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The Guardian
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Infused with the fire born of resistance': the magic of the Calabash literary festival
'Do I look like a rebel?' Booker prize winner Marlon James jokingly asks the crowd moments after walking on stage, head-banging his dreads to the sound of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. If your only experience of literary festivals are polite, well-mannered affairs inside tents in the British countryside, the Calabash literary festival, held on Jamaica's Treasure Beach, hits differently. It's not just the setting but the rare joy of seeing a majority-Black audience and roster at a literary event. It's a festival infused with the magic and fire born of resistance. James was one of many authors who shared that, were it not for the festival, he wouldn't be the literary giant he is today. It was after one of Calabash's now-legendary open mic sessions that he secured his first publishing deal. No surprise, then, that people waited in snaking lines, some for well over an hour, to get their three minutes on the mic. For festival-goers, one of the most anticipated readings of the weekend was from Safiya Sinclair's National Book Critics Circle award-winning How to Say Babylon – on home soil for the first time. Her book chronicles growing up in 80s and 90s Jamaica as a Rastafarian girl, and she read a haunting passage about deliberately stepping on a rusty nail after being ostracised at school. This was at a time when the legacy of Jamaica's first prime minister Alexander Bustamante, and his infamous 1963 command to 'Bring in all Rastas, dead or alive' still loomed. The Calabash literary festival was founded in 2001 by poet Kwame Dawes, novelist Colin Channer, and producer Justine Henzell (whose family own and run Jakes, the beachfront hotel where the festival is hosted). What began as a small event in Jakes' lobby with only 150 guests now attracts thousands, a quarter of a century later. And, unlike most literary festivals, Calabash is completely free to attend. 'Passion is the only price of entry,' its website states – though adds that 'voluntary contributions are welcomed'. The festival's allure is undeniably amplified by its ludicrously picturesque setting: piercing blue skies, crashing waves and endless rays of sunshine frame the stage from which authors speak. If you thought Treasure Beach a sleepy town full of beach bums, fishers, locals and ex-corporate types who have traded in their careers for psychedelic retreats, you wouldn't be entirely wrong. But as the festival begins, a rebellious spirit is ushered in. The weekend's format is simple: readings arranged around specific themes, punctuated by a handful of headline talks. The crowd at Calabash is a world unto itself, made up of authors and book lovers from across the Caribbean, as well as from the UK, US, Canada and South Africa. A new wave of influencers were also in attendance, including prominent bookstagrammers like Trinidad-based @bookofcinz and South Africa's @prettybookish, who now play an increasingly important role in elevating Caribbean and diasporic literature. Standout sessions from the weekend included Caleb Femi, a former young people's poet laureate and the author of Poor. He brought south-east London to Calabash with four poems from his sophomore collection The Wickedest – a portrait of one party night told through the eyes of flirtatious guests, unwanted intruders and their fearless leader. Laughter echoed throughout. Danez Smith, author of Homie and Don't Call Us Dead, read work that could melt even the coldest of hearts – opening with a tribute to the gully queens (Jamaica's trans community), thanking their lesbian friends for teaching them how to love, and sharing poetry in the form of a love letter to their formidable grandmother. Mary-Alice Daniel gave perhaps the most brilliantly absurd reading of the weekend, sharing surreal poems and a hilarious piece of prose about the loss of her toe. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion Other literary heavyweights on the roster included Ian McEwan and Abbott Elementary's Emmy-winning Sheryl Lee Ralph, who closed the festival with a celebration of her memoir Diva 2.0, which traverses her journey from growing up in Jamaica to entering Hollywood. And of course, this is Jamaica – so while the days were filled with conversations about craft and storytelling, the nights belonged to music. On Friday and Saturday, the festival turned into a party, with live performances and DJs that didn't start until midnight. And Sunday afternoon closed with a moving celebration of the 50th anniversary of Burning Spear's album Marcus Garvey, a tribute to the power of roots reggae as a form of cultural memory and resistance. Over dinner that final night, there were discussions about how such a small island has managed to have a gargantuan, global cultural footprint, especially within the world of literature. Dawes, one of the organisers, pointed to Jamaica's history of rebellion, including the largest of slave uprisings, as the root of its spiritual and creative fire. 'Jamaica was the site of the most virulent practices of the transatlantic chattel slavery,' Dawes says. 'While we can speak of the negative legacy of this truth we can also speak of the restorative and inventive power of resistance and rebellion [that has] allowed this small population of 2.5 million people to have an absurdly outside global impact as a culture.' 'Despite the hardships of history,' he adds, 'there is a necessary confidence that is part of the Jamaican spirit.' The next Calabash literary festival will take place in 2027
