Before getting into the official editorial for this special issue of PREE, we would be remiss not to acknowledge the terrible violence done to gallerist Cat Moses and Mazola Wa Mwashighadi, the Kenyan-born multidisciplinary artist who had been living, creating, and community-bridging in Jamaica since the 1990s. He made art that revealed a process of cultural exploration and understanding, a process facilitated by Mazola’s own self-journeying from Kenya to Jamaica and from the green hills of his studio in St. Andrew just outside of Kingston to the coastal community of Treasure Beach in St. Elizabeth. Mazola was fatally attacked in Billy’s Bay, Treasure Beach, on December 5, just days before his healing from the hurricane through art workshops were to begin. Cat Moses remains in hospital and we hope she is able to recover gradually from the trauma inflicted on her and Mazola.
We hope also that this PREE special issue will be a healing light in the dark.
17 June 2025, Mazola Wa Mwashighadi, Instagram. Shared with permission from his family
As guest editors Diana McCaulay and I, Isis Semaj-Hall, felt that if we are to sustain a future, we must confront the challenges and create a way forward. In the aftermath of the hurricane we approached PREE’s Editor-in-chief, Annie Paul, with the wish to curate a special issue featuring five Jamaican storytellers to do just that: create a way forward. We figured that if a Category Five storm upended us, then we could hit back with an equally strong and powerful five.
In this special issue you will find some of Jamaica’s finest storytellers, all resident here year round. The only prompt or guidance given was that their contribution be in response to the hurricane. Poet Yashika Graham, fiction writer Roland Watson-Grant, photographer and educator Jik-Reuben Pringle, writer and co-editor Diana McCaulay, and writer and sociologist Erna Brodber quickly got to work reflecting and creating in the face of the devastation that surrounds all of us.
Here in Jamaica not everyone lost a roof in the storm; but we all lost the ground beneath our feet. Not one of us – in the west or in the east – was spared the dark, looming feeling of uncertainty, of not knowing what tomorrow or tomorrow’s tomorrow will bring for our little island on the front line of the climate crisis. But we must still create a way forward. There is no doubt that Melissa’s might was unleashed unevenly, but this Cat 5 also proved that when the storm surge rises and the clouds burst, hurricane floodwaters will rise up and trickle down on every heart all across this island. All of us together can build better, but let us be intentional with every step.
Before we rebuild, or perhaps in order to rebuild, we must look around and make sense of all that surrounds us. The contributors to this special issue do just that. A stirring poem by Yashika Graham reminds us what it is like to cleave to a place, to be away from home when disaster approaches. Roland Watson-Grant teases us with the fiction of safety and leaves us wondering if there is any safe refuge in an overheated world. A photo essay by The Visual Advocate, Jik-Reuben Pringle reassures us that not all hurricane photography is devastation porn, his work is loving, thoughtful and considerate. Co-editor of “Cat 5” Diana McCaulay shares an encouraging essay that teaches us that there are valuable lessons in nature, if only we take the time to look. And in the incomparable Erna Brodber’s story of the meek attempting to commandeer an old woman’s house, is a tale that is ripe with the bittersweet tek-bad-ting-mek-laugh energy that makes us who we are as Jamaicans. With this special issue readers will know for sure that storytelling is our great superpower in the face of any challenge.
We hope that “Cat 5” gives you some relief, some reflection, and the deep exhale that can only come from gaining deeper understanding.
Isis Semaj-Hall & Diana McCaulay, co-editors
