Author | US | Lynda R Edwards

Meet Lynda R. Edwards

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lynda R. Edwards a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Lynda R., looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Have you signed with an agent or manager? Why or why not?

Just last week, I was asked if I realized I was the unicorn in the room. It’s not the first time I’ve been told this. I’m a Jamaican author who writes stories about my native land. But I live in the United States. I have for the last twenty-seven years. Why am I still a unicorn? Because agents don’t know how to market me, this frightens them enough to avoid signing me.

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One agent decided to take a chance on me, but she had no idea what to do with me. She didn’t understand the message in the books I wrote. Was Friendship Estate a Caribbean Bridgerton? You missed the mark completely if that’s what you got from that book. Is Redemption Songs a book about the song made famous by Bob Marley? Not even close, but the message of the song and the book are similar if you understand the history of the Caribbean. Most don’t.

The history of the Caribbean is the story of the world’s discarded who then became the world’s disregarded. We are where the worst of humanity called home while they took our natural resources to build their industrial empires. The Irish enslaved and indentured. Poor English, Scottish, and Welsh discards no one wanted. Then the enslaved Africans were closely followed by the Indian and Chinese indentured. They brought us all to the islands of the Caribbean. Then they left us to fend for ourselves, which we did. We built a society of the many becoming one, with its own musical soundtrack. We succeeded where everyone else failed. We embraced the yoke of colonialism as a bond instead of what it was meant to do, create divisions based on class and color.

I have yet to find an agent that sees the value in the life I have lived, understands the importance of the cadence of my voice and the value of my stories. Finding an agent is not the hard part. Finding the right agent is. Look at the case of the unicorn. Being an agent is similar to being a horse trainer. Both need to find the Secretariats that consistently take them to the winner’s circle. To have a horse ready for competition takes 12 to 16 months. If the horse is a “born natural,” it may not take quite as long, and that’s what most agents look for in their stables, the naturals, not the unicorns.

The agent for a unicorn needs to be as invested in you as you are. They need to involve you in their approach to selling you. They need to learn from you, and to do that, they have to believe in you! Your talent and your voice. They have to believe that what you have to say is essential for the world to hear. Then they need to be willing to wear their shoes out, knocking on every door. They need to be ready to shout themselves hoarse, screaming your praises to any and everyone. They must have the righteous conviction of a preacher to make others believe in you as they do.

So, you see, I am not the unicorn here. The right agent for me is the unicorn because I am the Secretariat in their stable.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I love to write about women who have agency and try to capture their strength with a fresh, new premise. I want to create a story that combines reality with what may be. My goal is to start a conversation with my writing. The lesson I have learned growing up in the Caribbean is that society is far more complex than the history books would lead us to believe, something that provides rich fodder for my very active imagination.

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I was born in Mandeville, Jamaica, in 1967, the beginning of a turbulent time in Jamaica’s history. Eight generations of my family are buried on the island. My roots are planted deep in the island soil and throughout the Caribbean—replanted roots originating in Portugal and Spain. My Jewish ancestors fled the Spanish Inquisition to Jamaica, where they found other transplanted roots from England, Scotland, and China to comingle with, creating a society of inclusion steeped in one love.

My first book, REDEMPTION SONGS, is a fictional but contemporary telling of societal life in Jamaica, where lessons of taking responsibility for oneself and others, righting wrongs, and recognizing duty, honor, loyalty, equality, and fairness are universal. But it is the deeper message of love, loss, betrayal, and finding love again that makes REDEMPTION SONGS an enthralling read.

In my second book, FRIENDSHIP ESTATE, I look at colonial history in the Caribbean. Colonialism is the greatest transgression humanity has propagated on itself. Yet because of it, we have the opportunity to create the greatest civilization humankind has ever known. In rewriting this dark period in Jamaica’s history, I try to build a bond strong enough to tear through readers’ hearts and break the back of racism and division. By showing us what might have been, FRIENDSHIP ESTATE points the way to what yet might be.

I love to write about the human condition. I believe stories have the power to deepen our faith in the power of redemption, love, and humanity.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

We in the Caribbean are in a unique position. Our African heritage gave us the gift of storytelling. But our European heritage gave us respect for the written word. Gifted orators were given pen and paper to record and preserve the rich legacy of a people who fought, struggled, and ultimately not only survived but thrived.

