About the Book & Project
Naniki (meaning ‘active spirit’ in the Taino language) is a cross-platform story project authored by Oonya Kempadoo, published as a Caribbean-futurist novel, Naniki (Rare Machines, Dundurn Press, Toronto, Jan 2024); it’s produced as an immersive and live-performance experience; with preliminary concept development for VR and Fulldome.
Through luminescent light, ancestral paths, and a Caribbean spirit-inflected world, Naniki explores the musings and inner workings of the deep blue—the Caribbean Sea—and its shape-shifting sea beings. As the sea mirrors the light from the blue skies, and its depths are exposed by daggers of sunlight, so too Naniki reveals and honours the Indigenous roots of the Caribbean and its people, whose destiny is tied to the sea, the vessel of collective memory. Amana and Skelele are made of water and air, their essence intertwined with Taino and African ancestry. They evolved as elemental beings of the Anthropocene, and shape-shifting with their naniki (active spirits) or animal avatars, they begin an archipelagic journey throughout the Caribbean Basin to see the strange future they dreamed of. Until devastation erupts. Tasked by their elders to go back in time to the source of the First People’s knowledge, they must surmount historical and mythological challenges alike. How can they navigate and overcome these obstacles to regenerate themselves, their love, their islands, and their seas?
You can find more about the project at Oonya’s site.
Mary: It’s a true pleasure to chat with you! Tell us about Naniki and how this amazing cross-platform story came about.
Oonya: The Naniki story project continues to be many years of exploration, learning, collaboration, adaptation and re-mediation. Re-mediation in the sense of changing the media format of a story, except in this case the seed story was not a novel at first. I had a seed story that grew into a treatment, and extended treatment because I felt it was much more audiovisual and should be experiential, or at least interactive, rather than words on pages. So organically, as opportunities for research and exploration became available, I was able to work with students of art, creative writing, digital art and technology (at college level in a Fulbright scholarship in the US), consult youth artists in the Caribbean; and connect with Caribbean artists in various media in the region and the Diaspora. In moving to Montreal in 2017, I was inspired further to dare to explore even more disciplines like the circus arts and multimedia immersive production. I feel very fortunate to have the interest and support of so many professionals on this project – which has become the biggest one of my ‘writing career’.
Mary: The project sounds unique and not limited to one genre. It has the Caribbean Sea, magical realism, shape-shifting sea creatures, and so much more. I wish I had this kind of imagination. So it’s a book as well as an immersive location based experience (LBE), complete with multimedia, including a carnival circus performance, digital art, live storytelling, music, an audio-visual experience, and so much more. It has live actors and was filmed underwater. Did you direct all this too?
Oonya: Yes, I did end up directing for the first time (as well as co-producing) to coordinate the production since I had a clear idea or vision of what I wanted it to be and look and sound like. How to do this while including other artists’ creativity and making it work together was another matter! But again, I was fortunate to have the support of professional development master classes – in how to translate literature to live performance, and on translating literature to multimedia and how immersive productions are built – from very experienced and generous professionals James Tanabe and Lena Gutschank, and Normal Studio. With the privilege of artist grants and the support of Concordia University’, Milieux Research Institute on Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG), and a prototyping expert, I learnt a huge amount in a very short space of time while developing, directing and producing Naniki Immersive. The underwater performance and filming was its own production, an exciting first time for all of us and what surprise and fulfillment when we saw the results! None of us knew how it would really turn out, but it was the first part created and inspiring to the whole team. The respect and friendships that have been built through this risk-taking production mean a lot to me (and others), and as a result there was a really good vibe in the making of it and with the audience when we presented it.
Mary: The story is described as a “lyrical spiritual Afro-Indigenous epic set in a climate-ravaged Caribbean”. We need stories like this, so thank you. Any thoughts on place-writing and the spirituality of this novel?
Oonya: Thank you and thanks to generous readers! Writing rooted and characterized by place is something I have done in all my novels. Specificity in locale that connects to global narrative is what I enjoy reading and I guess try to do. For me the sensory portrayal of place helps me to go there and stay there – literature in this way was my first immersive experience complete with imagined scent and flavors. Naniki is set across many islands and cultures but anchored in the sea but I could only get to know some of these islands through research and visit in imagination a different time – our shared future. Acknowledging non-human, elemental, and spirit life is, to me, part of life and is also connected to creativity/creative energy and honoring Indigenous beliefs. Writing longhand by and with the sea was almost a meditational practice for me and it is where this story came from. My focus on the rhythm and flow of words is trying to reflect the intangible presence and feeling that nature provides. Perhaps these factors, along with characters (human, other animal species, and spiritual) embodying symbolic meaning, is where descriptives like this come from.
