“The problem of race is the most obscure of all and Lall has opened the proverbial Pandora’s Box, not just by cracking it open, but by ripping the cover off altogether,” Speaker of the National Assembly Raphael Trotman said on Friday at the launching of writer GHK Lall’s Sitting on a Racial Volcano (Guyana Uncensored).
The book launch was held at the Marian Academy on Carifesta Avenue last evening.
The book, Trotman said, has inconvenient truths and we must face up to them. “People of Guyana sit on top of a known, restless volcano called race and anyone who looks the other way is considered reckless… There is no way to sugarcoat or ignore this prowling monster,” he said.
Trotman added that he would have liked to read more about the views of the silent minority groups in Guyana. “The one thing the book does not adequately address is the shared concerns of indigenous groups,” he said.
Lall, in his remarks, said that there is a brick wall of presidential non-assent. “I took the liberty to write in March that there is a brick wall of presidential non-assent, and two months later our leader as if to prove me a prophet, earlier this month said that he wasn’t going to sign those bills. We have become so routinely intransigent, because we are so blatantly obvious in our deliberations,” he said.
“The protest in Linden showed us that we have a serious national problem. What did the Linden and Agricola protests tell us? … That this country is divided. There is a burning resentment and no one is listening. It can’t be Africans for Africans or East Indians for East Indians. We need to put our heads together…,” he said.
The book will be available at Austin’s Book Store from June 4 at a cost of $2,000.
