It wasn’t me

I would like to state unequivocally for the record that I am not the author, either wholly or in part, of “The Feared Generation” essay posted on the Guyana Media Critic blog. That shit was written by a motherfucker that is even chubbier, meaner and more politically incorrect than I am. While I am flattered that some of my friends think that I just got up one night and gushed out seminal, fluid piece of writing, I cannot lay claim to what ain’t mine. At times in a writer’s career you have to acknowledge il miglior fabbro.

In the case of the fucker who wrote TFG, I have to remind him from time to time that he actually put his finger on the pulse of a generation and claiming credit for it is not a bad thing. The irony of The Feared Generation is that, having had our formative years in the immediate post-1992 era, the very freedoms that have defined us have prepared us also to strive and agitate for something far greater than what exists in Guyana at present. Under the PNC as we are so often reminded, the free press was muzzled.

Now today because we harbour an expectation of a state media completely free of partisan political constraints – and Big Brother, don’t even fuck with me here, I have spent five years in the fetid belly of beast – we are branded as unpatriotic. And this isn’t about the political sphere alone – the liberalism of the Feared Generation has been the antithesis of the status quo particularly in the area of race relations. The very cultural and indeed ethnic erosion feared by Indo-Guyanese via the spectre of interracial relationships in the late seventies and eighties has now increased exponentially even as Hindu/Indian culture has thrown off the shackles of suppression, and indeed oppression, that existed under PNC rule.

The eugenics of metissage (or miscegenation) as embodied in institutions like the two decades long Guyana National Service has probably had a far lesser direct impact on the production of dougla babies, than Club Avalanche had in its two year run. Those of the Feared Generation, as the author of that essay says, have no problem dating across racial lines – and trust me, he know what he talking about. A few nights ago, in conversation with Mr. TFG himself, I proposed that he get the essay published along with several others.

Let me put that proposition out into the open. I am willing to edit and seek publication for essays on “The Feared Generation” – we aren’t looking for wide international circulation here, except perhaps in the Diaspora but what the publication can serve to do is provide a picture of the thoughts of a group of people who in a couple of years are going to be critical in charting the course of Guyana’s future. You stayed here for a reason – engage in this exercise and in thirty years you future business magnates, tenured academics, presidents, and (ahem) Nobel Prize winners can look back and measure the progress you and this country have made. Who’s with me? Eh, who’s with me? Who did I have from “It wasn’t me”? Interested persons can e-mail me at ruel.johnson@gmail.com.