Will Real Jamaican Men Stand Up?

Editor's Note: The beating of a gay student in Jamaica, which was videotaped and posted online, has embroiled the island in discussions about Jamaican masculinity, homophobia, and gender roles. These discussions are long overdue. Yet instead of encouraging diverse points of view, the mainstream newspapers in Jamaica have decided to ignore some of the core issues.

Here is a letter by Yvonne McCalla-Sobers that was rejected. 

Dear Editor:

Straight people should be fighting to end homophobia because of the damage done by beliefs about how a “real man” is expected to behave.

For example, a school youth invites homophobic bullying if he is polite and considerate, respects his parents, attends to his lessons, gets good grades, dresses neatly, shows an interest in arts and culture, and is still a virgin in Grade 8 let alone 10. In particular, he risks being called a sissy if he shows emotion – he is expected to “man up” even under trauma. 

So a savvy youth – straight or gay – will find ways to avoid the bullying. He will be crude and disrespectful, under-perform at school, support the violent and abusive elements in our culture, and sleep with (or pretend to sleep with) a growing list of females. Naturally he shows no emotion; he mostly deals with stress by smoking a ganja spliff or engaging in high-risk behavior such as unsafe sex or fast driving. To protect his macho reputation, he develops only superficial relationships with males. 

For the youth who is in conflict with his same-sex inclination, the disguise is complete when he joins in bullying those alleged to be gay. 

The adult male risks being considered gay if he values books apart from those needed for his faith or his job, and if he speaks as if he is widely read and able to think critically. He can be labelled gay if he is nurturing and considerate (especially to women), seems sexually responsible, and has non-sexual friendships with women. He will know better than to show physical affection to his son, or to have male bonding activities (apart from sports) with male friends or relatives. Too often, he affirms his macho identity in domestic violence, serial infidelity, unplanned fatherhood and other anti-social behaviour. No matter what, the behaviour of the “real man” must be the antithesis of all that is feminine. 

The closeted gay male can divert attention from his sexual orientation by adopting cultural norms for the way a “‘real man” behaves. A straight woman trapped in a marriage with a closeted gay male can expect mixed messages and hidden resentment from someone in denial or unable to disclose his true identity. Sex will be sporadic if at all, and absence of emotional connection can make the wife mentally or physically ill. If the male meets his sexual needs on the “down low”, the wife risks contracting HIV.

The society is in trouble when being intelligent, law-abiding, and able to show appropriate emotion is seen as gay, and where gay men are forced to live a lie for the sake of survival. The distorted image of the “real man” may well be contributing to rising violence against women, increasing alienation of young males from academic pursuits, increasing marital failure, rising use of illegal drugs, and increasing violent death or incarceration of males. The recent mob violence toward a gay man on the UTech campus could well be related to the student mob’s perception of what it means to be a “real man”.

Straight people need to begin to see that their self-interest requires an end to the distortion of masculinity that prevails in a homophobic society. 

Yours truly,
Yvonne McCalla Sobers

About Yvonne McCalla-Sobers

Yvonne McCalla Sobers is a Jamaican author. Her most recent book is Lifelines: The Black Book of Proverbs, published by Random House with a foreword by the Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

She has also written a cookbook - Delicious Jamaica! Vegetarian Cuisine, published by Book Publishing Company in 1996.

She is a former educator and management consultant. 

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Blog Disclosure Policy

Geoffrey Philp’s Blog Spot receives a percentage of the purchase price on anything you buy through links to Amazon, Shambala Books, Hay House, or any of the Google ads or Google Custom Search.


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Disclaimer of Endorsement

The documents posted on this Web site may contain hypertext links or pointers to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. These links and pointers are provided for visitors' convenience. I do not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of any linked information. Further, the inclusion of links or pointers to other Web sites or agencies is not intended to assign importance to those sites and the information contained therein, nor is it intended to endorse, recommend, or favor any views expressed, or commercial products or services offered on these outside sites, or the organizations sponsoring the sites, by trade name, trademark, manufacture, or otherwise.

Reference in this Web site to any specific commercial products, processes, or services, or the use of any trade, firm or corporation name is for the information and convenience of the site's visitors, and does not constitute endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by this blog.

Jamaican Gentlemen @ The Good Men Project

For a revolutionary generation of young Jamaican men, the strong and available role models looked like the enemy.

