Ten of the most fascinating tales of the island's past are here retold by one of her foremost historians. Three Fingered Jack, the Terror of Jmaica, the Sinister Annee Palmer of Rose Hall estate, Lewis Galdy, the Man who was buried twice, the women pirates, Anne Bonney and Mary Read, each in his or her own way is a memorable personality, with a story well worth telling.
A very striking and curious story, founded on fact, of the West Indies of the early nineteenth century. Robert Rutherford is sent to the Islands to learn the planter’s business from the bottom. He becomes an overseer at Rosehall, the property of a young widow, Mrs Palmer, whose three husbands have all died in curious circumstances. She takes a violent fancy to Rutherford, who is also embarrassed by the attentions of his half-caste housekeeper, Millicent. His housekeeper is urging him, with some success, to fall in with West Indian habits, when Mrs Palmer arrives. Millicent defies her and threatens her with the powers of Takoo, an Obeah man. Mrs Palmer, herself skilled in Obeah magic, puts a spell on the girl, which Takoo’s rites, shattered by the white woman’s stronger magic, are powerless to remove. “de Lisser utilizes the conventions of a romantic entanglement to investigate and debate the wider socio-political issues within the novel that relate to colonialism, Jamaican identity and culture... The White Witch of Rosehall is a delightful read, written by an author who sought not only to entertain, but also to educate.”—Donna-Marie Tuck, Society for Caribbean Studies Newsletter
For the first time the Dutch-speaking regions of the Caribbean and Suriname are brought into fruitful dialogue with another major American literature, that of the anglophone Caribbean. The results are as stimulating as they are unexpected. The editors have coordinated the work of a distinguished international team of specialists. Read separately or as a set of three volumes, the History of Literature in the Caribbean is designed to serve as the primary reference book in this area. The reader can follow the comparative evolution of a literary genre or plot the development of a set of historical problems under the appropriate heading for the English- or Dutch-speaking region. An extensive index to names and dates of authors and significant historical figures completes the volume. The subeditors bring to their respective specialty areas a wealth of Caribbeanist experience. Vera M. Kutzinski is Professor of English, American, and Afro-American Literature at Yale University. Her book Sugar's Secrets: Race and The Erotics of Cuban Nationalism, 1993, treated a crucial subject in the romance of the Caribbean nation. Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger has been very active in Latin American and Caribbean literary criticism for two decades, first at the Free University in Berlin and later at the University of Maryland. The editor of A History of Literature in the Caribbean, A. James Arnold, is Professor of French at the University of Virginia, where he founded the New World Studies graduate program. Over the past twenty years he has been a pioneer in the historical study of the Négritude movement and its successors in the francophone Caribbean.
Anya's World Adventures Book Series, takes young readers on a tour of the world through the eyes of a child. With the help of Anya's magic globe, readers will experience the joys of travel and adventure. The first stop in the series is Jamaica. Join Anya as she learns about the food, language and culture of this beautiful country.
Diana Cooper-Clark has written a book that uncovers a ‘hidden’ history in the Holocaust narrative. The stories of seventeen Holocaust survivors who escaped to Jamaica and who are among the last eyewitnesses to the Shoah are inspiring. As well, she reveals the involvement of Jamaican Jews with the refugees and the Holocaust, and the virtually unknown story of the killing of Caribbean Jews in Nazi concentration camps. In addition, Dreams of Re-Creation in Jamaica has dozens of never before published photographs shared by the Jewish refugees. This book also sheds light on the Sephardim and their marginalization in the history of Hitler’s extermination policies. These compelling tales bring together World War II, Jewish refugees and Jamaican Jews, stories that have previously slipped through the cracks of history. As a child of six years old in Jamaica, Cooper-Clark read a book about the Nazi, Karl Eichmann, thus changing her life. She swore to spend the rest of her life bearing witness to the Holocaust. For everyone inspired by survival stories, and the triumph of life over death for both individuals and communities, this book is a must-read.
11 April 1982: a smell is coming down John Golding Road right alongside the boy-child, something attached to him, like a spirit but not quite. Ma Taffy is growing worried. She knows that something is going to happen. Something terrible is going to pour out into the world. But if she can hold it off for just a little bit longer, she will. So she asks a question that surprises herself even as she asks it, "Kaia, I ever tell you bout the flying preacherman?" Set in the backlands of Jamaica, Augustown is a magical and haunting novel of one woman’s struggle to rise above the brutal vicissitudes of history, race, class, collective memory, violence, and myth.