Yahoo
09-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Marlon James on why Kingston is Jamaica's beating cultural heart
If you're looking for a good time, Jamaica is where to go – as Marlon James knows all too well. The author, who was born and raised in Kingston, often heads back to the island from his base in New York to shoot documentaries, hang out with his friends and (these days) to film TV shows like Get Millie Black. And with more tourists than ever heading to Jamaica to enjoy it's sun, sea, and rum we sat down with James to discuss how to do a holiday the right way. I am going to advocate for Kingston. I lived there most of the time I was in Jamaica, and it's still my favourite place. I think a lot of times when people come to Jamaica, they go straight for the beaches or for the coastline, and that's great, but Kingston actually is on the coast. And the great thing about being in Kingston is that you're in a centre of culture. There's always something going on. There's Dub Club in the hills, if you want to get classic reggae; there's always some sort of party going on. I was last there a month ago, with me and my beautiful self. I was actually shooting a documentary about being an LGBT Jamaican coming back home. So that involved talking to a lot of young people, talking to people in different scenes and so on. I'm there quite a bit: for me, Jamaica will always be home. If I'm at a hotel, I'm usually in Treasure Beach. So I'm usually at Jakes. Or if I'm in Kingston, I'm usually at AC Hotel. If I want to be up in the hills, I go all the way up to Strawberry Hill. Rasta pasta. Rastafarian culture was vegan before we had the name vegan. And I like Rasta food. It's sort of a guilty pleasure, I think. How do you take fettuccine alfredo and take out all the nasty parts? I'm not the biggest fan of dairy. It's kind of that. When I'm there, I'm eating at friend's houses. Restaurants? There's one up in the hills, a vegan restaurant called Stush in the Bush. Stush, in Jamaica, is patois for posh. It's absolutely fantastic. You definitely have to reserve ahead, because it's a pretty remote location. I love going to that when I can. But I'm a pretty regular Jamaican, so I'm usually not far from somewhere selling Jamaican patties. I'm either eating patties or I'm on the street buying pan chicken late in the night. They're cooking it in an old oil drum, it's steaming hot, and it's two in the morning and you're standing on the roadside and you're eating chicken. I'd hope I'm in Kingston, so I would check out the National Gallery. Then I'd probably go to one of the many restaurants that are in downtown Kingston. You particularly want the old Chinese restaurants, which may have secretly been there a hundred years; you want to soak that up. I think downtown Kingston gets a bad rap. It's actually really quiet, which is weird. I would start from there, from the harbour, and just go all the way up into the interior, go to Devon House, in the centre of Kingston. It was built by a runaway slave who escaped to Venezuela and came back a millionaire. Then just sort of keep going, until you hit the hillside, and then you can go to like The Gap Café in the hills, or you can go to Skyline Drive and look out at Kingston. Slip into Dub Club near the end of the night and then just come back down off the hill, and then you're done. Go to somewhere where there isn't a road. It's one thing to go to the port town Ocho Rios. But have you been to the small town of Above Rocks? There are places in, say, St Catherine, where, without knowing it, you're suddenly on a mountain cliff and you're looking over the mountains. The interior country is so fantastic. And when you go there, you're basically dropped into 1924, except they have wireless internet. It's a great way of seeing all the different Jamaicas there are without going very far. Grace Jones's My Jamaican Guy, because it's a song about rural Jamaica. It's about her guy, but it's also about a person who washes clothes by the river and lives a pretty rural and idyllic life. And I think in some ways that always reminds me of Jamaica. Then just stuff like Bob Marley's Three Little Birds, which does it as well, or a Jamaican song like Greetings, by Half Pint. But ask me tomorrow, and I'll give you three different songs. There's two. I can't believe I'm going to talk about a beach, but I want to talk about a beach. For me, there's a beach called Winnifred Beach. You're not going to see it on the map. You have to ask somebody where it is and they'll show you. It's almost as if you accidentally tripped into the Blue Lagoon; it's fantastic and it's not that well-known. Then, there's a very famous beach called Fort Clarence, which people go to. Stay on that road and continue going, and you'll come across this thing called Two Sisters Cave. They'll tell you it's not open; it's open. And you can go down into the cave. You can even take a canoe from in the caves out to open sea. That's my secret place. In Jamaica, just go until you find something. Somebody's always having a party, somebody's always having some event, preferably downtown, preferably somewhere near the sea. So there, you know, there's always something going on. There's always a party; there's always some sort of street dance going on. There was a time in Jamaica when the biggest dances started at two in the morning. Wow. And you just stay partying until eight; basically morning to morning parties. Clear your slate, because it will be filled up. My best friend Ingrid. I mean, you can call any Jamaican to have a good time. Honestly, call a total stranger. We're fun-loving people. We love to enjoy ourselves, so you're never too far from a celebration. And Jamaicans are very open and welcoming. Get out of the hotel, honestly, and if you're at a hotel that tries to discourage you from going out, leave that hotel. Jamaicans are very big on style. They're very big on fashion. Don't be the one idiot to overdress and end up sweating. Stay away from the Jamaican clichés. You do not need a 'No problem' T-shirt. In Jamaica, you kind of come as you are. And I think that's part of the laid-back atmosphere. It doesn't necessarily mean underdress. There is a kind of casual glamour to it. People are dressed simple, but they're put together. It's a T-shirt and shorts where it's probably tailored or something, it's the little details. Certainly bring home the coffee, because it's super expensive. Once you leave Jamaica, grab as much of that Blue Mountain coffee as you can. I do; I am kind of shameless. Yeah, if it's Jamaican, I say grab the food. Grab a box of patties. Grab your Jamaican stuff, like, find out what a gizzada is and ask for it. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is. Just carry back all these things that will perplex British customs. Get Millie Black is streaming now on Channel 4
The Guardian
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
TV tonight: Tamara Lawrance is an ace detective in a Jamaica-set thriller
9pm, Channel 4 A brilliant, textured crime thriller from Booker prize-winner Marlon James. Millie-Jean Black (Tamara Lawrance) grew up in Jamaica, until her abusive mother sent her to live in London. News of her beloved brother's death sends Millie on a personal mission to become an ace Scotland Yard detective. But when her mother also dies, a discovery in her papers compels Millie to return to Jamaica and join Kingston's police force. She is put on the case of a missing girl with partner Curtis (Gershwyn Eustache Jr), when Scotland Yard inspector Luke Holborn (Joe Dempsie) arrives with his own agenda. There's plenty of action, but the personal conflicts with her past will keep you gripped, too. Hollie Richardson 7pm, BBC Two A man who, it could be said, never looked comfortable as prime minister and has been swiftly forgotten returns for a two-part interview with Nick Robinson. Sunak, who has a new job in the US alongside his seat in the Commons, could be entertaining and enlightening. He certainly has nothing to lose by spilling some tea. . Jack Seale 9pm, ITV1 In 1955, nightclub host Ruth Ellis was the last woman in the UK to be hanged, after shooting dead her abusive lover David Blakely (Laurie Davidson) in north London. She admitted her crime to the police immediately and accepted her fate. This dark but glossy four-part drama tells her story, with Lucy Boynton playing Ruth and Toby Jones as the lawyer trying to persuade her to fight for her life. HR 9pm, BBC One Anne (Philippa Dunne) continues to be the standout comedy star in this Motherland spin-off, as she mishears 'Johannes' as 'Your highness' and thinks Amanda (Lucy Punch) is dating South African royalty. Anyway, the gang head off camping and it goes as badly as you would expect. HR 9pm, Sky Max Never mind the box sets: Beckett and his team captains, Alison Hammond and Josh Widdicombe, return for a second series of the banter-packed quiz. The talent booking is certainly on point, with prestige panellists Richard Osman, Oti Mabuse, Richard Ayoade and Danny Dyer ready to grapple with EastEnders trivia and more. Graeme Virtue 9.30pm, BBC One As Daisy May Cooper and Selin Hizli's wonderfully weird, increasingly Wiccan comedy nears the end of its second series, Nic (Cooper) has doubts about her on/off bestie. If only she would listen to nine-year-old Ollie (Lenny Rush), who has seen a side to Jen (Hizli) that is less 'nice single mum' and more 'Single White Female'. Hannah J Davies Champions League football: Paris Saint-Germain v Liverpool 7pm, TNT Sports 1. From Parc des Princes, Paris.