I count myself among the fortunate to have known a few people who have been my Morning Stars or heroes: Dennis Scott, friend and mentor; Melvyn Smith, family friend and supervisor, and James Carnegie, teacher and scholar. These three men personified what it meant to be, as Mr. Carnegie often reminded me at Jamaica College, a “Jamaican gentleman.” That phrase stuck with me. As someone who came of age in post-Independence Jamaica, I grew up in revolutionary times in which the idea of resistance, especially to British colonialism, became my raison d’être.

Read more at http://goodmenproject.com/mentoring-and-volunteering/the-good-life-jamaican-gentlemen/#TdEG6Ctfl64PeI8K.99 


Blog Disclosure Policy

Geoffrey Philp’s Blog Spot receives a percentage of the purchase price on anything you buy through links to Amazon, Shambala Books, Hay House, or any of the Google ads or Google Custom Search.


***

Disclaimer of Endorsement

The documents posted on this Web site may contain hypertext links or pointers to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. These links and pointers are provided for visitors' convenience. I do not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of any linked information. Further, the inclusion of links or pointers to other Web sites or agencies is not intended to assign importance to those sites and the information contained therein, nor is it intended to endorse, recommend, or favor any views expressed, or commercial products or services offered on these outside sites, or the organizations sponsoring the sites, by trade name, trademark, manufacture, or otherwise.

Reference in this Web site to any specific commercial products, processes, or services, or the use of any trade, firm or corporation name is for the information and convenience of the site's visitors, and does not constitute endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by this blog.

Call for Papers: Special Issue of the Journal of West Indian Literature

Michael A. Bucknor (University of the West Indies-Mona) and Ian Bethell-Bennett (College of the Bahamas) extend an invitation to submit articles for a special issue of the Journal of West Indian Literature for publication in April 2012. The issue will focus on “Masculinities in Caribbean Literature and Culture.”  The date for submitting articles is October 31, 2011, but the co-editors encourage potential contributors to send work ahead of the deadline.

Description: In spite of the growing significance of issues of masculinities in gender and other interdisciplinary studies, publications on the role of masculinities in Caribbean culture have been modest in literary and cultural studies. Curdella Forbes points out that it was not until the appearance of works “such as Belinda Edmondson’s Making Men (1999)… that major discussions of the subject appeared” in Caribbean literary criticism (From Nation to Diaspora 2).  In Anglophone Caribbean cultural studies, it is primarily music that has attracted gendered analyses that focus on masculinities. While there have been some discussions linking masculinities and sexualities, masculinities and education, and masculinities and socialization, and there have been inter-disciplinary collections of essays that engage masculinities, the range of artistic modes that contribute to masculinities discourse is still to be explored.

This Special Issue of the Journal of West Indian Literature invites multiple readings of gender that underscore the role of masculinities in a range of literary and cultural expressions in the Caribbean.  Against the background of studies of the social construction, performance, interrogation and political posturing of hegemonic masculinities, we ask for explorations of some leading questions: Have the depictions of male characters changed over the last five decades or so from Naipaul, Lamming, and Lovelace to such contemporary writers as Junot Díaz, Kei Miller, Anton Nimblett, and what ideological agendas have been served by these depictions? Is there a relationship between migration/diaspora and revised Caribbean masculinities?  Of what significance is the geo-political world of the family, the community, work and leisure to the construction of Caribbean masculinities? To what extent has the role of the Caribbean male been altered by modernity and postmodernity, late-capitalism, late-postcolonialism, globalisation or neo-liberalism? These and similar questions are issues this JWIL publication endeavours to highlight.

Although JWIL is a literary journal, the editors encourage submissions from all areas of cultural production: literature, film, music, visual arts, theatre (including forms of popular culture) and any field of study that examines masculinities in Caribbean cultural and artistic expression.  They also strongly encourage the submission of comparative work between the Anglophone and other linguistic groups of the Caribbean or between different modes of cultural production.

The editors invite papers of 20 to 25 double-spaced typed pages in English and formatted to the MLA style guide. A copy of each paper should be sent by October 31, 2011, by e-mail, to one of the co-editors:

Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett (School of English Studies, College of the Bahamas, Oakes Field, P. O. Box N 4912, Nassau, The Bahamas) at bethellbennett@gmail.com

Dr. Michael A. Bucknor (Department of Literatures in English, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Kingston 7, Jamaica) at michael.bucknor@uwimona.edu.jm

Painting from Ebony G. Patterson’s series “Faces from the Dancehall”

Via http://repeatingislands.com/2011/09/20/call-for-papers-special-issue-of-the-journal-of-west-indian-literature/

Dub Wise @ University of Miami

Some welcome words of praise from my alma mater.

