When seven year old Shania returns back to Jamaica, her homeland for the first time in three years, she is reunited with her family and meets her cousin Tamika. Together the inseparable pair make mischief in the parish of St. James and at the last minute she decides she wants to stay. Will her mother get her back in time before their flight leaves?

Songs of Jamaica (1912) is a poetry collection by Claude McKay. Published before the poet left Jamaica for the United States, Songs of Jamaica is a pioneering collection of verse written in Jamaican Patois, the first of its kind. As a committed leftist, McKay was a keen observer of the Black experience in the Caribbean, the American South, and later in New York, where he gained a reputation during the Harlem Renaissance for celebrating the resilience and cultural achievement of the African American community while lamenting the poverty and violence they faced every day. “Quashie to Buccra,” the opening poem, frames this schism in terms of labor, as one class labors to fulfill the desires of another: “You tas’e petater an’ you say it sweet, / But you no know how hard we wuk fe it; / You want a basketful fe quattiewut, / ‘Cause you no know how ‘tiff de bush fe cut.” Addressing himself to a white audience, he exposes the schism inherent to colonial society between white and black, rich and poor. Advising his white reader to question their privileged consumption, dependent as it is on the subjugation of Jamaica’s black community, McKay warns that “hardship always melt away / Wheneber it comes roun’ to reapin’ day.” This revolutionary sentiment carries throughout Songs of Jamaica, finding an echo in the brilliant poem “Whe’ fe do?” Addressed to his own people, McKay offers hope for a brighter future to come: “We needn’ fold we han’ an’ cry, / Nor vex we heart wid groan and sigh; / De best we can do is fe try / To fight de despair drawin’ night: / Den we might conquer by an’ by— / Dat we might do.” With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Claude McKay’s Songs of Jamaica is a classic of Jamaican literature reimagined for modern readers.

Narrative constitutes an integral part of human existence, being omnipresent in our ordering of the world and the ways in which we transmit both knowledge and experience. Narrative construction has challenged the supremacy of empirical fact and has questioned our ability to know the past Aas it really was. Examining a wide range of texts, from ancient Greece and medieval Britain to contemporary America, Asia, Australia, Britain and the Caribbean, the essays in this volume address the inconsistencies in master narratives to reveal that all representations of the past, like knowledge, are situated.

A number of lives captured at a particular time creates a record that enables us to see just how the circumstances of Londoners are changing and evolving, though perhaps for the luckiest or unluckiest few, nothing ever seems to change very much. In addition to addressing the question, 'WHERE do we live?', perhaps the most obvious dimension of Londoners at Home, the project goes on to consider, through 64 topics, 'WHO do we live with?', 'WHAT do we do?', 'WHENCE did we come?', and 'HOW are we different?' and a wide variety of sitters has contributed to the substantial commentary that now offers extensive and illuminating answers to these existential questions. However, Londoners at Home always aimed to comprise wholly non-judgmental observations of some of the denizens of our vast, capital city and the accumulated images and stories have, as was originally hoped, built into a fascinating tableau of the way we Londoners live now, in the second decade of the 21st century. The Photographer, Milan Svanderlik, is a veteran observer of the extraordinary diversity and beauty of nature, people and life in general. Londoners at Home: The Way We Live Now is the final part of a major project, The London Trilogy. Part I, 100 Faces of London, was exhibited in central London in 2012, with Part II, Outsiders in London, following in 2015. Gerald Stuart Burnett was born to émigré Scottish parents in a small Cheshire market town. Graduating from the University of Stirling, he went on to the University of Nottingham before pursuing a long career in the Education Service. Gerald's project role has been primarily as editor, painstakingly reworking the text of each 'story' into its current form.

This book offers an introductory survey of contemporary poetry in English from all the regions that have developed into modern nations from the former British Empire. It is ideally suited for readers interested in world writing in English, contemporary literature, postcolonial writing, cultural studies, and postmodern culture.