Caymanian educator, wedding officiant and storyteller Joy Basdeo has released a new children’s book, ‘Slice of Home,’ drawing on memories of everyday life in Bodden Town during the 1950s and 1960s.
Grounded in home life, school and community, the book brings together 26 true stories from Basdeo’s childhood. First shared privately within her family, the stories have since reached a wider audience, resonating across generations.
Each story is paired with an illustration by Caymanian artist Michelle Bryan, whom Basdeo describes as “the perfect person to bring my characters to life”.
Basdeo herself appears in Bryan’s illustrations, along with her dog Caesar, who is featured in several stories. Rendered in a childlike, expressive style, the images echo the warmth of the text, depicting family life, childhood, animals and the coastal setting that frames so many of the memories in the book.
Depictions of days gone by
‘Slice of Home’ traces life in the Cayman Islands before electricity, cars, supermarkets or instant communication. It recalls a time when people used pit toilets, Bodden Town had a single telephone at the post office overseen by Miss Dina, and there was one car, which belonged to Mr. Logan, the shopkeeper. Trips to George Town required advance planning and early starts, and daily life moved at a slower pace.
Far from feeling deprived, Basdeo recalls a childhood that felt complete. The week revolved around church, school and family visits, with many stories set around Bodden Town Primary School, where friendships grew through what she describes as “everyday adventures and gentle mischief of island life”.
Central to those friendships was her cousin Toni, whom Basdeo describes as “my co-adventurer and the best friend a little girl could have”, and to whom she dedicates the book alongside her grandchildren.
Origins of the book
The idea to write the stories down emerged after Basdeo’s son, Jesse, moved to Canada with his family.
“One day my son asked his children, ‘What do you miss most about Cayman?’” she recalled. “And they said, ‘What we miss most is our nanny stories.’”
Missing them too, Basdeo began writing the memories at night and emailing them to her son. As more stories surfaced, the writing gathered pace, sometimes coming in batches.
She later recorded the stories as voice notes, which were played to the children at bedtime, continuing a long family tradition of being read to before sleep. The growing collection was eventually shared on a flash drive.
One of those recordings became the chapter ‘Sunday Tea’, which follows a young child on a blustery afternoon who slips away from a busy kitchen, annoyed that her baby brother is getting all the attention.
Sitting alone on a wooden tramway above the sea, she sulks until an aunt finds her, dries her off and leads her back inside for tea and lemon meringue pie.
“So the afternoon turned out OK after all,” the chapter concludes.
The story also captures domestic rituals of the time. “The dining table was spread with the best china cups and plates and groaning under the weight of all the food they had been preparing for us,” Basdeo writes, singling out Aunt Gloria’s lemon meringue pie as “the pièce de résistance”, with meringue “about four inches thick”.
As the recordings circulated, the project began to extend beyond Basdeo’s family. A conversation led to an invitation to record the stories for Radio Cayman, where the response, particularly from listeners who grew up during the same period, was immediate.
Many urged Basdeo to publish the stories so they could revisit them in print. “People started showing a lot of interest and said, ‘You have to write them down,’” she said. “Well, I had them written down, so I polished them up.”
Since the book’s release, Basdeo has been reading from ‘Slice of Home’ to schoolchildren and seniors across the island, including visiting to John A. Cumber Primary School and Theoline McCoy Primary School. The readings have often sparked conversation and shared memories.
“This book is for the children of today, so they can hear the echoes of the past,” Basdeo said, “and for the adults who will smile in recognition, remembering what once was. It is my gift to my grandchildren and to all young readers – legacy of love wrapped in the spirit of Cayman.”
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