After After Raising SUGAR CANE BOOK-III is a continual autobiography of the life of Barry Franklin Anthony Raffray. This book starts in 1994 and goes to 2010. My first three sons are grown and I will now have two more boys to try and finish raising to become grown responsible men, after marring their mom in 1997. We had many good times and some bad times. But I would do it all again. I hope that you enjoy reading this part of my life and experiences.

After Raising Sugar Cane, it was time to get on with living. This is a continual autobiography of the life of Barry Raffray after completing high school, joining the Army, coping with health problems, getting jobs, getting married, having children, moving to another state, raising children, trying to learn to be a dad, etc.,etc., etc. There are numerous stories, some funny, some not so funny. This is the second book in a series of three - err – well now, maybe four books. We hope that you will enjoy reading this part of his life as he experienced it.

This book is about the life of a little boy born during WW II raised on a sugarcane plantation in Southern Louisiana. These were hard times for poor folks who had to work very hard to earn meager living wages to support their families. Although money was scarce, living and working on the land allowed you to grow and raise much of your food, which the city people could not do. Generally, one had food or the means to get food if you were inclined to do so by working extra time on the land, provide it was after your normal work day was completed. Some landowners would not allow workers to use their land for gardens. Times were hard, and folks were poor, but most of us did not know we were poor because all of our friends and neighbors had the same things; we had nothing. You made the most of what you did have. It was a simple time when you could grow your own food and make your own toys to entertain yourself and your friends. As a youngster, I had plenty fun times, growing up on the plantation. This book is about some of those times as best as I can recall them. Most of this book is written in the manner that we talked before education came into play. If this story were told with proper English and punctuation, the reader would miss out on the flavor of the times of these happenings.

ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A sweeping debut novel that explores the intimate struggle for independence and success of a young descendant of Indian indentured laborers in Mauritius, a small multiracial island in the Indian Ocean. "The beauty of Busjeet's splendid, often breathtaking book is, like the best stories of journeys to young adulthood, the precious and well-observed and heartbreaking details of day-to-day life." --Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Known World In the 1950s, Vishnu Bhushan is a young boy yet to learn the truth beyond the rumors of his family's fractured histories--an alliance, as his mother says, of two bankrupt families. In evocative chapters, the first two decades of Vishnu's life in Mauritius unfolds with heart wrenching closeness as he battles to experience the world beyond, and the cultural, political, and familial turmoil that hold on to him. Through gorgeous and precise language, Silent Winds, Dry Seas conjures the spirit and rich life of Mauritius, even as its diverse peoples live under colonial rule. Weaving the soaring hopes, fierce love, and heart-breaking tragedies of Vishnu's proud Mauritian family together with his country's turbulent path to gain independence, Busjeet masterfully evokes the epic sweep of history in the intimate moments of a boy's life. Silent Winds, Dry Seas is a poetic, powerful, and universal novel of identity and place, of the legacies of colonialism, of tradition, modernity, and emigration, and of what a family will sacrifice for its children to thrive.

The Growing of Sugar Cane develops the fundamental principles of the growing of cane in the hope that cane culture throughout the world will benefit by it. The tremendous strides made in recent years in the knowledge of how to improve the growing of sugar cane, form the subject of this treatise. Cane growing is not a science. As the results of research replace tradition and guesswork, yields are expected to continue to rise. The book opens with a chapter on the factors that affect sugar cane growth. This is followed by separate chapters on seedbed preparation, sugar cane planting, the nutrition and irrigation of sugar cane, drainage, weed control, flowering control, ripening and maturity, harvesting and transportation, and pest and disease control.

"Shanti is a heroine that the reader will not easily forget. The story that is told here is worth not only knowing but also remembering." – Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, author, filmmaker and academic Vividly set against the backdrop of 19th century India and the British-owned sugarcane plantations of Natal, written with great tenderness and lyricism, Children of Sugarcane paints an intimate and wrenching picture of indenture told from a woman's perspective. Shanti, a bright teenager stifled by life in rural India and facing an arranged marriage, dreams that South Africa is an opportunity to start afresh. The Colony of Natal is where Shanti believes she can escape the poverty, caste, and troubling fate of young girls in her village. Months later, after a harrowing sea voyage, she arrives in Natal only to discover the profound hardship and slave labour that await her. Spanning four decades and two continents, Children of Sugarcane demonstrates the lifegiving power of love, heartache, and the indestructible bonds between family and friends. These bonds prompt heroism and sacrifice, the final act of which leads to Shanti's redemption.

While the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico may conjure up images of vacation getaways and cocktails by the sea, these easy stereotypes hide a story filled with sweat and toil. The story of sugarcane and rum production in the Caribbean has been told many times. But few know the bittersweet story of sugar and rum in the jungles of the Yucatán Peninsula during the nineteenth century. This is much more than a history of coveted commodities. The unique story that unfolds in John R. Gust and Jennifer P. Mathews’s new history Sugarcane and Rum is told through the lens of Maya laborers who worked under brutal conditions on small haciendas to harvest sugarcane and produce rum. Gust and Mathews weave together ethnographic interviews and historical archives with archaeological evidence to bring the daily lives of Maya workers into focus. They lived in a cycle of debt, forced to buy all of their supplies from the company store and take loans from the hacienda owners. And yet they had a certain autonomy because the owners were so dependent on their labor at harvest time. We also see how the rise of cantinas and distilled alcohol in the nineteenth century affected traditional Maya culture and that the economies of Cancún and the Mérida area are predicated on the rum-influenced local social systems of the past. Sugarcane and Rum brings this bittersweet story to the present and explains how rum continues to impact the Yucatán and the people who have lived there for millennia.