Kiffy Greaves’ debut book a message of resilience, perseverance

Gillian Cal­iste

The first time Kiffy Greaves felt ma­jor shame she was a pre-teen.

“Shame and I met when I was 11 years old,” she said.

At the time, the shame of pass­ing for a “Ju­nior Sec” seemed un­bear­able, but she would be gripped by a deep­er, un­told, seem­ing­ly paralysing shame years lat­er. It would change her per­cep­tion of the men­tal re­al­i­ties in which peo­ple live, cause her to re-eval­u­ate the mean­ing of true friend­ship and her re­la­tion­ship with mon­ey, and even in­spire a mem­oir.

A com­mu­ni­ca­tions and PR spe­cial­ist, Greaves makes her de­but as an au­thor with her re­cent­ly re­leased 200-page book If Shame Came in Fla­vors: At Debt’s Door. With a fore­word by close Bar­ba­di­an friend and so­ca su­per­star Al­i­son Hinds, the book is Greaves’ re­flec­tion on how Caribbean peo­ple are so­cialised to feel shame from a young age, the im­pact of this on men­tal health and re­bound­ing de­spite the un­pre­dictabil­i­ty of life.

The world of the 28-eight-year-old pro­tag­o­nist and uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent Kiffy is al­most cap­sized when her name is pub­lished in a news­pa­per by her cred­i­tors seek­ing her where­abouts. She can ei­ther choose to crum­ble in the face of cul­tur­al crit­i­cism and shame or re­deem her­self.

Em­ploy­ing var­i­ous lo­cal fruits like sour­sop, ton­ka bean, and pineap­ple, Greaves con­veys what vary­ing types and lev­els of shame “taste” like.

“More than any­thing, I want­ed to bring to the fore the is­sues of cul­tur­al shame and how it can af­fect a per­son’s per­spec­tive on their place in the world, their wor­thi­ness, and their abil­i­ty to seek help in their time of need,” Greaves said.

“We have peo­ple who will lit­er­al­ly die of shame rather than ask for help.”

If Shame Came In Flavors by Kiffy Greaves.

COURTESY KITTY GREAVES

More than the joy of hav­ing her first work pub­lished, Greaves said that she was hap­py peo­ple could con­nect with her mem­oir which was re­leased on Ama­zon on Au­gust 4 and was picked up by re­tail book­selling gi­ant Barnes and No­ble. Peo­ple who share sim­i­lar sto­ries of shame in ar­eas of fi­nances, re­la­tion­ships, or even body im­age have been reach­ing out to her and Greaves said she hoped her mes­sage of re­silience and per­se­ver­ance would en­cour­age many more while chang­ing the minds of those who usu­al­ly sit in judg­ment of oth­ers.

She penned the work over a decade ago as a pos­si­ble means to sup­port her­self af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed for an is­sue about a ve­hi­cle she had sold to a room­mate–an­oth­er in­ci­dent that brought shame in her life. She al­so was mo­ti­vat­ed by the sui­cide of Amy, a sin­gle moth­er of three, whose name had been pub­lished along­side hers in the news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment. But it was on­ly in 2019, while ac­tive­ly seek­ing a pub­lish­er in the US at the Ac­claimed Writ­ers’ Di­gest Con­fer­ence in New York a pre­mier re­source fo­rum for writ­ers, that Ko­re­an Amer­i­can au­thor and jour­nal­ist Min Jin Lee, who her­self had been in­spired by V S Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas, dis­cov­ered that she was from T&T and en­cour­aged her to push through her goal of be­com­ing an au­thor.

Greaves sought out pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny Daria Pub­lish­ing based in New York and run by Reea Rod­ney which fa­cil­i­tat­ed the self-pub­lished book.

Out­lin­ing the plot of her book, Greaves re­count­ed her jour­ney start­ing as a child who was skipped from Stan­dard 3 to 5 with the ex­pec­ta­tion that she would pass her SEA ex­am for Bish­op Anstey, Port-of-Spain. The shame of scor­ing on­ly enough marks to earn her a place at a Ju­nior Sec and that every­one was go­ing to know her re­sults cut deep for a young Greaves who had hopes of be­com­ing a doc­tor or lawyer.

Her re­prieve came a year lat­er when she sat an en­trance ex­am and end­ed up at­tend­ing St Fran­cois Girls’ Col­lege. She grav­i­tat­ed to­wards busi­ness sub­jects, but her moth­er’s knack for jour­nal­ism, more so, the pub­lic re­la­tions as­pect, rubbed off on her.

But shame again vis­it­ed the Bel­mont na­tive when she did not qual­i­fy for Form 6 and by age 18, she en­tered the world of work.

