Welcome to The Bookcase.

I'm your host, Shawna Richards, a sometime writer and a long time reader.

I invite you to join me as we explore The Bookcase and celebrate Virgin Islands authors and talent.

Each week on The Bookcase, we'll introduce you to a local author and learn more about them and their work.

A storyteller lives in each of us, and I am so excited to give our homegrown storytellers a chance to tell their story.

Tonight's selection from The Bookcase is Masqueraders Musicians and the Old Time Saint Croix Christmas Festival.

And I'm honored to welcome its author.

Dr. Karen Thurland, Welcome to the bookcase.

Thank you so much for joining us this evening.

Please tell our audience a little about yourself.

Thank you for having me.

I was born in Christiansted.

I'm a 10th generation Crucian.

I was a teacher, a culture education specialist, a social studies supervisor, a director of curriculum, an assistant principal, deputy deputy superintendent, also a part time instructor at the University of the Virgin Islands.

So I've worn many hats, but from a young, I had loved to read any kind of books.

I attended St Mary's School, which was in Christiansted, and after school I would go to my grandparents, my grandfather had a collection of books, books on philosophy, auto mechanics, popular mechanics, different subjects.

I even found a Booker T Washington up from slavery.

W.E.B.

Dubois book, a poetry book by Langston Hughes.

His wife, my grandmother, used to get the Reader's Digest, and when I was in junior high and high school, she would always show me a copy and said, Learn these words.

You're going to college and not too far away was the Christiansted Public Library.

And this is where I really began to read third grade.

So many of us in St Mary's School started reading the Happy Hollister's, then fourth grade, we were introduced to Nancy Drew mysteries.

I love Nancy Drew and being in Christiansted, there was Del Thorpe Bookstore.

So on the way home from school went home to my grandparents home.

I was able to step in there and my classmates and myself, we would buy books and exchange them.

Now I have read the entire set.

My younger sister, have read all the Nancy Drew mysteries because when I got to high school, I discovered James Baldwin and other black authors.

So I kept on was I liked Sherlock Holmes.

I like mysteries.

My father used to have a lot of National Geographic magazines around.

He even bought a junior National Geographic for his great grandson My father also had Popular Science Popular Mechanics magazines.

He got the local newspaper every day.

From the time I was young, my mother would read the newspapers and talk to her children about what was in the news.

So I was surrounded by reading all over and I continue to reading, and I think that's what got me interested in history and also in travel, because with reading, you go to different places without leaving.

Without leaving, Yes.

And years later, you learn or you yearn to visit those places that you've learned about.

So all the history that you read, all those books that you read, is that what triggered your own interest in chronicling the history of Saint Croix?

Well, I enjoyed reading, but something was missing.

It wasn't about Saint Croix the Virgin Islands, My people.

I saw a need and I said, I'm going to feel that.

So I started collecting information, you know, questioning people, reading other writers, especially black writers.

Writer's from the Harlem Renaissance, Just to get a feel for writing.

Now, in my undergraduate courses, I studied historiography, the writing of history and I was very fortunate to have a professor who encouraged me to go to the Schomburg Center.

Another professor, she was chairman of the New Jersey Bicentennial Commission.

So you can tell when I was in college.

And she also encouraged me.

But who really pushed me was an English professor, Professor Harrington.

We had to write weekly papers for her on different subjects and she said, Karen, you can write, you should keep on writing.

And she gave me a book called A Writers Control of Style.

She saw something in me and encouraged me to write.

How long was it between you having that encouragement from your instructor and getting that book to actually saying, I'm going to write a book about 20 years?

But before I used to write newspaper articles on Virginia Island, there's different events.

I have them in the Saint Croix Avis.

So I started with newspaper articles and then I moved on to books.

Is this your first book?

This is my sixth book.

Impressive.

Congrats.

Thank you.

So what inspired to you or what motivated you to write about Masqueraders and Musicians and the Christmas festival?

The Old Time Christmas Festival?

Well, as you know, there are three books in one.

So I had a home run here.

I did a workshop for presentation, I should say, and masqueraders back in, I believe, 2010 for the Ancestry Discovery Group, we do oral history, family research, and I found some interesting photos at the Whim Museum Library.

And I said, you know, that would be a good picture for a book.

So I collected those and I started collecting stories.

