Meet Frances Coke

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Frances Coke a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Frances, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

To give the most honest answer, I must speak of two purposes: teaching and writing. Discovering the first one was not exactly my doing, and the same is true of the second.
After graduating as an English major from the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica (where I was born and lived the first 70% of my life), I became a news editor at the local broadcasting company, one of the organizations open to graduates who showed promise in writing. My pursuit of English and literature at university was a pretty obvious course of action; it was the only option that reflected my leanings in school. Despite the satisfaction I experienced there, I remained just under a year, during which some realities of the world of journalism sent me looking for an alternative. Being young and foolish, I hadn’t looked beyond the moment to consider all the angles, so I disobeyed my mother’s lifelong warning against leaving one job before securing another.
My funds depleted and my next step unclear, I had a rude awakening when the placements officer asked the scathing question, “So you think there are hundreds of employers out there waiting to employ an English graduate like you?” Of course, the answer was “no,” followed closely by the realization I had no option but to follow her advice and go down to a prominent boys’ school to see if the principal had “anything to fit me into.” As it turned out, he did, and I soon found myself reluctantly facing the questioning glances of thirty-seven fourteen-year-old boys in my first assignment as a teacher of English Language and Literature! After the year I promised the headmaster, I left to pursue what I thought was my “dream job” as a trainee copywriter in a “grand” advertising agency. The opportunity soon lost its sheen as my inner voice insisted I did not belong in that world, and my longing grew for the interactions I had experienced with my students. In a few months, I was back at the high school, bitten for life by the teaching bug–my primary purpose.

My second purpose – writing – was always there–ever since my grandmother sat me down under the moonlit sky in rural Jamaica, where I spent many formative years absorbing her stories, and hiding behind my grandfather’s old piano, losing myself among the cracked yellowed pages of the books he had assembled. As the third child of struggling young parents and the one left out from the bond between two “big sisters” locked in their own partnership, I found refuge in reading, which became a lifelong love. It was only a matter of time, before my childish musings, questions, and reflections began toppling from my head onto my pages, bringing to life a second purpose, which has lasted all my life despite the inevitable intrusions from career, family, and other adult responsibilities that steal our time. In the last twenty years, this second purpose has struggled to take its rightful place among those priorities, resulting in my most productive writing years, and the publication of two poetry collections, a few short stories, a memoir recounting my life-changing years as a high school teacher, and this year, my first novel, When Banana Stains Fade: A Jamaican Family Saga of Adversity and Redemption.
During and after my ten years as a high school teacher of English Language and Literature (my second purpose of writing always shadowing my career activities), I continued my tertiary education, completing a Master’s degree in education (major: psychology), which allowed me to spread my wings into human resource management, corporate training roles, and lecturer/administrator at my alma mater, the University of the West Indies. There, I remained until family demands resulted in my migration to Florida in 2008. I have continued working in education as an online writing tutor/writing studio coordinator at a private local university. I also work as an adjunct faculty member teaching English/writing at the local state college. My strong links with Jamaica continue to be maintained through regular visits, close contact with friends and family, and of course, writing. As a member of the Caribbean American Cultural Group, one of Port St. Lucie’s premier philanthropic organizations, I continue to contribute to the development of young people through CACG’s MLK/Scholarship Committee. CACG marks its 40th anniversary this year and we are especially proud of its annual Dr. Martin Luther King celebration and its flagship scholarship program, which has supported college-bound students to the tune of over $166,000 to date.

Involvement with my family, many of whom live close by in Port St. Lucie, is a major source of happiness as I help to shape the younger generation through my granddaughter, my nieces and nephew, as well as their children and grandchildren. It is a source of immense joy to “educate” them about our Jamaican roots through my writing and storytelling. Being a bridge between them and their origins is a special responsibility that I cherish.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

To be honest, I knew nothing about having or needing a brand until I confronted the demands of the publishing world and its emphasis on activities like pitching, querying, pursuing agents, and other elements of creating the visibility necessary to sell books. Today, I’ve heard and seen myself described as a writer with gifts like sensibility, a poetic voice whose lyrical writing brings a different dimension to storytelling, along with authenticity, economy of style, and a keen ear for how real people speak and interact. Some of these attributes were cultivated during years of intense involvement in studying and writing poetry, as well as my vast experiences as a voracious reader, teacher of literary criticism, and movie buff. But I did not see any of these attributes as part of “my brand.” Now I understand that they are, and they help to drive public perceptions of who I am as a writer, and what should be expected of the books I try to sell. Over the years, writing has worked for me as a cherished and even a therapeutic process through which I learn what is going on inside me, and can share my journeys and reflect on what it means to be a Jamaican woman.

