How to Outwit a Duppy using Jamaican Spirit Lore

The Jamaican Duppy

African in origin, the word duppy has two meanings in Jamaican spirit lore. The first refers to a soul, which may manifest in either human form or animal form. The second meaning evolves from the first and references a supernatural race of mischievous little people—a duppy-folk akin to fairy-folk.

This post offers advice on the first type of duppy, that of a soul.

Can stock photo

Jamaican Spirit Lore

Jamaican folklore presupposes a person has two souls. One is good, originating with God. The other is secular.

When someone dies, the good soul soars to heaven to answer for its earthly sins. The other remains coffin-bound for three days, after which its shadow emerges and its duppy is born.

If the duppy manifests in human form, it will often resemble the body it abandoned. If animalistic, it might appear in the guise of a snake, a lizard, a horse, you name it—but not, I think, a lamb or a donkey.

These manifestations aren’t ghostly apparitions or demonic possessions; they have substance. But even so, a duppy can disappear into the shadows at will.

There’s the good duppy, and then there’s the evil . . .

A well-intentioned duppy might stick around to sit with the children or guard the family valuables. A malevolent duppy will cause you no end of trouble. A whiff of its hot breath has power to kill, and it can do irreparable damage to one’s finances, health, property, or love life.

A dead husband’s duppy, for example, might return to reclaim his conjugal rights, causing the widow to become barren well before her time, or worse, to bear dead babies.

As it’s impossible to know whether you’ll wind up with a good one or an evil one, it’s best to silence a duppy from the start. Thanks to the aforementioned three day grace period, mourners have an opportunity to plant the duppy down before it manifests.

Plant the duppy down!

A properly planted duppy is unable to leave its coffin. These methods have had success in the past:

1.  Throw a shovelful of parched peas into the grave. If the peas don’t grow, the duppy can’t escape
2.  Plant a shrub upside down in the grave, roots out.
3.  Place a cotton tree limb on the coffin.

Planting a duppy down isn’t always possible. If this is the case, there are a number of options to outwit it.

Outwitting a pursuing duppy:

1. Stay in the shadows at night, out of the moonlight.
2. Climb a tree.
3. Buy time by “cutting ten.” In other words, cut the sign of the cross ten times in the dirt with a knife. A duppy can’t count past nine, nor does it care much for crosses.
4. Cast peas, rice, or sand before a pursuing duppy. This is similar to deterrent #3. The duppy must count the grains, thereby granting its victim precious time to escape.
5. Shout these words from an unknown tongue: “Ig no ring ya no bar ditos doranti placitus.”
6. If the duppy’s inside a dwelling, expel it by burning cow dung mixed with hoof and horn.
7. Brew tea with magical herbs.
8. Wash yourself with the same water used to cleanse a dead person. (If you bathe later, all bets are off).

And if all else fails . . .

Employ an obeah man as a duppy catcher.

Real or imagined, a malevolent, vengeful duppy can wreak havoc with one’s senses. Why take chances?

 

The post How to Outwit a Duppy using Jamaican Spirit Lore first appeared on Linda Lee Graham.

Soldier of the Black Watch c.1740, colorized {{PD-US}}

 

When Malcolm McPherson joined the Black Watch in 1735, he and his fellow enlistees “thought themselves destined to serve exclusively . . . in the Highlands.”¹

They had no expectation they’d do duty in the West Indies. If they had, it’s unlikely they’d have enlisted. Most soldiers dreaded a West Indies posting—so many of them never returned.

It’s estimated that over half of the troops serving the islands in the latter part of the 18th century died before leaving. Some called the region a mass grave of British soldiers.²

Some called the region a mass grave of British soldier.

The Death Toll

The soldiers stationed in the West Indies had a greater chance of dying from disease than they did of dying by enemy fire. Impure water supplies carried typhoid fever, dysentery, and cholera. Insects carried yellow fever, malaria, and typhus.

These diseases weren’t new to the tropics, but the inhabitants were. The soldiers, the planters, and the enslaved carried no immunity; all were susceptible.