Musicians, we love Stanley.

And I said, You know, we have to write about Stanley now, but there's got to be other musicians that are part of our very rich musical history.

Well, there's a documentary on Jamesie , then.

Blinky Mackintosh was in one of Richard Schrader seniors book.

So I said to Stanley, Now, Prince Galloway, beautiful.

He was to be in my first book.

Well, my third book, Neighborhoods of Christiansted that but we never did meet up.

And I kept saying, I got to put him in, I got to put him in.

So I put him in because you'd need musicians for the masqueraders and for festival.

So he's very special, very nice person to interview.

And I don't know if you remember hearing this song, Archie buck me up.

Yes, that he said, You have the lyrics in your book.

I have the lyrics that he wrote out for me, and he perform at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

He performing in the in a Calypso tent in Trinidad.

So he has a lot of talent.

And he could tell us about Virgin Islanders in New York City and some of the activities like the boat rides that they had up there.

So you have three books and one.

Yes.

You talk about masqueraders, musicians, and then the old time festival.

Why was it important for you to document masqueraders?

Because we don't have masqueraders like we used to.

I grew up hearing my parents talk about masqueraders coming out on holidays like Easter Monday, Christmas second Day, and it was a lot of fun.

You know, in those days, a lot of people lived in the towns Christiansted or Frederiksted and also in the country villages.

So this was a form of entertainment.

You didn't have radios, you didn't have television.

And it was a drawback to our African and European customs.

So in documenting and documenting the masqueraders and musicians and festival.

Where did you find your information?

What type of research was involved?

Well, a lot of research, especially for festival.

now festival, I added in because I saw the anniversary for festival was coming up and I said, I have to have a yes.

Yes.

Their connection.

I spoke to troup leaders.

I did research at the Whim Museum Library.

I was able to get my hands on some old festival booklets and I remember being a young child, see, and photos by Fritz Henlay.

He was a German photographer who came here in the late fifties and he took a lot of photographs.

So I looked through the photo collection that he had.

I also went back to Axile Oversen, but his was an earlier period in time and everything just came together.

It even grew beyond what I had first thought, because when I looked at the booklet for festival, I saw all these ads of little businesses, small businesses that are no longer an existence.

And I said, This will be very important to document.

And the grandchildren and great grandchildren of these shop owners or storekeepers will be very proud to know that they were all part of festival.

It was a community get together and I spoke of the two ladies, Hilda England and Mrs. Anna Broadhurst, who are two spearheads the driving force behind the first festival, On St. Croix, and also the women from the Women's League of Christiansted and Frederiksted Mrs. Riviera, who has written a book.

She was one of the spearheaders, Frederiksted Then you had so many people I don't want to call names because I'm going to forget some, but there was so many familiar faces in your book, so many people that you interviewed, especially for the old time Christmas festival portion, so many people that you interviewed, many of whom are still with us today, who had such rich stories to tell about.

I don't want to say the olden days, but I guess it would be the olden days of how festival used to be.

And did you find a common theme in any of their stories?

It was about having fun and it was about community and people working together and doing the best for the island.

It was a community effort and what I liked is some of the secrecy with the different troops.

You didn't know what they were coming out as until they came up until they came down the road.

And you have different people I mentioned I tried to get with be the names of seamstresses, the people who made the mask, people who made the costumes, even people like Abramson Bus Company that contributed busses to take the troop from Christiansted down to Fredericksted and bring them back up.

So it was a community effort and it was colorful.

It was joyful.

It was a lot to look forward to when I was a kid.

And I remember being in a truck, I probably was four or five years old in a parade, and I said to myself, Why am I that truck?

I should be in the street dancing but it was fun.

And you met a lot of people.

A lot of people were nice and kind.

And I have to say, whenever I do research, people are so given, they're so happy.

And when I tell them that, you know your name and your story will be remembered, I'm going to make sure that copies in the libraries public library, school libraries and the public's hands, you know, and they're so happy with that.

They share, Family stories, they share photos.

And what's interesting, too, they'll say, you need to talk to this person or that person.

So that adds to my research.

Is that why you write so that people's stories can be remembered?

Yes, because we have a unique history and it's good for others to know The caring and the sharing that goes on.

You know, I always say that when I was young and I walk home from school, I'm sure there were people looking out jealousy at myself and other little kids walking on the street, You know, you felt like you had someone looking and caring for you.