My poetry (notably the collection Intersections), has shed light on the reflections of a woman devoted to exposing the joys and struggles of life in Jamaica. My memoir The Spirit of Clovelly Park exposed the emotional depths and heights experienced by a reluctant young teacher who tackled the challenges and became a life-long educator. This year, I’ve had the opportunity of using my first novel, When Banana Stains Fade to chart the journeys of four generations of Jamaicans fighting to overcome social, historical, and familial challenges that threaten the well-being of so many all over the world.
In recent months, my challenge has been to bring this story to the attention of a global audience despite the barriers between a relatively unknown new voice and those who would likely relate to the book’s universal themes of social inequities, family relationships, loss, hope, redemption, and the dangers of pursuing love’s impostors.
In the larger scheme of things, there is not much that is special about a story like mine, and I wonder what I have to share that would suggest my journey has been a “bold” one. At first glance, one might say nothing really. However, looking more closely, I see that my story is worth sharing, not for any earthshaking insights, but for a couple of lessons that might prove encouraging to others.

Lesson 1: While many of us have been conditioned to believe that certainty about one’s purpose characterizes the great and unerring path to success or self-fulfilment, my experience tells me otherwise. I was not a child with certainty at any point about becoming a lawyer, or scientist, or writer…or anything for that matter. I tumbled from high school into a job as a bank teller because we were brought up to believe in finishing high school and getting a job. The job was one I hated, and that alone spurred me to take an exam that could lead to becoming the first member of my family to attend university. Upon receiving a bursary and trying to persuade my family to help with the remaining expenses, I confronted the age-old belief that studying beyond high school was not “for us.” It didn’t help that I wasn’t about to pursue a course that they could identify with immediate improvement in my job prospects. I was going to pursue the one course that my school-leaving exam results qualified me to pursue. I hadn’t thought beyond escaping from the bank to the campus. But I persisted because I hated the job of being a bank teller and saw no path to happiness. I had never thought about a job in a television newsroom, but that is what my bachelor’s degree qualified me to do, so I did it, and I was much happier than being a bank teller had made me…until I wasn’t anymore. Still young and green, but desperate to earn my way, I tumbled into teaching and ran off after a year to a “glamour job” for which I was not cut out. Yet, it was those failed endeavors that led me into teaching and turned on a light that has shone on my entire career since. Could it be that failure is not an end, but the opening of a different door?
The lesson that is worth sharing is that we are allowed to be uncertain… to take the wrong path, to retreat from one endeavor and then go back to it for a second try. It was my failure in the world of advertising and my second try at teaching that filled me with the determination to make my life’s purpose one of learning, self-development and a commitment to facilitating the development of others.

Lesson 2: My secondary purpose has always been writing. At this stage, I still do not call myself a writer, but an educator who writes. Admittedly, there have been moments of regret that my life and upbringing put my hidden aspiration to write beyond my reach and reality. In my mind, writing was something that famous people did – people who emerged from worlds that were very different from mine. As I devoured the works of the greats and even the less famous writers whose work appealed to me, the belief thrived that I was a reader and other people were writers. My jottings didn’t really constitute writing, did it? Nevertheless, I never stopped writing – including a great deal of what has never seen the light of day and what my main poetry teacher called “rubbish fit for the bin.” But after a fire destroyed everything I owned, and every word I ever wrote, and I was swallowed up in a dry period that seemed destined to kill all thoughts of writing, the desire to write returned with a vengeance, and I realized what had been missing throughout that period. The lesson? – maybe one’s purpose can emerge from unexpected places in unexpected times; but this does not make the purpose invalid.

