“Crekateh” is one of the stories from Daryll Goodchild’s self-published short story collection, Crassin de Rivvah, which was launched last month in Trinidad during Carifesta.
In the story, the titular character, Crekateh, experiences a traumatic childhood experience, which Goodchild says has led to many other problems for the character due to his forced silence.
“I wanted to show how damaging this continued silence can be to a person and how misunderstandings between people can fester and become so much worse over the years. I believe it represents quite a bit of Guyanese culture, in that the buried story of Crekateh, for even honourable reasons, has haunted him all his life and in the absence of avenues of help, he has become a social outcast suffering from mental disorder,” he notes.
“I also wanted to show how thin the line is between sanity and insanity, to show that natural motivations (such as searching to find a valuable item) can easily become obsessive in situations of emotional turmoil,” he adds.
Like “Old Mr. Greaves,” a previously featured story in which he explored in part the culture of the older generation, Goodchild explains that “Crekateh” also looks at the roles of elders in the community. “It really speaks to idea of having older ones in the community preserve the precious memories of the village for as long as they humanly can,” he says. “The proclivity that our elders seem to have towards remembering stories from since childhood and using this knowledge almost therapeutically for the village is something that I find interesting in our country, and perhaps the wider Caribbean.”
In addition, Goodchild says that while mental illness is often ridiculed, those who make up the older generation have been “the mental doctors and therapists by helping us to talk about difficult things” and also by posing solutions.
He adds that the present day story of Crekateh is also in the making. “…It is a story of morals that encourage speaking up about negative emotions, educating about mental disorders and advising against illegal drug use,” he says.
“Crassin de Rivvah” is available for purchase online from Amazon.com (https://amzn.to/2nUhgMZ). Goodchild says the local launch of the collection should be held by mid-October, the latest.