And I think we had a very nurturing and we still do community people who care and who are concerned about others.

And we know how to have fun together.

How long did it take you to put this book together?

It took five years.

That's a quite a bit of time, quite a bit off and on, because writing is something I try to do every day, but I also do family history research.

So that takes up some of my time.

And this is an island that has so many cultural activities, it's always something to do.

Last week I was on a staycation.

I went to three museums and Fredericksted, okay, the Fort, the Chant Museum and the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts.

I said, I'm going to be a cultural person looking at the events when there's not a lot of people around and really take it in and speak with the curators, the other people who work there.

And I enjoyed it.

I'm ready to go on another staycation tour in my island because, you know, there's a lot of wrong and we don't realize what's around us.

In your professional career, you were an educator.

You developed curricula curriculum for our school system.

How different was that?

How different is that from the writing that you do now?

I do more detail and more cultural stuff, and I get firsthand information, firsthand accounts from people, and I can go in different directions.

You know, I don't have to stick to one goal or objective.

I let the evidence or the research takes me in whatever direction and is it's beautiful.

I love researching, I love meeting people and talking with people.

And it's such a joy when they thank me for doing it, because a lot of people don't feel that what they have is important and when I get through and I show them what I've written from our interview, they're so happy.

In writing your book, Masquerade as Musicians, An Old Time Saint Croix Christmas Festival.

Was there anything that you came across in your research that was completely new to you?

Not really.

I taught Virgin Islands history at Saint Croix Central High School for several years, and I was with the Cultural Education Division doing research in and writing and presentations.

And I thought Virgin Islands history and Caribbean History at the university.

I was a part time instructor.

Is there anything that when you finished putting your book together, you said, wow, I wish I'd gotten that in there.

there was a photo I took in St Thomas of a bull with the dried banana leaves and the horn.

The bull was made of the dried beans.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

I took it back in 1983.

In those days, your camera, when you sent your film away for development, they had the month and the year on the back.

Yeah.

So it was 1983.

And there's a story to that.

I was at my godmother's house in St Thomas in Savan, and I went down the street to the bakery and coming back up I see this bull coming towards me down the street.

So I crossed over and I took a photo of it.

But by that time there were so many people around and I'm sorry I didn't take a picture of the back of his costume, but I had pastries in one hand and the camera in the other hand, you know, But It didn't get into this book it's Savan Saint Thomas and this is Saint Croix, even though I have one picture that I believe is in Saint Thomas.

Bat my father used to take eight millimeter films of parades, some in Saint Croix, some in Saint Thomas, and several years ago in Sears Roebuck, in New Jersey, I saw an ad you can have your eight millimeter films develop on a VHS tape.

And I sent about 12 reels and it came back on a VHS tape.

Nice.

The tape was in the house for years.

And when I looked at it two years ago, there was mold on it.

So I looked up online and I found a company that said they can preserve and preserve it.

They can contain the mold.

Was CD and it was transferred to a C.D.

It survived hurricanes.

and I did that.

Now my laptop, you need a small flash drive unless I get an external hard drive for the CD.

So you see you learn about photography and how things progress or develop over the years.

And it's a fascinating field.

It's always changes.

And now I find that online there is a lot of information on writing and you you can learn so much online.

Of course, there's a lot of nonsense there, but there's a lot of good stuff on there also.

So you are a self-taught writer, photographer, editor, publisher.

You wear all the hats I wear all hats.

Plus, I say I'm a people person and that's because that's important.

Getting a rapport with someone, because sometimes in a conversation, someone may go overboard and they get into family stuff or something personal that, you know, being a professional, I can't write that.

Which is why for long interview, I let them review what I've written before.

I publish it.

You record it as well.

I record most of them.

The short ones, you know, telephone conversations.

I don't record because I'm very good at taking notes.

So in putting your and putting your books together because this is your sixth book.

Yes.

Who do you rely on to make sure that you've dotted all your I's and cross your TS?

Well, I usually get someone to do the editing locally.

And some of these self-publishing companies also have editors you can hire, but they don't speak Crucian.

Okay.

In fact, when I started doing interviews, one of my sister gave me Naturally Speak In is a program that transcribes what you've interviewed.