Mary: The protagonists are the elemental shapeshifters. I was going to ask how they related to ancestral lore but then read that they are based on Taíno and African legends. Did you hear or read stories of such beings when growing up?
Oonya: The preservation and handing down of Indigenous and African stories in the Caribbean (like in other parts of the world) suffered much through colonial Christianization which is the foundation of the school/education system. There is no romantic picture of elders telling stories to families or gatherings anymore but built into storytelling is resilience and so some storytellers have survived. I am grateful to my parents for home-schooling myself and my siblings in their efforts of decolonization, and actively finding Aboriginal stories not just from Guyana but from around the world to include in our education and home library. Growing up in Guyana at a time when Caribbean art forms were being affirmed, post-independence was an exciting time of hearing contemporary actors use our Creole language in performance and claiming stories that were devalued in the past, such as ‘myths’ and legends and stories in song. TV was quickly delivering new stories and for many in my generation children’s literature (apart from the Bible) was largely British e.g. Paddington Bear, Enid Blyton’ books, American comic books and romance novels popular among teens. I read my share of these too (minus Biblical stories) but enjoyed folktales from all over the world, in particular ones from South America, Australia, Black America and the Caribbean. These were my preferred fantastical and real stories that connected me to landscape.
Mary: You live in Montreal now, but spent most of your life in the Caribbean?
Oonya: Yes, I chose to remain the Caribbean after growing up in Guyana even though most of my family had migrated to Europe and have lived in Trinidad, St Lucia, Tobago, Grenada but see the region as ‘home’. I live in Montreal for now, drawn to the exploration of multi-disciplinary arts, and it is my first time living in a Northern city for more than two years. I had to ‘shape-shift’ to write away from the sea, but am increasingly aware of how urgently our home, this planet, needs our care wherever we are on it.
Mary: What are some cool experiences and stories that you grew up with?
Oonya: Well…cool is relative but this was unique at the time, and I treasure it now: my father along with a favorite ‘uncle’ who was an actor and storyteller, and a scholar, went around Guyana in the 70’s recording ‘Our Kind of Folk’. As kids, my siblings and I would get to go on some of the trips with them to find singers, elders, tradesmen, all sorts of people in Guyanese East Indian, Black and Amerindian villages to record songs, mostly, and traditions that were dying out. I remember seeing the lyrics in print for the first time when Dad transcribed the songs and typed them up in Creolese, and then having great fun with my sister and friends as we tried to sing along to sound like a lecturing granny, or a lovesick man, imitating the gestures or dance moves we saw when it was recorded. When the songs were broadcast on the radio – a first for local music like this – we would belt them out, delighted that we knew the words!
Mary: Anything else to add about this or future projects?
Oonya: The Naniki journey continues, and I can’t say exactly what is next as I have learnt how long development takes and more so the bigger the expenses of production are. But explorations of iterations in VR and other formats are ongoing as well as how to adapt the existing production to make it sustainable and tourable. The cross-platform possibilities are many but it is reassuring to know that I can always return to the page and pick up with my protagonists, Amana and Skelele, and follow them, perhaps on land, or wherever they lead, to hear and learn more.
About the Author
Oonya Kempadoo is a UK, Guyanese, Grenadian citizen, and a resident of Montreal, Canada. She is the author of three novels and is critically acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic. Her semi-autobiographical first novel was long-listed for the Orange Prize and translated into six languages and her second won a Casa De Las Americas prize. Oonya is a US Fulbright alumni, has taught creative writing in the USA, led workshops in the Caribbean, at the Quebec Writers Federation, and has served on several award juries including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards (USA & Canada). She is co-founder of the Grenada Community Library and the writing facilitator and editor of The Grenada Chocolate Family, the first children’s chocolate book, written by children of colour in a cocoa-growing country, that won Gourmand’s ‘Best in the World’ award. Oonya’s new novel of speculative fiction, Naniki, is part of an eco-social story project that she has produced and directed as an immersive multimedia and live performance experience, with the support of Canadian public funds.
