The Essential Benedict Wight and other writings by Owen Baptiste is a political history of Trinidad and Tobago in the tumultuous years after its Independence on 31 August 1962. A no-holds barred newspaper column, Benedict Wight grew out of the turbulence of black power politics and the efforts of governments to stop the tide of racial conflicts. Says Baptiste: "My plan for Benedict Wight was to create a newspaper personality that was informed, wise and courageous. That was the reason for the frequent references to writers like Shaw, Camus and Nietzsche. I wanted Trinidadians and Tobagonians to think that it was the alter ego of a man of learning, wit and leisure. But the nom de guerre was mainly because I wanted the population to focus on the message and not on the messenger. I was hoping to assist in building a just and intelligent society." The veteran journalist was to become a fearless voice in times of political unrest in Trinidad and Tobago during black power demonstrations and a failed Black Muslim coup in the seventies and nineties. This is what readers had to say of his daily columns that appeared in the Trinidad Express. "Until Benedict Wight," said Justice Aubrey Fraser, head of the Hugh Wooding Law School at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, "I don't think I have seen critical writing in the local Press. No one is indifferent toward him; you are either irritated or you are with him." "Wight is quite a different kettle of fish. He has been known to show us what responsible journalism can be," wrote UWI professor Lloyd Best in the Sunday Express on 26 January 1969. This book is a primer for practicing journalists and students of Journalism and a mine of information for anyone interested in Caribbean politics and Caribbean history after the granting of Independence to British colonies in the West Indies.
OWEN BAPTISTE is a former Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief of the Trinidad Express and Editor-in-Chief of the Trinidad Guardian and Chief Executive Officer and Editor-in-Chief of the Jamaica Observer, which he launched in 1993. In 1998 he left Trinidad to teach in the People's Republic of China and in 2010 he returned to Trinidad and worked with COSTAATT (College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts of Trinidad and Tobago) to plan the Ken Gordon School of Journalism. He also published in 2012 The Seagulls Won't Come Down, the story of his twelve years' teaching in Guangzhou and Beijing. In 2011 and 2012 he undertook tours of the United States to write In Search of America's Soul to be published in October.
