If I Had the Wings

Overview

Growing up gay in the small Greek-Bahamian community, which feels its traditional culture and religious pieties are under threat, is fraught with constraints and even danger. The main characters in Helen Klonaris's poetic, inventive and sometimes transgressive collection of short stories confront this reality as part of their lives. Yet there are also ways in which young women in several of the stories search for roots in that tradition – to find within it, alternatives to the dominant influence of the Orthodox church.

Reviews

From Courtney Arnold, Reviewer of the anthology Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writings from the Antilles, edited by Thomas Glave "It is a Saturday night, Independence weekend, and there is not one church on this island that would welcome me and my kind publicly, speak our names openly, with respect, and honor us for who we are." In "Independence Day Letter," Helen Klonaris's contribution to Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, the author describes the social exile experienced by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people in her native Bahamas. Klonaris writes eloquently about the internalized colonialism at the root of her country's pervasive homophobia; yet her outrage—and the deep hurt it belies—point beyond just a "niche" cause in some "other" place. Indeed, the Caribbean's notorious and often violent intolerance toward those who are, or are perceived to be, in some way queer is part of a far bigger issue.

"Klonaris uses memory and dialogue as valuable tools to convey her stories, introducing a compelling voice to short fiction." —Jeff Fleisher, Foreword Reviews

Author Biography

Helen Klonaris is a Greek-Bahamian writer and teacher who lives between the Bay Area, California and Nassau, Bahamas. Her early years in the Bahamas were spent working as a human rights activist, raising awareness around issues that ranged from capital punishment to violence against women to discrimination against LGBT Bahamians. She co-founded several socially significant organizations, including The Rainbow Alliance of the Bahamas, and several literary journals, associations, and organizations including WomanSpeak: A Journal for Caribbean Women's Literature and Art, The Bahamas Association for Cultural Studies, (BACUS) and the Bahamas Writers Summer Institute (BWSI).