Ramabai Espinet

"In writing (poetry, fiction, plays, etc.) I am aware of functioning as an Indian woman from the Caribbean in dialogue with the world. The world may choose to ignore that dialogue; all the same this is what I am doing. And at a primal level, I and my kind (Indo-Caribbean women) are prohibited by the full weight of patriarchal law and authority from having dialogue with the world outside the home."

"Disparate and colliding identities are intrinsic to any home I have ever known. One cannot afford to be complacent. But there is too a very real sense of belonging and wherever I am, I recognise that belongingness instantly. Place does not matter to me because I know that things change constantly. For me, home is a moveable shack on a beach, a moveable feast."

"I work as an educator/knowledge worker and this means that I am actively involved in the large human project of understanding at all levels all the time. I dont know how this fits with the desire to convey the history of Indo-Caribbon settlement except that this area is still so underdeveloped untold, ill-understood. And maybe this novel is a small step in pushing this understanding forward"

"It is impossible to be alive and have nothing."

"Different works emerge differently and I pay no real attention to the external process. Internally I think there is an identifiable process which can be captured by one word: obsession. The thought, the line, the image, the one word: whatever is the germ of that particular poem stays and stays until it reaches its needed form on the page."

"Opening our mouths and saying our words, breaking the cycle of the "unknowable," seems to me right now an essential tool for our survival, on our own terms, and for that of our daughters and granddaughters. We can only become stronger as we build upon each others experiences and strengthen that repository of woman-knowledge (also community-knowledge) of which we are the rightful inheritors."