Gloria by Kerry Young (Bloomsbury USA)

Needless to say, with news in last week’s edition of Bookends that Jamaican author Kerry Young’s newest novel, Gloria, is in the running for the prestigious 2014 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, we around here are ecstatic. We absolutely loved Pao, Young’s pitch-perfect, beguiling first novel published in 2011 about a Chinese man negotiating love and life in postcolonial Jamaica. Young read an excerpt at Calabash 2012, and was riotously funny in her delivery, earning wild applause and a standing ovation. She also earned, we reckon, lifelong fans of her work. So we were delighted to discover that the story of Gloria, whom we met in Pao, is now continued in this prequel, of sorts.

It’s Jamaica, 1938. Gloria Campbell is 16 years old when a single violent act alters the course of her life forever. Taking along her younger sister, she flees their hometown to forge a new life in Kingston. But in a capital city awash with change, a black woman is still treated as a second-class citizen. From a room in a boarding house and a job at a supply store, Gloria finds her way to a house of ill repute on the edge of the city, intrigued by the glamorous, financially independent women within. It is an unlikely place to meet the love of your life, but here she encounters Pao, a Chinatown racketeer and a loyal customer who will become something more. It is also an unlikely place to gain a passion for social justice, but it is one of the house’s proprietors who instils in Gloria new ideas about the rights of women and all humankind, eventually propelling her to Cuba, where even greater change is underway, and where Gloria must choose between the life she has made for herself and the one that might be.

We’ve just purchased it on Kindle and can’t wait to dig in!

LMH Official Dictionary of Jamaican Reggae and Dancehall Stars – Volume 1 compiled by K Sean Harris and L Mike Henry (LMH Publishing Ltd)

This nifty little pocket dictionary succinctly catalogues some of Jamaica’s music stars, past and present, of reggae and its offspring dancehall, who have and continue to impact the world. Some of the artistes include: Beres Hammond, Damian Marley, Shabba Ranks, I Wayne and Third World. A must-have for anybody interested in the evolution of the country’s musical history, and, we would add, entertainment journalists.

Ode to Miss Lou… From the Soul of Dr Sue by Susan Lycett Davis

For those who want to hark back to the kind of verse made popular by beloved Jamaican icon and cultural ambassador, the late Honourable Louise Bennett Coverley, this is it. It’s chock-full of 50 of Davis’s poems in honour of Jamaica’s 50th Independence celebrations and arranged in sections titled Ode to Miss Lou, My Soul, and Let’s Talk. There’s also a Foreword by the legendary entertainer Oliver Samuels.

Davis is a self-described “Jamaican by choice”, and her collection of poems reflects her desire for this generation to embrace and proudly re-claim the rich Jamaican heritage we all share.

Caribbean Round-Up

Title: The Story of Jamaican Missions: How the Gospel Went From Jamaica to the World by Lloyd A Cooke

Published by: Arawak Publications, 2013. 672 pages.

Reviewed by: Maureen Warner-Lewis

The sweep of Lloyd Cooke’s opus is truly impressive, both in terms of time span and geographical reach. This is a very ambitious work, which must have taken many years to research and compile, and which reflects painstaking, laborious dedication. This comment serves not only for the text, but also for the many images which enhance the book’s presentation. There are photographs of Jamaican and European missionaries and congregations, illustrations of churches and scenes, and maps of various parts of the world where mission stations were established. Arawak Publications is to be commended for taking on the demanding but valuable task of producing this book.

Cooke extends the expositions by Horace Russell, The Missionary Outreach of the West Indian Church, and Waibinte Wariboko, Ruined by ‘Race’: Afro-Caribbean Missionaries and the Evangelisation of Southern Nigeria. Cooke begins his story with the 1831-32 Sam Sharpe rebellion in order to show the persecution of the enslaved and the missionaries in Jamaica as government and planter reaction to this revolt. But the author becomes so involved in the details of the rebellion that the reader wonders, from time to time, what the connection between these minutiae and the spreading of the Gospel from Jamaica to the world is.

