The Vintage of the 80s Winepress
The Vintage of the ‘80s Winepress By Gwyneth Harold Davidson This article first appeared in the 2016 edition of The Jamaica Teachers Association Magazine, The Clarion Jamaican author Mr Marlon James is a big deal. He is the winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize – arguably the world’s most prestigious prize for a novel in English literature - and I am proud that a book written by a born yah Jamaican writer has been so recognised. His novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, breaks ground, showing writers more ways to expand the boundaries of Jamaican English in literature. James describes his writing as beyond post colonial , a state where the dominant cultural reference is the USA and not the UK. He suggests that today’s creative writers from the Caribbean are more expressive of who they are , as opposed to who they are not . If beyond post colonialism puts the USA at the heart of the progressive Jamaican experience, I fear we may have exchanged black dawg fi monkey.
