The Story Behind the Story: A Likkle Miss Lou

How I wrote a Picture Book about Jamaican Poet Louise Bennett Coverley

As we near the end of Poetry month, today I share with you a post I did about writing A Likkle Miss Lou: How Jamaican Poet Louise Bennett-Coverley Found Her Voice. This book about Jamaica’s most celebrated poet, Cultural Ambassador, and Mother of Jamaican culture, Dr. Louise Bennett Coverley, took seven years to write.

This article was first published while I was the Open Book writer in residence. You can read the blogpost in its entirety here, but I’ve decided to include some excerpts below.

Who was Louise Bennett Coverley otherwise known as Miss Lou?  

Born in Kingston in 1919, Miss Lou is the mother of Jamaican culture, a cultural ambassador, singer, poet, playwright, actress, television show host, author, radio personality, ethnomusicologist, popular educator in drama, wife, mother to adopted children, and woman way ahead of her time.  Sadly, I had never met Louise Bennett.  But if I had, I think we would be very good friends.

Miss Lou portrait and I at the Jamaica, Jamaica! Exhibit in São Paolo, Brazil in 2018     

     It’s been quite “a trip” with A Likkle Miss Lou.   Bringing it into the world was slow and frustrating at times.  In the background, I was going through many life changes.  I will take you through the 7 year journey to bring this 32 page picture book from conceptualization, research, grant-applications to support a research trip to Jamaica, editing, critiquing, pitching, and revising.  Please know that while I was working on this book, I was working on others.  I guess that makes me a polyscribe? A multiscribe?  

     When I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2010, the disease added “fire” to my drive to write and publish my stories.  I had treatment mostly in 2011, then my return to work as a classroom teacher at the Africentric Alternative School, where I was an inaugural teacher, was gradual.  While still on part-time hours in 2012, I was singing with the Heritage Singers (a local Caribbean folk choir), planning my wedding, and taking a Writing Non-Fiction for Children class with Catherine Rondina in Continuing Education at George Brown College (GBC).  

My days with the Heritage Singers, circa 2012

Author Cathy Rondina and I in 2019    

     When given an assignment of writing a query letter for a biography, without hesitation, I chose to write about Miss Lou who I first learned about as a child.  (The whole story is outlined in the Afterword of my picture book.)  At the time, I called it Sister Lady Daughta and it was just a spark of an idea.  I knew there needed to be a biography about Miss Lou for two reasons.  Firstly, at the time, unlike Marcus Garvey, Bob Marley, and other well-known Jamaicans, there were no books written about the life of Miss Lou.  Secondly, I had taught Miss Lou’s poetry to my Grade One students at AAS and witnessed their enthusiasm in reading and memorizing her words.  Afraid that these mostly second- and third-generation Canadian children of African-Caribbean descent would lose a huge part of their cultural knowledge and history, I knew I had to write a book to teach kids about Miss Lou.  I just didn’t know what form it would take or how.  

      It took some inner-boastifyin’ to consider my class assignment for a possible book but it wasn’t the first.  I had written the manuscript for my first book, Malaika’s Costume published in 2016, as an assignment in Writing for Children 1 at GBC in 2010.  So I began to workshop the Miss Lou story at conferences.  The first time anyone outside of my class gave me feedback on this manuscript was a one-on-one critique session with author/illustrator Roxie Munro at the 21st Century Writing Non-Fiction for Children conference in New York City in 2015.  She thought the project had promise.  I thought she was being very, very kind to me.  

Illustrator Roxie Munro and I in 2015, courtesy: Publishers Weekly

      Fast-forward through many life changes including a divorce and an overseas move to and from the UAE, I slowly gathered facts and chatted with people who knew Miss Lou.  Years before I joined the Heritage Singers, I learned that they had performed with Miss Lou while she was alive.  It turns out I had unknowingly met her son Fabian Coverley while singing with the Heritage Singers.  In late 2016, I visited London where Louise Bennett lived as a young woman in the 1940s and photographed some of key sites.

