First Day of School: Do You Want to Be My Friend? by Jennifer Bisram

Kadecia Baird has established herself as New York’s fastest female high school sprinters.  This 17 year old star athlete has made a big impact on the track and field community. Kadecia grew up in  Campbellville, Georgetown and is a senior at Medgar Evers High School in Brooklyn, New York.  She began competing in Guyana, passionately pursuing a junior national title. However her talent sky rocketed after she migrated to the U.S. three years ago. Kadecia is a member of her school’s…

Fifteen year old Table Tennis Star, Chelsea Edghill, was introduced to the sport at the tender age of 9, and she has served up quite an impressive career record. The Bishop’s High School student first got her start at the Teach Them Young training Summer Camp and later at Mae’s where she regularly competed for the school. In 2006,  Edghill made her first regional appearance at the inaugural tournament of the annual Caribbean Pre-Cadet Table…

Mashramani is carnival like in nature. This year’s theme is “Showcasing our Culture, Sustaining Our Heritage.” Customarily, this is a colourful festival and is a combination of costume competitions, float parades, masquerade bands and much dancing and merriment in the streets to the sweet sounds of steel pan along with calypso and soca music. The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport continues annually to create and manage the Mashramani celebrations as the largest national event.

As a highly successful voters’ rights lawyer in the US, Marcia is able to help thousands of persons, particularly minorities, through her work and hopes to replicate her successes in Guyana. Now 46 years old, Marcia lives in Washington D.C. with her husband and two daughters. Though she has lived in America for more than three decades, Marcia said that she had never forgotten her roots. Promoting democratic rights in Guyana and beyond…Lawyer Marcia Johnson-Blanco…

Vannetta Seecharran has been influencing art and design in the jewellery field for nearly 20 years. Born in Guyana in 1969, the London-based jewellery teacher migrated at the age of 11 with her parents to New York City. She graduated in 1991 from the prestigious Parsons School of Art with a BA in Product Design, and in 1996 earned an MFA in Jewellery from State University of New York at New Paltz.   She later moved…

Guyanese, Debra Amata, received the top score out of 836 students who sat for the SEA examination in Tobago this year.  She scored 238.298 points and told the media her success was due to her spirituality, parents and teachers.  Debra moved to Tobago in 2014 with her parents, who are both medical doctors at the Scarborough General Hospital in Tobago.  Her mother, Dr Vivienne Amata, said her daughter was a well-rounded student and she was very proud of her…

Celebrity choreographer and actress Shakira Marshall combined her passion for African and Caribbean dance into a class. Marshall, who is of Guyanese ancestry, now shares her love of dances from the diaspora as an instructor at the Center for African and Diaspora Dance in Brooklyn. NY-based video reporter, Melissa Noel, (also a Guyanese Girl) recently caught up with Marshall at her studio and witness her in action. Check out the video. Shakira grew up in…

Born under the Zodiac star of Leo,  Actress Simone Dowding attended the Salem Primary and Secondary schools, where her love for the stage was noticed by teachers and peers alike. In no time she had become quite a force to be reckoned with, as she participated in numerous school plays and drama presentations with gusto, finesse and bravery. Being an artistic person, she attended and graduated from the Burrowes School of Art with flying colours…

You should be known for the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God. 1 Peter 3:4 Look in the mirror and start loving yourself, then your inner beauty will grow and radiate to your outer self.

The Guyanese Girls Rock Book Club  (GGRBC) is an online platform to browse, share and shop for books written by Guyanese Women and Girls.  Authors may submit their books to contact@guyanesegirlsrock.com. You must have a website or a link to your book sale page. Submissions will be listed permanently on the GGR website as a “Recommended Reading” list.   Happy Reading!  Browse all Books via the GGR Book Club Tab above. Disclaimer:  GGR reserves the right to reject any book that is…

My memoir is laced with nostalgia and at the same time it is my sincere intention to portray the true essence of the Guyanese culture without offence. Keep in mind that this is not based on the experience of every Guyanese. This was the way I saw and experienced things back then. The use of colloquialism is of utmost importance; it is the vernacular we understand. It may sound like another language so unless you…

SHE was recently elected the first woman president of the Guyana Press Association (GPA), shattering the glass ceiling that existed for seven decades. Although excited for her new role, Nazima Raghubir is ready to hit the ground running with plans to have the GPA offer more training for its journalists. “There is a high turnover of media workers, journalists in Guyana. A lot of us aren’t trained and we don’t have a journalism programme at…

Born in Guyana, Sharmilla Persaud, with a little unwilling help from her mother, discovered her love of fashion at an early age. Finding the perfect artistic playground in her mother’s colorful saris and jewelry, a young Sharmilla went to work cutting and combining them into her own creations. At five, she moved with her family to New York, and now credits the streets of Manhattan for lending an urban edge to her aesthetic as a…

Yaani King is an American actor of Guyanese descent. The only daughter of an NYPD officer mother, Yaani was born on August 10, 1981 in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and raised in Queens. She has two elder brothers, she spent most of her childhood around the theater, as her mother was a stage and commercial actress before becoming a police officer. As a teen, she was accepted to the High School of Performing Arts at Lincoln Center…

Stacey Samuels Richardson is looking forward to the day when she will become a Licensed Family Life Educator.  The Berbice-native is a firm believer that the family is the basic unit of society and is currently pursuing a BA degree in Marriage and Family Studies at BYU-Idaho Online University. Three years ago during a mission trip to the United States, Stacey experienced her first bout with anxiety, which was possible triggered by the change in…