The account then reverses in time to the arrival of the first Christian missionaries to the enslaved in 1754. These were the Moravians who began their work in south-west Jamaica, later moving into Manchester to their east and St James to their north. This is followed by the coming of the Baptists, then the Methodists, and the Presbyterians, all the while that the Anglican Church was already installed in the island on account of its being the official religious arm of the British government which possessed the island as a colony. The Anglicans were to enter the missionary field in Jamaica late in the day, but by the second half of the 19th century, through several dedicated West Indians including Jamaicans, they had become involved in proselytisation at several locations in West Africa. In Jamaica itself, Cooke illustrates how the various missionary churches were important agents of change in the lives of the ex-slaves after Emancipation.

The accounts of the involvement of Jamaica-based Baptists and Presbyterians in establishing missions in West, East, and Southern Africa are enthralling. Calabar, Cameroon, Fernando Po, Akropong, Rio Pongas, the Congo, Tanganyika… Within this region, there were missions to Haiti, Nicaragua, Belize, Suriname, Costa Rica, Panama. Anyone wishing to understand the early role of the Mico Teachers’ Training College in the ecclesiastical and educational evolution of Jamaica must read Cooke’s excavation of the individuals who were inspired to leave Jamaica with the message of salvation, along with skills in agriculture, health care, printing, and construction. The role of members of the local Chinese and Lebanese communities in twentieth century evangelism, especially out of the Brethren Assembly, is ably treated by this author.

This book is an important reference, apart from being an exciting read of pioneering in strange environments; it is a book with discoveries for its readership, and is helpful in its tracing of Christian evangelism from the late-18th century to the 20th century. In this last century, Cooke identifies several individuals, including himself, who have acted in concert with as well as independently of their denominations, bravely planting churches in places and among peoples where Christianity had not existed before.

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Title: Fault Lines by Kendel Hippolyte

Published by: Peepal Tree Press, 2012, 78 pages

Reviewed by: Ann-Margaret Lim

Having been exposed to Kendel Hippolyte by way of the CXC syllabus and at the University of the West Indies (UWI), I had an idea of what to expect, but Fault Lines, his sixth book of poems, with its musicality, real pictures, thoughts and feelings, is indeed Hippolyte at his poetic best.

On the cover is what appears to be an upside-down earth split along a fault line with houses and the lives they contain precariously perched and tilting, but the earth, as presented in the painting, also resembles a brain, and so the precariously pitched houses and their contents could be those belonging to the people we meet and engage with in Hippolyte’s first poem in the book – “Windows”.

And engage is an important word when describing or reviewing Fault Lines, as the book not only actively engages the reader from cover to finish, but it also reflects the engagement of the poet with his surroundings which he reflects by engaging his intellect, his senses and emotions even as he engages our intellect, our senses and emotions.

In Fault Lines Hippolyte’s braided approach of engaging the intellect, emotion and sensation is on full display in every poem. Sometimes the sensation hits him first, whether it’s visual or auditory, then the emotive reaction, then the thought. In “Blue Hydrangeas”, for example, the persona, who we’ll assume is the author, gorged on such visual, tactile and auditory stimuli going up a hill or mountain that sounds very much like our own Blue Mountains, that at the moment of seeing a “brilliantly sky-blue brooch of clustering petals”, there was nothing else he could do but react emotionally.

So after being so affected by the visual, tactile and auditory stimuli of going up a beautiful, growing cold hill with “the road itself crack-toothed, weather-beaten grey/like the occasional countryman gravely raising a hand as we pass/alongside the insouciant slant of the young bamboo fluttering/…looming blue mahoe, with necks of dinosours from the deep ravines; under the watchful gaze of pines – prim watchful country school mistresses, with the height calling still to height, the sound and the echo”, it’s no wonder that the author ‘falls to pieces’ when his what do you call these? is answered by hydrangeas, which of course follows a moment’s hesitance… from a kind of waiting.

Yes, for me, Fault Lines is a perfect study of the process of writing; of Hippolyte’s process, which through the decades has allowed him to author eight plays, gained him the St Lucia (Gold) Medal of Merit for his contribution to the Arts in 2002 and allowed him to write such engaging poems as those found in this book, which won him the 2013 Bocas Poetry Prize.

