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The book offers description and assessment of the Jamaican language situation. It is aimed at providing basic information for interested laypersons as well as students of language and also at counteracting traditional social and linguistic prejudices, which are seen as affecting the usual assessments of the situation. Proficiency is essential for Jamaicans in view of its important role both within the island and internationally, but mastery of Standard English often falls short of the ideal. Some reasons for this failure are explored in the book. Its simple style is designed to enhance its appeal to the average reader. Topics specifically discussed include the functions of English and Creole (Patois) in the society and attitudes to these varieties, the origins, development and present state of English in Jamaica, the role of language in education and various proposals for taking Creole into account in classroom teaching. Although the main focus is on the Jamaican situation, this is also set within the framework of English worldwide and of developments outside of Jamaica involving the use of Creole.

Paulette A. Ramsay and Anne-Mari­a Bankay have made a truly invaluable contribution by translating this novel -making it available to English-speaking audiences in the Caribbean and beyond. Chiriboga deserves to be read more widely. An important Afro-Latin American novelist, she addresses difficult and even controversial issues within a framework that poignantly illuminates how the dynamics of race, class, gender and sexuality affect black women's lives. - Faye V. Harrison, Director of the African American Studies Program, Professor of African American Studies & Anthropology

The Story of the Telegraph in Jamaica discusses the scientific principles governing telegraphy. And so the reader is taken through the Morse code, the Telex machine, Intelsat, various technical improvements such as those of Frederick Creed, including the Creed High Speed Automatic Printing Telegraphy System (from which the Telex machine emerged). The nineteenth century was remarkable for the growth of new technologies which were destined to have, in some cases, a revolutionary impact on the quantity of social and economic life. This book concentrates on one of the inventions telegraphy which was significant for local and international communication. The telegraphy and the cable, airmail and surface mail gave the post office a central role in the life of the villages scattered over the Jamaican countryside. The history of the telegraph is in part the history of the post office in Jamaica. The telegraph was an essential instrument. Indeed, not until 2004 was the news of the death of the telegraph announced by Cable and Wireless. Up to then it had served with an economy of words and in its distinct peach coloured envelope as the bearer of good news and bad. The people of Jamaica took to the telegram all the more so because telegraph assisted the illiterate or barely literate to compose their thoughts and record then in the format required. On the international front, Jamaica was first lined to the international telegraphic system by submarine cable through Cuba. The book outlines how the system spread into the rest of the Caribbean and to Latin America. Indeed, the books preface not only points to the potential loss to the historical record if the story of the telegraph was not written, but to the demand for this kind of data from students of social history and the history of science and technology.

This brief quick-paced novel is very readable as we follow Dalphus Congozas mixed fortunes from birth in north-western Jamaica through his experiences in Cuba and his return to the community of his birth in rural Jamaica. Although the story has several clearly defined characters, the plot centres on the life and career of a rural Jamaican, Dalphus. His struggles against the circumstances of his birth, and his ambition and partly successful efforts to overcome them constitute the main thrust of the novel. Although I material/economic terms, Dalphus was a success, the scars of his childhood remain to haunt him in at least two ways, first his ambition is to throw off the scars and the negative features of that childhood, and to succeed in spite of them. Second, and in contradiction, some of the values that he disdains, and which contributed to the dysfunctionality of his family become part of his own value system.

Probably the two main concepts around which studies of the historical Caribbean have been organized are nationalism and the plantation. The former stresses an ongoing struggle for emergence on the part of a people for self-government, identity and empowerment. The latter emphasises the plantation as the crucible out of which Caribbean societies have been conditioned and the legacy of slavery, sugar and colonialism. This study accepts these two principal organising concepts but utilises them against the main concerns that are current: the problems of democratisation, the effectiveness of civil society, the constraints and opportunities of small size, the appropriate role of the state, and the search by Caribbean people for a better life or, at least, another life abroad.

The abolition of the slave trade was significant in that it was the first clear declaration by a major imperial power of the illegality and the barbarism of a traffic in human beings which had previously been widely supported in the highest circles of European society. But, diplomatically, it also allowed Britain to use these achievements as bludgeons against its rivals and to clothe the imperialism of Pax Britannica in moral dress. For the slaves, the abolition of the slave trade was at once a disappointment and a harbinger of the total emancipation which was to come... objectively... despite its ambiguities, the abolition of the slave trade was the beginning of the end for the slave institution in the Anglophone Caribbean. Within three decades, slavery became insupportable, and emancipation became real.-Excerpted from "Introduction to the 2nd edn"

How much do you know about your ancestors? Not the general national ones, but your own personal family ones? How did you come to have your surname? What is its historical origin? Researching Your Jamaican Family is about you, about discovering more about yourself and your family. The more you can find out about yourself, the deeper you will be able to ?root? yourself. This book will guide you in drawing up a family tree, in researching your family history and in sharing the information with other family members. The language is conversational and straightforward, and makes for easy reading. This makes the book suitable for children 10 years old and over, as well as for adults.

How is identity claimed, contested and sustained? This book looks at retentions, reconstructions and reverberations of identity in a colonial Caribbean setting. It is uncomfortable and impressionistic ethnography of life on the island of Montserrat leading up to and including the present day volcanic eruptions. It explores Montserrats existing colonial identity and emerging postcolonial identity drawing upon examples from local poets. Calypsonians and historians; controversial development and trade union struggles; and the impact of tourism and colonialism on the island Black Irish identity claims and the celebration and/or commemoration of St Patricks Day in particular. This book will appeal to Anthropologists, Sociologists, and Cultural Studies and Caribbean Studies scholars, as well as those involved in and concerned for the reconstruction of Montserrat the place and Monsrat the people.

... provides a new and fascinating account of the arrival and settlement of this ethnic group in the Caribbean. This beautifully illustrated work is a general guide to East Indian history and culture for young Indo-Caribbean readers and for all Caribbean peoples. The book gives reasons for emigration from India and describes life on the estates and in the early villages, the education of the East Indians and the transition from immigrants to permanent residents. An overview of migration, indentureship and settlement is given but the focus is on three former British territories ? Trinidad, Guyana and Jamaica.