Lucille Mathurin Mair

Lucille Mathurin Mair (née Walrond) made a mammoth contribution to women in Jamaica and across the world. In this biography, Verene Shepherd traces Mair's evolving ideology through her roles as professional historian, wife, mother, mentor, diplomat, national and international civil servant, legislator, and women's rights activist. Mair's tireless commitment to the principles of justice and equality for women guided her work and she particularly sought to centre women of the Global South in the development agenda. The accounts of Mair's myriad and often uncredited contributions at the University of the West Indies, the United Nations, and as a senator in the Government of Jamaica are enhanced by previously unpublished extracts from her notes and personal papers and interviews with her friends and colleagues. Shepherd weaves these sources together to give us a thought-provoking study of the evolution of a rebel woman.

"The Rebel Woman describes a period in Jamaica's history where women played an important part in different forms of protest against slavery. Mair's book details both the negative and positive methods of protest used by the enslaved people of the West Indies. An excellent reference for students researching topics relating to slavery, freedom and gender.

An exposure of women as agents of history - a path-breaking achievement at a time when Caribbean historiography ignored women. The white woman consumed, the coloured woman served and the black woman laboured.

Lucille Mathurin Mair (née Walrond) made a mammoth contribution to women in Jamaica and across the world. In this biography, Verene Shepherd traces Mair's evolving ideology through her roles as professional historian, wife, mother, mentor, diplomat, national and international civil servant, legislator, and women's rights activist. Mair's tireless commitment to the principles of justice and equality for women guided her work and she particularly sought to centre women of the Global South in the development agenda. The accounts of Mair's myriad and often uncredited contributions at the University of the West Indies, the United Nations, and as a senator in the Government of Jamaica are enhanced by previously unpublished extracts from her notes and personal papers and interviews with her friends and colleagues. Shepherd weaves these sources together to give us a thought-provoking study of the evolution of a rebel woman.

This study examines childhood and slavery in Jamaica from the onset of improved conditions for the island's slaves to the end of all forced or coerced labor throughout the British Caribbean. As Colleen A. Vasconcellos discusses the nature of child development in the plantation complex, she looks at how both colonial Jamaican society and the slave community conceived childhood—and how those ideas changed as the abolitionist movement gained power, the fortunes of planters rose and fell, and the nature of work on Jamaica's estates evolved from slavery to apprenticeship to free labor. Vasconcellos explores the experiences of enslaved children through the lenses of family, resistance, race, status, culture, education, and freedom. In the half-century covered by her study, Jamaican planters alternately saw enslaved children as burdens or investments. At the same time, the childhood experience was shaped by the ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse slave community. Vasconcellos adds detail and meaning to these tensions by looking, for instance, at enslaved children of color, legally termed mulattos, who had unique ties to both slave and planter families. In addition, she shows how traditions, beliefs, and practices within the slave community undermined planters' efforts to ensure a compliant workforce by instilling Christian values in enslaved children. These are just a few of the ways that Vasconcellos reveals an overlooked childhood—one that was often defined by Jamaican planters but always contested and redefined by the slaves themselves.

From Miss Lou to Bob Marley and Usain Bolt to Kamala Harris, Jamaica has had an outsized reach in global mainstream culture. Yet many of its most important historical, cultural, and political events and aspects are largely unknown beyond the island. The Jamaica Reader presents a panoramic history of the country, from its precontact indigenous origins to the present. Combining more than one hundred classic and lesser-known texts that include journalism, lyrics, memoir, and poetry, the Reader showcases myriad voices from over the centuries: the earliest published black writer in the English-speaking world; contemporary dancehall artists; Marcus Garvey; and anonymous migrant workers. It illuminates the complexities of Jamaica's past, addressing topics such as resistance to slavery, the modern tourist industry, the realities of urban life, and the struggle to find a national identity following independence in 1962. Throughout, it sketches how its residents and visitors have experienced and shaped its place in the world. Providing an unparalleled look at Jamaica's history, culture, and politics, this volume is an ideal companion for anyone interested in learning about this magnetic and dynamic nation.

It is often thought that slaveholders only began to show an interest in female slaves' reproductive health after the British government banned the importation of Africans into its West Indian colonies in 1807. However, as Sasha Turner shows in this illuminating study, for almost thirty years before the slave trade ended, Jamaican slaveholders and doctors adjusted slave women's labor, discipline, and health care to increase birth rates and ensure that infants lived to become adult workers. Although slaves' interests in healthy pregnancies and babies aligned with those of their masters, enslaved mothers, healers, family, and community members distrusted their owners' medicine and benevolence. Turner contends that the social bonds and cultural practices created around reproductive health care and childbirth challenged the economic purposes slaveholders gave to birthing and raising children. Through powerful stories that place the reader on the ground in plantation-era Jamaica, Contested Bodies reveals enslaved women's contrasting ideas about maternity and raising children, which put them at odds not only with their owners but sometimes with abolitionists and enslaved men. Turner argues that, as the source of new labor, these women created rituals, customs, and relationships around pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing that enabled them at times to dictate the nature and pace of their work as well as their value. Drawing on a wide range of sources—including plantation records, abolitionist treatises, legislative documents, slave narratives, runaway advertisements, proslavery literature, and planter correspondence—Contested Bodies yields a fresh account of how the end of the slave trade changed the bodily experiences of those still enslaved in Jamaica.

A collection of lectures delivered between 1987 and 1998. The book is divided into two sections: slavery and freedom, which features critical research on slavery and post-emancipation society, and gender.