Hippolyte delivers many memorable poems and lines in Fault Lines and one can’t help but think the disaster in Haiti, which precedes this book by two years, is very much in the shadows here. It could have influenced the title poem, thus the title and choice of cover. And if it did, it goes straight back to Hippolyte’s modus operandi of engagement. Something as horrendous as the Janauary 2010 earthquake in Haiti would have affected an at-the-heart intuitive poet as Hippolyte, to the point where it is the looming shadow of the book.

Describing Hippolyte as an at-the-heart intuitive-poet only means that he feels deeply what he writes, or feels deeply, thinks it through, then writes. It doesn’t mean that Hippolyte doesn’t employ traditional forms also; he does. His poem “Trialectics and Problematics” is what could be considered now a rare form. It’s a triolet, which is quite similar to the rondeau style of some nursery rhymes, employing eight lines, with the first one appearing three times and the second one twice. As both the second and last lines indicate, he knows it’s not a great triolet, but I’m glad he included it. You see, Hippolyte is a poet with a wide appeal. Poets and scholars read him and performance – or spoken-word poets also enjoy him. In including this rare form, I see Hippolyte encouraging the young aspirant to know form also, if you intend to truly practise the art. His fellow St Lucian, the Nobel Laureate, Sir Derek Walcott, also knows this.

As a playwright and director, Hippolyte has an eye and ear for performance poems and has included some of these in the collection. Performance poets are therefore encouraged to read Fault Lines, as his word plays are of the highest level and his poems are extremely easy on the ear.

The book in its entirety is a gem with such sparkling lines “today the silence sipped another drink/ and asked him to explain/again” (“Silence”) and brilliant word plays, sound effects, rhymes, half-rhymes and echoes as in “all these weird voicings/a single voice sings (“Dance Craze”).

Hippolyte’s playground, room and bed are words and this reader enjoyed sharing his space in Fault Lines.

I’ll leave you with his exalt from “Archipelago,” the last poem in the book:

“If you can see the Caribbean archipelago, you will see yourself…

if you can be this, beyond it, you will miracle into impossibility, you will see

how to be broken and yet whole.”

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Title: Many Rivers to Cross: A Political Journey of Audacious Hope, with Reflections on 2012, by Mike Henry with Reginald Allen

LMH Publishing Ltd, 2013, 178 pages

Reviewed by: Alfred Sangster

Many Rivers to Cross: A Political Journey of Audacious Hope is a collection of some of politician Mike Henry’s thoughts and ideas distilled over a parliamentary period of some 33 unbroken years. The text is edited by Tony Patel and Dr A Mandara with the first major part being a collection of 10 speeches in the House and secondly on reflections on the past and focus on the future.

The Foreword, written by Professor Oswald Harding, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology, Jamaica, describes Henry as “a visionary, far ahead of his contemporaries”.

Reginald Allen — an experienced reporter and the former communications manager of the JUTC — writes very knowledgably in the Introduction about Henry’s political journey and summarises his political career. He also writes the introduction to each chapter and gives some important insights into the overall contents of the book.

Speeches. All of the 10 speeches address significant national issues such as: Population Control and Rural Development, Youth and Sports, Constitutional Reform, Political Victimisation while in Opposition, and more. However, five of the chapters have been selected for special mention.

The first chapter, The Conscience Behind Political Representation, Henry’s maiden sectoral debate begins by reflecting that …of holding the unfortunate ‘distinction’ of being the first active political representative to be shot on the campaign trail in Jamaica (in1976 in York Town Clarendon.) He speaks about the country not keeping up with the world’s technological developments, of the country being set back in the past eight years (of the PNP government) and having retained its merchant mentality, becoming a nation of ‘pedlars’ if you are of the favoured classes and ‘higglers’ if you are not. This presentation spoke eloquently of what was to come in the years ahead.

The chapter on Governance at the Local Level represents a review of achievements of his constituency over the previous years of his administration and of the discriminatory tactics which were now being displayed by the new (PNP) administration. In an analysis of the failings of the Government and its significant lack of planning and support for constituency projects – some ongoing and others funded – which were ether stopped or stalled, he makes the statement: “…I will urge us to resist the co-operation of any kind with this Government until it treats us all as equals, and not only when it suits then in order to use the minority to rule the majority with oppression”.

