21 Books Published by Ian Randle Publishers on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

In the Caribbean, poverty is the other side of paradise. Economic hardship and social exclusion coexist with idyllic beaches and picturesque scenes of island life, and poor communities, both rural and urban, with substandard living conditions and a lack of access to basic services, belie the story often sold in tourist brochures. In Poverty is a Person, Theresa Ann Rajack-Talley, in a participatory approach to development studies, raises the voices of those usually muted in poverty research. The people-centred approach forces a questioning of statistical data on poverty and how that data is used to craft responses and solutions to meeting the needs of the most marginalized persons in Caribbean societies. The book provides a synopsis of poverty from a "people perspective" and is supported by case studies of households and communities. The lack of humanity in traditional poverty studies is brought to the fore and in particular, the gender dimension of poverty - what it is that women do on a daily basis to survive and provide for their families. Rajck-Talley, in a refreshing take on research and development, highlights how social inclusion can influence positive change and improvement and how the employment of social capital can be harnessed as an important element in poverty reduction. In pulling together an understanding of social exclusion, women’s roles in negotiating poverty, and the role of human agency generally, Poverty is a Person highlights the need to remove the prohibitive parameters of traditional poverty studies and suggests a paradigm shift in the approach of Caribbean countries to employ a more effective and targeted approach to the multidimensional facets of poverty.

Despite outstanding histories and ethnographies on maroons, there has been little attempt to draw modern maroons into a comparative perspective with the descendants of emancipated slaves who are the majority of African-Americans today. There is therefore a gap in the comparative exploration of creolization in maroon and non-maroon derivations of African-American slave cultures. Transformations of Freedom in the Land of the Maroons bridges that gap through a comparative ethnography of three post-slavery transnational communities - Accompong, Aberdeen and Maroon Town - that stand fast in the Jamaican Cockpit Country today. The Cockpit Country, so named after the cock-fighting pits introduced by the Spanish to the Americas, with steep mountains and deep valleys, straddles the interior of adjoining parishes in central Jamaica. During slavery these Cockpits served as a refuge for fighting maroons and the provision grounds of plantation slaves. In the twenty-first century Accompong endures as a corporate maroon society; Aberdeen is a village descended from emancipated slaves; and Maroon Town is a community claiming descent from planters, maroons and slaves. Consolidating over 30 years of research and fieldwork in these communities, Jean Besson provides a sweeping yet all-encompassing examination of comparative creolization and the complexities of ethnicity at the maroon/non-maroon interface.

When Huareo inherits the role of cacique, he leads the Taino into a prosperous life until he receives word one day from neighbouring Haiti of strangers sailing and laying waste to their villages. Determined not to let the same fate befall his people, Huareo did not welcome or trust the Spanish strangers when they first arrived in Yamaye (Jamaica) in 1494. In 1509, the Spaniards return to the island with the sole purpose of gaining control and the result is something Huareo and his people could never have imagined. Meticulously researched from original sources such the journals of Diego Mendez and Hernando Colon who were marooned in Jamaica on Columbus’s fourth voyage, along with other primary and secondary sources and consultation with historians and archaeologists, Fred Kennedy unearths the history of Jamaica’s first ancestral heroes.

Jamaica’s rich culture is known the world over; and every aspect of this culture has been influenced by Jamaica’s African heritage. From speech to dress, and spirituality to dance, from food to folklore and from music to art and religion, African retentions from the time of slavery have become more than preserved aspects of Jamaica’s past; African traditions have become part and parcel of Jamaican culture. In this Reader, Coester and Bender have compiled some of the most important ethnographic work by noted researchers which, although previously published, have been exceptionally difficult to access by the growing community of scholars of African-Caribbean and Jamaican studies. Several seminal articles on aspects of African-Jamaican culture are included in this rich and valuable collection that describes and analyses the elements that make up a distinctive African-Jamaican ethos. Includes works from: Walter Jekyll - Astley Clerk - Helen H. Roberts - Ivy Baxter - Sylvia Wynter - Judith Bettelheim - Cheryl Ryman - Kenneth Bilby - Monica Schuler - Elizabeth Pigou - Martha Warren Beckwith - George Eaton Simpson - Edward Seaga - Barry Chevannes - Pamela O’Gorman - Garth White - Laura Tanna - Olive Lewin - Adina Henry - Laura Tanna with interviews by Hazel Ramsay - Maureen Warner-Lewis - Kenneth M. Bilby and Fu-Kiau kia Bunseki - Hazel Carter - Abiodun Adetugbo - Donald Hogg - Douglas R.A. Mack - Verena Reckord - Kenneth Bilby and Eliott Leib