Ignorant of what caused a disease, doctors could do no more than treat the symptoms. Unfortunately, their treatment often only aggravated the complaints, or as Rudyard Kipling wrote: “half their remedies cured you dead.”³

Another culprit was alcohol abuse. Island rum was cheap, plentiful, and easily obtained–all qualities that led to excessive use. While new rum (it’s been likened to moonshine) was known to sometimes have ill effects, many regarded properly distilled rum as safe in any quantity.

Soldiers’ rations included alcohol. Often they were allocated an extra portion before a battle to boost their courage, or after a battle to calm their panic.

Island doctors, both military and civilian, tended to prescribe rum as a curative. It wasn’t.

Malcolm McPherson {{PD-US}}

One historian recorded that his grandfather, serving a term in Jamaica, was measured by an individual who seemed “particularly interested in his height and build.” The individual was a forward-thinking undertaker, for “burial of course must follow death very speedily in the tropics.”¹²

Decoys and Deception

Britain’s empire was rapidly expanding in the 18th century, and it continually required soldiers to keep its territory–including the lethal West Indies–secure. So in 1743, His Majesty’s Government disregarded the Black Watch’s home-service terms of enlistment.

The men of McPherson’s regiment were lured outside their territory and ordered to march south. They were told King George had “never seen a Highland regiment,”⁴ and that he desired their presence in Musselburgh for his review.

Some in the regiment were suspicious. The Duchess of Atholl made note of their discontent, writing that “this affair of the highland Regiment marching has given great uneasiness to their officers and the 5 companies that passed thro this town  . . . without beat of Drum or sound of pipe, those musicianers having Disserted . . .”⁵

Not all suspected treachery. One newspaper claimed that when marching through Edinburgh, the men made an “excellent appearance in their uniform and kilt.”⁶

Black Watch review at Glasgow Green c. 1758 {{PD-US}}

The king, however, was not in Musselburgh. Nor was he in Berwick-upon-Tweed, the next town scheduled for their review. In Berwick, the men were informed the king would review them in London. Thus they were decoyed from the Highlands to London.

King George wasn’t in London, either. He was in Flanders.⁷

The post The Dreaded West Indies Posting first appeared on Linda Lee Graham.

Spanish explorers first brought the spice to the Europeans’ attention late in the fifteenth century, bolstering its value as a commodity. It’s been used as a flavoring worldwide ever since.

In addition to flavoring holiday baked goods, pimento is used to flavor fish, meats, soups, stews, marinades, gravies, and jerk-seasonings. Next to rum, it’s the primary ingredient in the liqueur “pimento dram.”

By Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen (List of Koehler Images) [Public domain]

The more odoriferous and smaller the berries are, the better they are accounted at market. The leaves and bark are full of aromatic inflammable particles . . . Nothing can be more delicious than the odour of these walks [garden plots], when the trees are in blossom, as well as at other times; the friction of the leaves and smaller branches, even in a very gentle breeze, diffusing a most fragrant and exhilarating scent through the circumambient atmosphere.¹

Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?

Mrs. Nugent, wife of the British governor of Jamaica in 1804, wrote in her diary that on Easter Day the church was “strewed with pimento and orange blossoms, and the pews were ornamented with branches of both. The scent was most refreshing.”²

The fragrance has been likened to that of cloves, juniper-berries, cinnamon, and pepper—hence the name “allspice.” It’s value as a commodity still ranks right up there with pepper, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and mace.

Pimento flourished as an export crop in 18th-century Jamaica. Many sugar plantations, including the fictional Fain Hill of Voices Echo, boasted pimento walks as well. 

Rhiannon looked up to see a long line of women returning from the pimento walks, their heads held high as they balanced their baskets . . .

The scent of pimento wafted in the girls’ wake, reminding her she’d planned to add the spice to her soap collection. She’d fetch some berries from the barbecue before they dried. ~ Voices Echo

1. Edward Long, The History of Jamaica: Or, General Survey of the Antient and Modern State of That Island, With Reflections on Its Situation, Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce … Vol. 3, facs, Cambridge Library Collection (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010). 705
2. Philip Wright, ed., Lady Nugent’s Journal of Her Residence in Jamaica from 1801 to 1805 (The University of the West Indies Press, 2002). 200

The post Pimento: A Spice for the Holidays first appeared on Linda Lee Graham.

