Folklore stories that make your hair stand on end! The folklore of Trinidad and Tobago has pan-Caribbean appeal, as it is shared in common with many former French territories in the region from Louisiana to Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica and St. Lucia.The beautifully illustrated book has been celebrated as a milestone publication in Trinidad and Tobago.

Folklore & Legends of Trinidad and Tobago

Literature & Fiction

Besson, Gerard

Besson, Gérard A

Mythology & Folk Tales

Paria Publishing Company Ltd.

This study deals with the complex issues of race, history and politics in Caribbean society. In its first part, “François Besson”, it examines the fortunes of a French creole family between the mid-18th and early 20th centuries, and describes their experiences against the backdrop of the social and political conflicts occasioned by the excesses of plantation slavery and the upheavals of the French revolution. It looks at Julien Fédon’s revolution of 1795 in Grenada, examines the nature of the relationship between master and slave, the children of these unions, and the deadly divisions that were at times engendered as a result of the custom of the plaçage (concubinage), causing ‘victors’ or ‘victims’ of “The Cult of the Will” to emerge; thus influencing at times the destiny of these islands. The second part of the book, “Eric Williams”, studies the manner in which an historian-turned-politician, tragically afflicted by “The Cult of the Will” and perhaps convinced that history is destiny, used, in Trinidad and Tobago, the politics of inherited guilt and inherited victimhood to create scapegoats in an attempt to assuage his “Inward Hunger”, while making clever use of ‘Black Nationalism’ that was becoming popular in the 1950s. Revisionist in its scope, this book undertakes to change our understanding of the past, so that we may create a more useful future. It examines the points in time when the historical narratives of the country changed, occasioned by a shift in moral values, bringing about a different interpretation of its history. It ponders the question whether the presidency of Barack Obama may mark the end of the Eric Williams narrative of victimhood, scapegoating and irresponsibility as expressed in its politics, and herald the start of a new, New World narrative endowed with empowerment and responsibility. “Your thesis comes across as logical, though speculative at times, but put together with the deprivations he (Eric Williams) admittedly experienced at Oxford and at the Caribbean Commission, the victimhood narrative is plausible, and indeed has become disruptive of this country’s civility, democracy and ethnic harmony . . . You have created a serious challenge to orthodoxy. You have broken up quite a few myths, and in fact forcefully argued how the passion for psychic compensation and restoration by Williams has led to an intensely institutionalized culture of victimhood. A victimhood now challenged by Obama, a challenge which not only shifts the paradigm but holds better promise for spiritual growth and the shaping of a common humanity.” (Professor Emeritus Ramesh Deosaran) Gerard A. Besson is a publisher, writer and historian who specialises in the history of Trinidad and Tobago and has worked in all media in a career that has spanned four decades. In 2007, he was awarded the Hummingbird Medal (Gold) for Heritage Preservation and Promotion.

The Cult of the Will

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

This is the black-and-white edition of the book "The Cult of the Will".  This study deals with the complex issues of race, history and politics in Caribbean society. In its first part, "François Besson", it examines the fortunes of a French creole family between the mid-18th and early 20th centuries, and describes their experiences against the backdrop of the social and political conflicts occasioned by the excesses of plantation slavery and the upheavals of the French revolution. It looks at Julien Fédon's revolution of 1795 in Grenada, examines the nature of the relationship between master and slave, the children of these unions, and the deadly divisions that were at times engendered as a result of the custom of the plaçage (concubinage), causing 'victors' or 'victims' of "The Cult of the Will" to emerge; thus influencing at times the destiny of these islands. The second part of the book, "Eric Williams", studies the manner in which an historian-turned-politician, tragically afflicted by "The Cult of the Will" and perhaps convinced that history is destiny, used, in Trinidad and Tobago, the politics of inherited guilt and inherited victimhood to create scapegoats in an attempt to assuage his "Inward Hunger", while making clever use of 'Black Nationalism' that was becoming popular in the 1950s. Revisionist in its scope, this book undertakes to change our understanding of the past, so that we may create a more useful future. It examines the points in time when the historical narratives of the country changed, occasioned by a shift in moral values, bringing about a different interpretation of its history. It ponders the question whether the presidency of Barack Obama may mark the end of the Eric Williams narrative of victimhood, scapegoating and irresponsibility as expressed in its politics, and herald the start of a new, New World narrative endowed with empowerment and responsibility. "Your thesis comes across as logical, though speculative at times, but put together with the deprivations he (Eric Williams) admittedly experienced at Oxford and at the Caribbean Commission, the victimhood narrative is plausible, and indeed has become disruptive of this country's civility, democracy and ethnic harmony . . . You have created a serious challenge to orthodoxy. You have broken up quite a few myths, and in fact forcefully argued how the passion for psychic compensation and restoration by Williams has led to an intensely institutionalized culture of victimhood. A victimhood now challenged by Obama, a challenge which not only shifts the paradigm but holds better promise for spiritual growth and the shaping of a common humanity." (Professor Emeritus Ramesh Deosaran) Gerard A. Besson is a publisher, writer and historian who specialises in the history of Trinidad and Tobago and has worked in all media in a career that has spanned four decades. In 2007, he was awarded the Hummingbird Medal (Gold) for Heritage Preservation and Promotion.