Louise Bennett Coverley, ’Miss Lou’, has for decades represented the ’face’ of Jamaican culture, the essence of what it is to be Jamaican. As a poet, performer, storyteller, singer, actress, writer, broadcaster, folklore scholar and children’s television show host, she won hearts and souls for Jamaica with her humorous yet compelling performances worldwide. It is Miss Lou, more than any other figure in Jamaica’s history, who showed that the language spoken by most Jamaicans - patois or Jamaican Creole - is worthy of respect. In Miss Lou: Louise Bennett and Jamaican Culture, Mervyn Morris traces the life of this legendary Jamaican from early beginnings through to her local and international eminence, and discusses aspects of her work. A listing of recommended books and recordings is an added feature of this worthy biography of Miss Lou.

This book captures the thoughts of many of Tosh’s closest confidants and generals to take you inside the mind of the genius Bush Doctor. It will help you discover the man, the music and the magic of one of the most important musicians in history. - Native Wayne Jobson, Producer of the Peter Tosh film Stepping Razor/Red X Ceil Tulloch’s important and timely Peter Tosh compendium reminds that Tosh was a major figure, not only in the realm of reggae, but in the realm of contemporary music more generally. - David Katz, Reggae historian, author As one-third of the Wailers, icons of reggae music, the late Winston Hubert McIntosh, better known as Peter Tosh, continues to gain many fans all over the world. By way of his hugely successful solo career, many people knew Tosh to be a hard-hitting, unapologetic and controversial artist, who spoke the truth in his lyrics and brought attention to the plight of the poor and downtrodden, both at home and abroad. However, not many people saw the private side of Peter Tosh, a man who is described by those who knew him best as humorous and compassionate. Remembering Peter Tosh is one of the first books to be dedicated solely to the life of the great reggae icon Peter Tosh. This book is filled with engaging remembrances from colleagues of Tosh and gives insight into the man Peter Tosh really was - both on and off the stage. Little known facts about Peter Tosh, such as his affinity for animals and a love for cooking are revealed in anecdotal fashion, sprinkled with images of Tosh at work and at play. Contributors include: Jayne Cortez • Dr Omar Davies • Lowell ’Sly’ Dunbar • George ’Fully’ Fullwood • Revd Canon Ernle P. Gordon • Dermot Hussey • Donald Kinsey • Chuck Krall • Herbie Miller • Norman O. Richmond • Desmond Shakespeare • Robbie Shakespeare • Dennis Thompson • Roger Steffens • Doug Wendt • Dick Wingate

An ascetic and failed priest, a stoic, father of the nation, prime minister and first national hero of the Central American nation of Belize, George Price remains one of the most enigmatic leaders of the 20th century. Nothing in the early years of Price s life gave any indication that he would become the most uncompromising adversary of the British government in the struggle, first for self-government and later for Belizean independence, and in the process dominate Belizean politics for over 40 years. An indifferent scholastic career, failure to complete studies for the priesthood followed by a decade as the right-hand man for one of the colony s most astute businessmen, were less than impressive a track record for a future national leader and political firebrand. Yet for close to 50 years, the story of George Price was inseparable from the story of the modern political development of Belize, involving the birth of nationalist politics; the formation of political parties; the struggle for independence and the national objective of maintaining the territorial integrity of Belize against claims by Guatemala. Here is the story of a man who never married or raised a family, who never had a romantic liaison with a woman and who up to the time of his death at the age of 92 had remained celibate all his life. Price s first and only lifelong love, his sweetheart, wife and family were Belize and its people. In this even-handed and revealing authorized biography, Godfrey Smith does not attempt to canonize Price or denigrate his rivals and detractors. Rather, he exposes the contradictions that were a feature of Price s life and career. On the one hand the reader is shown Price as the ardent nationalist and a man of uncommon discipline and tenacity who pursued his vision of an independent Belize with clear-minded focus, courage and determination, yet who by his own admission, had secret relations with Guatemala whom most Belizeans regarded as the enemy. On a personal level, Smith paints a picture of Price as one who beneath his pious exterior could often be found to be petty, secretive and vindictive, and a man who did not suffer slights lightly. Few political leaders from the region have recorded their memoirs or, like Price, given access by way of interviews or opened their personal papers to researchers or biographers. As one whose political career spanned both the colonial and post independence eras, the information, experiences and insights Price has freely given to his biographer will make this work an important contribution to the study of the political personality, the development of political parties and party politics in the Caribbean at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In addition, the book sheds new light on Price s adversarial relationship with local British governors and officials of the Colonial Office in London, and on the central role that the Guatemalan claim on Belize and Price s controversial affiliations with Guatemala played in both the negotiation and timing of Belizean independence. The value of Godfrey Smith s work as the biographer of George Price lies in the fact that it is at once the revealing story of an important and controversial political leader, and at the same time, a history of the anti-colonial struggle and the modern political development of Belize.

