Born to Guyanese parents in Manchester, UK, Anita Sethi, an award-winning writer, journalist and broadcaster, was recently in Guyana as one of the mentors of the Guyana Commonwealth Writers Workshop and to launch We Mark Your Memory: Writings from the Descendants of Indenture, as she is one of the contributing writers.
The workshop was spearheaded by members of the writers’ team: Janet Steel and Emma D’Costa, Spoken Word Poet and Radio Presenter Mr Gee and Anita and incorporated three genres – short fiction, creative nonfiction and performance poetry. The one-day workshop was hosted at the Moray House Trust two Wednesdays ago and was also inclusive of a session on performance and stagecraft for writers. The book launch on May 7, saw an average of 80 persons attending while the writers’ workshop attracted some 30 participants.
Anita took charge of the creative nonfiction group and tackled some key points – who each individual was and their reason for being at the conference; techniques in learning how to interview people; and how to survive as a writer. Steel and D’Costa mentored the Short Fiction Group while Mr Gee, did the same for the Performance Poetry Group. These sessions led into a Public Speaking Forum and later that day all writers were given the opportunity to share their work.
On Friday, May 10, Anita travelled to Berbice, from where her mother hails, to launch the book at the Tain Berbice Campus.
She said the workshop was about bringing people of a shared history together to share and interact to therefore have a better understanding of the history. “I want to use my experience to help other writers. It [writer’s workshop] was really wonderful. There are so many stories to be told and writers need the confidence to establish their stories,” she said.
The writer said also that it was sad that not many people are inclined to learning about their history. Anita had some time ago on another visit here stopped at the Walter Rodney Museum in hopes of finding out the journey of her fore parents to Guyana from India. She recounted her experience of going through the alphabetically designed records but much to her dismay where the names of her fore parents should have been there was a gaping hole, and also several pages before and after where many names should have been listed.
Commenting that ignorance affects all classes, Anita recalled that some time last year during a Commonwealth heads of government meeting, it was announced that Prince Charles will be the successor of the Queen. She said she met the prince and shook his hand sharing with him that her mother was born in Guyana. The prince, she said, asked where she was from and she answered, “Manchester, UK”. To which he responded, laughing: ‘Well, you don’t look like it’.
Anita said she found the statement insulting and later wrote: “That the mooted next leader of an organization that represents one-third of the people on the planet commented that I, a brown woman, did not look as if I was from a city in the UK is shocking.”
She said she believes it’s high time that some people, including the prince, received an immediate history lesson about immigration, the British empire, the Commonwealth and colonialism. She that having a UK passport and can prove that she was born in Manchester, but she couldn’t say where her ancestors were originally from due to destroyed historical evidence. Anita ended her message to the prince thus: “I am here because you were there.”
The statement was derived from the ‘We are here because you were there’ slogan that has become familiar with immigrants living in the UK. The saying simply means that immigrants are in the UK because the British would have invaded their countries taking them as indentured labourers. The banner with those words hangs from the Migration Museum in Lambeth, London where We Mark Your Memory: Writing from the Descendants of Indenture was launched. Anita contributed to the Caribbean edition.
Anita has written for national and international newspapers and magazines including the Guardian and Observer, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The National, New Statesman, Granta, Harper’s Bazaar, Times Literary Supplement and BBC Travel among others. In broadcasting she has appeared as guest critic and commentator, panelist and co-presenter on several channels including BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live, The World Service and ABC Australia.
She has pieces forthcoming in new anthologies: Common People, Women on Nature, Seaside Special: Postcards from the Edge.
She is also a contributor to Seasons, Solstice Shorts, Roads Ahead and From There to Here (True tales of Immigration to Britain).
She is a recipient of a Society of Authors Award, Penguin/decibel Prize, Arts Council Writing Award, and Travelling Fellowship. She was a finalist for Journalist of the Year Award at the Asian Media Awards.
The broadcaster has also appeared variously as a speaker, presenter and chairperson/interviewer at the Commonwealth People’s Forum part of CHOGM 2018 (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting), Hay Festival, Southbank Centre, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Latitude Festival, Green Man Festival, Manchester Literature Festival, Ideas Festival, the British Library, RichMix, Foyles, Daunts, among others, and at many bookshops. She has participated in festivals and events around the world including in Trinidad & Tobago, Kerala, Nairobi, the Maldives, Erbil (Iraq), and Melbourne, Australia, where she was an International Writer in Residence and Ambassador for Journalism at the Emerging Writers Festival and a writing fellow at the Wheeler Centre of Books, Writing and Ideas.
She was a judge of the Costa Book Awards 2018, has also judged prizes including the David Cohen Prize for Literature and the Solstice Shorts short story award, and is an Academician in the Folio Academy of the Rathbones Folio Prize. She was a finalist for Writer of the Year at the Northern Soul Awards 2018.
We Mark Your Memory: Writings from the Descendants of Indenture (Caribbean edition) can be purchased for $3,000.
Anita can be contacted on email at anita@anitasethi.co.uk, on Twitter @anitasethi and on Instagram @anitasethi.