The University of Miami Magazine, Spring 2011

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Book Review: "Dub Wise: A Gift from Maker to Reader" by Mary Hanna

Geoffrey Philp is a fine poet and a friend of poets. His latest collection of poems is lauded by Olive Senior, Mervyn Morris, and Kamau Braithwaite on the back cover of the text. Olive Senior is attracted to Philp’s humour. She says:  “Without losing the joy of play or the play of the rhythms, Dub Wise celebrates the burdens and delights of love, friendships and the responsibility of being at home in the world.” Mervyn Morris admires Philp’s scope and the complexity of his heritage. Morris says:  “Epiphanies in the US and the Caribbean, sensuous love poems to his Colombian wife, poems about family, hurricanes, injustice and other challenges; poems in dialogue with myth, literature, the Bible , music – these are some of the many graceful treasures in this book.” Kamau Brathwaite remarks on Philp’s clear and accomplished voice and its “new strong sense of place…family & history.” He sees “a continuing unfolding of a ‘Jamaican Tradition’” and calls the names of all our major poets in the influences he sees in Philp’s work. It is with delight that one opens this collection and partakes of the offerings there.

           

Here is a simple, lovely poem by Philp. It is called “Rest Poem” and appears in the second section (“Dub Wise”) of the collection:

My sister drags her shadow across

the back of Miami Avenue, her head

brewed in wood smoke, fingers

knotted around the smell of money.

Rest, little sister.

Leave the money in the till, uncounted,

rumpled beds, unmade,

dust in the corners, unswept.

Rest, little sister.

Rest, your head on the cushion of my shoulder,

your arms on the pillow of my chest,

your feet in the cradle of my lap.

Rest, little sister, rest.

I have quoted this poem in full so the precious intensity of Philp’s work can be appreciated, the world of caring and loveliness he can build into a simple poem. It comes as a gift from its maker to the reader, and is symptomatic of this entire collection.

Dub Wise is made up of roughly 70 poems divided into four sections:  “Poems for the Innocent”, “Dub Wise”, “Beyond Mountain View”, and “Mysteries”. These sections address the core concerns of relationships, blessings, and epiphanies.

We hear echoes of the voices of Morris and Dawes, McNeill, Baugh, Mikey Smith and Garvey, Joan ‘Binta’ Breeze and Derek Walcott. Yet Philp has his own distinct voice, as shown in the above quoted poem.

The influence of Walcott can be seen in “Beyond Mountain View”. Here, Philp draws pictures of the landscape that lies along the Palisadoes and harbor View.  He starts with locating the poem in space:

As we descend Mountain View Avenue,

past houses that lie prone

beneath Wareika, scarred by hurricanes

and bulldozers, past walls

smeared with graffiti that still divide the city,

I roll up my window from the stench

of the sea at low tide that creeps

into storefronts and rum bars,

into the hair of sisters in floral

prints, shirts of brothers

with spliffs tucked behind their ears,

up the legs of children rolling

spokeless bicycle rims down a lane…

(“Beyond Mountain View”)

Philp writes with a love of place and purpose, his rhythms always flawlessly attuned to the subject matter of the poem. He builds humour out of unlikely subjects, as for example in “Warner Woman:  Version”, a poem dedicated to Edward Baugh and carrying something of Baugh’s tone in its measured phrases:

“Woe to you, for you have stoned and exiled

my prophets.  Woe to you, for you have defrauded

the homeless and the poor.”  Then she ripped

her dress in two, spat on the asphalt three times,

and ran like a horse without its rider,

back up to Long Mountain, up into the darkness

gathering around the tops of trees

with the smell of rain around their roots.

Philp intertwines his fresh vision with myths of other cultures with remarkable results. Here he draws on the Erzulie myth to write a beautiful paean to the Creole:

But then, the scabs became scars became scales,

her hair grew wild and untamed,

and a garden of yellows, blues, and reds sprouted

on her arms, legs, and back –

her ears and lips studded with gold –

and almost overnight she changed into something

she had always resembled in her own dreams,

in the mirror of her mother –

something beautiful and fearsome.

(“Erzulie’s Daughter”)

In the closing section called “Mysteries”, Philp retells the biblical stories of transformation in a moving sequence. “Isaac’s Sacrifice” is the story of Abraham preparing for the sacrifice of his son, but told from Isaac’s point of view. It is a loving and humorous rendition of terror:  “Isaac probably held Abraham’s trembling/hand against his cheek, and forgave, /yet he couldn’t help but think, /”What would have happened/if the old goat hadn’t had been so lost?”

