
Loving Jamaica: A memoir of place and (not) belonging
In April 2014, Diana won the Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize for a non fiction work in progress, and is working on her fourth book entitled Loving Jamaica: A memoir of place and (not) belonging.
The Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize is an annual award which allows an emerging Caribbean writer living and working in the Anglophone Caribbean to devote time to advancing or finishing a literary work, with support from an established writer as mentor. It is sponsored by the Hollick Family Charitable Trust and jointly administered by the non-profit organisation the Bocas Lit Fest and the creative writing charity Arvon.
Loving Jamaica is a memoir exploring the meaning of place to Caribbean peoples through Diana’s own connection to Jamaica and her 23-year journey from insurance executive to environmental activist and writer. Each chapter presents an evocative narrative of Jamaican places told through Diana’s own eyes and experiences – their natural history, development, degradation, efforts at protection and current status. Interwoven throughout is Diana’s account of her journey from member of a privileged class to environmental activist – her empowering tomboy childhood, later rejection of gender roles and societal expectations, her development as a writer, to the real and perceived risks of taking a stand against hegemonic narratives of national development. Loving Jamaica explores the impulse to activism, what it takes to stand up for an idea against the interests of your own class and dominant cultural values, and confronts Diana’s feelings of connection and exclusion, of frustration, impotence and loss.
Excerpt
So that was my inheritance. I was not of the people who loaded bananas; I was of those who built Roman villas and imported monkeys. My family was not wealthy, but they had wealthy friends and the same inheritance, which comes down to skin colour. When San San beach was closed to the public and a large entrance fee imposed, I was somehow not the public, and if I arrived on that beach on my surfboard or dinghy or simply by swimming, I was quite free to sit under a coconut tree, or lie in the sun. The security guard would not tell me this was now a private beach. We could even talk our way past the security guard at the gate if we wanted to.
I could fish and row and run an outboard engine, I could water ski and sail a boat, I could swim and dive and climb and I thought I knew the land and the sea. Then, I had never heard of Winnifred Beach, a white sand beach where black people went. I never went there when I was a child or teenager, there was no need, I played in the places of ancestors who were not blood ancestors but who had somehow continued the building of a Jamaica of barriers. I went to Boston Beach to watch the boys surf and bought jerk pork from the people who came from Maroons and banana loaders and cane cutters. I went to Long Bay, where we were not allowed to swim because of the undertow. I went in groups for picnics to Holland Bay, a wild beach with pounding waves and a different undertow and we were told that if we got drawn out to sea, we should not struggle, but let the waves take us to the headland we could see.
In April 2014, Diana won the Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize for a non fiction work in progress, and is working on her fourth book entitled Loving Jamaica: A memoir of place and (not) belonging.
The Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize is an annual award which allows an emerging Caribbean writer living and working in the Anglophone Caribbean to devote time to advancing or finishing a literary work, with support from an established writer as mentor. It is sponsored by the Hollick Family Charitable Trust and jointly administered by the non-profit organisation the Bocas Lit Fest and the creative writing charity Arvon.
Loving Jamaica is a memoir exploring the meaning of place to Caribbean peoples through Diana’s own connection to Jamaica and her 23-year journey from insurance executive to environmental activist and writer. Each chapter presents an evocative narrative of Jamaican places told through Diana’s own eyes and experiences – their natural history, development, degradation, efforts at protection and current status. Interwoven throughout is Diana’s account of her journey from member of a privileged class to environmental activist – her empowering tomboy childhood, later rejection of gender roles and societal expectations, her development as a writer, to the real and perceived risks of taking a stand against hegemonic narratives of national development. Loving Jamaica explores the impulse to activism, what it takes to stand up for an idea against the interests of your own class and dominant cultural values, and confronts Diana’s feelings of connection and exclusion, of frustration, impotence and loss.
Excerpt
So that was my inheritance. I was not of the people who loaded bananas; I was of those who built Roman villas and imported monkeys. My family was not wealthy, but they had wealthy friends and the same inheritance, which comes down to skin colour. When San San beach was closed to the public and a large entrance fee imposed, I was somehow not the public, and if I arrived on that beach on my surfboard or dinghy or simply by swimming, I was quite free to sit under a coconut tree, or lie in the sun. The security guard would not tell me this was now a private beach. We could even talk our way past the security guard at the gate if we wanted to.
I could fish and row and run an outboard engine, I could water ski and sail a boat, I could swim and dive and climb and I thought I knew the land and the sea. Then, I had never heard of Winnifred Beach, a white sand beach where black people went. I never went there when I was a child or teenager, there was no need, I played in the places of ancestors who were not blood ancestors but who had somehow continued the building of a Jamaica of barriers. I went to Boston Beach to watch the boys surf and bought jerk pork from the people who came from Maroons and banana loaders and cane cutters. I went to Long Bay, where we were not allowed to swim because of the undertow. I went in groups for picnics to Holland Bay, a wild beach with pounding waves and a different undertow and we were told that if we got drawn out to sea, we should not struggle, but let the waves take us to the headland we could see.
Diana's Books are available at Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook , Apple iBookstore. and Kobo books