In July 2019 I attended a performance of Caryl Phillips's play Strange Fruit at the Bush Theatre in London. My colleague Bénédicte Ledent and I were on our way back to Belgium after having participated in the annual Conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies in Preston, Britain. The Kittitian–British novelist, essayist and playwright Caryl Phillips had been attending the same conference and he had suggested that Bénédicte and I stop in London overnight and see his play so we could spend a last evening together before parting ways.
Attending the conference in Preston had been planned well in advance—not the play. Memory hardly bothers with plans, though; it has its own way of accenting life and reshuffling experience. Thinking back to July 2019, I can remember the play in vivid detail, as if it has been burnt in my mind—less so the conference. At first, I thought that the...