Free Women of Color ~ Agostino Brunias

In the 1780s, French traveler Moreau de St. Méry documented eleven different racial combinations in French-controlled Saint-Domingue. Then, taking into account the interracial mingling over a span of several generations, he sub-categorized more than a hundred variations.

To say his resulting table is expansive is an understatement.¹

Moreau’s work was an early attempt at formulating a science of skin color and, taken in context, it illustrates the obsessive race to white in the European-dominated West Indies.

Similarly, contemporary historian Edward Long  expanded on the colonial preoccupation with skin tones in his History of Jamaica.

Degrees of Distinction

Long claimed Spanish colonists thought it worthwhile to “mend the breed by ascending or growing whiter; insomuch that a Quateron will hardly keep company with a Mulatto; and a Mestize values himself very highly in comparison with a Sambo.”²

As for the Dutch, Long wrote, they transcended the Spaniards “very far in their refinement of these complexions.” Their approach to the science of skin color included adding drops of clear water to a “single drop of dusky liquor, until it becomes tolerably pellucid.”³

As crazy as that sounds, Long may have actually tried the ludicrous experiment. He reported that when using the analogy as many as thirty generations might not be “sufficient to discharge” the dusky “stain.”⁴

But the British Jamaicans weren’t as obsessive, according to Long. The ancestral distinctions common in Jamaican records were mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, and mustee. Often, Jamaicans simply used the word “mulatto.”

The Race to White in 18th-century Jamaica ~ LLG

Nevertheless,  regardless of the degree of distinction, the distinctions were crucial—to creoles of European and African ancestry both. Miscegenation had resulted in generations of children of varying ancestry and skin tone, and skin color had come to dictate legal, social, and economic status throughout the Americas.

The closer one’s skin tone to white, the better one’s status.

Sex An Unwritten Colonial Right

Most planters considered copulation with their female slaves their right, and the practice was openly tolerated in the West Indies. As a result, It led to a “vast addition of spurious offsprings of different complexions,” producing a “tawney breed.”⁵

Long explained it thus:

“A place where, by custom, so little restraint is laid on the passions . . . men, of every rank, quality, and degree here, who would much rather riot in their goatish embraces, than share the pure and lawful bliss derived from matrimonial, mutual love. Modesty, in this respect, has but little footing here. He who should presume to shew any displeasure against such a thing as simple fornication, would for his pains be accounted a simple blockhead; since not one in twenty can be persuaded that there is either sin; or shame in cohabiting with his slave.”⁶

The 18th-Century West Indies Creole

A creole was a nonindigenous island born person, regardless of his or her skin tone or ancestry. Moreover, there were three classes of creoles.

White Creoles

First were the white creoles. White creoles were born into privilege. Free, they enjoyed some control over their fate and—subject to property and religious qualifications—entitlement to civil rights. Even those born destitute had the opportunity to better their economic status.

Black Creoles  

Second were the black creoles, those of African descent. The vast majority of black creoles were born enslaved. The enslaved had no civil rights. They were subject to a harsh criminal code and had little or no opportunity to better their economic status.

The Barbadoes Mulatto Girl ~ Agostino Brunias

Brown Creoles

Lastly were the brown creoles—creoles of mixed ancestry. Their rights fell somewhere in between, and each colonial power had its own set of laws.

If classed a mulatto, an enslaved creole was usually accorded a superior social rank in the slave community. The trace of European ancestry generally granted the enslaved domestic labor as opposed to field labor. Often a mulatto was given the chance to learn a trade, and with a trade came the opportunity to earn money in one’s free time.

“Do you remember meeting Mrs. Paterson and Miss Hart at dinner, Mr. Brock?” Miss Airth asked. “Quaminah says they’re brown girls, not white. Tell him, Quaminah.”

Swallowing a sigh, Liam scratched his chin. If he let the conversation continue, Quaminah would soon cite the ideal width and angle of a girl’s nose and lips. Rose tarried with the same preoccupation.

The journey from black to white or white to black was complex at best. ~ Voices Echo

The post The Race to White in the 18th-Century West Indies first appeared on Linda Lee Graham.

The phrase is a variant of the more familiar “as rich as Croesus,” implying a creole was as rich as Croesus, the ancient king of legendary wealth.

So what created such wealth on an island smaller than the state of Connecticut? In a word: sugar.