George Lamming is one of the best known, certainly one of the most highly regarded contemporary writers from the Caribbean. Spanning nearly 60 years and encompassing fiction, poetry and critical essays, Lamming’s writing covers the length and breadth of Caribbean intellectual, cultural, political and literary life. Credited as a part of that group of Caribbean activists who awoke the Caribbean to its identity and more specifically to its cultural identity, his works have focused on finding new political and social identity. Indeed, Lamming was a seminal figure in the Caribbean 20th century intellectual tradition and radical anti-colonial tradition.

Lamming is best known for his novels. In the Castle of My Skin and The Emigrants take place in England and are largely autobiographical. Of Age and Innocence and Season of Adventure are set on the fictional Caribbean island of San Cristobal. In Water with Berries, the plot of Shakespeare’s The Tempest is used to unmask the imperfections of West Indian society while his final novel, Natives of My Person, gives account of the voyage of a slave-trading ship on the triangular trade route from Europe to Africa to the New World colonies.

In The Aesthetics of Decolonisation, friend and colleague Anthony Bogues pulls together Lamming’s critical works, some previously published, some given as addresses, lectures and interviews. This is accompanied by critical reflections on Lamming’s work by noted scholars such as Andaiye and Sandra Pouchet Paquet as well as a foreword by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. This much needed reader on Lamming and his work examines the history of the Caribbean and the categories which continue to shape and influence Caribbean identity in our contemporary world.

Beautiful; aggressive; exuberant, talkative; humorous; resourceful; unpredictable Jamaica brings many adjectives to mind, but boring is not one of them. No other country so young and so small has had such global cultural influence as the land of Marcus Garvey, Louis Bennett, Bob Marley and Usain Bolt. Jamaica Fi Real provides ponders the present in the context of the past, and highlights the threads of continuity. Here is today’s Jamaica from a Jamaican point of view, giving an in-depth look at its people, history, music, sports, religion and culture. It’s the good, bad, ugly and pretty - a vivid twenty-first century portrait of perhaps the world’s most fascinating island.

Created in the West Indies: Caribbean Perspectives on V.S. Naipaul updates and furthers the debates on the life and work of an internationally acclaimed writer, Nobel laureate and native son of Trinidad and Tobago. The book draws together the proceedings of a series of outstanding public lectures and an academic symposium that featured a distinguished cadre of Caribbean scholars who, during 2007, participated in a year-long schedule of activities initiated by the University of the West Indies, St Augustine campus, to honour the life and work of this highly accomplished ’enigma’ of Caribbean letters. The essays in this collection are organised into three sections that represent a compression of the multifaceted range of V.S. Naipaul’s creative concerns, thematic explorations, even obsessions, and philosophical persuasions. The singular power of these contributions is their ability to push at the borders of Naipaul scholarship, cutting new pathways for considering this most intriguing creative mind and offering fresh perspectives on the now familiar themes of postcolonial identity and nationalism, the fiction of history and history of fiction, home and belonging in a world characterised by flux, movement and cultural contact. Controversy has always companioned Naipaul’s career. Not surprisingly, some of the contributions are unrelentingly honest in their expos? of Naipaul for his trademark impatience with the very societies that created his unique sensibility and his propensity for self-contradiction.