She did an LC­CI diplo­ma in Mar­ket­ing, Ad­ver­tis­ing and PR, and while an em­ploy­ee of TSTT and a part-time com­mu­ni­ca­tions stu­dent at the UWI in 2007, Greaves be­came “bored” with her rou­tine. Con­vict­ed by the TD Jakes book Repo­si­tion Your­self one day, she de­cid­ed to quit her job the next, to feel alive again.

Protest from friends and scep­ti­cism from her fa­ther failed to make her re­think her de­ci­sion. She sim­ply re­as­sured them that she would take up stud­ies full-time and con­tin­ue to man­age her life.

Al­though five or six years old­er than her UWI peers, the more Greaves im­mersed her­self in her uni­ver­si­ty en­vi­ron­ment, the more she felt as if for the first time in her life, she fit in with peo­ple who were study­ing just like her, and deal­ing with sim­i­lar life is­sues.

To top things off, her fel­low stu­dents saw her as “the rich girl” be­cause she had a car and drove to and from the cam­pus.

“For the first time, I was in a hap­py place. I felt as if I was where I be­longed.”

As she was about to en­ter her sec­ond year of uni­ver­si­ty, her new-found sense of com­fort came to a screech­ing halt one day when she re­alised her name had been pub­lished in the news­pa­per by her cred­i­tors for un­der­pay­ments on her house and car.

To Greaves, she was in the midst of a mon­u­men­tal cri­sis. She imag­ined what her friends, pro­fes­sors, par­ents, grand­moth­er, and even for­mer co-work­ers would think. Em­bar­rass­ing her fam­i­ly was the ul­ti­mate hu­mil­i­a­tion. Paral­ysed by fear and shame, she stopped at­tend­ing class­es and spent five weeks curled up on her bed.

“I got to a place where I thought that prob­a­bly if I just lay there with­out eat­ing for two weeks, I could leave this life,” Greaves re­called.

A phone call from a class­mate named Fran­cis­ca jolt­ed her out of her de­pres­sion.

“She said: ‘hi, I saw your name in the pa­per. Are you OK?’ And I didn’t know how to take that ques­tion be­cause we were not close.”

Fran­cis­ca en­cour­aged Greaves to lift her head up and press on, of­fer­ing her notes from the class­es she had missed, and they be­came friends.

Car­ni­val time drew close and this meant Greaves would be up and about the fes­tiv­i­ties with her dear friend Al­i­son Hinds. Con­vinced that her em­bar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tion would neg­a­tive­ly im­pact Hinds’ im­age and even her book­ings for per­for­mances, Greaves de­clined Hinds’ usu­al in­vi­ta­tions to go out and lime.

“That is where I was in my thought process. That’s how shame works, your shame be­comes oth­er peo­ple’s shame too,” Greaves said.

Hinds was not hav­ing it, how­ev­er.

“She was like: ‘Get up!’ And she had a re­al heart-to-heart with me about her be­ing a woman in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try who has had to face shame from the me­dia and crit­ics etc.

“She said debt doesn’t de­fine you. You just have to re­cal­i­brate and do some things dif­fer­ent­ly,” Greaves re­called.

On her re­turn to uni­ver­si­ty class­es, Greaves had a sur­pris­ing re­cep­tion as none of her class­mates had heard about her name be­ing pub­lished in the news­pa­per by cred­i­tors. Even when she told them about her “shame­ful” sit­u­a­tion, it did not af­fect how they treat­ed her. They saw her as be­ing hu­man, prone to mis­takes, and as some­one who need­ed friends and hugged her.

“The defin­ing mo­ment” stayed with a shocked Greaves who said this group who had stood by her in her “dark­est hour”, re­mained her clos­est friends even un­til to­day.

“They showed me what friend­ship was when I had noth­ing,” she said, adding that she learnt the val­ue of hav­ing a cir­cle, a tribe, and be­ing hon­est with­in it.

When she had her now-nine-year-old son Je­re­mi­ah years lat­er, Fran­cis­ca be­came his god­moth­er.

Greaves who com­plet­ed her bach­e­lor’s in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­spite her strug­gles al­so holds a mas­ter’s in Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Pub­lic Re­la­tions from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter.

She said in writ­ing her mem­oir, she had al­so drawn on an­oth­er source of in­spi­ra­tion that had come one day when for­mer pres­i­dent of South Africa, the late great Nel­son Man­dela vis­it­ed Trinidad in 2004. Stand­ing on Fred­er­ick Street to catch a glimpse of the renowned No­bel Peace Prize win­ner, she was tak­en aback when his ve­hi­cle stopped right in front of her, and he looked her di­rect­ly in her eyes and ut­tered: “Be some­body.”

“I nev­er for­got that,” she said.

To check out If Shame Came in Fla­vors in pa­per­back and Kin­dle, vis­it the Ama­zon and Barnes and No­ble web­sites, Pa­per Based Book Shop, St Ann’s, or pre-or­der via Greaves’ land­ing page https://bit.ly/Kiffy­G­reaves.