“They Could Scarcely Get Enough”

German monk Albert of Aachen wrote in 1100 of the Crusaders’ discovery of a refreshingly “wholesome . . . honey-flavored reed” in the Holy Land, that once tasted, “people could scarcely get enough of.” He also noted the cane’s cultivation required “extremely hard work on the part of the farmers.”¹

With uncanny perceptiveness, not only did Albert of Aachen discern sugar’s value, he pinpointed why the crop was a candidate for slave labor. Centuries later the nearly insatiable demand for sugar not only fueled the rise of the transatlantic slave trade, it fueled the creation of sugar tycoons.

Christopher Columbus brought sugarcane to the West Indies in 1493, on his second voyage. He was familiar with the crop’s potential; his first wife’s mother owned a sugar estate on Madeira.²

A Condensed Island History

Columbus claimed Jamaica and its indigenous people for the Spanish Crown in 1494, marking the beginning of its colonial history. Though colonized less rigorously than neighboring Hispaniola, Jamaica remained in Spanish possession for over 150 years, until Britain wrested the island from them in 1655.

The biggest of the British West Indian possessions, Jamaica quickly became Britain’s largest producer and exporter of tropical goods, with sugar at the forefront. By 1774, the island was the wealthiest colony in British America.

As rich as a Creole

Thousands of young Britons flocked to Jamaica in search of a fortune. The colony had an abysmally high mortality rate, but those who survived often achieved that fortune.

Segar Smoking Society in Jamaica James Abraham © The Trustees of the British Museum

Many wealthy planters, managers, and merchants spent lavishly and lived extravagantly. They became known for their ostentatiousness, and for a time “as rich as a creole” became a commonplace expression. King George III, upon spying the opulent coach and equipage of one such over-the-top West-Indies planter, was said to have noted it. In apparent concern that the Mother country might not receive its fair share of the wealth, he remarked to his minister: “Sugar. Sugar. Eh! All that sugar. How are the duties, eh, Pitt? How are the duties?“³

But at what cost?

As Albert of Aachen wrote hundreds of years earlier, sugarcane cultivation was a slow, labor-intensive process. The West Indies planters came to rely almost entirely on imported slave labor to harvest and process the cane. From 1700 to 1750, Jamaica was second only to Brazil in the number of slaves imported from Africa.⁴

The Africans contended not only with the island’s climate and tropical diseases, but with an inadequate diet, an unrelenting labor regime, and the slave owners’ brutality. The island’s enslaved labor force never became self-sustaining as deaths far out-numbered births.

But perhaps most devastating, in that its effect was (or is) longer lasting, was the damage to the black creole’s psyche. Generations of children were born into slavery, and they grew up believing their skin color consigned them to the status of chattel.

The whites did not escape unscathed. The corrupting, barbaric effect of slave ownership cannot be underestimated. The circumstances altered the slaveholder’s behavior and core beliefs, making a mockery of any previously held cultural values.

Scholar Trevor Burnard, in his intriguing analysis of slaveholder Thomas Thistlewood’s diary, states:

“The foremost characteristic of white Jamaicans, therefore, was an all-consuming ambition for wealth, an avaricious and aggrandizing self-interest . . . Jamaicans were addicted to ostentatious display and devoted to luxury. They spent their money on lavish feasting, copious drinking, and all manner of sexual and sensual delights.” ⁵

© The Trustees of the British Museum

The image at left is one of the many contemporary satirical prints mocking the indolence of West Indies planters. It is captioned: “Make haste with the Sangaree, Quashee and tell Quaco to drive the Birds up to me – I’m ready.”

The “sportsman” (planter) sits in a chair with his feet supported on a stool, gun in hand. A slave stands behind him with an umbrella to ward off the sun and a branch to beat off the flies. A boy approaches his master, his tray laden with an enormous goblet of sangria. Judging by the number of bottles, jugs, and plates filled with food, the planter has been at it a while. A fellow sportsman, this one reclining, is shown in the distance.

Part of this self-indulgence might be attributed to a desire to live in the moment. Good health was fleeting in a way that’s impossible to appreciate today. Add to that, the whites were heavily outnumbered. Fear the enslaved would revolt and extract revenge was ever-present.