Constituency Plans follows the bitter accusation of the previous chapter on the poor treatment by the new government on his constituency. The chapter articulates the actual achievements with a vision of what is possible not only for Cenral Clarendon but the whole parish and the wider area, as well. His support for sports led to the building of the Herb McKenley Stadium and the establishment of Humble Lion Football club in the Premier League. His major theme for development was one in which “…people do not look for a Messiah, but together with leadership, break the chain of mental slavery and build unity of purpose”.

The Drive for Reparations is the longest chapter and perhaps the area in which Henry is most recognised both regionally and internationally. His Private Members Motion in 2007 has had to wait some seven years before the country’s Parliament has taken the idea on board. A National Commission on Reparations has been established, chaired by Professor Verene Shepherd of UWI.

Henry lays out the historical facts clearly. The agony of the Middle Passage, the treatment of slaves on the plantations, the developments and wealth in Europe and Britain from the slave trade all call for justice. The successful cases of reparations, for example, Israel from Germany, and Japan from the United States, point to the potential for Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean going successfully to the International Court of Justice.

He describes his own experience of racism in Britain and, when asked how he spoke English so well, sarcastically replied: “I learned it on the boat (coming over)!”

Henry puts the case simply as follows: “…I call on us Parliamentarians to seek reparations in the highest courts of justice, and receive, on behalf of descendants of us the slave servants, that which was given to the slave masters, amounts in cash and equity equal to the barbaric act of slavery.”

His final speech on Generating Jobs and Productive Job Opportunities lists his development activities in his Ministry of Transport and Works. His long list of achievements: the reopening of the passenger railroad, the opening of the Falmouth Cruise ship Port and many others from his all-embracing list includes a vision for Land, Sea and Air. Henry was guided by his innovative 1-3-5-7 programme of focus. An example was his flagship programme, the Jamaica Infrastructure Development Programme (JDIP), which in the years one and two were about analysis and directions, with years three to five being about the initial major deliverables, years five and beyond were to coincide with opening of the expanded Panama Canal and the plans to match that development. The JDIP, however, became a special target by the Opposition PNP. The hypocrisy of opposition MPs was displayed in them writing to Henry and requesting specific development in their constituencies while publicly berating him for bad administration of the project. The call for a forensic audit led to Henry being abandoned by his party, resigning from the Cabinet and seeing the JLP unwisely – against his advice – calling an election with a catastrophic loss. The audit subsequently cleared his name.

Time will tell how Henry’s political future will emerge.

Reflections on the Past and the Future. His concern for the Jamaican people is reflected in the comment “… for it must be recognised that too many of our people live on streets with no names, houses with no numbers, and only have aliases as their names…” The chapter carries with it an element of nostalgia as he reflects on what has been, what might be and what could have been. What of the projects so near to completion and visions to be implemented. One wonders what would have happened if Henry’s warning about not calling an election had been heeded. His list of ‘unfinished business’ is extensive and includes the recognition of the Rastafarians, the legal and financial principles of reparations and some 21 other listed ideas. His multi-modal network involving Fort Augusta, Tinson Pen and Vernam Field was the prelude to the potential development of the Kingston Harbour Hub, now proposed elsewhere.

Many Rivers to Cross is a magnificent vision of a courageous and visionary man who was not afraid to challenge the status quo and those in the seat of power. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in Jamaica’s development.

NOTICE: New Start Date for Writers’ Workshop at UWI [run across bottom of pp2, 3]

The Department of Literatures in English UWI, Mona’s creative writing workshop in prose fiction will begin on Thursday, March 20, 2014 instead of March 13 as was previously announced. Distinguished author and writer-in-residence Dr Erna Brodber will lead the five-week workshop which will be held on Thursdays from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. Interested persons are encouraged to register early as limited are spaces available. Please contact the department at 927-2217 or e-mail litsworkshop@gmail.com for further details.

Love Wounds 

Chapter 8

The weekend I returned from Amsterdam I avoided Chester. Carlene called me on Saturday and asked if I wanted to have Sunday dinner with them. I could hear Chester in the background saying, “Welcome back, Grets.” I didn’t want a welcome from him. I declined the invitation blaming jetlag and the beginnings of a cold.