I would rather die in yonder gallows than live for a minute more in slavery Sam Sharpe declared before he was hanged in 1832. Today revered as one of Jamaica s seven National heroes, Sam Sharpe was a Baptist preacher who was born a slave in Jamaica and named for his master. Sharpe is best known for his leadership role in the 1831 Christmas Rebellion on the Kensington Estate in western Jamaica during which hundreds of slaves lost their lives. Historians agree that this rebellion and the many others that it sparked, was largely responsible for the passing of the Act to abolish slavery less than a year later in 1832. Sharpe was tried and hanged for his part as organizer of the rebellion. DADDY SHARPE is the riveting account of Sharpe s life, in his own voice. Locked in prison, awaiting a sentence of certain execution, Sharpe retells the story of his life from his boyhood days at Cooper s Hill in St. James, ending with his surrender to the authorities after defeat in the 1831 rebellion. Rich with historical details of plantation life in colonial Jamaica, Sam Sharpe s story is told with depth and sensitivity and makes compelling reading.

From stationmaster s daughter to wife of one of Jamaica s most charismatic prime ministers Beverley Manley s life has been an odyssey. As a young girl, starved of her mother s love because she was darker than her siblings, and forced to do housework while her sisters relaxed, Beverley was a modern-day Cinderella. Told incessantly that she was good for nothing, she defied her mother s prophecy, and triumphed over her ordinary beginnings first as a model in London and later becoming a household name in local radio, television and on stage. It was her path at the then Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC) that would lead her directly to Michael Manley and to Jamaica House. Marriage to Michael also lead to her political awakening; not content with being the docile wife, Beverly assumed an activist role in the governing People s National Party (PNP), becoming embroiled in the ideological politics of the 1970s that would eventually lead to her estrangement from Michael, the destruction of their marriage, her flight into the arms of a rival lover and finally to a self-imposed exile in the US, where she took refuge from the ire of the Jamaican elite for daring to walk out on one of their own. But Beverly was to redeem herself and earn new respect as a broadcaster, commentator and incisive interviewer on the immensely popular and innovative Breakfast Club radio show. Now older and much wiser, Beverly tells it like it is in this intriguing and revealing memoir. It is a rags to riches story almost; a story of triumph and loss; of rising again and finally one of redemption.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey…his name is legend from the America’s to Zanzibar. One of the most influential figures of the 20th century, Garvey’s powerful message of Black pride remains as relevant today as it was almost a hundred years ago. Across generations and continents, leaders like Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta and musical icon Bob Marley readily acknowledge the influence of Garvey’s philosophy on their lives, thoughts and actions. Now the story of Garvey’s colourful life, his exploits and his compellign message are captured in text by Suzanne Francis-Brown and in brilliant colour illustrations by Jean Jacques Vaysierres for young readers.

"The Transatlantic Trade in Africans (TTA) has no equal in the annals of modern history in terms of the scope and depth of suffering experienced by its victims, mostly at the hands of European traders and enslavers. Yet, denial and silence continue to surround this human tragedy. Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd, two of the Caribbean’s most distinguished historians, make extensive use of the research by scholars from Europe, Africa and the Americas to describe the trade and analyse its impact on African, European and Caribbean societies in language and style that makes the information accessible and comprehensible for school students and the general reader. Readers will gain an appreciation of: The role of slavery from ancient to modern times and its development in African societies ? The contribution of African scholars and intellectuals in the pre-slavery period and how the trade bled the continent of valuable intellectual and technical resources ? The instution of slavery from an economic perspective, through an examination of the business aspects of the development of the TTA ? The physical and psychological consequences of the Middle Passage on Africans ? The trade in Africans as a business with examples of companies, individuals and nations that were active participants ? The contributions of the TTA to the economic development of the West and the underdevelopment of African societies. Trading Souls, like its companion volume Saving Souls, is a reflection upon a history that was terrible and turbulent and tries to make sense of the silence and denial even as it seeks to break it. "

This book is a study in the depth of a colonial ’plantation’ during fifty critical years of slavery in the Caribbean. As the title suggests however, it is not concerned with slavery exclusively, but with a social entity of which slavery was a significant part. Brathwaite argues that the people - from Britain and West Africa, mainly - who settled, lived and worked in Jamaica, contributed to the formation of a society which developed its own distinctive character - creole society. This society developed institutions, customs and attitudes which were basically the result of the interaction between its two main elements, the African and European. But this creole society was also part of a wider American or New World culture complex, and as such, it was also shaped by the pressures upon it of British and European mercantilism, and the American, French, and Humanitarian Revolutions.