The Fall of Planter Society

For a number of reasons, by the end of the eighteenth century the growth of the planters’ debt began to outpace the growth of their wealth.

In 1807 the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act abolished slave trading in the British Empire, effectively numbering the days of slavery in Jamaica. In 1834 Britain’s Slavery Abolition Act abolished the practice of slavery in most of their possessions.

Jamaica herself gained independence over a century later, in 1962.

In Voices Echo, Liam Brock struggles with the temptation to let others handle life’s unpleasantries:

Outside the stable, Liam paused mid-step, considering. Had the day come when he couldn’t be bothered to unsaddle his own horse? Nay, not even that—a horse not his to begin with, but one he enjoyed freely.

Perhaps it had. Dripping wet, he was anxious to escape the mosquito-laden, steaming inferno of a stable. He started toward the house again.

Hell, he may be dripping wet now, but as soon as he went inside, he’d no doubt find dry clothes laid out and waiting, ready for use. His pot of shaving cream, scented with some concoction the lovely mistress of the plantation had prepared especially for him, would be restored from this morning’s use and set alongside a freshly honed razor for his beard and newly cut root for his teeth.

How quick the slide to pampered fool. Rhiannon had been right. Plantation life changed men—and not for the better. He retraced his steps.  ~Voices Echo

———————————————
1“Sugar.” In Africana The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, edited by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 1800. 1st ed. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999.
²Crosby Jr., Alfred W. “Old World Plants and Animals in the New World.” In The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, 68. 30th Anniversary ed. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2003.
³Sheridan, R.B. (1961), “The Rise of a Colonial Gentry: A Case Study of Antigua, 1730-1775.” The Economic History Review, 13: 342–357. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.1961.tb02124.x
⁴ Table below compiled using: Estimates Database. 2009. Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. https://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/assessment/estimates.faces (accessed August 17, 2014)

⁵Burnard, Trevor G., Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. 19.

The post As Rich as a Creole first appeared on Linda Lee Graham.

I did a double take when I saw this work hanging in a Montego Bay exhibit last year. Admittedly, my interest was more than casual. I was writing Voices Echo at the time and visiting Jamaica to flesh out my research. Many of the images in the collage echoed familiar themes and historical details in my novel.

The Nugents Entertain at King’s House  © Carol Crichton

Still, it’s striking, isn’t it? The work was on display at Montego Bay’s Sangster International Airport and curated by Gilou Bauer. The artist, Carol Crichton, managed to capture the essence of Jamaica’s complex, tapestried past in this one collage, and she has graciously allowed me to post it.

As her website explains, Ms. Crichton’s work “considers issues of identity and history as found in the nexus of bloodlines and cultures that is the West Indies.” Her depiction, blending realism and caricature, offers a glimpse of the people as well as a social critique of the period.

It’s worth noting that such a diverse gathering would not have occurred in the King’s House during the Nugents’ time in residence. Ms. Nugent wrote of receiving “black, brown and yellow ladies” only in her private rooms,¹ and missionary historian W.G. Gardner wrote that it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that “colored guests” were invited to social functions at the King’s House.²

The Nugents Entertain at King’s House

The King’s House referenced in the image was in Spanish Town. It served as the Governor’s residence from about 1762 until 1872 when the seat of government transferred to Kingston. Only the façade of the original King’s House remains; fire destroyed the building in 1925.

Governor George Nugent, who was governor from 1801 through 1805, and his wife Maria are pictured twice in the bottom left corner—once in color and once in black and white (parceled out and shown at left).

Crichton explains that their family portrait appears twice, small and large, to emphasize that though they were mere mortals, “in the context of the Colony” they were “larger than God, embodying the Crown.”

The room pictured is the great saloon, and it occasionally doubled as a ballroom when not being used for official business. Mrs. Nugent referred to it as the ‘Egyptian Hall’ in her diary, a generic 18th-century term for large rooms characterized by columns on one side with a gallery above. Both the gallery and the columns are on the right side of the image.

The chandelier still exists and is now hanging in the National Library in Kingston.

Admiral Duckworth and the Earl of Balcarres, both serving in Jamaica in the King’s House heyday, are pictured in black and white in the lower right corner. There’s even an image of pirate-turned-governor Henry Morgan tucked in.

