Videos are from our YouTube channel and articles were found on both Newsday Trinidad papers as well the Trinidad Express Newspaper. We would continue to update this page with additional content as we obtain them (book launches etc.)
Trees Grow Over Fences – Reading by Author Michaellee James
Live Interview on TV6 Morning Edition.
Trees Grow Over Fences – Reading by Michaellee James
Testimony from Michaellee James former primary school teacher.
‘Paula’ could not spell her own name
Throughout her school life Michaellee James struggled to read because of early childhood impediments and found herself cut off from mainstream education.
“The system made me feel like I was nothing,” James said, and for years she underperformed. No encouragement came from her teachers and James was often the child sitting at the back of the class who was never asked a question or called upon to do anything. School, she recalled, was “a dark and lonely place” and not being able to read made the environment more difficult to survive in. But James internalised all the rejection she felt from teachers and set her own goals. She decided that her success was tied to how much she wanted an education and ignored what teachers wrote on her report card.
Michaellee’s journey
When Michaellee James was a teenager, no one even remotely expected academic success from her, let alone that she would develop into an author.
At 14 years old, she was only just entering the secondary school system and could not read to save her life.
Having lived in England for 23 years, she recently returned to Trinidad to launch her first book, I’m Thinking, which is a series of poems and available at leading bookstores locally. “I felt I had to reflect on what was happening at the moment.
Some of the poems took me back to painful things that happened in my childhood. All of my poems are from real situations.”