Author: Patricia Angoy

Photo Credit: author’s own photograph (with edges and shadows) Image left: personal gift from the Bailey family, see more @ https://baha.co.za. Image right: African Beauty by Phindile Mamba, see more @ https://yeboartgallery.com This month of September has given me the opportunity to read around what I can source, so far, of my own heritage and that of black Guyanese. … Continue reading What do we still carry from our past?

It was 9:30am on Monday morning when the doorbell rang. I opened it to my neighbour carrying an old tin basin filled with freshly picked green beans. He asked me if I knew how to cook them. He then invited me to take what I wanted.  A simple gesture that conveyed so much. He trusted … Continue reading A gift in kind?

Photo credit: author I am learning to look at what I can see in the images I have taken in the places I have lived.  From time to time, many of you will look at printed photographs you may have in old shoe boxes, as I do. Some of you may even be fortunate to … Continue reading Where in the World?

Photo credit: Toni Morrison by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. Location on the shelves at the BNL: 81 MORR To: 1 w In one of the closing paragraphs of Toni Morrison’s Nobel Lecture, as recipient of the Prize for Literature 30 years ago in December 1993, she talks of this place; the margin. This liminal space we once … Continue reading “What moves at the margin?”

Image: #visitguyana In conversation with my granny in Guyana when I was about seven years old, I began to talk to her excitedly, disagreeing with her vehemently about one or other fact, as young children often do with their elders. She stopped me in mid-sentence and asked; “Since when did we go picking mangoes together … Continue reading When did we go picking mangoes together?

Author's Image: Forest in front of my home It is a question I asked myself each evening, as I sit down to eat, and look out as village life closes in. One important part of this time in looking forward to the next day has been for me to look back through the long legacy … Continue reading How do we remain hopeful?

Photo credit: PBS illustration - Jane Mount Thirteen years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warned of the danger of the single story https://youtu.be/D9Ihs241zeg and earlier still, the great Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, through her published work, interviews and refusal to be silenced or misrepresented, reminds us of the master narrative, imposed from the time of slavery … Continue reading Our thinking selves

Sunrise on Waterford Kamhlaba UWCSA, September 2022 https://www.waterford.sz photo credit MASS Design Group https://www.massdesigngroup.org/ Many months have past since my last post and so much has happened in the intervening time, personally and professionally, ending with my retirement at the end of December 2022 and the beginning of a new rhythm to my life.  Most … Continue reading One person at a time

Statue of Mafalda, the most recognised character created by Joaquín Lavado (a) "Quino", in the "Paseo de la Historieta" in San Telmo, Buenos Aires According to a recent Harvard Study of 3 May 2022, about a quarter of school heads plan on resigning this year following the last two stressful years of leadership in schools … Continue reading “Stop the world! I want to get off.”

For over 400 years there has been a cry, a shout, a whisper and a silent prayer to be heard above the roar. Through the arts in poetry and prose, in music and dance, sculpture and painting, scientific and mathematical endeavour, medicine and ecology, politics and religion, all over the world there are those who … Continue reading Nine Minutes