The Revelers

Ms. Crichton explained the women positioned above Duckworth and Balcarres are part of a
derisive cartoon mocking the white creoles and their “balls and ostentatious excess.” There’s no shortage of 18th-century caricatures mocking the white West Indies creoles’ ostentatiousness; the caricature she referenced is entitled A Grand Jamaica Ball! and likely dates from Balcarres’ term as governor.

This woman features prominently in the collage. She’s the “Queen” of the “Set Girls,” and is from one of Jamaican artist Isaac Belisario’s 1837 lithographs.

Note the smiling Queen carries a cow-hide whip in her right hand. Unlike an overseer’s whip, it’s festooned with three bows. Belisario wrote that she exercised the whip “with unsparing severity,” the ribbons being a mockery of “the purpose to which it [the whip] is not unfrequently applied—the appendage is highly necessary for the preservation of order in her corps de ballet.” ³

Crichton also placed Belisario’s Red Set Girls in the “sky”, as “whimsical anachronistic shades of Mary Poppins.”

The French Set Girls with the Jaw Bone Musicians (Belisario)

In actuality, the Sets danced and paraded through Kingston’s streets at New Year, decked out in all their finery—most of which was supplied by their masters, mistresses or patrons. In his 1818 Journal of a West Indies Proprietor, Matthew Lewis recorded the Sets were first sponsored by rival military units stationed in Jamaica.⁴  Ms. Crichton noted that some parade characters mocked their oppressors; others retained African ritual symbolism in their dance.

The “John Canoe” festivals, as the elaborate holiday processions were known, were created by the enslaved Africans. The white colonists viewed the secular⁵ celebrations as a harmless, if somewhat intimidating, release of simmering hostilities. The celebrations, often called Jonkonnu, occur to this day.

The Enslaved

And finally, the enslaved, whose labors were chiefly responsible for the colony’s vast wealth. Crichton’s placed them up near heaven, dispiritedly trudging the ceiling’s perimeter, while the whites and “free coloreds” revel below.

Shown in full shackles and headed for work, they appear too weary to pay heed to the ball. In turn, the revelers pay little heed to them.

Gabriel stands by with his trumpet, symbolizing the slaves’ longing for the next life. Understandably, as death was the only sure escape from their torment.

Jamaican artist Carol Crichton

I love this quote I snatched from an “Art Buzz” article on Caribbean-Beat:

“Oftentimes we think of history as something we learn at school. When we look at works like Crichton’s, history comes alive in ways that are fascinating. They’re paintings about history. But they’re very much alive, contemporary works.” ~ Art critic Eddie Chambers

If you’ve visited Jamaica, you’re aware it’s a Mecca for tourists. But there’s so much more to the island than its beaches, and it’s worth taking a step past its shoreline to catch a glimpse of its past. One way or another, we (i.e. our ancestors) all played a part in it. I hope Crichton’s work has sparked an interest, and you’ll take that step on your next (or first) visit.

Ms. Crichton tells me that The Nugents Entertain at King’s House is also reproduced in the new addition of Jamaican Art Then & Now! You can see other intriguing depictions of her work on her website, and I encourage you to check it out.

Many of the images in the Ms. Crichton’s collage echo the themes and historical details in Voices Echo.

1. Nugent, Maria, as edited by Philip Wright. Lady Nugent’s Journal of Her Residence in Jamaica from 1801 to 1805. The University of West Indies Press, 2002 p 65
2. Ibid., p XXIX
3. Kriz, Kay Dian. Slavery, Sugar, and the Culture of Refinement, Picturing the British West Indies, 1700-1840. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008 p 133
4. Ibid, p. 131
5. Surviving written accounts characterize the festival as non-religious in nature. Those writers, however, were all European, and it’s possible they hadn’t attained a clear understanding of the celebration’s significance to the Africans.

The post Jamaica’s Tapestried Past first appeared on Linda Lee Graham.

Appearances notwithstanding, it’s safe to say Kara Walker didn’t intend to present a sugarcoated history when she created her cast of sticky subtleties in the defunct New York Domino Sugar refinery earlier this summer.

Her remarkable two month long exhibit, entitled “A Subtlety,” was billed instead as a homage to all the “unpaid and overworked artisans” who labored the sugarcane fields in days past.