Philp’s collection is a pleasure to read and remember. The master poets have praised it rightfully and respectfully.

Geoffrey Philp is the author of nine books of poetry and fiction. He teaches English and creative writing at Miami Dade College where he is the chairperson of the College Prep Department. His poems and stories have been published in prestigious journals and anthologies.

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Hanna, Mary. "Dub Wise: A Gift from Maker to Reader." The Sunday Observer 12 December 2010: 3.

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Related articles

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• Interview on BBC: THE POETRY OF REGGAE - DUB WISE (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)
• Elegguas: New Poetry Book by Kamau Brathwaite (repeatingislands.com)
• White Egrets: A Review (repeatingislands.com)
• Book Review: The Fullness of Everything by Patricia Powell (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)
• New CD: Hail to Jamaica by Malachi Smith (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)
• Book Review: Dub Wise @ Morphological Confetti (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)
• 15 Miami Poets@ The International Literary Quarterly: Geoffrey Philp (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)

Book Review: Dub Wise @ Morphological Confetti

Geoffrey Philp has woven together everything that represents his heart and his perception of the world dealing with spirituality, existence, love, and family. Yes, acrostically, this spells “SELF.” I threw that in just to be clever, but he also explores identity in the poem,“Red.” 

For more, please follow this link: http://civileyes.blogspot.com/2010/12/geoffrey-philp-dub-wise.html

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Book Reviews: Geoffrey Philp, Kei Miller, and Christian Campbell

 Dub Wise by Geoffrey Philp (Peepal Tree Press Ltd, 2010, 72 pp).

Of the 42 poems in Dubwise, all of which I found enjoyable for various reasons, the one I couldn't resist poking a pen at up close was "Summer Storm." It begins with a portentous, two-line condition:

After thunderstorms have cleared the city,

after the homeless have abandoned their cardboard palaces,

 Whether it's a condition of abandonment or erasure, or a fresh start, what appears next is a fog, which acts in a manner worthy of pause:

For more, please follow this link:  The Signifyin' Woman (Charmaine Valere).

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If you liked this post, please vote for my blog in the Jamaica Blog Awards:

http://jamaicablogawards.com/geoffrey-philip/

Last hour to Vote!

Notes on Dub Wise

A few weeks ago in a conversation with Malachi Smith, he made a comment about Dub Wise that has stuck with me. He said that unlike my previous collections, I have moved away from Walcott toward Brathwaite. He asked me why.  I gave him a short answer which needs expansion.

If as Malachi contends I have moved more toward Brathwaite, I think that by living in Miami, I have become much more aware of what Charles Pollard in New World Modernisms (who confirmed many of my readings of these two poets) describes as Brathwaite’s attempts  “to address the historical neglect of the Afro-Caribbean cultural connection” (34).

But I also think I have been trying to reach the state of maturity, which Walcott describes in “The Muse of History” as “the assimilation of the features of every ancestor” (1). This is why the poem, “Red,” has become important to me. For I have been trying in Dub Wise to assimilate the vision of these two ancestors, Walcott and Brathwaite.

So, if as Pollard asserts, Walcott and Brathwaite share common aesthetic principles that arise from T. S. Eliot’s writings,  when Walcott  cites Eliot’s  phrase that the “culture of a people” is the “incarnation of its religion,” then I would extend this idea by saying that the representation of a culture is best found in its music (38).

In my case, that music was reggae (the visceral music that at best moves the mind and the body in a single accord—beyond what Bob calls “just ‘Baby, baby I love you’”—fiah bun Eliot’s “dissociation of sensibility”) and the dub: the pared down essentials, drum and bass, (Lee “Scratch” Perry says they are the heart and brain of the music) of a musical representation after which there is only the silence of the Void.

Specifically, then, while acknowledging the nod to Brathwaite’s influence in privileging an Afro-Caribbean identity, Dub Wise seeks to reconcile the visions of Brathwaite and Walcott by using the following strategies:

Recovery of an Afro-Caribbean identity in the poems about reggae, Haiti, and Rastafari (Brathwaite).

Mimicry of forms (sonnet, ballad, sestina, and ghazal) and recasting them in a new mode (Walcott)

I have also included imagery from Buddhism, Rastafari, Christianity, and Voudoun—the sacred in Caribbean life—to include as many voices as I can which represent the various faith traditions in the Caribbean.

