ST. MARTIN (October 2001) — Uitgeverij Contact has recently released Tropentaal in The Netherlands, an ambitious book of prose literature edited by Aruba’s dedicated literary chronicler Wim Rutgers. The 637-page hardcover tome includes some 95 stories and fragments from the oral and literary traditions of the Dutch territories in the Caribbean for the last 200 years.
In the seventh chapter of Tropentaal can be found Lasana M. Sekou’s “The Rightful Heirs,” from his book Love Songs Make You Cry (House of Nehesi Publishers, 1989). The story, wrapped in mystery and patriotism, is about elderly leaders secretly planning for the unification and independence of St. Martin by involving young people, and how the new generation was about to impact on their plans. “It is interesting that that story would be selected,” smiled Sekou, who last week received a copy of Tropentaal. “It could just be part of the spirit of the times, of a vision and direction that is searching us out to activate our claim to our manhood and our island as our own.”
The St. Martin author has long been impressed with Wim Rutgers’s work. “Rut-gers has been doing his best to chronicle and review the literatures of the Dutch colonies in the Caribbean for some time. Tropentaal is a landmark of his dedication and a dramatic leisure reading book and research tool for a Dutch reading public and literary scholars and students.” All of the writings are printed in their original Dutch or translated into Dutch from Papiamentu and English.
In the oral tradition chapter of Tropentaal can be found the lively “Tete en Massa Yaya,” a St. Martin folktale penned by Camille Baly, also from St. Martin, and “Indianenverhalen” penned Saba’s Will Johnson.
Another St. Martiner featured in the book is Fred Labega (“Verschijning”), thought to be the most serious pre-1950s St. Martin writer. “The prose fiction and poetry of the late Mr. Labega have not yet been collected and published in book form,” says Jacqueline Sample, House of Nehesi Publishers president. “Just as we did in the late 1990s with the works of Borromeo Hodge, we have been interested in publishing Mr. Labega since the late 1980s. We’ve seen some fine pieces. He was the typical St. Martiner when it came to his travels and the many languages that he spoke and, in his case, wrote in—but we haven’t been able to make contact with anyone with rights to his work.”
The writings from Curacao make up the overwhelming majority of Tropentaal’s richly varied selections. There are also writings from Aruba, Bonaire and St. Eustatius. Among some of the outstanding writers featured are Frank Martinus Arion, Jules Palm, Cola Debrot, Luis Daal, Elis Juliana, Frans Booi, Pater Paul Brenneker, C. Lopes, Diana Lebacs, Guillermo Rosario and Jacques Thonissen. Some of the writings are essays and accounts of historical, social, political, and constitutional topics, such as of “Bolívar op Curacao,” and Boeli van Leeuwen’s “30 mei 1969: ‘Amador Nita’,” but most are prose fiction.