Unpaid artisans . . . ? Yes, she’s referencing the enslaved—and offering a not-so-subtle clue that her exhibit targeted the horrors of the 18^th-century West Indies slave trade.

Inside the Refinery

The soon-to-be demolished refinery closed in 2004, but a dark and sticky molasses and sugar residue still clung to the walls ten years later, adding an authentic aura and odor to the exhibit.

A few steps inside the building and a visitor came face to face (or face to nipple) with a snow-white, towering, majestic sphinx. Stretching seventy-five feet long and thirty-five feet high, the sugarcoated sphinx dominated the cavernous factory.

Kara Walker’s Sugar Sphinx

“What we’re seeing, for lack of a better term, is the head of a woman who has very African, black features,” Walker explained in a NPR interview. “She sits somewhere in between the kind of mammy figure of old and something a little bit more  . . . recognizable . . . recognizably human . . . She’s positioned with her arms flat out across the ground and large breasts that are staring at you.”

The sphinx was settled in the traditional pose with the exception of a raised tail-end.  That raised tail-end exposed a giant vulva. Make of that what you will; there were no edifying placards placed beneath her. To me, it more than hinted of the rampant sexual exploitation of enslaved women during sugar’s heyday. And as it turns out, Walker’s art is noted for exploring the “vestiges of sexual, physical, and racial exploitation” of slaves. (NY Times)

Kara Walker’s Sugar Baby

In the early days of the exhibit there were fifteen cherubic sugar-boys (babies) lining the walk to the giant sphinx. Unsurprisingly, all did not survive the duration of the exhibit. Made of candy, many melted in the summer heat.

Their fate was yet another not-so-subtle subtlety. The mortality rate of those working the cane-pieces  was abysmally high, and the harsh climatic conditions with its accompanying diseases was one of the reasons.

Ms. Walker, in a move she admits was “maybe a little bit hammer-over-the-head,” took some of the pieces of the melted, broken boys and threw them “into the baskets of the unbroken boys.”

A gut-clenching reminder of a sugar plantation’s “bloody sugar day,” wherein a slave charged with hastily feeding cane into the mill would lose a limb between its crushing rollers.

What does it all mean?

I didn’t attend the exhibit but my daughter did, and she shared her photos and first-hand impressions. Art means different things to different people, but for what it’s worth, the message I absorbed was one not only of overwhelming loss and sadness, but of survival.

Wearing  a kerchief and exaggerated African features, the towering white sphinx conveyed an overwhelmingly powerful figure. Take from her what you will, she’ll not be cowed into surrendering her essence.

And the dripping, black, molasses-covered boys carrying the baskets? Their image exudes  a heart-rending vulnerability, and it’s as simple as that. 

By all accounts, A Subtlety was a powerful exhibit. Read the New York Times and NPR interviews with Ms. Walker and watch the video below for more insight. 

As an aside—or maybe not an aside, as the subtleties of medieval times were what inspired Walker—“subtlety” is an historical term for an ornamental confectionery table decoration. It was usually made of sugar and often eaten.

The post A Sticky Subtlety first appeared on Linda Lee Graham.

Sugarcoat history? Of course we can, but should we? Not in my opinion. Still, it’s a fine line to straddle when writing romantic historical fiction—particularly a story that takes place in brutal 18th-century Jamaica.

Kara Walker’s Sugarbaby

I know romance readers have certain expectations of the genre. Romances offer happy endings and emotionally satisfying escapes from our everyday concerns. Voices Echo is a romance at its core. Yet I struggled writing it, knowing I might alienate some Voices series fans by straying from the ‘sweet’ corner of the genre.

I hope not, as in the end, I felt compelled to give Jamaica its due, disturbing though it might be. Because Voices Echo is historical fiction as well as a romance, and I believe the authenticity of a historical setting is paramount to creating a believable world about what “could have happened.” Also, I think my readers enjoy learning about history and expect to be drawn into a deeper understanding of the historical forces shaping a given setting and the characters’ lives within it.

Why Jamaica?

