Zervita Charles
The Create Caribbean staff and interns have been working on Visualising Caribbean Literature since November 2021 and it has been quite a journey to our destination. By using a few of our various digital tools taught by Dr. Esprit, we were able to create a website using Wax and Jekyll to display as many Caribbean authors along with their published books. We also utilized ArcGIS in order to map out the author’s native country as well as the location of their book. While working on the project, we had to work on an individual project that correlated with the main topic. On January 5th, 2022, data from Zotero was imported into a spreadsheet in order for the interns to collaborate and arrange the data. Everyone spent three weeks editing the data column that had been allotted to them. The 'Genre' column was allocated to me. My job is to identify, research, and verify the genre of each book before entering it into the spreadsheet. It was an uphill task. On the contrary, it was both entertaining and demanding. I discovered book summaries I had yet to learn existed. I utilized the websites World Cat, Internet Archive, Google Books, Amazon Kindle, and Goodreads to discover and/or determine the genre of each book. After establishing a method, I found myself generating a high number of entries in a short amount of time. Despite a few glitches, I thought that asking for support and clarity from the project team, as well as providing comments on the spreadsheet, was really beneficial.
During this time, not only did I realise that there were few children’s books, but I also realized that they were mostly fiction novels and short story collections. Upon seeing this, I took it upon myself to research more about the genres found in Children’s literature as well as the most popular genres. As a Digital Humanities pupil who did a solo digital project, being introduced to the new tools twine and Wax was an excellent addition to my expertise in other DH tools. Overall, I found twine to be relatively straightforward to work with and opted to use it.
Working on these two projects showed me the diverse cultures these authors were successfully able to display through writing. They made me appreciate the rich melting pot of dialect, traditions, and my culture as well through the works of Jean Rhys. These projects improved my analytical and critical thinking skills.
During this time, not only did I realise that there were few children’s books, but I also realized that they were mostly fiction novels and short story collections. Upon seeing this, I took it upon myself to research more about the genres found in Children’s literature as well as the most popular genres. As a Digital Humanities pupil who did a solo digital project, being introduced to the new tools twine and Wax was an excellent addition to my expertise in other DH tools. Overall, I found twine to be relatively straightforward to work with and opted to use it.
Working on these two projects showed me the diverse cultures these authors were successfully able to display through writing. They made me appreciate the rich melting pot of dialect, traditions, and my culture as well through the works of Jean Rhys. These projects improved my analytical and critical thinking skills.