I have always admired Dr Ramchand and read some of his work when I studied at UWI. I was therefore excited to listen to him speak on the online memorial for V.S. Naipaul that the Friends of Mr. Biswas Society and NALIS put on recently. However, due to the England/ Trinidad time difference and balancing mothering and freelancing, I was unable to log in live and only watched the recorded version this week on NALIS’ youtube channel. Three acclaimed prize-winning Trinidadian writers, two of which are women, were invited to talk about how Naipaul’s writing influenced them and to share some of their own work.
I was shocked when the learned Dr. Ramchand introduced the women writers as having studied law before becoming writers by saying “all these women studying law, they want to throw their husband in jail! Ha ha ha.” Furthermore, when the third writer, a man, said he also studied law, Dr. Ramchand had no little jokes to add but instead lavished praise on his writing.
Dear Dr. Ramchand, in the off chance that you read this, I admire your work, but please check your patriarchy.