Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home
Author: Erna Brodber
Publisher:
Published: 2014-07
Total Pages: 147
ISBN-13: 9781478622840
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Myal
Author: Erna Brodber
Publisher: Waveland Press
Published: 2014-08-08
Total Pages: 119
ISBN-13: 1478626828
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJamaican-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.
Wildthorn
Author: Jane Eagland
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2010-09-06
Total Pages: 357
ISBN-13: 0547505051
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThey strip her naked, of everythingundo her whalebone corset, hook by hook. Locked away in Wildthorn Halla madhousethey take her identity. She is now called Lucy Childs. She has no one; she has nothing. But, she is still seventeenstill Louisa Cosgrove, isn't she? Who has done this unthinkable deed? Louisa must free herself, in more ways than one, and muster up the courage to be her true self, all the while solving her own twisted mystery and falling into an unconventional love . . .Originally published in the UK, this well-paced, provocative romance pushes on boundariesboth literal and figurativeand, do beware: it will bind you, too.
American Phoenix
Author: Jane Hampton Cook
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2013-05-06
Total Pages: 569
ISBN-13: 1595555420
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJohn Quincy and Louisa Adams’s unexpected journey that changed everything. American Phoenix is the sweeping, riveting tale of a grand historic adventure across forbidding oceans and frozen tundra—from the bustling ports and towering birches of Boston to the remote reaches of pre-Soviet Russia, from an exile in arctic St. Petersburg to resurrection and reunion among the gardens of Paris. Upon these varied landscapes this Adams and his Eve must find a way to transform their banishment into America’s salvation. Author, historian, and national media commentator Jane Hampton Cook breathes life into once-obscure history, weaving a meticulously researched biographical tapestry that reads like a gripping novel. With the arc and intrigue of Shakespearean drama in a Jane Austen era, American Phoenix is a timely yet timeless addition to the recent renaissance of works on the founding Adams family, from patriarchs John and Abigail to the second-generation of John Quincy and Louisa and beyond. Cook has crafted not only a riveting narrative but also an easy-to-understand history filled with fly-on-the-wall vignettes from 1812 and its hardscrabble, freedom-hungry people. While unveiling vivid portrayals of each character—a colorful assortment of heroes and villains, patriots and pirates, rogues and rabble-rousers—she paints equally fresh, intimate portraits of both John Quincy and Louisa Adams. Cook artfully reveals John Quincy’s devastation after losing the job of his dreams, battle for America’s need to thrive economically, and sojourn to secure his homeland’s survival as a sovereign nation. She reserves her most detailed brushstrokes for the inner struggles of Louisa, using this quietly inspirational woman’s own words to amplify her fears, faith, and fortitude along a deeply personal, often heart-rending journey. Cook’s close-up perspective shows how this American couple’s Russian destination changed US destiny.
Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home
Author: Erna Brodber
Publisher: Waveland Press
Published: 2014-07-22
Total Pages: 147
ISBN-13: 1478649186
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJamaican-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.
Jane of Lantern Hill
Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
Publisher:
Published: 2020-03-16
Total Pages: 180
ISBN-13: 1678019828
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJane of Lantern HillLucy Maud Montgomery Jane of Lantern Hill is a novel by Canadian author L. M. Montgomery. The book was adapted into a 1990 telefilm, Lantern Hill, by Sullivan Films, the producer of the highly popular Anne of Green Gables television miniseries and the television series Road to Avonlea.Montgomery began formulating an idea on May 11, 1936, began writing on August 21, and wrote the last chapter on February 3, 1937. She finished typing up the manuscript on February 25, as she could not hire a typist to do it for her. This novel was dedicated to "JL", her companion cat.The novel was written at Montgomery's house, "Journey's End"; the environment influenced Montgomery's writing to create a
Juletane
Author: Myriam Warner-Vieyra
Publisher: Waveland Press
Published: 2014-05-01
Total Pages: 109
ISBN-13: 1478622660
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this powerful and moving novel, Myriam Warner-Vieyra sensitively portrays the complexities of cross-cultural relationships and, in particular, the female predicament. When Helene, a self-reliant career woman, is packing her belongings for a move and imminent marriage for which she is reluctant, she unearths a faded old book. It is the diary of young Juletane, a confused, sheltered West Indian woman struggling to find herself. Written over three weeks, it records her short life: childhood in France, marriage to an African student, and an eager return with him to Africa, the land of her ancestors. It is Juletane’s diary that brings her and Helene together. Juletane does not fit into her husband’s traditional African family, especially the Muslim cultural demands of polygamy. Full of gentle ironies, Juletane is a story about alienation, madness, shattered dreams: the disillusioned West Indian outsider’s disenchantment with Africa. Myriam Warner-Vieyra looks at women’s lives, at the paths they have taken, at the possibilities open to women in the Caribbean, in Africa, in life. She forces readers, through the double narrative of Juletane and Helene, to reexamine easy assumptions, to look again at safe generalizations. Includes valuable Introduction 2014 by the translator.
Crick Crack, Monkey
Author: Merle Hodge
Publisher: Heinemann
Published: 2000
Total Pages: 148
ISBN-13: 9780435989514
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTee is suspended between the warmth, spontaneity and exuberance of Tantie's household and the formality and pretension of Aunt Beatrice's world, which Tee is obliged to accept when she wins a scholarship. Her initiation into the negro middle class is an uneasy one.
Erna Brodber and Velma Pollard
Author: Violet Harrington Bryan
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Published: 2021-11-15
Total Pages: 160
ISBN-13: 1496836243
DOWNLOAD EBOOKErna Brodber and Velma Pollard, two sister-writers born and raised in Jamaica, re-create imagined and lived homelands in their literature by commemorating the history, culture, and religion of the Caribbean. Velma Pollard was born in St. Catherine, Jamaica. By the time she was three, her parents had moved to Woodside, St. Mary, in northeast Jamaica, where her sister, Erna, was born. Even though they both travel widely and often, the sisters both still live in Jamaica. The sisters write about their homeland as a series of memories and stories in their many works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. They center on their home village of Woodside in St. Mary Parish, Jamaica, occasionally moving the settings of their fiction and poetry to other regions of Jamaica and various Caribbean islands, as well as other parts of the diaspora in the United States, Canada, and England. The role of women in the patriarchal society of Jamaica and much of the Caribbean is also a subject of the sisters’ writing. Growing up in what Brodber calls the kumbla, the protective but restrictive environment of many women in the Anglo-Caribbean, is an important theme in their fiction. In her fiction, Pollard discusses the gender gaps in employment and the demands of marriage and the special contributions of women to family and community. Many scholars have also explored the significance of spirit in Brodber’s work, including the topics of “spirit theft,” “spirit possession,” and spirits existing through time, from Africa to the present. Brodber’s narratives also show communication between the living and the dead, from Jane and Louisa (1980) to Nothing’s Mat (2014). Yet, few scholars have examined Brodber’s work on par with her sister’s writing. Drawing upon interviews with the authors, this is the first book to give Brodber and Pollard their due and study the sisters’ important contributions.
The Likely Resolutions of Oliver Clock
Author: Jane Riley
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2020-02
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781542008143
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhen a terrible tragedy takes Marie out of Oliver's life but leaves him with her private journal, he discovers too late that she secretly loved him back. Faced now with an empty love life, a family funeral business in trouble, a fast-approaching fortieth birthday and a notebook of resolutions he's never achieved, Oliver resolves to open himself up to love - and all the mess that comes along with it.