"West Indian Literature, as a body of work, is a fairly recent phenomenon; and literary criticism has not always acknowledged the diversity of approaches to writing effectively. In Making West Indian Literature poet and critic Mervyn Morris explores examples of West Indian creativity shaping a range of responses to experience, which often includes colonial traces. Appreciating various kinds of making and a number of West Indian makers, these engaging essays and interviews display a recurrent interest in the processes of composition. Some of the prices highlight writer-performers who have not often been examined. This very readable book, often personal in tone, makes a distinctive contribution to the knowledge and understanding of West Indian Literature. "

"Esther Philips describes When Ground Doves Fly as being ‘a heeding of an inner voice whose whisperings and resonances echo the heart-cries and triumphs of so many other women’. The poems are presented here with an astonishing blend of simplicity and depth that will lift the reader from their mundane plane of existence and take them soaring to a higher level of awareness. "

Daughters of the Diaspora features the creative writing of 20 Hispanophone women of African descent, as well as the interpretive essays of 15 literary critics. The collection is unique in its combination of genres, including poetry, short stories, essays, excerpts from novels and personal narratives, many of which are being translated into English for the first time. They address issues of ethnicity, sexuality, social class and self-representation and in so doing shape a revolutionary discourse that questions and subverts historical assumptions and literary conventions. Miriam DeCosta-Willis’s comprehensive Introduction, biographical sketches of the authors and their chronological arrangement within the text, provide an accessible history of the evolution of an Afra-Hispanic literary tradition in the Caribbean, Africa and Latin America. The book will be useful as textbook in courses in Africana Studies, Women’s Studies, Caribbean, Latina and Latin American Studies as well as courses in literature and the humanities.

The Real Taste of Jamaica takes food lovers and cooks the world over into Jamaican homes, kitchen and restaurants to sample the full range of native cuisine prepared by local housewives, cooks, restaurateurs and roadside ’jerkies’. Enid Donaldson presents her dishes with flair and imagination, delicately spiced and flavoured with curry, scotch bonnet peppers, jerk sauce, pimento, nutmeg, rum and a dash of typical Jamaican humour. ’Stamp and Go’, ’Dip and Fall Back’, ’Mannish Water’ and ’Matrimony’ conjure up images that do not disappoint when tasted. Traditional recipes are included for those who would like to recapture childhood memories. The section, ’Ole Time Someting’, contributed by noted journalist and talk-show host Barbara Gloudon, captures the memories and magic of Jamaica kitchens and homes of yesteryear. ’Out of Many, One Pot’ aptly describes Jamaica’s culinary motto, capturing the rich and exciting blend of Native Indian, Spanish, British, African, East Indian, Chinese, Jewish and Lebanese cuisines.

The Real Taste of Jamaica sizzles to life as Enid Donaldson embarks on a tropical culinary journey, exploring the unique flavors that can only be called Jamaican. Taste native cuisine prepared by local housewives, cooks, restauranteurs and roadside `Jerkies` that food lovers savour all over the world.

First published in the Carribbean by Jamaica’s top independent publisher, Ian Randle Publishers, The Real Taste of Jamaica was brought to North America by Warwick Publishing in 1996. Four years and five reprints later, Warwick and Randle have collaborated to develop additional material on traditional Jamaican cuisine and regional variations to dishes that round out the flavor of this amazing and original book. In addition, new photography by well-known Jamaican-Canadian food photographer Ray Chen illustrates this revised new edition.

This book celebrates the lives of seventeen Black leaders who have made outstanding contributions to the liberation, unity and solidarity of Africa and African peoples throughout the world. Inspired by the "Pan-Africanists" portfolio, a series of oil paintings by artist Barrington Watson, the authors present the reader with succinct biographies of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Nelson Mandela, W.E.B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, C.L.R. James, Kwame Nkruma, Julius Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta, Haile Selassie, Paul Robeson, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Muhammad Ali, Patrice Lumumba, Malcolm X, and Nelson Mandela.

Not all of them necessarily belonged formally to a Pan-Africanist organization or ever used the term in descriptions of themselves. But the life of each one of them manifests the core values of Pan-Africanism. Together, their lives represent a powerful embodiment of the history of this social movement.

This is both an art book and an important reference work for young readers throughout Africa and the Diaspora.

Usain Bolt’s story of being the world’s fastest man.