Chester had nonchalantly ‘suggested’ that I find another boyfriend. He could have said it in jest. In fact, I’d had time to think about it and I really did not believe he was ready to cut me loose. But it still didn’t mean he wasn’t thinking of doing it. understand this. I was never the kind of woman to suffer humiliation from a man – I was independent, in every sense of the word – and if he’d decided that we’d come to the end of our affair, then so be it. No harm, no foul. As events over the past few days had shown, I was able to find a man. I wasn’t afraid to put myself out there. Getting with American Bill had made me realise that my stocks were still rather high. I was already 36, but I could easily pull off 30, maybe even 29 on a good day. But that was the gene situation I was blessed with in my family. My mother at 69 was still a radiant beauty. Her mother before her, when she’d died at the age of 85, had looked not a day over 60. And besides all that, I actually had something to bring to the relationship table other than the physical. I was well-spoken. I had a point of view. I had a brain. If it seems arrogant of me to say these things, please be assured, that’s not the intention. It’s simply that women of a certain age and a certain colour in this country would do well to understand what they’re up against and understand how to effectively market themselves. It makes no sense griping about the system that is inherently set up with a bias against us. One had to simply get on with it.

Still, a restlessness had settled over me like a cloud. I was unsure of what it was that I wanted in my life. There was no doubt that I saw myself as a successful career woman, and that aspect of my life was progressing at a nice clip. I was in a position of financial independence and was in fact at the stage of purchasing a house. A few years ago, I’d bought a one-bedroom apartment, which I rented and which brought in a nice additional income stream for me. But I’d needed my father to co-sign. This house I was purchasing, which was actually the one I was living in and paying that oppressive rent for, was going to be mine, free and clear. It was a rambling five-bedroom in the St Andrew hills that was not exactly suited to a single woman, but who cared? I could swing the mortgage and, importantly, I loved it. Nights when I came home and lay in bed reading, I would sometimes glance up and allow myself to be warmed by the sight of the fireplace, which, while I’d never had an occasion to use it, nevertheless filled me with a sense of well-being knowing it was there.

When the owners had approached with the news that they planned to sell the house, and would I be interested, I hadn’t even been thinking along those lines. But after consulting with my financial advisor, I’d gone off the reservation in heady excitement. The house was impressive and would be even more so when I parcelled out some funds for the home-improvement project I worked out. My sister Opal, when I’d told her about my plans, had regarded me with barely disguised envy. Of course she lived in a fancy house, too, but everybody knew that it was her husband’s, even if her name was on the title as well. That, however, would have been a mere convention. Opal, the college dropout who’d landed on her feet and married well, would never have been able to buy her house right out. And certainly not before she turned 40. I could, though. We’d been brought up in a very middle-class Jamaican family, but had been raised to desire even more for ourselves – and, when the time came, our families – than what our parents could have dreamt for themselves.

But even I knew this wasn’t enough. How was I going to fill that big house with the warmth I’d experienced as a child growing up? I blamed Martin. I’d invested heavily in him, giving him so much of my time, four years, assuming we’d have ended up together. When we broken up I was already 34. I didn’t even have a child? What were my prospects?

On Monday, Chester called me early in the morning. I knew that he was puttering around his back yard, probably bent over his koi pond or feeding his German Shepherds. I stared at the phone. Let it ring out. Tried to steel myself against the memory of the smell of his cologne. He called me two other times before leaving his home. Both times I refused to answer, as well.

At work, he called again. I’d put my cellphone on silent so I didn’t feel constrained to answer it. When he tired of calling that line he called my direct number. “I’ll call you later,” I said when I picked up and heard his voice. Of course, I never did. I had my story ready: it was a New Year and I’d fallen behind in my work after the two weeks that I’d been off.

That evening, when I pulled out of the parking lot at work, he was parked across the street. My heart fluttered when I pulled up next to him and let my window down, but I played it cool.

“If I didn’t know any better,” he said without first saying hello, “I’d think you were avoiding me.”

I could smell the citrus of his cologne from where I sat at the steering wheel and it was all I could do to not climb through the window and beg him to take me right there.

“If I didn’t know any better,” I replied frostily, “I’d think you were stalking me.”

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK