Author Spotlight: Barbara Mahase Rodman

January 16, 2024 — Originally published 7/15/2020 (From Gail Kuhnlein: I felt this wonderful blog post deserved rekindling. It was coincidentally published on Barbara’s birthday, the first after her passing. Barbara is my Mom. I read Olas Grandes hot off the press (Mom’s typewriter) when I was in high school. Reading it all these years later, I still love it. And I love this special and delightful blog post by Nancy and Davey’s inspired answers. Thanks to you both, again.)

Pictured above: David Kuhnlein

I’m kicking off this new feature today with a Q&A that tells the remarkable story of a young writer’s devotion to his grandmother and her literary legacy. For reasons you’ll understand as you read on, it wasn’t possible to interview Barbara Mahase Rodman, author of the recently published novel Olas Grandes. Instead, this interview is with her grandson David Kuhnlein, who edited and published the book after the long lost manuscript was unearthed.

The manuscript for Olas Grandes was stashed in a trunk for about forty years before you found it. Tell us more about how you learned of its existence and managed to locate it.

For the most part that’s true: the manuscript sat in her trunk since 1979, full of potential, charging up like a battery. Barbara Mahase Rodman (my grandmother, known by her grandsons as Babbie) got many rejection letters in the 70s and 80s, due to a couple factors, one of which was her animosity towards the editing process. Another was her interest in larger publishing companies.

I hadn’t heard of Olas Grandes, or at least I’d forgotten about it, until I read my great grandmother’s autobiography My Mother’s Daughter – a testament to growing up as a strong Indian woman in Trinidad. My mom told me that I was mentioned in the back of the book where Anna Mahase Snr. wrote about the family. So, of course, that’s the first place I looked! …

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