Though it can be read on its own, Voices Echo follows Voices Beckon and Voices Whisper, both of which take place in eighteenth-century Philadelphia. Given my reservations, you may question why I would consider transporting my characters at all. Philadelphia doesn’t suffer a lack of compelling historical themes. Why begin another year of research if I didn’t have to?

I chose Jamaica because I wanted an exotic setting for Liam and Rhiannon’s story-an exceptional setting that would challenge their individual strengths and flaws to the greatest degree. Jamaica offered all that and more. Many intriguing possibilities for conflict came to light in my research—conflict that provided opportunity for a relationship between them to progress. I’m actually not sure their relationship could have progressed in a tamer setting. It took more than a gentle nudge for Rhiannon to question her values.

Add to that, I was curious; by the late 1700’s, the United States and Jamaica had shared a colonial history dating back a century. Philadelphia’s newspapers referenced the island frequently. At the time, many Americans had family and business connections in the British colony, making the island seem somehow closer to America in 1791 than it is even in today’s jet age.

The Reality of Plantation Life in British Jamaica

That said, day-to-day life on a Jamaican plantation differed greatly from day-to-day life in post-revolutionary Philadelphia. Readers often question how much of a story is based in fact. The characters in Voices Echo, of course, are purely fictional, but period diaries and historical narratives provided inspiration for most of the book’s events and conflicts, especially those involving overindulgence, plantation discipline, obeah, and the exploitation of women. (Trust me, my mind is not that dark on its own.)

New Release! If you like your #histfic dark, exciting & romantic, you’ll love VOICES ECHO! http://t.co/LMnoWWKAvc #reading #indie #fiction

— Jenny Q (@JennyQinVA) June 25, 2014

Saint-Domingue’s Long Shadow

In 1791 Jamaica was second only to neighboring French-held Saint-Domingue in supplying the world’s sugar. When the French Assembly declared political equality for all freeborn men, white or mixed race, news of the decree created an upheaval in Saint-Domingue that reverberated throughout the West Indies. August 1791 marked the beginning of a colony-wide insurrection that would last until 1804.

While I doubt the British military actually flooded the streets of Montego Bay within days of the insurrection’s first outbreak as Liam noted in Voices Echo, the military did respond to the islanders’ call for reinforcements within months, if not weeks. It was imperative the infectious rebellion not spread south; the loss of Jamaica would be an economic catastrophe for Britain.

As for Rhiannon’s overwhelming fear of a rebellion occurring one hundred miles north of the Ross plantation, that unease was keenly felt by most of the whites on Jamaica. The enslaved comprised the vast majority of Jamaica’s population, and they were not a satisfied lot for obvious reasons–the threat of Jamaica’s own rebellion was real. As in the novel, while the government and white residents actively encouraged more white men to make the island their home, their efforts were largely unsuccessful.

“See that ship under half sail? It’s a slaver, Mr. Brock. Over a hundred fresh Africans are on that ship. I can guarantee you the other ships moored in the bay don’t carry more than five white men among them who plan to stay. Do you know what that means?”

“I expect it means you’re woefully outnumbered, Mr. Airth.” He ought to take Mr. Ross aside and speak to him regarding his mate’s high-handed recruiting. If he’d had plans to stay, he’d be second-guessing them about now.  ~ Voices Echo

History’s Stories

In summary, the 18th-century Caribbean slave trade is a story filled with horror. While I don’t advocate dwelling on things we cannot change, I believe it serves no one to gloss over the horror as if it never occurred.

“Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.”   ~ Abraham Lincoln (November 1864, in reference to the Civil War)

New York artist Kara Walker tackled the story in a most unusual exhibit earlier this summer–one that took place in a sugar refinery, no less. I’ll share some pictures of the exhibit in my next post.

The post Sugarcoating History first appeared on Linda Lee Graham.

I explored the site this afternoon and happened upon a treasure–an old Jamaica/Cuba field notebook. The page I reviewed detailed more information about Jamaican fireflies than I’ll ever need to know—but fascinating nonetheless, as Rhiannon and Liam have a poignant scene amidst the fireflies in Voices Echo.

The post Smithsonian Treasures first appeared on Linda Lee Graham.

Hurricane of October 1780, Print made by Edward Edwards, © The Trustees of the British Museum

The post Jamaica’s Hurricane of 1780 first appeared on Linda Lee Graham.