Jacinta Bannis launches debut novel in Dominica

Jacinta “Jess” Bannis launched her debut historical fiction novel, Of Islets, Folklore and Second Chances, on Sunday 18 October at the Castle Bruce Regional Emergency Shelter in Dominica. The event also marked Bannis’s 70th birthday and had Kweyol and African themes.

The novel is set in rural Dominica in the 1960s. It includes koudmen, a tradition in which neighbours volunteered their labour for one another and shared food. Bannis presented a copy to Senator Austelle Lockhart, who accepted it for the Castle Bruce Secondary School.

Bannis did not attend high school and later earned degrees from Virginia Tech, the University of the West Indies and Florida Metropolitan University. She has worked as a teacher at Castle Bruce Primary School, Director of the National Drug Prevention Unit and a senator for the Dominica Labour Party. She received Dominica’s Meritorious Service Award in 2018.