Voicing It Out

Think about your voice…think long and hard about its tone, its pitch, inflections…think about it. Now write it in a sentence. It’s not very easy to lay your voice on a sheet of paper and now that I’m thinking about it there is so much left to expansion in a voice, so much of yourself up for grabs. There is so much vulnerability in that little detail. Your reader thinks they know you by how you write, what you say and how you say it.

I’ve been looking recently at the voices of some of the Caribbean writers I have come to adore and respect. Edwidge Danticat, Derek Walcott, Jamaica Kincaid and Erna Brodber all have distinguishable voices. If I chose to read an except from any of them without telling you who they were I’m sure u may guess right away. Think of writers like Naipaul and Lovelace, like Walcott, their voices are both known and undeniably distinguishable. I have compared all of these to my own voice. Walcott has a slow and deliberate voice, simple but learned with an almost Shakespearean intimidation. To me at least. Danticat seems relaxed and deeply connected . Her stories carry you with them. Her imagery is blow mind and subtly surprising you. I love that about her writing.

I don’t know what my voice is. I know I wish to have as calm a voice as Walcott, one that gives me an air almost “Oh that?...it came to me as I sipped my Jamaican coffee, looking out at the “galvanised” sea.” I’d like the carrying power of Danticat, so I can drop you in the middle of my story or poem and have you convinced that stories were braided into your plaits and slipped into your Saturday cowheel soup.

The novel “Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home” by Erna Brodber and the inspiration of this blog’s name, explores the finding of the voice and the self. I can relate to this completely, looking for my own. Something in me however, does not allow me to shout it just yet. I want to listen to my voice; simply hear it. I want to be able to hold it and nurture it till it sings my stories. I want to tell the same story someone else told you five mins ago and make mine distinguishable by MY voice.

“Voice” I have always thought comes naturally at first. Slipping out in the sentence you didn’t edit the life out of yet. Surprising even you in the re read. I admit (reluctantly) that the edit may help but how do you balance it? How do you change a word to one YOU would not usually use, doesn’t it perhaps alter your voice? Vocabulary is a major part of it.


Then as a growing “Caribbean writer” how do I know my voice is Caribbean enough? Kinkaid I think has an elegant Caribbean voice. Walcott in “Omeros” made me so admiringly jealous. He is the writer most times that cause me to kick myself and ask “Who you really tryin to fool? You? A writer?! Ha ha ha”. Maybe I should mention coconut trees more often.


There is a lot of thought that deserves to be allocated to your voice as a writer it can make or break a story and leaves an impression of who you are, where you’re from, what growth potential you may have, and you general though pattern on your readers. Everyday I think I may be ready to shout something shouts back from the inside…
“Pickney please! Go eena Kumbla!”