So from my story, there are no life-changing lessons to share; I doubt my journey has been “bold,” but it has been a special and humbling experience to reflect on my travels – from being an unexposed introverted child growing up on a small island in a city between a riverside grandmother and seaside grandparents – and the educator/writer that I am today. The path has been littered with the usual challenges, failures, and accomplishments, but nothing can diminish the joy of having contributed to the development of hundreds of teenage boys in my first teaching job in Kingston’s inner city, or with my students at various educational levels, or seeing the satisfaction of corporate employees in the many leadership workshops I facilitated. It has been a rewarding process of forging relationships that have lasted until today with former students and adult learners who have become my friends living all over the world. The same is true of the numerous individuals who have taught me, nurturing my writing talent, and supporting me as a fledgling writer, now with a new novel on the market that champions my ultimate hero, the strong, resilient Jamaican family, which remains the backbone of a small country still struggling to find its place in the world.

This book was released in April 2024 by Black Rose Writing and since then, it has been the center of my activities including building a social media presence, hosting launches, and learning a host of new skills that are essential in the challenging business of selling books.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

We benefited from an upbringing that emphasized the need to take responsibility for ourselves, to seize the opportunity of a solid educational foundation, and accept that our family had no material legacy for us to inherit, so we must make our own way. We were exposed to hardship and taught to find happiness where we could, without breaching the ethical guidelines and principles laid down all around us. We suffered from harsh disciplinary practices now considered to be abusive, but we never questioned that it was “all for our own good,” and now, we always describe our childhood as happier and less complicated than what we see these days.

The lessons we learned have stood us in good stead as individuals who have had to make our own way in a challenging world. Giving advice is not something I do readily. My preference is to share what I’ve learned with my daughter and granddaughter, as well as hundreds of young people with whom I’ve interacted. I encourage them to learn to understand themselves and others; be sensitive to their circumstances and be hesitant to judge others whose circumstances are different; to seek and to share love, friendship, happiness, and accomplishments, never losing sight of the reality that no one can provide them with any of it. There will be times of losing and gaining, darkness and light, joy, and suffering – all are important avenues to understanding oneself and what life is all about. I believe even though some experiences seem devastating and impossible to overcome, they may still open our eyes to important lessons because no experience needs to be wasted.
If I’m to summarize all this in terms of three skills, qualities, or areas of knowledge, I would say I have benefited most from my self-reliance, broad-based education, awareness of myself and others, and openness to new experiences,

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

Self-development demands honest self evaluation, the willingness to own and address one’s limitations, and develop and capitalize on one’s strengths. It is essential to seek opportunities to use those strengths productively for oneself as well as others. Investing in opportunities to tackle my weaknesses and develop my strengths has always been a priority for me. When I was sure I wanted to be a teacher, I pursued educational opportunities to help me improve my knowledge of the factors that affect learning, learners, and teachers. When I wanted to balance my traditional didactic teaching methods with more modern participatory methods that would help me function as a facilitator of learning rather than a purveyor of knowledge, I pursued training opportunities to help me. I pursued training in guidance and counselling so I could respond to the needs of students and families who encountered challenges to their learning process. By seeking to broaden and deepen my knowledge and expertise and respond to new challenges, I became more knowledgeable, more versatile and adaptable to various job opportunities, and this resulted in acquiring experiences way beyond my early limited perspectives about the kinds of work teaching experience could equip me to do.

In more recent years, circumstances have compelled many of us to transition past our comfort zones from face-to-face educational roles in “brick and mortar” structures to online teaching and facilitation. Perceptions of communication and leadership as a face-to-face activity gave way during and since COVID to the recognition that we needed to be agile; to be willing to learn modern technologies, new delivery modes, and new ways of interacting, leading, and influencing. As recently as the past year of trying to find a publisher and then to market and sell books, I have had to learn how to operate in the world of agents, publishers, scammers promising the world to extract money from writers seeking opportunities to be published, to have their work promoted, and “made into movies.”

Learning a limited number of skills and techniques in a few fields is good for developing mastery in a few areas. Even so, this may not be enough in a changing world. Acquiring skills and expertise outside one’s core competencies is a good way of preparing oneself for change, which is inevitable.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.francesmarie.com
• Instagram: www.instragram.com/fmc_author/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FMCauthor/ https://www.facebook.com/francesmarie.coke
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@frances.coke.auth