Fabian Coverley in 2016

    I shifted from telling the story about why Louise Bennett wrote in Jamaican patois, the vernacular of a country that became ashamed and undervalued its most authentic speech under the oppressive remnants of colonialism and slavery, to focussing on the start of her prolific career started as a young teenager.  Uniquely because it is about such a well-loved and -respected cultural icon who shares my Jamaican heritage, a household name there, this story remained close to my heart and I knew that I could not afford to make any mistakes.  I had given early versions of my manuscript to the late publisher Sheila Barry of Groundwood Books.  Already, she had acquired and published both of my first two picture books— Malaika’s Costume and its sequel Malaika’s Winter Carnival.

Late publisher Sheila Barry and I after signing the contract for Malaika’s Costume in 2014

      Sheila told me that there should be a book about Miss Lou.  In 2016, I spent a few days conducting research at the Louise Bennett Coverley Archives at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.  In 2017, Sheila and I were supposed to meet online and then in person to discuss the most recent draft of Miss Lou, but she kept rescheduling the meeting.  In summer 2017, after teaching in the UAE for the year, I had planned to conduct research at the Louise Bennett archives in the Jamaican National Library in Kingston as part of my 40th birthday Caribbean epic trip to visit Trinidad, Tobago, and play Mas’ at Cropover, a Carnival in Barbados.  Sadly, my brother passed away suddenly that July 2017 just one week after I returned from overseas.  I cancelled my birthday trip.  That November 2017, Sheila Barry passed away due to complications from cancer.

     In October 2017, while taking the Fundamentals of Writing Biography workshop with authors Cynthia Levinson and Bethany Hegedus at the Highlights Foundation, I learned that it was a good idea to release a biography around a significant date or year in the subject’s life.

Snapshots from Highlights with author Bethany Hegedus     

     

Louise Bennett’s 100th anniversary was on September 7, 1919.   I worked on my manuscript which was by then called A Likkle Labrish.  Bethany said she believed it was ready for submission.  My heart stopped in my chest and I felt slightly dizzy when she said she thought the story was ready and suggested that I send it to her agent.  With the possibility of still working with Sheila, I realized then that I had a challenge— to find a publisher who could get it out in time or an agent who could find me said publisher who could get it out in time.  With a traditional publisher, picture books typically take 3-5 years to be published from the signing of the contract.  So I decided to send the manuscript to agents and other publishers.  Time was critical.  Not only did I have to find the right publisher, I had to also get copyright clearance from Louise Bennett’s Estate for the excerpts of her work that I used and this all needed to happen ASAP.  Athough a few said ”no”, a few publishers and agents expressed interest in my project but they expressed conflicting opinions.  The publishers said there was not enough time to get the book published by 2019 while the agents said, “Sure. No problem.”  I listened to the publishers.  And I am glad I did.  But then there was Owlkids which proved to not be your typical publisher.

      I met Owlkids publisher Karen Boersma first at the TD Canadian Children’s Book Awards in November 2018, a week after Sheila Barry’s passing.  Karen invited me to meet with her and said Sheila was her friend.  I ended up meeting with Owlkids acquisitions editor Karen Li in December 2018.  I pitched some other book ideas but then said, “There is this manuscript I am working on...” referring to A Likkle Miss Lou but not sure if it would be the right fit.  Not only did Karen Li request to see the project, she pitched it to her team and wrote me a few days later.  They loved it and wanted to publish it.  They would do their best to get it out in time for Miss Lou’s 100th anniversary.  Due to its proximity in downtown Toronto, Owlkids gave me a chance to meet face-to-face regularly with the team who would be bringing my book to life.  I was familiar with Owlkids, having grown up with Owl magazine and the Owl TV show as a child.  I had reviewed an Owlkids book, Oscar Lives Next Door, about the late Canadian jazz musician Oscar Peterson, for a children’s book magazine.  Coincidentally, Bethany Hegedus and Cynthia had talked about two Owlkid books, The Artist and Me about artist Vincent Van Gogh and The Man Who Loved Libraries: The Story of Andrew Carnegie, in the Highlights workshop I had just attended.  So I knew that Owlkids had a good reputation for producing solid picture book biographies.  I was also pleased to hear that a Jamaican employee at Owlkids was excited about this Miss Lou book.  I found myself agonizing over making the right decision— 1) Go with a larger more well-known US publisher and have a later release date OR 2) Go with Owlkids, a mid-size Canadian publisher that has a US distribution, and get the book out in time for the 100th anniversary.  By January 2018, I had been teaching full-time in a Toronto school but during my lunch breaks, before and after school, I felt extremely anxious in anticipation, trying to make my decision.  Between the e-mails and calls to the Louise Bennett Coverley Estate to approve the use of Miss Lou’s words, literary lawyers with quick turn-arounds, Owlkids, and consultation with Leonicka Valcius, I signed the contract. 

