between this mountain ridge and the vague seawhere the lost exodusof corials sunk without trace—  There is too much nothing here.  – “Air” by Derek Walcott  A new middle passage gapes wide, and amnesia fills the cracks. An unbroken line of signifiers, Ste Lucie, the Helen of the West, Santa Lucia, Hewanorra, Ioüanalao, burst…

Memory only matters for the future.  I love to go to a specific beach back home in Saint Lucia. It’s a long yellow sand beach called Reduit Beach. I was at this beach one day with my family. While I was in the water with my little cousin, teaching her how to swim, I…

Following European colonisation, gendered pronouns have become the norm in language usage. Nonetheless, with the increasing number of individuals adopting gender-neutral pronouns, the perception of gendered language as the default is changing. Gender-neutral terms are not a contemporary craze. They have existed for hundreds of years, dating back to the 14th century in Europe. The…

Saint Lucians’ linguistic identity manifests in the two languages we use to express ourselves and their convergence at the core of our being. After the Anglo-Franco wars for Saint Lucia, the island was ultimately under British rule from 1815 until independence in 1979.  The official language of Saint Lucia is English, but it informally shares…

Prefer to read? The island of Saint Lucia lies between the turbulent waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the calm waves of the Caribbean Sea. Situated in the middle of the Eastern Caribbean island chain, Saint Lucia has been a transitory point for hundreds of years during the precolonial and colonial periods. It was used…

Here is a list of Nèg Mawon sites that were either strongholds, storage or ambush sites. There are many possible sites such as these, but further archaeological research is needed to confirm their status. The Nèg Mawon sites that have not already been destroyed by development, if not documented and preserved, are vulnerable to being…

The names of the communities listed below were influenced by or named after Nèg Mawon. Fond Gens Libre (Valley of the Free People) A photo of the Fond Gens Libre Community stluciastar.com Fond Gens Libre was a remote Nèg Mawon community situated on a plateau on one of the twin peaks, Gros Piton. It was…

This is a list of Saint Lucian districts whose names were changed during the period of the French Revolution. In 1792, the freed people of colour in Saint Lucia embraced the French Revolutionary motto (“Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”) and banded together to create a Colonial Assembly. The renaming of the island and the Quarters (districts) was…

(Nèg Mawon Names) Welcome to the toponymic data depository of Revolutionary and Nèg Mawon place names in Saint Lucia. This page is an ongoing project to remember the names given by the self-freed ancestors of Saint Lucians. An artistic illustration of Flore Bois Gaillard The events of the French Revolution and the Brigand Wars (1794…

by jessiemayers | Class Blog 7 | It’s a new day and a blank slate! between this mountain ridge and the vague seawhere the lost exodusof corials sunk without trace—  There is too much nothing here.  – “Air” by Derek Walcott A new middle passage gapes wide, and amnesia fills the cracks. An unbroken line…