LargeUp Interview: Akashic Books’ Johnny Temple on Bringing Caribbean Stories To The World

Words by Jesse Serwer—

Brooklyn-based publisher Akashic Books is behind many of the most notable Caribbean-themed books of the last few years. This year, the company has brought its Caribbean focus to the fore, honing in one of the world’s most overlooked regions for literature.

Among its releases in the last few months are the Ziggy Marley-penned children’s story I Love You, Too; Haiti Noir 2, a (second) Haiti-themed edition of the publisher’s flagship Noir short story series; Game World, a fantasy-adventure story for kids based around Jamaican mythology written by JA-born, Wall Street Journal editor Christopher John Farley; and Pepperpot, an anthology of Caribbean writers which marks the launch of Akashic’s new Peekash imprint with U.K.-based publisher, Peepal Tree Press. Other notable books in the Akashic catalog include John Crow’s Devil, the debut novel by noted Jamaican writer Marlon James; and Kingston Noir, the Jamaican installment in the aforementioned Noir series, edited by LargeUp contributor Colin Channer.

The company’s newest release, Go De Rass to Sleep, is one of its ost intriguing. A Jamaicanization of Adam Mansbach’s best-selling “bedtime story for adults” Go The F*** to Sleep, it is the first commercial book title to be translated into Jamaican patois. We sat down with Akashic founder Johnny Temple to find out how an indie imprint founded by an indie rock musician from Washington D.C. (Temple, the long-time bassist for DC’s Girls Against Boys, worked at RAS Records as a teen and roadied for Eek-A-Mouse) became a driving force behind Caribbean literature’s growing international profile.

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LargeUp: Akashic Books has been one of the most active publishers of Caribbean writers and Caribbean-themed books recently—the Haiti and Kingston Noir books,  now “Go De Rass to Sleep.” Was there a void you noticed and wanted to fill or was it more of a personal interest/mission?

Johnny Temple: Outside of the Caribbean, the only publishing company more dedicated to Caribbean literature than Akashic is Peepal Tree Press, a visionary UK-based publisher. Akashic’s commitment to Caribbean writers stems from my own personal interest in the region, and fortunately I have a staff who are fully on board with this mission. I became very interested in Jamaican culture as a teenager when I worked for the Washington, DC-based reggae record label RAS Records. That and punk rock were the foundations of my cultural education.

LU: What is your own personal connection to the Caribbean?

JT: I first traveled to Jamaica in my mother’s womb in 1966, the year Haile Selassie visited Jamaica. I next visited as a teenager when I was working for RAS Records. My parents let me travel there alone at age 16 with some very questionable “guardians.” Since then, Jamaica and the wider Caribbean have been in my blood.

LU: Where do you find the greatest demand for your Caribbean-themed books?

JT: Assuming you mean outside of the Caribbean . . . we try to sell our Caribbean-themed books to everyone. A good example is Jamaican author Marlon James. We published his debut novel John Crow’s Devil a number of years back, and he now has an audience all over the world. His books have been translated into German and Italian, for example. Having said that, my hometown of Brooklyn, and New York City in general, is obviously a good market for Caribbean writing. In many ways, Brooklyn is actually an outpost of the Caribbean.

LU: Are you involved in any outreach, related to literacy or otherwise, in the region?

JT: Hell yeah, we’re involved in a number of ways. One current project that I’m excited about is a new Caribbean-based publishing imprint called Peekash Press that we started with Peepal Tree. Together we are building a publishing company that we hope will one day stand on its own as a Caribbean-based company committed to Caribbean writers still living in the region. (Many of the most famous Caribbean-born writers now live in the US, UK, or Canada.) Another goal of the project is to help foster a healthier, more robust publishing infrastructure in the Caribbean. While there are indeed a number of great publishers in the Caribbean already, there are few that focus on the type of literary work that Akashic and Peepal Tree devote ourselves to.

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LU: How did the concept to translate “Go The F*** to Sleep” into patois come about?

