The stories in Sic Transit Wagon bring together a rich, evocative and authentic tapestry of Trinidad life, from the 1940s to the present day. We move from the all-seeing naivety of a child narrator trying to make sense of the adult world, through the consciousness of the child-become-mother, to the mature perceptions of the older woman taking stock on all that has gone before.
In the title story – a playful pun on the Latin phrase on the glory of worldly things coming to an end – the need to part with a beloved station wagon becomes a moving and humorous image for other kinds of loss.
Barbara Jenkins was born in Trinidad. She studied at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and at the University College, Cardiff. She married a fellow student, and they continued to live in Wales through the whole decade of the 1960s, before returning to Trinidad. Her stories have won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Caribbean Region) in 2010 and 2011, for ‘Something for Nothing’ and ‘Head Not Made for Hat Alone’ respectively; the Wasafiri New Writing Prize; the Canute Brodhurst Prize for short fiction from the Caribbean Writer; the Small Axe short story competition, 2011; and the Romance Category, My African Diaspora Short Story Contest.