The buzz is palpable both inside and outside of the Grand Jamaica Suite of the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel, where hundreds of Trinbagonians and Jamaicans have gathered to celebrate the twin-island republic’s 53 years of Independence. In a room of worthy notables, UWI Professor Emerita Maureen Warner-Lewis makes her own exquisite statement…

You have authored more than six books. What particular joy do you get from the creative process of writing?

I enjoy the challenge of amassing data, selecting them and shaping them to develop a particular line of argument. In addition, it is particularly satisfying to recognise that one’s intellectual work is contributing to a society’s better understanding of its history and culture.

What books are occupying space on your bedside table?

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel — I’ve been reading it slowly over several months. I like period works — it’s set in 16th century England, and it’s a novelistic imaginative biography of Thomas Cromwell who rose from working-class origins to become an advisor to Henry VIII. I admire Mantel’s accretion of details of interior decoration, costume, and social mannerisms, and her ability to re-create the political and religious obsessions of the time.

As a 33-year member of UWI academia, now retired, how would you assess the shift in classroom learning over those three decades?

Because of the computer and the Internet, information has become much more accessible than in the days when students had to compete to get books from the library. But in a sense, it has made some students lazy and more prone to plagiarism. In recent decades, we find that students want to receive high grades, but are unwilling to put in hard work, and resent being corrected. This is ironic, because students worked harder when education was ‘free’, but they seem to put in less effort now that they have to fund their education. But technology has also provided them with more distractions. The example set by our high achievers in athletics should be heeded: they obey their coaches and subject themselves to disciplined routines of work.

You are a Trinidadian national who has lived in Jamaica for an extended time period. What do you appreciate most about island cultures?

The physical closeness to events and persons with whom you want to interact; avoidance of the hustle and bustle of urban life; the option of accessing the benefits of metropolitan life when you want them or need them, while still enjoying the feeling of community recognition in small societies.

Post-UWI, you’ve maintained an active role as a guest lecturer at conferences. Do you enjoy this new phase of your professional career?

Retirement has allowed me to work at my own pace. University lecturing and research and publication are very demanding activities, and by my late 50s I was suffering from burnout. Now the demands for lecturing are much less, and there’s usually long notice and therefore long lead time for preparing a lecture.

What personal traits do you admire and dislike most within yourself?

I am not as organised as I would like to be; I try hard not to judge from appearances; I am not as consistently close to relatives and friends as I think a good friend ought to be, but this is because the love of reading and writing lends itself to solitary behaviour.

The ideal day for me is….

A day free of bodily pain, a day when I have had enjoyable interaction with friends and relatives, a day when I have attended a stimulating lecture or panel discussion, when I have made a meaningful and appreciated contribution to someone else’s life, and when I have listened to a beautiful piece of music, vocal or instrumental.

Being a grandmother means…

Witnessing and helping to share in and shape a younger generation. You also re-learn how curious and wonderful the world is, because you see it again through the eyes of a child.

What is your preferred cocktail of choice

Coconut water, moscato wine.

Where do you head to when you need to unwind?

The TV. I am attracted to documentaries, travel programmes, court cases, domestic dramas. In my teaching years, the garden was my relaxation.

What can Jamaica learn from Trinidad, and vice versa?

Societies are shaped by their geography and their history. Jamaica and Trinidad are at two opposite poles of the English-speaking Caribbean. Trinidad has been an immigrant society, so there’s a greater sense of Caribbeanness there because people have family and commercial ties with people from other islands. This means, though, that Trinidadians are less committed to Trinidad than Jamaicans are to Jamaica. By contrast, Jamaica is isolated amid islands which speak Spanish and Creole French, so it looks to the United States for example and comparison — a very unequal linkage as regards size, socio-historical evolution, and natural and economic resources. On the other hand, Jamaica’s long experience of slavery and its rugged terrain have bequeathed its people a stick-to-it-iveness of character and effort which I think is lacking in the Trinidad personality. Trinidad had a relatively short period of intensive slavery, its terrain is mostly flat, and it has enjoyed long periods of economic prosperity through exports of cacao, oil and gas. Jamaica has also developed a capacity for forging associations and institutions of long standing, whereas Trinidadians link together in more fragile and short-term communal associations.

What inspires you?

A sense of indebtedness to maintain the achievements of my ancestral families, and a confidence in God’s design for my life.

What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?

When I was unmarried and emotionally unsettled, two of my male friends separately advised that I should continue the activities in which I was interested, and that my marriage partner would emerge from those environments — which did happen. Another important piece of advice was given by a male colleague of mine who encouraged me not to abandon a difficult project which I had embarked on — that was my doctorate.

You’re hosting a dinner party at home. Who, living or passed on, would make up your wish list of six guests, and why?

Rex Nettleford, Barry Chevannes, Gordon Rohlehr, Oprah Winfrey, Maya Angelou and Velma Pollard. Because they have thought about and articulated some of the important issues concerning the life of people of African descent in the Americas.

What would you consider your greatest life accomplishment and most challenging moment?

Accomplishment: becoming a mother, creating and nurturing new life. Challenges: living with diabetes for three decades; confronting breast cancer in 2006; writing up a doctoral dissertation in an academic discipline which was my second (Linguistics ), not my first (Literature), love, and focusing my topic on a language in which I was not a native speaker — the Yoruba language of West Africa. But it is a language which I had discovered to be one of the minor languages of Trinidad. The doctorate took me over a decade to do, not only because of the difficulties I just mentioned, but also because I was mothering and teaching at the same time as well.