Miss Lou — A personal remembrance of Louise Simone Bennett-Coverley: Poet, folklorist, community worker, lyricist, stage and movie actress

One question that people ask me is: which writers would you say have influenced you? I used to explain that I don’t think of myself in this way, as one who served an apprenticeship to particular practitioners of the craft, and therefore properly owes them a debt. That is not to say that I am intensely original; rather, it is to say that, being a greedy puppy, I have lapped up things from all the books I’ve ever read, and so could not begin to name the writers to whom I am obligated.