Many on the Coast know him as a theatre performer, an African dance instructor and a children's storyteller, but Jean-Pierre Makosso of Gibsons has another aspect to his creativity -a writer.
"I've always written poems, but in the Congo, I got in trouble for it," he recalls. "All the time I'm writing stories in my head."
In 2010, he was encouraged by Radio Canada, which asked for original articles, and was urged on by a teacher who heard one of Makosso's school programs. He published two books, both in French, a language he learned in school in the Congo and mastered while working in France and Switzerland.
La Voix du Conteur means "the voice of the storyteller," and it was published by a Montreal publisher, Dedicaces, last summer.
Makosso explains that the narrator has travelled all over, seen bad and good, and now lives isolated, contemplating the tragedies of abuse and war. The storyteller is "part of me," Makosso said, but the book involves many other characters.
The storyteller tries to bring solutions, but his voice is that of a child - so naïve that nobody listens.
"They don't care, but they forget that the children are the generation that will replace them," he said.
One day the storyteller finds himself in Vancouver where he meets a pregnant woman. He lets his imagination fly and visualizes women giving birth only to girls who will make the world a better place. Would the world truly be better that way?
"Women will not allow the killing of their own children in war," he said.
He points to the country of Liberia, a peaceful place run by a woman, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. But the true solution, he suggests, is hope. We've let all the other troubles out of the box, but only hope is still in the box for us to find.
Coast Francophone Judith Mathieu describes the book in this way: "He encourages discussion rather than confrontation, construction rather than demolition and sharing rather than self-centredness."
Makosso's second book, published this fall by Dedicaces, is a book of poems, Le Cri du Triangle. The triangle relates to family -mother, father and children - and speaks personally to Makosso's own situation. His wife is still in the Congo, his daughter is now in Tunisia and he's been in Canada for 10 years now - the three points of the triangle. Each is left to cry out the pain of being apart. The characters hear the sound of drums that celebrate their wedding day or a child's birth - marking time's quick passage.
"The book is like an emotional roller coaster," said Mathieu, "nostalgia, meditation, laughter."
Makosso goes on a book tour to Ottawa and Quebec in February, but returns to Gibsons to celebrate Black History month. His books are available at Talewind Books, Gaia's Fair Trade and through the Dedicaces website at www.dedicaces.biz.
A journalist is a different type of storyteller. In former Coast resident Al MacLachlan's latest noir novel, Murmurs of the Dead, the author, who once worked as journalist at The Reporter newspaper (prior to Coast Reporter), borrows from rich material generated here on the Sunshine Coast.
MacLachlan truly knows how to dish up a good front page story.
The book's lively characters and the town of Paradise Harbour are familiar and believable to anyone who has lived here. MacLachlan notes that he has based his story on true events that took place in his journalist days -though the stories are fictionalized.
In the novel, editor Phil Bailey has moved his family, including his consultant wife Diane, to Paradise Harbour to take up his new position at the newspaper and work with reporter Terri Beaudoin, a woman with her own secrets. At first, the town lives up to its name. He meets local characters at the dock, squares off with the police chief, shakes the mayor's hand and enjoys music night at the Legion. But there is a dark underbelly to this idyllic location, and readers can trust that Phil will find it. Stories of drug smuggling, pot raids and scurrilous land deals are all grist for the mill of the town's newspaper.
Local thugs threaten Bailey's reporter, his publisher won't let him write anything that will rock the boat, and his wife wants to move back to the city. When he uncovers a decades-old unsolved murder, things really get interesting.
A crusty retired journalist (the voice of the author?) who befriends the editor and opines frequently on the state of the community, serves to bring the slightly disjointed narrative together and gives it an allegorical quality. The state of this B.C. coastal town reflects the state of our society.
Murmurs of the Dead has a suitably ominous cover illustration by Coast artist Robert Kinnard, and the book is available from the publisher, Ekstasis, (www.ekstasiseditions.com).
