From the Founder’s Desk: Who Gets to Tell Caribbean Women’s Stories?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about who gets to tell our stories.
Not Caribbean stories generally. Ours.
The stories of Caribbean women.

The ones who stayed. The ones who left. The ones who left and came back. And the ones who have never actually lived in the Caribbean but somehow still know exactly what “come here nah” means when their mother says it.

There are just so many versions of us. And I think the more I work on Cocoa & Coconut, the more I realise that this is probably the part I care about the most.

I want us to be able to tell our own stories.
Not just the big, impressive ones either.
I mean the everyday stuff too.

The career we thought we’d have by now. The friendship that changed. Moving away from home. Moving back home. Trying to save money. Starting again. Falling in love. Grieving someone. Getting older and realising you’re becoming more and more like your mother. (Whether you like it or not.)

All of it.

When I first started Cocoa & Coconut, I knew I wanted to create a modern Caribbean magazine for women. That was the idea.

Then, I think it started to feel like something else too.
A place for us.
And I know that probably sounds a little cheesy, but it’s true.
I want someone to come across a story on Cocoa & Coconut and think, Wait. Other women feel like this too?
I want someone to discover a Caribbean writer they’d never heard of before.
I want someone to send an article to their group chat and say, “This is SO you.”
I want us to talk about work and money but also love and grief and beauty and books and culture and all the random, complicated things that make up our lives.

Because sometimes nothing extraordinary has happened to us.
We’re just living.
And I think those stories deserve somewhere to go too.

I don’t know exactly what Cocoa & Coconut will become.
I have plenty of ideas. Trust me. Probably too many.

There are things I want to build, things I want to try, events I’d love for us to have one day, and so many women whose stories I’d love to share.

But I’m also figuring it out as I go.
And I actually like that.

I don’t want to decide what Cocoa & Coconut should become without the women who are reading it. I want us to build it together. Cocoa & Coconut may have started as my idea, but I never want it to become a place where you only hear from me. That would completely miss the point.

There are far too many of us, from far too many islands, countries, families and experiences, with far too much to say.

So, I think we’ll just keep making room.

One story at a time.

With love,
Michaela
Founder & Editor, Cocoa & Coconut