New Book Chronicles VG History
Review from The BVI Beacon, Oct. 17, 2007

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An aerial view of Handsome Bay in Virgin Gorda. View Joan Soncini's photos from the island.

Louis Walters remembers how he got his "very first pen." His mother gave him a hen that laid ten eggs.  He traveled from Virgin Gorda to St. Thomas and sold them for 50 cents. But he was still 17 cents short for that nice fountain pen he needed to teach a class. "So I had to beg for extra money to buy my pen. It was hard life." Mr. Walters’ account is part of a series of profiles featured in Virgin Gorda: An Intimate Portrait by photographer Joan Soncini.  

The book, published this month, captures the essence of the island through dozens of interviews and photographs with its schoolchildren, political figures, farmers, fishermen, and cooks.

 "My goal was to get a cross section of all roles of life," Ms. Soncini said in a recent interview after she came off the ferryboat from Virgin Gorda. "Visually, it was so beautiful. It’s the people that does it."

There’s Father JNK Gibson, the former rector of the then Anglican churches, who remembers that the first day he held mass, only one person showed up. "When I arrived in 1956 there were only 356 people living in The Valley," Fr. Gibson recalls in the book.  "That’s until Little Dix started."

The resort constructed by Laurence Rockefeller began the transformation from a rural economy to a world known tourist destination.  

"It was a very difficult time for the people, who had been accustomed to ‘real’ life for generations, to adjust now to vehicles and heavy equipment," says Premier Ralph O’Neal, who wrote the prologue to the book. But according to Mr. O’Neal, the transition was possible because the developer was always mindful of Virgin Gordians. "Vehicles couldn’t travel faster than 15 miles an hour, because you had old people in the village and farmers walking their cattle. … They did a wonderful job of working with the people."

The more than 30 interviews conducted by Ms. Soncini, were transcribed and edited in the United States and printed as first-person accounts. "I far prefer listening than talking," Ms. Soncini, a psychotherapist and an adjunct professor at New York University, says.

Joan Massel Soncini
soncijo@gmail.com
Phone (US): 917-697-7216
Phone (Italy): 349-852-0272 (from USA, add-011-39)