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DUB WISE @ the BBC

Give thanks to the BBC World Service for isolating this clip and rebroadcasting my interview:
Topics covered: Influence of Bob Marley on my work & Dub Wise

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/2010/11/101112_geoffrey_philp.shtml

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• Book Review: Dub Wise @ Morphological Confetti (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)
• Vote for Geoffrey Philp's Blog: Jamaica Blog Awards (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)
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Interview on BBC: THE POETRY OF REGGAE - DUB WISE

The Strand: BBC World Service

The best of the world's arts, film, literature and music brought to you every day. 

Presented by Anna McNamee.

In case you missed the interview:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00bqsdk/The_Strand_The_Strand_Tuesday_2nd_November_2010/

My interview begins @ 8 minute mark.

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Tue 2 Nov 2010 22:32 BBC World Service

The Strand - Tuesday 2nd November 2010

SYNOPSIS

In today's programme: Mike Leigh's new film Another Year, Jamaican poet Geoffrey Philp, astronomical music with New York rock group One Ring Zero and we talk to the creator of the Muslim superheroes from The 99 comic.

THE POETRY OF REGGAE - DUB WISE

For Jamaican poet Geoffrey Philp reggae is at the heart of his work. His poems have a beat and rhythm which is his response to what he hears and feels when he listens to the music. From Miami he talked Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey and the importance of singing the songs you want to sing no matter what anyone tells you.

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 How and When to Listen:

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmeguide/


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DUB WISE is Here!

The poems in Dub Wise have had many beginnings. From the first time I read Uncle Time by Dennis Scott and the poem, “For the Last Time, Fire,” I was intrigued by Scott’s use of the myth of the phoenix to explore the cyclical nature of revolutions. Equally impressive was Scott’s manipulation of the many registers of Caribbean English. After reading the poem, I wanted to write a poem that contemporized myth within a Caribbean setting. But then, after re-reading the poem at least fifty times, I thought, “Forget it, Geoff. You’ll never be a poet.” And it didn’t help that while I was studying for my GCE “A” Level in literature at Jamaica College I was confronted by Scott’s genius. Every day.

Still, I persisted. The desire had already been kindled. Scott’s poem also sparked my interest in the writing of James Baldwin. But more anon.

Fast forward, thirty years (more or less) later. I’ve re-read Uncle Time at least fifty more times and I’ve become a student of myth via Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. Then, I recognize the gift of West African mythology in the poetry of Kamau Brathwaite. The question that the Omowale asks in “The New Ships” from Masks in The Arrivants: “Whose ancestor am I?”  haunts me. Moreover, The Arrivants, leads me to appreciate West African religions in the Caribbean and the distortions that surround them. I soon realize that the lwas of these Yoruba-based religions, which have only been imagined as a source for horror (the most extreme form of Otherness), represent what Jung has dubbed the “collective consciousness.”

All of these disparate ideas, including events in my personal life, came together when I wrote “Erzulie’s Daughter”—the first poem in the Haitian trilogy of “Marassa Jumeaux” and “Limbo. The direct influence of Scott and Brathwaite guided the composition of these poems—Derek Walcott lurks in the background. There is also the indirect influence of Haitian poet/scholar, Felix Morriseau-Leroy and Cuban-American poet/babalawo, Adrian Castro, from whom I’ve have learned so much about Caribbean literature and religions.

Some Caribbean writers still argue whether a Caribbean literary tradition exists. Dub Wise posits the continuation of that tradition—a line of thought that extends across generations, which is either enriched or even if rejected, is nonetheless acknowledged by the inheritors.

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Please follow this link to order Dub Wise from Peepal Tree Press:
http://www.peepaltreepress.com/viewcart.asp?zoneid=&classid=

Dub Wise may be ordered also be pre-ordered @ Amazon:

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Review of DUB WISE @ Digital Calabash

"Geoffrey Philp is arguably among the most talented and versatile of contemporary Caribbean writers. His works have spanned the spectrum from children's literature to novel. His latest literary endeavor is "Dub Wise", a collection of poetry published by Peepal Tree Press."

For more, please follow this link to Digital Calabash: http://digitalcalabash.blogspot.com/2010/09/dub-wise-geoffrey-philp.html

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Who's Your Don-Dadda?

I had never planned to become a Caribbean-American or Jamaican-American. The idea of being a hyphenated man did not appeal to me, especially since I grew up in post-Independence Jamaica and was weaned on the idea of reclaiming our national identity from the nightmare of our colonial past. I wanted to be true to the words of Dennis Scott who wrote, “these hot and coffee streets reclaim my love.” But this was not to be so. On April 30, 1979, I left Jamaica because my mother was worried about the rising level of violence in Jamaica and the close ties between gun-men and politicians. If only she could see us now.


