“She stands before the door. Feeling the tremor. Goes forward to the lock with fingertips trembling. Searching. Naked. Vulnerable in this corridor of wall, greyed like the lips of a waterfall.”

I wonder if you would still love her

If she had no body

No female physical attributes for you men to gaze at

No Instagram picture to hit the love button

In the next series of images you will see, I work through the traces of these violent histories of Indo-Caribbean misogyny that have been left behind in our houses, songs, language, families, communities, and bodies.

As Shea sat in the pew listening to Father Lewis preach about forgiveness, her mind wandered back to the trial. Fr. Lewis was getting into the throes of the sermon and showed no signs of letting up any time soon. She allowed her thoughts to drift.

Taitu Kai Goodwin. Taitu. Daughter of the Soil. Antigua Girls’ High School Alumna. Former Ambassador’s daughter. Miss Anguilla. Someone I knew. Taitu.

Tantie Mary say that since me feel me a big woman now, to gwan and don’t comeback. The words still ring in my head three weeks later. My last image of Hibiscus Road featured the woman who raised me.

It was three months after moving into their new home that Toni-Ann was recognising a new pattern with George. He seemed secretive, withdrawn at times and agitated with her most days.

Maybe this is the time to come clean. This is the salvation, the sign she had been beseeching the universe for the last four years. Or maybe this is a trap. To admit the abuse, would be to admit her weakness. 

Control is not love. Obsession is not love. Harassing a person to respond in a certain time frame is not love. That’s entitlement.

Being in love is a sensation like no other. The feeling of being validated...I got the guy! He told me that the way our feelings developed for each other were so unique and effortless. He never wants to lose it

One of the prominent themes from many of the stories shared by the West Indian women who participated was about traumatic childhood experiences and their process to heal on their own.

One of the most heinous crimes that constantly gets dismissed in the Caribbean and has gone on for generations is the exploitation of young girls by adult men.

Imagine being 13 still just a little sprat

But the men you grow up ‘round

Can’t seem to see that

Your uniform ready for school

Imagine being 13 still just a little sprat

But the men you grow up ‘round

Can’t seem to see that

Your uniform ready for school

She wants to say something to him about how pretty the purple thyme grows this time of year.

Sitting straight-backed on a cluster of smooth rocks, not too far from Jonita, was a breadnut-brown woman with a sprawling afro enclosed in a circle of plaits decorated with iridescent shells at the base, and a lush body with a waist that curved into…

Caged

Pretty little bird,

I adore your coiled feathers

I could never tell a single soul how I really feel about the girl-child. She is not of me. She is my husband’s child.

My words pat her on the hand and

Shoo her protests like stray cats

But

She objects just once more

My bones and spirit broken

Battered, bruised and slapped.

Words are unspoken

Inside my body trapped.

It was while she was frying plantains one day that she had a thought. She recalled how her mother used to tell her that to get the best results, the oil had to be very hot. “That’s it!” she exclaimed.

I desperately grasped for the light, the dark water swallowing me up. The voices mocking me. I couldn’t stop now.

Looking through this window

Drowning in a river of tears

My bruises begin to show

Silenced by my fears

You wish you could but how do you forget about a guy who feel like it is all right to walk around with the words “Enjoy Vagina” in coca cola font across his chest, as though it were another flavour the company brought out?

She saw the spider crawl on the fading blue painted walls of her home. She timidly headed for the broom with the brush end facing the rather large, hairy, strange looking spider.