The Cult of the Will (B&w Edition)

From the Gates of Aksum weaves Freemasonry and European religious and political intrigue into the tapestry of Caribbean and South American political history. The book begins in late 18th century Port-d’Espagne, Trinidad, and is told by several narrators. The story spans centuries, from a time when a company of adventurers recovers a mysterious object of an antediluvian science from the secluded kingdom of Aksum in the Ethiopian highlands, on to the first anguished years of the 19th century. In the riotous wake of the American, French and Haitian Revolutions, the collapse of the Spanish empire in the New World and the rise of the British empire, François de Gurvand, a French colonist, must transport the object from his ancestral home in France to a specific geographical position ― the island of Trinidad. A Vatican secret society, the Holy Hermandad, the Emperor Napoleon, various factions of Freemasonry, and another ancient secret society all vie for possession of the object. From the Gates of Aksum speaks of the role that the early Trinidadians played in that epoch-changing period when the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment altered the course of the history of the world. While the plot and most of the characters are fictitious, the reader familiar with West Indian, South American and European history will find old acquaintances who come to life in this book ― such as Francisco de Miranda, Simón Bolívar, and a heroic band of Trinidadians remembered as the Immortal 45.

From the Gates of Aksum (Softcover)

Genre Fiction

For Paria Publishing's 35th anniversary and in honour of G rard A. Besson being awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of the West Indies, we are presenting a limited second edition of his first published work, Tales of the Paria Main Road. First published in 1973, this whimsical book began G rard's journey into publishing, which lead to the formation of Paria Publishing Company Limited. Tales of the Paria Main Road is comprised of three short stories loosely based on the mis-adventures of Jerry and his friends as a young men in Trinidad during the 1960/70's. It touches on the folklore of Trinidad and Tobago's Afro French culture and introduces the reader to some of the characters who still inhabit to this day the forest of the Paria Main Road. Not all is folklore and tall tales, however. At the time, Trinidad, like much of the world, was changing and this was ever present in the growing social awareness of the "Black Power Movement" which played a big part of our nation's growth, as seen through Besson's eyes.

Tales of the Paria Main Road

Children's Books

Fairy Tales, Folk Tales & Myths

A life .... a Caribbean life ... a life of a distinct Franco-Caribbean identity against the backdrop of the all-consuming French Revolution ... a life patchily documented in history ... a life seen through the eyes of the mistress, the wife .... a life of changing shape, of the shape-changer ... a life of political intrigue, of brutal slaughter, of exploration and love ...  a life of a Caribbean adventurer, Philippe Rose Roume de St. Laurent. In this book, Besson continues his exploration of the French presence in the Caribbean in the 18th and early 19th century and of the formation of a Creole identity in these islands at a time when Atlas truly shrugged in terms of European history, a quest that he began with his previous books "The Voice in the Govi", "The Cult of the Will" and "From the Gates of Aksum". Partly historical novel, partly a fictional tale, "Roume ... a Memoir" takes the reader into the confidence of Marianne, or Soubise as she becomes, and allows glimpses at Roume de St. Laurent's life through her diaries. Roume ... a Memoir is really the memoir of his lover and later wife, and bursts with the excitement of two adventurers sailing through life together, criss-crossing the Atlantic as the winds of revolutionary change blew them, trying to hold on to each other, to a dream of the future, or just for dear life itself.

Roume de Saint Laurent ... A Memoir

History

Americas

Philippine Book Second and Third: Book Second: Souls on Fire; Book Third: The Representative Man & The Servant of the Centurion

Professionals & Academics

A Photograph Album of Trinidad At the Turn of the 19th Century

Africa

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Books by Besson, Gérard A