JT: Just like me, the book’s author Adam Mansbach and its illustrator Ricardo Cortés have been hugely impacted in their work by Caribbean culture. Go the Fuck to Sleep has been translated into more than 30 languages around the world, but even before all those deals were made, we always dreamed of doing a “Jamaican translation.” Then, when the book became a mega-bestseller, we realized that we could make this dream a reality. So when Kellie Magnus and Kwame Dawes—both of them prestigious Jamaican writers—expressed interest in doing the translation, we were up and running.

LU: Caribbean storytelling is familiar to American audiences (and in other regions too) thanks to reggae and calypso. But few Caribbean authors are well-known here. What do you think would have to happen change this?

JT: Time will change that. Call me naïve, but I believe our world is getting culturally smarter. As the globe becomes more and more ethnically mixed, more and more people will be drawn to Caribbean culture because it is actually far ahead of the rest of the world in terms of its diversity—not just ethnic, but also cultural, religious, etc.

LU: Who are some young Caribbean authors worth looking out for?

JT: This is just scratching the surface: Marlon James, Tiphanie Yanique, Robert Antoni, Kei Miller, Edwidge Danticat, Kwame Dawes, Colin Channer, Kellie Magnus, Katia D. Ulysse, Christopher John Farley, Elsie Augustave, Montague Kobbé (he is Venezuelan-German, but most of his work is Caribbean), Ifeona Fulani, A-dziko Simba, Courttia Newland, Ziggy Marley, Sharon Leach, Sharon Millar, Diana Macauley, M.J. Fievre. There are many others, but I will stop here.

LU: Which islands would you say have the richest literary scenes right now?

JT: Truthfully, there is a matter of scale here which can’t be ignored. Just as New York City has more great writers than other American city due to its sheer size, so do Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, and Cuba have the richest literary scenes in the Caribbean because they are the biggest islands. And in all 3 places there are very important international book festivals that play a key role in creating vibrant literary cultures. In Jamaica, the Calabash International Literary Festival is simply the best book festival in the world, hands down. In Trinidad the relatively new NGC Bocas Lit Fest is doing a fantastic job of nurturing Caribbean literary life. In Cuba there is the annual Havana Book Festival. But it’s also exciting to see more remote places like Anguilla establish themselves on the literary map of the region.

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LU: Tell us about any upcoming Caribbean-themed books Akashic will be publishing.

JT:  I Love You Too is Ziggy Marley’s first children’s book, which we have just published to a very appreciative worldwide audience.  Not for Everyday Use is the first memoir from award-winning Trinidadian-born novelist Elizabeth Nunez. It’s much about her parents as it is about Elizabeth, and it deflates any preconceived notions about what it means to grow up in the Caribbean. Mr. Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo is a hilarious and beautifully written story of two elderly gay West Indian men trying to find a way to come out of the closet in their London-based West Indian community. Game World, published two months ago, is the first middle-grade novel by Jamaican-born writer Christopher John Farley. It is a fantasy-adventure story as readable as any of the Harry Potter books—I’m not exaggerating—and it is all based around Jamaican mythology. And yet, a kid needs no preexisting appreciation of that mythology to love the book.

Pepperpot, an anthology of Caribbean writers, is the debut title on the Peekash imprint. It features stories that were finalists for the renowned Commonwealth Writers Prize, and is supported by CaribLit, an exciting, smart, and ambitious new organization. The Half That’s Never Been Told: The Real-Life Reggae Adventures of Doctor Dread is a forthcoming memoir from Doctor Dread, an American deejay who became one of the leading reggae producers of the past 25 years. Drifting by Haitian-born writer Katia D. Ulysse is a debut coming out in July that explores the lives of everyday people trapped in Haiti’s political and environmental turmoil.

LU: Shaggy is narrating the “Go De Rass to Sleep” audio book. Are you planning any further link-ups with the Caribbean music world?

JT: But of course! One of many examples: Bunny Wailer is writing the introduction to the Doctor Dread book I mentioned above. Anyone who knows Bunny’s relationship to the history of reggae and world music can understand what an honor this is. And that book is filled with many behind-the-scenes stories about famous reggae artists. The opening chapter about Gregory Isaacs is somehow both shocking and heart-warming.