Daryll Goodchild’s brave contributions to Guyanese contemporary literature
Lunch and dinner time was whenever the people got hungry. Ever since opening his shop at the edge of the public road he’d drawn customers like honey draw flies. Everyone heard of the new Chinese restaurant round the corner and came around to test it out. And Zhey Shou Li prided himself on the fact that they still chose him over the others.
Sometimes he liked to remember those days, feeling the fatigue in his arms from stirring vegetables in the wok all day, and the burning in his eyes from the rising smoke that the sea breeze drove into his face.
Those days were rough for another reason, but times had changed, the people knew him now, and called him with an endearing tone, the name bestowed to a friend, “chiney”. That was all, but it was enough. It didn’t matter that they didn’t say his name, it was their tone that did the trick. They meant well. Well, some of them anyway.
Daryll A Goodchild
That excerpt from a local short story quite well reflects what is happening in Guyanese literature at home among the younger set of new Guyanese writers. The impact of this local writing is modest since the young artists are not particularly well known and have not yet taken a prominent place in contemporary Guyanese literature.
This narrative, from the point of view of Zhey Shou Li, a Chinese immigrant who is just finding success with a new restaurant overwhelmingly patronized by the local communities, is somewhat typical. Zhey Shou is at the centre of life in the neighbourhood, and they do not even know his name, or care to know it. They were comfortable with typecasting him as the operator of a Chinese restaurant and he was willing to suppress the many irritants because paying customers could behave as they liked. He was all the richer for their business, and they were the ones coming to him.
The story is as much the portrait of the Chinese businessman as it is of the typical local Guyanese community, narrated in Standard English but with a strong Creole flavour, dramatising Creolese speaking characters in a work that is reasonably representative of contemporary Guyanese literature among new local writers.
One of the inhibiting factors affecting these writers is that for the most part, they are not published. A few might have printed copies of their work for sale, but the impact on national literature remains minimal. Added to that is the COVID-19 pandemic that has halted several opportunities for them to read or perform their work publicly. These factors have surely put a hush on their collective voice.
Two of them have recently published books of an acceptable quality of printing, binding and cover design. These are Gabrielle Mohamed and Daryll A Goodchild. Mohamed produced poetic collections in Creolese Is You Madness, Nah Me Own (2019) and Blackout Daze (2019), while Goodchild released a collection of poetry and prose Crassin De Rivvah (2019).
To give them that extra push, they were selected to represent Guyana at Carifesta XIV in Trinidad and Tobago in 2019 where they were able to exhibit and read their work. Goodchild launched his book at Carifesta. It is a mixed collection of prose narratives and poems mostly rooted in a Guyanese setting with colourful local characters. He writes, “I saw it as important to tell stories that paint visuals of what we experience right here”.
Apart from that, the biographical blurb in the publication does not tell anything much about him, except that he was born in Guyana.
The poems are: “We The Invisible Poor”, “An Undocumented Police Report”, “Not About Me”, “New Growth”, “Not About Me” and “Voice of Comfort”. He sometimes exhibits a post-colonial leaning, but produces more in the line of social realism. That is the voice that comes out of “We The Invisible Poor”, while there is some humour in “An Undocumented Police Report”. The work is self published and did not benefit from professional editing, which could certainly have influenced the style and structure of the pieces.
The real strength of Crassin De Rivvah is to be found in the short stories or vignettes, some of which are interestingly narrated and embellished with a great deal of humour. “Old Mr Greaves” is quite a studied piece built around an old man with stubborn traditions in a modern world. The story creates its own share of laughter while commenting on the prevalence of modern technology and the way the aged gentleman warms towards it. The narrative is enriched by proverbs while the hero is rooted in gardening, which serves as a counterpoint to the internet, tablets and Facebook. Parallel to that is the symbolic movement in the other direction, since the young great-grandson, immersed in the technology, is moving towards gardening and the proverbs.
“Culcha Day ‘’ takes the opportunity of the practice of culture day at school to instruct readers about racial tolerance and the popular tendency to stereotype and prejudice. A young girl’s inspiration and interest in dressing in Amerindian costume for the special day at school comes into conflict with the stubborn narrow bias of her mother, and the situation had to be rescued by their neighbour. With stories like this one added to “Old Mr Greaves” the collection’s interest in Guyanese culture is highlighted.
This culture is reflected in many different ways across a number of other stories. Popular traits are pictured and
shown for their colour and attraction as much as for their shortcomings. Ethnic tolerance is key not only in “Culcha Day”, but in “Chiney” as well as “De Buss Driva”. Many of these local traits are not celebrated, neither are they encouraged.
The experiences vary from urban to rural and seem designed to paint pictures of the country with its wide range of cultural practices from the city to the river. There is the title story, “Yuh Waan to Craas De Rivvah?”, for instance. Crossing the river is dramatised as risk-taking and a dangerous lifestyle from the point of view of one who is an outsider and thus able to pick up those things which are second nature and unremarkable to those who live and practice them.
Goodchild is therefore very much like many of the new contemporary local writers who practice a continuing and dominant nationalism. Their work is immersed in social realism and in portraying things Guyanese. This is done in the language, choice of language as well as identifiable places and inhabitants. Goodchild, in a fairly limited way, undertakes that task through his colourful characters whether they are in the very heart of the city at Stabroek Market, in a minibus or out in a rural community. He tries to capture that heartbeat, showing it to be running through them all.
Deprived as they are of publishing houses and publishing opportunities, writers like Goodchild may be forgiven their technical weaknesses. Professional assistance is often available at reputable publishers but missing when these writers are driven to self publish. Goodchild must be recognised for having the courage.
At the same time, it must be said that technical training is available at the National School of Theatre Arts and Drama, one of the four schools in the Institute of Creative Arts where there is a Diploma in Creative Writing. Many writers do not avail themselves of it. Then again, treasured institutions once offered by the government, such as the Caribbean Press, which is just what these writers need, and the Guyana Prize for Literature were not continued.