By Kim Robinson-Walcott
Kim Robinson-Walcott’s latest collection features Kingston the city as the setting. Speaking about the collection, Kim says, “It’s a collection of different voices and different people from various strata of Kingston society. Only a couple stories are not actually based in Kingston, and even there Kingston is the backdrop or starting point.”
The title, the authors states is fitting, and she elaborates: “I really think we have to harden our hearts to survive in Kingston (and Jamaica overall, but in Kingston everything seems more intense), to make it from day to day without being overwhelmed. Life is hard here. On the other hand my aim as a writer is to soften those hearts – to offer insights about different lives and perspectives that will hopefully at least in some cases result in more understanding or empathy on the part of the reader.”
Perhaps this excerpt from “Spreeing in the SUV,” one of the stories in the collection published by Blouse and Skirt Books, 2024 shed more insights:
“I always wanted to be rich. People with money had cars. When I was a
little girl I used to ask God to give my daddy a car so I wouldn’t have to
get up at four in the morning to go to school. I wanted to reach school
not tired but clean and fresh like some of the children in my class.
God didn’t listen. My daddy never got a car, and then after a while I didn’t
have a daddy because he left us to look work in foreign and never came back,
and when I was twelve I had to stop from school anyway because there was no money.
I still had to get up at four, though, because I had to get my younger brothers
and sisters ready for school and then I had to mind the baby while my mother
went out to work. And then when I was a little older I had another baby to mind,
my own this time, and then when I turned seventeen I started work myself so I
still had to get up at four.
Now my job is with some rich people up at the top of Cherry Gardens and no
bus run there, so if I don’t leave Portmore at minutes after four, then by the time
I get the bus to Half Way Tree and the taxi to Barbican and then walk up the hill
I will reach work late, and the mistress warn me already that if I get there after seven again I won’t have a job. When I get there I’m tired. Sometimes when I’m walking up that hill I try to beg a ride, but the people who drive up that way act like they don’t see you, they just flash past in their big Bimmers and Benzes and SUVs.”
Kim has been working on this collection for a while and describes its evolution.
“In a sense I’ve been working on this collection for decades: a story I wrote for Wayne Brown’s writing workshop in circa 2000 was my first piece of what I later came to recognise was flash fiction. That story won the regional Commonwealth Short Story prize in 2005, and I enjoyed writing it so much, having to condense a story into a tight space of a few hundred words, that it inspired me to write more in that genre. But I was still writing mainly longer pieces. Then in 2018 Millicent Graham invited me to teach a flash fiction workshop for her Drawing Room Project and that was a refresher course for me. I was also writing other longer short stories, but I liked the compressed energy of a shorter piece. That same year I went on a year’s sabbatical from my job as editor of Caribbean Quarterly at UWI, and although my plan had been to finalise a manuscript of those longer stories during that year, instead one after the other a series of new short pieces started popping into my brain.
Then in early 2022 Tanya Batson Savage, publisher of Blouse and Skirt Books, approached me with a proposal to publish a collection of these newer, shorter pieces. I said to her, actually I was planning to get that other collection published first. She said, no, let’s do this one. I said, I don’t think I have enough of these newer shorter stories to make a collection. She said, I think you do.
Not all the stories in this collection are flash fiction pieces but I think the energy core resides there. I signed the contract with Blouse and Skirt Books in March 2022 and in September 2022, on September 23rd to be exact, Tanya sent me her editorial suggestions. I remember that day well, because it was the same day I had a colonoscopy and I was given the news that a mass had been found that looked cancerous. A couple weeks later that diagnosis was confirmed and I started chemo immediately. It took a year before I could even think about my stories, and it was only last year that I felt I could manage revising the stories in between rounds of chemo.
So yes, completing the revisions and getting the book published – with book cover art painted by me – was a huge triumph for me.”
An editor for decades, Kim has helped many writers realize their dreams of publishing, so she understands readership appeal and audience. She speaks to the importance of this collection.
“I think it’s important because many of the stories give voice to the voiceless, the disenfranchised. Some stories give perspectives which may be new to my readers. And the stories are very short – which makes them easy to read and therefore, I hope, appealing even to those who don’t love reading!
My specific audience is primarily Jamaican or Caribbean – as the pieces written in the Jamaican language demonstrate (although I did try to write a version of patois that would be accessible). That said, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the response of some non-Jamaicans who told me they understood and enjoyed the patois pieces. And note that only eight of the twenty-six pieces are written mainly in patois. I hope that the Standard English pieces will attract those who can’t manage the patois.”
During the writing of this collection, Covid 19 and the Black Lives Matter movement occurred, and Kim speaks to the impact they had on her and her writing.
“The Covid experience in Jamaica was much less traumatic and horrific than in other countries such as the US, Canada, the UK – we had far fewer deaths, there was no one in my inner or even outer circle who died – but it did cause me, and probably the entire world, to realise how fragile our world is, to appreciate life more, to see more clearly what matters, and that inevitably impacted my writing.
“And the imposed quiet time and solitude actually gave me space to write.
“The Black Lives Matter movement: The horrors of racism in the US and the continuing struggles of black Americans for civil rights have always been extremely disturbing – I would never have wanted to raise my children in the US. But then Jamaica is no bed of roses either – we have a problem of police brutality and a shocking number of police killings here too – the difference is that here the victims, the disenfranchised, are poor black Jamaicans.”
Here is a glimpse of her upcoming project
“I’ve been doing some memoir pieces over the years, and I want to develop, expand and consolidate them. Also I want to publish the older collection of stories that I mentioned earlier – many of them were previously published but I would like to combine them in a new collection.”
Kim’s writing process is simple yet profound. What’s important is that it works for her.
- “Listen, observe and absorb.
- Process – play with the subject in the imagination.
- Put it down on paper (or onscreen); then leave it to gel for a while.
- Rewrite, revise, refine; then leave it to gel for a while; then rewrite, revise, refine.
Kim aspires to:
- To write simply and clearly.
- To give voice to the voiceless.
- To move people.
- To show them new perspectives.
And now you know her secret, “I was/am a Trinidad Carnival addict – I missed only a handful of Carnivals between 1981 and 2021, when Covid interfered. Fête, fête, more fête – that was me. Soca makes me happy. Illness prevented me from joining in the joyful resumption of Trinidad Carnival in 2023. But I’m still hoping to go at least one more time!”
And we are affirming that Kim will get to fête, and enjoy more fêtes!!!
Opal Palmer Adisa 