But I found that I had to go over so much because, you know, the Crucian dialect was their So I usually write out the transcript from the interview and when I type, if there's personal stuff, family stuff there that I said no one should see, you know, it's not on my typed copy of the interview.

Is there a favorite passage in your book that you could share with our audience?

This so many favorites passages that I have.

Well, if there are any that there's one that I like.

It's from Floyd Henderson.

He's from Christiansted.

He organized his own festival troupe for 35 years, and he was also a member of the J and J Fun Troupe.

And he said the first year for me was in 1953 when we had a limbo troupe.

We were young and a group carried a stick to dance around and under.

And I remember seeing that as a kid.

I used to dance the limbo that Mrs. Anna Brodhurst taught us.

She had gone to Trinidad saw it and came back and taught us how to dance it.

I was in a youth club that had meetings at St John's Anglican Church Hall.

I decided to have the troupe and about 50 young people participated.

We all dressed up with a calypso shirt made out of silk taffeta.

It was a red shirt and we wore white pants.

The female members wore a skirt which froze and back on front the troops name was Floyd Henderson.

Coming down the road.

I was about 13, maybe 15 years old, and he said, I believe we had to dance with another troupe's of music with them in front and we behind the band.

It could have been Ralph "Rally" Phillipus Scratch Band And I remember Rally Phillipus us waving a flag in front of steel bands later on.

One that's special to me.

I found this close to the end of writing the book, and it's by my mother, who I always encourage me to read and write from a time I was young and she used to write a lot of things, so she wrote about her young life and about her family.

So I call it her autobiography.

Several pages.

Recently, after her passing, I found a copy of an autobiography.

My mother had written years ago.

She wrote, I have so many good memories of growing up on St Croix.

Easter Monday was a big holiday to on Saint Croix and also the day after Christmas, the masqueraders came out.

On those days, the bull was a man dressed in brown leaves and had a bullhorn.

Children would scream the bull is out and run and hide.

I was awfully afraid of the bull because he used to chase children.

So I stayed home and looked at him through the window at number 16 in Church Street where she lived.

And I said she left that for me.

It seemed so, Yes, very, very special.

It seems so for you to now carry the story, her story of masqueraders, of masqueraders forward.

What can you tell me about your about your writing process once you gather all of your information?

Are you someone who sits down with a pen and pad and longhand, puts everything out in longhand, or you sit before your laptop?

What is your laptop?

Your laptop?

Yes, I look for commonalities.

The story is, you know, based on the questions I ask, I ask about local events, local people, you know, community activists, people in the community.

And I look for a particular trend where it's going.

I do an outline and with the outline, I know where I'm going and where I have to go.

And I can always add to that outline.

I can always add more people books.

I remember lest photographs, whatever I can remember.

So that outline flows with the story and I may move, you know, things around and the outlines help produce the chapters for the book I write and I keep writing.

And I also read, you know, sometimes you need to step away from your writing.

So I read other books and I go back to my writing and interesting, I do the introduction last okay, Because then I can tell you what I did instead of writing introduction and trying to fit this story into the introduction.

So do you write for a specific audience?

I write for, let's say, Junior High and adults, junior high, high school and adults.

And with what?

With your busy life.

You are a historian.

You do family genealogy, you take staycations and visit local museums.

How do you find the time to balance being creative and gathering that history with just everything else that you do?

I find a time usually early in the morning as a writer, you know that you always read, you find a place to go.

Well, I have my desk in one room with my bookcase with a lot of Virgin Islands books, and I try to write like maybe half an hour to an hour in the morning, sometimes 2 hours.

That's the best time for me to be creative when it's quiet.

I also write when I'm traveling.

Believe it or not, I go with my laptop and on the plane I write Well, I think comes to you.

I think I think of the people who I meet and they ask me When is the next book coming out?

Do you have a new book?

And I also think of young children of future generations who would enjoy reading these stories, who would know the culture, how we are, how we have progressed over the years.

And that is our key message that we need to carry our culture forward.

It's been a pleasure to learn more about our local talent Doctor Karen Thurland and her book Masqueraders Musicians and the all time Saint Croix Christmas Festival.

For more information on this book or any of the books featured on this program, visit our website at w w w dot WTJX dot org.

We appreciate your support of our local authors and we'll see you next week when we take another book from The Bookcase.