It was a dread time. Even the music reflects the murderous mayhem that engulfed the island. Listen to the opening lyrics of "Burnin' and Lootin” to get a sense of what was happening in Jamaica.  What is happening now: "This morning I woke up in a curfew/ Oh God, I was a prisoner too/ Could not recognize the faces standing over me/ They were all dressed in uniforms of brutality." The horrors of slavery, which reduced our lives to entries in a ledger and we believed it-- haunts us. 


Still, I didn’t want to leave. But two incidents changed my mind: "The Orange Lane Fire" and “The Green Bay Massacre. The violence out of which the Caribbean was born and which continued through slavery and colonialism that divided Jamaica by race, class, poverty, and allegiance to outside forces threatened to tear the island apart. So when my mother eventually sold our house in Mona Heights, there was a part of me that welcomed the inevitability, for I had become disillusioned with those whom I had considered my heroes. I left Jamaica and came to live in South Florida.


My first few years in South Florida were deeply troubling. I couldn’t find my rhythm. I couldn’t find my space. It was a time of prolonged introspection. Out of that introspection, two books about that "watershed period" were imagined: a collection of poems, Florida Bound and a novel, Benjamin, my son.


In the title poem of Florida Bound, I commemorated the two events that changed my life's trajectory:

I never want to tell my story this way,
for is the same old story of my island
losing the young, never growing old to stay
to Brixton and Birmingham, ghettos of England,
Bronx and Brooklyn, to the barbed streets
of Overtown, scattered like cotton chaff, driven
into restless cities by comrades who cut
electoral seat like they own the people til gun
man like bedbug crawl over the land and bite
them in the arse. And brigadistas screamed
'Deserter', for I couldn't bear their rule. Drought
furrowed the land, rankings wallowed
in democracy, and the idren that stay
get lash with scorn hotter than Orange Lane
drown in silence deeper than Green Bay;
lives poured into the earth in vain.

In Benjamin, my son, one of the first novels to explore the connections between garrisons and politicians/gun men/guns/drugs,  I wrote a semi-autobiographical story about a young man’s reluctant return to Jamaica after his father, a politician, is murdered. The novel was turned down for many years by several publishers because the plot and the incidents in the novel--a state of emergency, lock down and roadblocks thrown up by the residents of the garrison-- seemed farfetched. Perhaps, the book violated their dream of what the “islands” were and what they wanted to sell. Little did they know. Given the recent events in Jamaica, time has proven them triply wrong. Yet I find little solace in saying this.


For I now realize that I may never return to Jamaica. Yet I have also accepted that I have a place to fill here in South Florida with my hyphenated brothers and sisters. Out of that seeming misery of rupture and displacement, a strong community within the diaspora has emerged: "Rise oh fallen fighters/ Rise and take your stand again/ For he who fights and runs away/ Live to fight another day."  


We have also listened to other voices from the larger African diaspora such as John Edgar Wideman who has cautioned in Cattle Killing: "Do not fall asleep in your enemy's dream." 


The same conditions that led to the undeclared civil war in the seventies have come full circle. The origins of current crisis begin in Jamaica with a mixture of urban poverty and political ambition and extend America's hunger for drugs. The capture of one "don-dadda" or the replacement of a politician will only be a quick fix to a larger problem that only Jamaicans can solve. For Jamaica. From The Children of Sisyphus to Dog-Heart,  our dreamers have been asking us: Where have we come from? Who are we? Where do we go from here? 


Or as Brother Bob challenged us in "Exodus": "Open your eyes and look within/ Are you satisfied with the life you're living?"


We need to answer that question. Now.

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Related posts:

http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2007/01/funny-thing-happened-on-way-to.html

http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2007/01/half-thats-never-been-told-fractured.html

http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2007/01/dear-mikey-in-last-few-posts-i-have.html

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• US warns Jamaica violence could spread outside Kingston (telegraph.co.uk)
• Jamaican Tourism May Be Hurt by Street Violence (Update1) (businessweek.com)
• Accused Jamaican Drug Lord: 'I Will Not Surrender' (abcnews.go.com)
• Jamaica declares emergency in capital over violence (repeatingislands.com)
• Experts: Accused Jamaican drug lord akin to Robin Hood, Pablo Escobar (cnn.com)
• Divisive figure (news.bbc.co.uk)