By Harold A Bascom
The Caribbean, including Guyana, has a population of close to 46 million. If one-quarter of those happen to be readers of literature produced by authentic Caribbean writers, we’re talking about 11,500,000 people. It, therefore, stands to reason that if a Caribbean novel is sold for one dollar, to each of that number of Caribbean readers, that Caribbean writer stands to make over $11 million for her/his creative undertaking. With takings like that, Caribbean writers would cease to be regarded as that destitute group worthy of pity for not having the sense to become doctors, lawyers, and politicians.
The posited analogy above, however, may only happen if inter-Caribbean reading is realised; and for such to happen, every Guyanese and every islander in the Caribbean must understand and accept that inter-regionalism is a current reality since, on casual examination, there is a shared Caribbean culture that all who are born in Guyana and the wider Caribbean can relate to. (Think of Paul Keens-Douglas. Why do you think Guyanese took his performances so readily to heart? Think of V S Naipaul’s Miguel Street, and ask yourself why, to the average Guyanese, every one of those characters inhabiting that fictional street are so well known?)
