By: Staff Writer
June 15, 2021
A Caribbean-English author tells us of her dreams of the motherland Africa as she paints her version of sex and slavery through her first published work, “Twisted.”
Kemet Imani, author of Twisted, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that there has not been a day that goes by where she does not dream about Africa. Despite being part Vincentian/Trinidadian on her mother’s side and Barbadian on her father’s side living in London, UK, she understands that her people were stolen from Africa and acknowledges being a possible descendent of the Fulani people of Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Kemet said: “Wherever I go people start to speak to me in Fula or that of Ethiopian o Eritrean, but I have not fully traced it back to them myself,” even though she knows most Caribbean people were brought to the western world by slave ships but could not take the ethnic similarities out of them.
All of this has inspired her to finish and publish her first book, “Twisted,” which she describes as more than just a book of poems, but a history book first and foremost that. We see it as an exploration into the psyche of the black experience from the slave ship to the slave quarters. Twisted is more than a book of poems indeed, but it is a history book written in poetry form so the reader can feel compelled to understand the weight of the material.
The book also explores the often times dark side of sexual relations between the white slave master and the black slave and explains the sexual side of the white woman and her lust of the black man, often times imaging the experience in sinister, twisted sex abuses with colourful language that digs deep into the heart of depraved human sexuality and sexual perversions. “We know from it is the fact that it is reality that our ancestors had to endure,” she said.
“I wouldn’t say it’s dark, but I wouldn’t say it wasn’t dark. I take it by being dark you mean it’s not on the on the bright side, let’s put it that way.
“But no matter what, what we do get from it and what we know from it is reality. These are the kinds of abuses what our ancestors, our aunts, our uncle’s, our grandparents, our great grandparents had to go through, and we’re all part of that lineage so it’s quite disturbing, but very, very true.”
This psychological scarring shapes the behaviour of the western Black individual today Kemet feels and there is no escaping that. She is more than just an author, she is also an activist and speaks boldly for African and Black rights.
Born and raised and currently living in London, UK, Kemet has also spent time in the United States and understands the seriousness of the Black Lives Matter movement and the equal, civil rights of black people in the USA.
She is more than just an author, she is first a Pan Africanist, a school teacher for over 30 years, a mother of four and a grandmother of five. She is also an activist.
Kemet said, “I understand the plight of our people and the need for us as African people to take responsibility for our destiny Comparing what she saw in the USA to what she has grown up accustomed to in the UK, she says that” The racism is everywhere. Not just in the USA. It’s just here in the UK the English hide it more and they are not as open with it, but it is very much here. The British are very good at making others look like oppressors.
“You have to remember, this is the mother of the beast. So the Americans and the Australians and everybody else are only the British people’s children, so they’ve been trained by the best. The British makes it seem as if they would let the Americans look like oppressors and racists, but they are behind the scene pulling the strings. This is the mother of the beast.”
While some would feel trapped being an African being born and growing up in an European country, not Kemet as she feels “everyone has a purpose,” and her purpose is being fulfilled through her writing and activism. She does wish that she was born in Africa or the Caribbean, but fate would have it otherwise that he parents moved to the UK.
As of now, Twisted is surging up the literary charts and is now ranked #1 on “Amazon’s New Releases in African Literature,” and #5 in the “Hot New Releases in Poetry,” which is quite and achievement for a first time published author.
This is not it for Kemet because she wants her first offering to the world to go full mainstream and is not stopping there, because Twisted is actually the first part in a trilogy of books that are set to come out. The immediate follow up to Twisted is “Straight,” where she will detail the various different African groups that have spread throughout the world and how they have contributed to world history. She is aiming for August of this year to have Straight completed and launched and if not August then definitely for Black History month in the UK in October.
The second sequel is “Strands” where she speaks of the black experience post slavery, from colonialism to segregation, Jim Crow, apartheid, neo-colonialism, Pan Afrikanism all the way through to the Nation of Islam and the black panthers to what we have now with the present day Black Lives Matter movement.
Twisted is now available on Amazon