NOS / Dick Drayer
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NOS News•today, 01:41
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Dick Drayer
Correspondent Curacao
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Dick Drayer
Correspondent Curacao
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Curaçao writer, singer and actress Diana Lebacs died on Monday in a hospice on the island from the effects of pancreatic cancer. Lebacs played an important role in the development of Dutch-Antillean children’s literature and the theater on Curaçao. She was 74 years old.
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Lebacs wrote in both Papiamento and Dutch. For the youth book Nancho from Bonaire In 1976 she was the first non-European writer to receive a Zilveren Griffel, one of the most important literature prizes for Dutch-language children’s literature.
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In 1971 she made her debut with the youth novel Sherry, the beginning of a beginning, the first Curaçao youth book by a Curaçao author on local themes. According to friend Jeroen Heuvel, agent for publisher In de Knipscheer, it was largely an autobiographical book about a girl who learned to be mature in the Netherlands and who took that empowerment to Curaçao after 1969, the year of the great revolt against the Shell. refinery and the colonial influence of the Netherlands on Curaçao.
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Curaçao, Indonesia and Suriname
Lebacs had a Curaçaoan Indonesian father and a Surinamese mother. At home, Dutch was spoken, because her parents could not communicate with each other in Sranantongo or Malay. Diana spoke Papiamento with her grandmother.
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She taught for thirteen years, led the school of writer Frank Martinus Arion and was a coach for educational innovation. She was also a storyteller, elocutionist, writer and director of plays and actively involved in stimulating new local writing talent.
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“Diana Lebacs was above all a fighter for an even greater recognition of Papiamento, but emphatically chose to also write in Dutch,” says agent Heuvel. “She did that, just like the great Curaçao writer Frank Martinus Arion, for two worlds. In Dutch to wash the Dutch ears and to hold up a mirror and in her own language to show how big the island is and how proud you should be.”
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Papiamento
In Curaçao, Lebacs has also become known for her Papiamento books for primary education and her jury contributions to the Tumba festival, the largest cultural event on the island. Every year dozens of musicians with accompanying bands take part in a kind of Song Contest to determine who will be Tumba king or queen. As a jury member, Lebacs judged the Papiamento texts of the submitted tumba songs.
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Lebacs dies after a short illness, on the day her latest novel is ready at the printer. “The PDF of Lady of the Evening and the Repentance of Benaro saw her, but she was no longer allowed to hold the book in her hands,” says Heuvel. Lebacs would have turned 75 in September.
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