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.
Janice Elizabeth MacGregor is a second generation Canadian born to parents who emigrated from Guyana and became Canadian citizens. Her father, Frank Moorgen (RIP 2010), was born in Hampshire Village, Berbice and her mother, Mary Moorgen (née Deonarine) was born in Corentyne, Berbice. Janice, her brother, and her sister were born in Edmonton, Alberta (Canada). She attended Millwoods Christian School where her strong commitment to academics and faith were formed. She fondly recalls visiting…
Abiola Abrams is a first generation Guyanese-American author, columnist, speaker, filmmaker and multimedia personality who was raised in New York City. Also a certified wellness coach, Abiola gives heartfelt, no-nonsense, stigma-free advice on self esteem and self worth, body image issues, healthy relationships, mental health, sexual health, and how to live with verve. The first person in her Guyanese family born in the US, Abiola was bullied in her African American neighborhood for being “the…
Flora Zeta Zhang Elizabeth Tian Ai Cheong-Leen was born in Hong Kong in 1959. Her father Hilton Cheong-Leen was born in Georgetown, British Guyana but is of Chinese descent and her mother Pauline Chow is from Beijing. Flora graduated from The Royal Ballet in the UK and at the Paris Opera in France. She starred as the lead actress in movies such as: “Life After Life”, “Duel to the Death”, “Chasing Girl” and “Return of…
Navigators Travel to Guyana gives a taste of what Guyana has to offer to its readers, and it is the follow up to Navigators Travel to Barbados written by Howard Liverpool. This time our intrepid explorers travel to Guyana and learn about the history and geography of the country. They also sample some of the local cuisine and have a scary encounter with a ram sheep. It’s a children’s book geared to kids from ages…
Since 2015, Anaya Lee Willabus has been known for being the youngest author in the USA to publish the first chapter book at eight years old. Today, Anaya is twelve years old and has released her fourth book. The fourth book is part of a series called- ‘Make it Happen’- Anaya Willabus by Lightswitch Learning. The book talks about the many challenges Anaya faced and how she overcame them. Anaya hopes that other children would…
Twenty five year old Rafieya Aasieya Husain was crowned Miss Universe-Guyana 2017 at the end of the first ever National Pageant to be held in the home of the Miss Universe Pageant. The former Miss World 2014 top eleven finishers and Queen of the Caribbean also romped of with the Most Elegant, Best Interview and Popularity side awards during the event held at York College Performing Arts Center in Queens, New York. Rafieya has been…
Founder & CEO of the award-winning global organization, Women on the Crossroads, Sherry Ann Dixons, was recently admitted to The Black 100+ Hall of Fame. The Black 100+ Project is an Exhibition of the top 100 Black Achievers in Modern Britain. Guyanese by birth, Sherry is highly respected in the ethnic community in Britain and developed a following of dedicated readers with her health, lifestyle, beauty and relationship articles She is very passionate about raising the…
During the colonial period in Guyana, the country’s coastal lands were worked by enslaved Africans and indentured Indians. In Creole Indigeneity, Shona N. Jackson investigates how their descendants, collectively called Creoles, have remade themselves as Guyana’s new natives, displacing indigenous peoples in the Caribbean through an extension of colonial attitudes and policies. Looking particularly at the nation’s politically fraught decades from the 1950s to the present, Jackson explores aboriginal and Creole identities in Guyanese society….
A Resourceful Woman Who Faces Her Fears Head-On. Nathaalie Carey is the Deputy Commissioner for Administration and Chief Financial Officer at NYS Department of Labor. She manages the agency’s $4 billion portfolios and oversees internal operations. Nathaalie previously served as a member of Governor Cuomo’s NYS Women’s Pay Equity Panel and was the Assistant Comptroller for Local Government and School Accountability. In 2018 the YWCA of the Greater Capital Region, Inc. named Nathaalie “Resourceful Woman of…
Communication Power and Change in the Caribbean takes a fascinating, holistic, multi-level actor-oriented approach to examining social change in two Caribbean countries. Paloma Mohamed evaluates the power of various communicative artefacts produced by various strata in those societies, investigating what constitutes this power, how it is used, how it is maintained and whose interests are served. The result is a richly researched, deeply thoughtful and passionately argued case for placing communication at the core of…
Winnie Cox lives a privileged life of dances and dresses on her father’s sugar cane plantation. Life is sweet in the kingdom of sugar and Winnie along with her sister Johanna, have neither worries nor responsibilities, they are birds of paradise, protected from the poverty in the world around them. But everything can change in a heartbeat….When Winnie falls in love with George Quint, the post-office boy, a ‘darkie’ from the other side, she soon finds herself…
Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing (1 Thessalonians 5:11). This five young women definitely epitomize this phrase. Meet Trea, Michelle, Sonya, Corlecia and Feigel who reign from the small town of Amelia Ward Linden in Guyana, and playfully call themselves the “Amelia’s Ward USCians.” These “beauties with brains” all attended the University of Southern Caribbean (USC) in Trinidad; an affiliate of Andrews University in Michigan and over the years have form a…
Ready to take the world by storm, the sultry songstress known to audiences as “Petra” crosses effortlessly into the realms of Caribbean music infused with pop, jazz and R&B melodies that places her in the evolving category called “Island Pop.” Born Roshell Petra Hooper, the singer/songwriter who hails from Guyana, South America was raised in Trinidad and Tobago in a family of professional musicians; her mother was a talented singer and her father is the…
Cindy Rajkuma, a dual-enrollment student who graduated from Valencia College and Ocoee High School in Orlando, is determined to get into medical school. “Becoming a doctor has always been my career path,” says Cindy, who will begin classes at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in January 2016, right after she completes an internship in Washington, D.C., with the National Institutes of Health. She doesn’t have to worry about paying for college because Cindy has been named…
On April 10th, the first Guyanese Girls Rock Scholarship award was presented to Kelly Hyles at the “Bridging the Gap” Millennial Conference in Brooklyn, New York. Kelly, a high school senior, was accepted to the top 8 Ivy League schools in the United States and was honor for academic excellence. She was presented with the Guyanese Girls Rock Certificate of Scholarship and a new Apple MacBook laptop computer by GGR’s Founder, Cloyette Harris-Stoute. Kelly was born in Georgetown, Guyana and…