Fractured Circles

Literature & Fiction

BERRY, JAMES

Poetry

New Beacon Books

The third book of poetry from acclaimed Jamaican author Mervyn Morris.

Shadowboxing

Morris, Mervyn

Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home

Jane and Louisa will soon come home

Erna Brodber

Jamaican-born Erna Brodber, a respected sociologist and critically acclaimed novelist, fuses the literary genres of fiction and nonfiction in this nontraditional, highly imaginative coming-of-age story laced with political and cultural messages. Often referred to as a prose-poem, Jane & Louisa Will Soon Come Home reflects an internal sociological perspective. At first, readers are outsiders, but soon they are invited into the narrative that is best understood in its totality and in the context of Jamaican history. Brodber breaks up the life story of Nellie, the primary narrator, into nonchronological vignettes that explore dimensions of the difficulties of the protagonist's childhood, sexuality, and search for identity under the circumstances of Jamaica's tumultuous past and colonial legacy. Brodber does not dwell on race or history but mixes each into Nellie's process of identity formation: Nellie is not merely aware of how she is seen by others but how she, herself, constructs her own identity examining her reflection in the looking glass of others' perceptions of her. In the end, she initiates her own recovery of her past traumas and rewrites her story. Table of Contents: My Dear Will You Allow Me Voices / The Tale of the Snail in the Kumbla / Still Life / Miniatures To Waltz with You Into This Beautiful Garden Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home The One-Sided Drum / The Kumbla / The Spying Glass / The Moving Camera / The Pill / The Fish Titles of related interest also from Waveland Press: Brodber, Myal (ISBN 9781478623113); Edgell, Beka Lamb (ISBN 9781478629412); Hodge, Crick Crack, Monkey (ISBN 9781478606598); Lovelace, The Wine of Astonishment (ISBN 9781478611271); and Warner-Vieyra, Juletane (ISBN 9781478611783).

Pitch Lake

Ramchand, Kenneth

Mendes, Alfred

Contemporary

Being Black: Selections from "Soledad Brother" by George Jackson and "Soul on Ice" by Eldridge Cleaver: with Questions and Notes

History

Cleaver, Eldridge

Jackson, George

Harris, Roxy

Americas

Barrel of a pen: Resistance to repression in neo-colonial Kenya

Ngugi, Wa Thiong'o

World Literature

Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya

Kamau Brathwaite was born in Barbados in 1930. He is a poet, novelist, historian, critic, editor (Savacou) and bibliographer. He taught for many years at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, but now teaches at New York University. His poetry collections include "Other Exiles, The Arrivants (Rights of Passage, Masks, Islands), Mother Poem, Sun Poem, X-Self, Black & Blues", and "Middle Passages".

History of the voice: The development of nation language in Anglophone Caribbean poetry

Brathwaite, Kamau

Myal

Jamaican-born novelist and sociologist Erna Brodber describes Myal as "an exploration of the links between the way of life forged by the people of two points of the black diaspora the Afro-Americans and the Afro-Jamaicans." Operating on many literary levels thematically, linguistically, stylistically it is the story of women's cultural and spiritual struggle in colonial Jamaica. The novel opens at the beginning of the 20th century with a community gathering to heal the mysterious illness of a young woman, Ella, who has returned to Jamaica after an unsuccessful marriage abroad. The Afro-Jamaican religion myal, which asserts that good has the power to conquer all, is invoked to heal Ella, who has been left "zombified" and devoid of any black soul. Ella, who is light skinned enough to pass for white, has suffered a breakdown after her white American husband produced a black-face minstrel show based on the stories of her village and childhood. This cultural appropriation is one of a series Ella encountered in her life, and parallels the ongoing theft of the labor and culture of colonized peoples for imperial gain and pleasure. The novel's rich, vivid language and vital characters earned it the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Canada and the Caribbean. The novel links nicely with Brodber's coming-of-age story, Jane & Louisa Will Soon Come Home, also from Waveland Press, for its similar images, themes, and specific Jamaican cultural references to colonialism, religion, slavery, gender, and identity. Both novels are Brodber's way of telling stories outside of published history to point out the whitewashing and distortion of black history through religion and colonialism. Titles of related interest from Waveland Press: Brodber, Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home (ISBN 9781478622840); Hodge, Crick Crack, Monkey (ISBN 9781478606598); Lovelace, The Wine of Astonishment (ISBN 9781478611271); and Warner-Vieyra, Juletane (ISBN 9781478611783).

Brodber, Erna

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