Jouvert

by Joy Mahabir

While growing up in Trinidad, Annaise’s longing to be a visual artist is influenced by the vibrant river scenes in her village, as well as the iridescent swirling colors she finds in the Jouvert streets of San Fernando during the Carnival season. Her relationships and her experiences open her eyes to the fierce and vulnerable edges of life and beauty in the Caribbean.
As an adult Annaise goes to New York and begins to perceive a contradiction between the world of gallery art in Manhattan and the world of Caribbean art that she finds in Brooklyn. A visit with relatives in Toronto unearths old family secrets, hidden hostilities, and gives her a new understanding of immigrant family relations as well as art.
Annaise goes to Trinidad to reconnect with her mother, and there she gains deeper insights into Indo-Caribbean culture through the feminine energies and rhythms that surround her and inspire her art. She returns to New York where she finds love and kinship in the Caribbean and African-American communities in Brooklyn, and she discovers the path that she must follow in order to create the jouvert arts of the street and the earth.

(From Publisher)

Joy Mahabir was born and raised in Trinidad. She now lives in New York and teaches Caribbean Studies and Global Literature at Suffolk County Community College of the State University of New York, where she is also involved with Conscious Lyrics, a spoken-word poetry group. Her previous publications include the book Miraculous Weapons: Revolutionary Ideology in Caribbean Culture (2003).