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How to pronounce Kevin Jared Hosein: ho-SAIN
An author's note by Kevin Jared Hosein about his first novel, Hungry Ghosts, set in the Caribbean in the 1940s
My favourite Caribbean stories aren't written on the page. They were those told by relatives and friends and strangers. Animated reflections such as these have always been part of Trinidad and Tobago's multicultural panorama—its anecdotal tapestry. Ghost stories and dark domestic parables and calcified wisdoms rooted in the bedrock of an island nation. I was always surrounded by storytellers—and my novel, Hungry Ghosts, is a deep breath held long in this tradition.
Set in the dusky rural past of the 1940s, it follows two households—the Saroops, living in a dilapidated, leaky-roofed barrack; and the Changoors, in the grand whisper-filled manor surrounded by lush acreage. When Mr. Changoor suddenly vanishes, Mrs. Changoor hires Mr. Saroop to guard the house. And here we see her adoration for him—and his for her lifestyle. Both families are subjects of hereditary pain, and both clash in a searingly slow but ruinous manner. Much focus is given to the land itself—the splendour of the Caribbean soundscape and ecology at a time when Trinidad was so old, yet so much on the cusp of reincarnation—on the cusp of post-colonial. This was when the American navy was still stationed at the peninsula. When people boarded boats in hopes of fleeing to Venezuela, only to end up dumped into the gulf halfway there as shark food. When Hindu marriages weren't recognised by the State—when their deities were deemed devils, and the town newspaper still called them coolies. When power was gradually osmosing to the locals, along with the foreboding uncertainty that was attached to such power.
There were two people in particular who helped me build this world—my grandfather, a machinist who lived through the time of this novel and offered a first-hand account of his experiences; and Angelo Bissessarsingh, a friend and historian. He shared old articles and badges and ephemera inherited or collected over the decades. Angelo passed away from pancreatic cancer five years ago at 34. Today, I am one year older than he was. Angelo and I spoke frequently—about stories, mainly, those passed down, those crafted and those untold. Two months before his death, with one lung collapsed, he invited me to his home and relayed to me some of the stories he had come across. Later that evening, he e-mailed me some photographs and notes, with keen words of encouragement that history is more than what is written in tomes and texts.
Fifteen years ago, my own stories were set in places I had never visited—a Californian suburb, the American Midwest, an English hamlet. In those stories, everyone spoke standard English. There were apple trees and meadowlarks and cottage pies. The few Trinidadian stories I had written felt painstaking and derivative, embarrassingly littered with footnotes attempting to explain what is a corbeau and what is a jhandi flag. That's how things exist in the uncanny valley of an unconfident identity. I wanted to write a book that not only electrified but was also more than its plotline and its characters—that it could be a portal to the Caribbean, even at such a dark time of Trinidadian history. And for those living in my country to lose themselves in an era many prefer to keep quiet about.
—Kevin Jared Hosein
Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.
Myriam J. A. Chancy, award-winning author of What Storm, What Thunder, is a Haitian-Canadian-American writer, the HBA Chair in the Humanities at Scripps College in Claremont, California, and a Fellow of the John Simon ... (more)
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