45 million people live in the Caribbean Islands, 14 million live in the diaspora, and 32 million people visited the Caribbean Islands in 2019. In 2020, a pandemic held us in its grasp, so we turned to that which gave us refuge and comfort. Our music, our food, and our stories. 91 million people whose voices grew stronger and louder.

Magazines wrote stories encouraging us to immerse ourselves in island life even as our world shrunk to the size of the screens on our phones. Caribbean-American Heritage Month, held in June, now came with the Read Caribbean hashtag. Oprah Magazine published articles like 16 Books to Read to Celebrate Caribbean-American History Month, and 91 million people stood up.

We were getting noticed, but just as we began to realize that our stories were a renewable, sustainable industry, we hit a stumbling block. The Caribbean’s all-time stumbling block. We lacked organization and representation. Saying that our stories should be told in our voices is an obvious cliché, but let me explain to you why this is crucial. Do you remember Pirates of the Caribbean? Disney’s exploitation of our history? The franchise grossed over $4.5 billion worldwide; it is the 14th-highest-grossing film series of all time and is the first film franchise to produce two or more movies that grossed over $1 billion.

Had the scriptwriters done a little bit of googling, they would have found this book: “If a Pirate I Must Be…: The True Story of “Black Bart,” King of the Caribbean Pirates,” written by Richard Saunders. Based on historical records, journals, and writings by Black Bart himself, this true story highlights the way this pirate ran his ships, in stark contrast to how the British navy shanghaied and tricked sailors into indentured servitude. Pirate life was actually a fascinating world of theater and ritual, where men (a third of whom were black) lived a close-knit, egalitarian life, democratically electing their officers and sharing their spoils. Instead, Disney turned us into cartoon characters.

Our stories do not reinforce the negative stereotypes of the Caribbean – poverty, violence, and decay. In fact, they tell a very different story of a far more complex society than the history books would like us to believe. Just as our music transports listeners back to our islands, our books should introduce readers to our rich legacy. And what a legacy it is. To steal a line from my good friend, George Graham, “Where Jamaicans may be unique is that we are far less obsessed with skin color and ethnic origin than any other multiracial society I can think of.” He is right; Jamaicans never refer to themselves as anything but Jamaican. We are exceptional enough with that title alone.

There are stories in the Caribbean that will soon be lost to the sands of time if they are not told. Great tomes of people with courage. The courage to do right in the face of any injustice. The courage to fight for others as ferociously as you would fight for yourself. The courage to show compassion when empathy just isn’t enough. And then there were the stories of love. Love of family, love of tradition, love of island, and love of storytelling.

Caribbean people! We are ready to show the world how to live in the spirit of ‘one love.’ So, mek me tell you a story….

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Writing began for me as a cathartic experience. In five years, I lost a beloved uncle, my father, and an aunt I was very close to. Those losses made me realize that I was now at the stage in my life where I was descending into the valley instead of climbing up the hill of life. The nightmares that plagued me as a child were back in full force. I realized I feared losing that which meant the most to me. On my husband’s advice, I sat down and started writing. Not gonna lie, it took me ten days to write the first chapter of Redemption Songs. It was that hard to do because I forced myself to face my greatest fear.

But after I stopped crying, I wanted to go on. The story evolved as my imagination took hold, and I realized I was writing about my family, or at least the rainbow coalition that makes up my family. I did wrap them up in a sensational and salacious story, but all the characters were familiar to me, which kept the story moving forward. I couldn’t find a publisher for Redemption Songs, so I self-published and was shocked at the book’s positive response. I thought I was just writing for friends and family and did enjoy the phone calls and emails saying, “I know who that character is or, I know who you are referring to with that one.” But when I realized the book resonated, I thought, you know what, maybe I have something to say.

One of the comments that came to me from Redemption Songs stayed with me. It was from an African-American woman who traveled to Jamaica regularly but had stopped going long ago because of the negative publicity the island was generating. She wrote, “I knew that south coast road you wrote about in your book. In my mind’s eye, I traveled it with Josephine and felt transported. It made me want to go back to Jamaica so badly.”

I responded to her, “Please go back. Please drive that road again, drive it with Josephine sitting next to you, and experience her Jamaica. I promise you won’t be disappointed.” And she wasn’t.

I have had so many emails from readers, most coming when I was at my lowest point, wondering if I really had anything relevant to say—wondering if I was toiling in vain or for my own vanity. If I can make someone feel the love I have for my island home and for the Archipelago of islands that make up the Caribbean, if I can show them we have great stories to tell beyond sun, sea, and sand, then I have something of value to say.