Miss Lou: Louise Bennett and Jamaican Culture - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

‘Jamaica’s First Lady of Comedy’, an indefatigable promoter of things Jamaican, delighted audiences in many parts of the world. Her ebullient delight in Jamaican Creole spread joy and earned respect. Her publications have been praised at home and abroad.

This book offers a brief account of Louise Bennett’s life (1919-2006): of challenges and blessings, of a journey towards national and international acclaim. It draws on a variety of sources, including interviews, archives, academic theses, documentary projects, recorded performances and Louise Bennett writings.

It also offers an assessment of her contribution to the arts. She was a key figure in the transformation of the Little Theatre Movement pantomime; a well-trained actor who quietly tutored others; an expert creator of Anancy stories; the popular host of a television show for children; a radio commentator dispensing wisdom in ‘dialect’; a poet evaluating attitudes, sometimes with complex irony.

‘Miss Lou’ used Standard English comfortably in many contexts, and did not wish the country rid of it; but she chose in most of her creative work to employ the language most Jamaicans speak.

A diligent researcher into Jamaican heritage, she acknowledged various streams, but was especially concerned with continuities out of Africa:

When the Asian culture and the European culture buck up on African culture in the Caribbean people, we stir them up and blend them to we flavour, we shake them up and move them to we beat, we wheel them and we tu’n them and we rock them and we sound them and we temper them, and lawks, the rhythm sweet!

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