Owlkids publisher Karen Boersma and I in 2019

Agent Leonicka Valcius and I in 2015

    For an illustrator, Karen Li suggested Eugenie Fernandes whose work I was familiar with since I taught her award-winning, One Hen.  Eugenie has a colourful, playful, kinetic style which I thought could lend really well to Miss Lou’s playful language and the rhythmic voice of my story.  She illustrated African and Caribbean realities so well.  Plus, a little birdie told me her husband is Trinidadian.  I agreed.  It turned out Eugenie was right for this project and signed on in March.  She worked extremely fast and by June 2018, I had not only given feedback on the sketches, I could see the finished art for the book.  Typically, an illustrator has one year to work on a picture book manuscript.  Eugenie did it in four months.

Photos courtesy of: Owlkids, illustrator Eugenie Fernandes     

     The book title was changed to A Likkle Miss Lou, thanks to a suggestion by Miss Lou’s son, Fabian Coverley.  My book was published on August 15, 2019 and Miss Lou’s 100th anniversary was September 7, 2019.  A record time!  A Likkle Miss Lou is dedicated to both my late brother Roury and my late publisher, Sheila Barry.

    At the date of this blogpost, there exists only one other book, Miss Lou: Louise Bennett and Jamaican Culture, published about her life written by Mervyn Morris published in 2014.  The process of developing this book taught me that there is room for so many more books and stories about the life and work of Louise Bennett Coverley.  My picture book is only one such story.

    I’m thankful for the valuable feedback from my picture book critique group and my friends who pre-read the final manuscript, and the arts grants that funded aspects of my research.  I’ve already presented this story to children and adults in Toronto, its surrounding area, a Hutterite school in southern Alberta, Baltimore, New York City, and Jamaica.  I even had a chance to be present for the unveiling of Miss Lou Square and a commemorative statue in her hometown of Gordon Town, Jamaica.  The prime minister’s wife and MP Juliet Holness, The Jamaican National Library, and others all now have copies of A Likkle Miss Lou.

Toronto Book Launch at A Different Booklist in 2019

Front page of the Toronto Star entertainment section in August 2019

Storytime at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, NY in September 2019

Member of Parliament and First Lady of Jamaica Juliet Holness and I at Gordon Town, Jamaica in 2019

Courtesy: Telling Tales Festival   

Signing books at NCTE in Baltimore, MD in 2019

     Below, I present to you an excerpt from my first draft of manuscript dated in 2015.  Keep in mind, I still had no idea what the finished product would look like.  All I knew was that I wanted to write a book about Louise Bennett Coverley.   But would the story be all in verse?  Would it all be in Canadian patois?  Would it be a non-fiction traditional text?  Would it be collage?  Shall I illustrate it myself?  In the end, I am very pleased with the finished product.

Happy reading!

Page 1-2

Louise heard something funny on the bus the other day.

Pread out yuhself deh Liza, one
Dress-oman dah look like she
She see de li space side-a we
And waan foce harself een deh.

Like doctor bird’s wings, the words tickled her ear and like peanut drops, they stuck. 

Oh how dose words make me giddy
De way dem roll out me mout
De words so direc, make me reflec
A dis what poetry about.

To read the rest of the entire first draft of Sista Lady Daughta (which became A Likkle Miss Lou), please join the paid subscription.