My blood is my ink
June Aming remembers Saturday mornings at the corner shop with her mother and sisters. Each child could choose a chocolate bar and a book. Her sisters usually picked titles like Judy for Girls. Aming went straight for Noddy. Soon she was filling copybooks with stories of her own, performing them for her childhood friend Charmaine at mock “book launches.”
“I wrote because I loved creating characters that I wanted to be,” she says, “and settings where I wanted to live.” In 2015, her story Carnival Baby was shortlisted for the Small Axe Literary Competition. She later won first prize in the 2023 BlackInk Writing Competition. In 2024, she was selected for the Bocas Lit Fest Breakthrough Fellowship and was longlisted for the BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. In 2025, she was named a finalist for the Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award.
Aming holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, and her writing appears in multiple anthologies, including Moving Right Along and The Caribbean Writer Vol. 26. Her debut novel, Yellow Is Not For Girls Like Me, went to auction and has been acquired by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, an imprint of Hachette UK, scheduled for publication in June 2027. During her MFA at UWI St Augustine, under the guidance of lecturers including Dr Muli Amaye, Aming began to think more closely about character, emotional truth and the demands of narrative. “I discovered that writing is not a selfish task undertaken by those who just want to see their own thoughts on paper, but that writing carried the responsibility of creating authentic characters that were fully functional and lived lives that resonated with its audience,” she says. Aming describes her writing as shaped by an awareness of the ways people harm each other through race, religion, class, gender and personal relationships. “I write now aware of the injustices in the world; the pain we cause each other in the name of religion, race, hate and even in the name of love,” she says. “I write to tell the stories of those who are silenced and need to be heard. I write to heal my hurts, with the hope that what I say can perhaps be a balm to someone else’s wound. I write to bring a little laughter and cheer into an ordinary situation, on an ordinary day. There are so many reasons I write, but the most important reason is that it is what I feel called to do. My blood is my ink, my fingers the pen and without any of this, I think I would just feel empty. So, I will continue to write for an audience of one, or many.”
The following is an extract from Carnival Baby, by June Aming, shortlisted for the Small Axe Literary Competition in 2015:
“I am no jokey carnival baby born November/ December when parang tunes strumming from quatro strings. I am the real thing. I, Mary Chin Wa Kwai, was born Carnival Monday with pan sticks beating on my eardrums. 5.20 J’Ouvert morning, my body burst out to the rhythms of Invaders Steel Orchestra ponging up Charlotte Street past the General Hospital. Kitchener’s ‘This is mas’ playing, my mother screaming. Blue devils jumping, red blood pouring. Black oil smearing, pink flesh ripping. Brown mud throwing, silver needle stitching. Orange and green jab-jabs crack their whips and a yellow, chinee girl-child start to bawl for the first time.
With all that, Carnival was never talked about in our house. Every year, this short, round, stocky man who was my father would screw up his black eyes and pack up my mother, my two older brothers, my younger sister and me, and send us to Sangre Grande by Aunt Doris from the Saturday right up to Ash Wednesday. There I would spend a restless holiday watching happy faces jostling into cars and taxis, clad in their dungarees, colourful tops, hats, and wearing new brand sneakers. Everybody was talking about going downtown and jumping up in the bands. The bands? What that meant? But when I reach back in Port-of-Spain on Ash Wednesday, some of the girls in my class would boast about the bands they would jump up and dance in. They would talk about dressing up in gigantic, brilliantly-coloured costumes with feathers and beads, and shiny cloth draping over their bodies. I couldn’t quite grasp what they were talking about and every time I ask Miss, she made me put ten cents in the cussing jar because for another 40 days you couldn’t speak of anything ‘Carnival’. I was left with an empty feeling inside, like an orphan abandoned at birth.
The year I was to turn ten, Aunt Doris pack up all of her belongings and went to New York to live with her daughter, Francine. There would be no Sangre Grande this year. Terry Chin Wa Kwai had no choice but to keep his family in town for Carnival. Well, every man jack get their instructions. Eddie and Tony, who were both thirteen, would be turning the big, wooden ice-cream bucket for Ma to sell coconut ice cream from our shop on Charlotte Street. My younger sister Kim and I were told that we would be selling popcorn. “So what Daddy going to be doing?” I asked Ma. “Mary, I hardly think what your father is doing is any business of yours.” “But it not fair,” I continued, “All of sudden he is….” I looked around to make sure he didn’t come back in the living room, “All of a sudden, he is the king.” “He ain’t no king, but he is your father. He can’t take all the noise of steel pan and calypso, so he don’t want to be around.” “So why he never come up by Aunt Doris then? Because you know up there you don’t hear nothing.” Well boy, I had her trapped like a macajuel snake in a glass jar. She stood looking at me for a while and I know what rattling around her brain. Why she have a child that like to question, question everything? Why this child can’t be obedient like the others and keep her mouth shut? “The Lord put you here to teach me patience, yes child. If you must know, your father is going to play cards in the East with Mr Toyshan and Mr Fung. Are you satisfied now? You could continue to breathe?” I could breathe, yes, and I guess I would have to be satisfied that the whole family working while Mr King-of-thenon-carnival would be playing cards.
When the day finally came, it was fantastic. Kim and I stood on the pavement shoving these little brown paper bags of popcorn in people’s faces, begging them to buy. I saw faces like those in Sangre Grande who had finally reached their destination. These faces matched the glowing sun above. Heat was rising up from the pavements, scorching feet as they stepped quickly in a timed march across the hot pitch. I could hear a long-lost melody in the distance and see a flowing river of colour moving in time to that music. The South Quay breeze seemed to be tossing silver in the air while being stabbed by tall, brilliant sticks pushed up against the horizon. A troop of glitter and gaiety ebbing down Queen Street. I was in a trance. Popcorn forgotten, my feet moved like a magnet towards the mas. Kim was calling me back, but the call of the Carnival was stronger. Imagine all this going on and my father have me selling popcorn. He must be crazy, yes.”
End of Extract