Description

My Political Journey is P.J. Patterson's account of his time as an active and successful participant in the political and social development of Jamaica and the Caribbean, from the mid-1950s well into the early 2000s. He was widely regarded as a master political strategist and universally acknowledged as an astute negotiator.

Jamaica is an enigma: its global impact belies its population and geographical size. This story of one of its most exceptional citizens is an enlightening revelation of the island's political and cultural narrative. Patterson was born in 1935, the dawn of a new era in the development of Jamaica and the Caribbean. A previously disenfranchised population would gain a voice through universal adult suffrage and have a say in the direction of the nation's affairs. Within a few decades, an independent nation would emerge to make a significant impact on the global landscape. Patterson is both a product of this new Jamaica and one of its architects, and his is a compelling and intimate account of a dramatic era for the young nation.

P.J. Patterson led his country with distinction, implementing policies and programmes to foster social renewal and the development of a modern Jamaica that was prepared to face the challenges of the new millennium. Throughout his career in the People's National Party, he gained international respect through the pivotal roles he played in the advancement of the causes of the developing countries of the world. My Political Journey recounts his performance at the national, regional and global levels and is a fascinating record of a nation's postcolonial growth.

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P.J. Patterson, ON, OCC, PC, QC, now retired, was Jamaica's sixth and longest-serving prime minister from 1992 to 2006. In addition to his lifelong political service, he has had an equally distinguished legal career and is the recipient of numerous academic and international honours. On his retirement from politics, he founded Heiconsults, an international consulting firm, and has remained active in public life in the national, regional and international arenas.

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This book is the first comprehensive treatment of gender in the works of Samuel Selvon and George Lamming, two important West Indian writers who are rarely analysed together. It demystifies nationalist discourses and discourses of creolization showing that these have masked gender inequalities and complexities in West Indian society, and that the maskings are in turn part of a larger masking of neocolonial threads within nationalism. Forbes situates the fictions of Selvon and Lamming within the wider field of West Indian social thought and practice, and she demonstrates that gender is foundational within West Indian revolutionary action - a fact consistently ignored in mainstream discourses, including feminist ones. These two West Indians' treatments of gender belong to a revolutionary poetics of liberation in West Indian culture but are deeply compromised by the nationalist engagements and the nationalist context of the 1950s-1970s. The unorthodox character of West Indian gender, as seen in Selvon's and Lamming's treatment of it, anticipates and problematizes the concepts of ""postmodernity"" and ""postmodernism"", which have entered West Indian discourse via postcolonial discourse and the work of migration on West Indian theory and criticism. The book concludes by looking towards these discourses that are now playing major roles in West Indian thought. Forbes links West Indian nationalism and the fictions of Selvon and Lamming into a dialogue with the concepts of diasproa, postmodernity and postmodernism, raising the issue of how the latter have impacted on the representation and formation of West Indian gender identities. She then considers the implications of these discourses for West Indian writing, West Indian theory and, above all, West Indian survival and identity in a postmodern, essentially neocolonized world.

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First published in 1961, Jamaica Talk is a thorough study of the English spoken in Jamaica and, although intended for the general educated reader rather than the linguistic specialist, has a foundation of sound scholarship, which makes it an authoritative classic. The late Professor Cassidy was born and reared in Jamaica and collected most of the material for his book when he was attached to the University College of the West Indies as Fulbright research fellow. There are chapters on the composition of ""Jamaica talk"", on pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. The book is an invaluable reference in all institutions that have language departments, and as a handbook for Jamaicans and for interested visitors to the island.

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The definition and evolution of the categories of race and ethnicity have long been topics of debate among historians and scholars of social anthropology. This book examines how the meanings and values of race and ethnicity have been constructed historically and how they are represented symbolically, with particular focus on the Caribbean. Alleyne examines the historical development of these categories in Europe, in Asia and in Africa and then proceeds to an in-depth analysis of the Caribbean, with a focus on Puerto Rico, Martinique and Jamaica as three different modalities of race and ethnicity and three different colonial systems. Through a unique approach grounded in linguistic, ethnographic and historic analysis, Alleyne draws on a wide array of evidence and ultimately opposes the widely held notion that racial antagonism against black people is the consequence of New World slavery in the period following the ""discovery"" of the Americas in the late fifteenth century. Of particular interest to the academic audience in the fields of history, linguistics, African American and ethnic studies, sociology, and anthropology, this book also appeals to general readers interested in issues of race, ethnicity and the historical experience of African and African-descended peoples.