Although not an author herself, the Trinidad and Tobago-born, US based healthcare instructional designer initially saw the festival as an avenue to create opportunities for Caribbean writers in the diaspora and region.
“Because when you live in a diasporic community, the first thing you discover is just how Trinidadian, Jamaican or Grenadian you really are,” she said.
The festival began in 2019. Held annually in September, it has been visited by some of TT’s and the region’s prominent writers such as Edwidge Danticat, UWI vice chancellor Prof Sir Hilary Beckles, Lisa Allen-Agostini and Barbara Jenkins. Danticat’s We’re Alone and Allen-Agostini’s Death in the Dry River were both launched at this year’s festival.
Next year, Massiah hopes to develop an arts-based children’s programme, put together an anthology and launch a new Caribbean voice talent initiative.
She takes pride in knowing that the literary festival is the only one on the US’s east coast that is solely dedicated to sharing the stories of Caribbean people, Caribbean American people and Caribbean diasporic people.
Massiah’s love for literature and the literary arts began with what she described in a phone interview with Newsday as a solid educational foundation at Bishop Anstey High School and the plural nature of TT’s society. Massiah said she had the best of TT’s postcolonial education and that equipped her to perform with a measure of success.
[caption id="attachment_1114714" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Award-winning author Edwidge Danticat, left, speaks at this year's Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. -[/caption]
“The festival and the enterprise of the festival was how I thought I would be able to pass on this inheritance and heritage to people in the diaspora.”
She grew up in San Juan and then moved to Trincity. After Bishop Anstey, she read for a double major at UWI, St Augustine, in history and English.
Massiah wanted to build on a conversation started by Danticat about diaspora and identity.
Initially, literature in Brooklyn, New York was very “diaspora-facing” and “meant to lift the chains of Caribbean people who live in the diaspora, meaning North America – USA and Canada.”
But it quickly grew beyond its original vision and became “a bridge for the movement of stories between people in the diaspora and home because we are inextricably linked.”
Although the festival was interrupted by the pandemic, that turned out to be a blessing rather than a curse for the organisers. It gave them a reach they did not ordinarily have, she said. The digital innovations hastened by the pandemic allowed the festival to go beyond limited resources and geographic boundaries. It also gained more attention in diasporic commu
