The Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books
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VOLUME 13 THE ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA REVIEW OF BOOKS VOLUME 13 NUMBER 1 FALL 2020 Dr. Foster Hill Asha Frank on Barbuda Dorbrene O’Marde on Barbuda NUMBER 1 Elaine Olaoye on Barbuda Paget Henry on Frank Walter and Walter Parker Anique John on Brenda Lee Brown FALL 2020 Mali Olatunji and Paget Henry Interview Dr. Foster Hill Lawrence Jardine on religious reading of COVID-19 Office of University Communications | 274138AFR0321 And much more …. THE ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA REVIEW OF BOOKS A Publication of the Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association Volume 13 • Number 1 • Fall 2020 Copyright © 2021 Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association Editorial Board: Ian Benn, Joanne Hillhouse, Paget Henry, Edgar Lake, Adlai Murdoch, Ermina Osoba, Elaine Olaoye, Mali Olatunji, Vincent Richards Paget Henry, Editor The Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association was founded in 2006 with the goal of raising local intellectual awareness by creating a field of Antigua and Barbuda Studies as an integral part of the larger field of Caribbean Studies. The idea for such an interdisciplinary field grew out of earlier “island conferences” that had been organized by the University of the West Indies, School of Continuing Education, in conjunction with the Political Culture Society of Antigua and Barbuda. The Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books is an integral part of this effort to raise local and regional intellectual awareness by generating conversations about the neglected literary traditions of Antigua and Barbuda through reviews of its texts. Manuscripts: the manuscripts of this publication must be in the form of short reviews of books or works of art dealing with Antigua and Barbuda. Thus reviews of works by writers and artists from Antigua and Barbuda such as Peregrine Pickle, Mary Prince, Tim Hector, Ashley Bryan, Novelle Richards, Gregson Davis, Jamaica Kincaid, Edgar Lake, Althea Prince, Keithlyn Smith, Adlai Murdoch and others will be particularly welcome. We will also welcome commentaries on reviews we have published. Reviews should be no longer than six double-spaced pages, with minimal if any footnotes. Submit reviews to Paget Henry, editor, as word documents at [email protected] for consideration. No portion of the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books may be reproduced for commercial purposes without the permission of the Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association. Photo Credit: Gwendolyn Fevrier-Roberts Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books Volume 13 Number 1 Fall 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS Editor’s Note . .. 5 TRIBUTES TO GEORGE (NUGGET) JOSEPH AND TEACHER FITZROY RAMSEY Happy Earth Transition: George (Nugget) Joseph . 8 Zucan Abiola Bandele Ancestral Tribute to George Manoah Joseph . 10 Edgar Othniel Lake None Dare Claim his Body (In memory of Teacher Fitzroy Herbert Ramsey) . 11 Edgar Othniel Lake FEATURE ESSAYS – BARBUDA Setting our own Agenda: Negotiating Inclusion and Accepting Culture . 25 Asha Frank Antigua/Barbuda: A Reparatory Justice Approach . 31 Dorbrene O’Marde A Social Psychological Analysis of Insularism in Postcolonial Antigua and Barbuda . 41 Elaine Olaoye FEATURE ESSAYS – VISUAL AND LITERARY ART Visual Art in Antigua and Barbuda: Frank Walter and Walter Parker . 61 Paget Henry Putting Some Black in the Union Jack: A Review Essay on Brenda Lee Brown’s London Rocks . 86 Anique John INTERVIEW Music and Church in Antigua and Barbuda: An Interview with Dr. Foster Hill . 100 Paget Henry COMMENTARY In Times of Crisis We Discover Our True Selves . 130 Lawrence Jardine Antigua and Barbuda Booklist . 132 Contributor Information . .. 136 Volume 13 Number 1 Fall 2020 A&B Review – Editor’s Note 2020 Once again, welcome dear readers to this issue, Volume 13, of The Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books, the official publication of the Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association. This is quite a different introduction to write as so much has happened since our last issue. Among the most important things that filled this intervening period was of course the COVID-19 pandemic that has taken so many lives around the world, and interrupted so many of our activities. Indeed, it stood in the way of our annual in person meeting, preventing us from gathering together. Never was I so terrified of traveling to my beloved Antigua and Barbuda. It took away my motivation to work on our Review, as I had to make the adjustments involved in teaching online. I am still such a classroom person, that it was not easy for me. So, in spite of all that, and with vaccines coming stream, welcome to the delayed 2020 issue of our Review. The second big event in our world since the 2019 issue has been the formal opening of the fourth physical campus of the University of the West Indies at Five Islands here in Antigua and Barbuda. This is a very significant development for us here in Antigua and Barbuda and also for the University of the West Indies. On behalf of the Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association (ABSA), we would like to congratulate all who made this signal event possible. We (ABSA) have had a thirteen-year partnership with the Open Campus of the University of the West Indies, putting on conferences and art exhibitions. We look forward to a continuing and a deepening of this partnership in the years ahead with the above expansion of the University. Forward ever, backward never. In keeping with our tradition, this volume of our Association’s journal is an important and interesting one. It opens with three tributes to two outstanding men from Antigua and Barbuda. The first is in honor of the legendary steel band player and leader of the equally legendary Hell’s Gate Steel Band, George (Nugget) Joseph. The first of these two tributes was written by his son, Zucan Bandele, and the second, by our outstanding poet, Edgar Lake. The second person honored in these opening tributes is the effervescent, ever curious, and education-loving man that we all called Teacher Ramsey. In one of his best poems yet, and with breathtaking elegance, Edgar Lake honors and celebrates the sad passing of Teacher Fitzroy Ramsey. Thematically, this volume expands on some important concerns from our previous issue and also introduces some new ones. With regard to the concerns from the previous issue, I am referring to the theme of rebuilding Barbuda after the 2017 devastation of our sister island by Hurricane Irma. The response to that rebuilding effort produced some significant papers on various aspects of Barbuda’s 5 history, political economy, system of land tenure, legal and constitutional status. They were presented at our 2019 conference, although not all were ready in time for inclusion in the 2019 issue of our Review. The papers that were included were written by Dorbrene O’Marde, Lionel Hurst and myself. These papers all suggested that this post-Irma period was indeed a significant transitional period for Barbuda. Recognition of the need for major change was unanimous, yet at the same time these suggestions and attempts at change were locked in conflicts of identity differences and also conflicts of ideological difference between the central government and the Barbuda Council. The papers on Barbuda that are included in this issue are revised versions of those papers that were presented at the 2019 conference that did not make it into that year’s issue of our Review. Thus, we open this issue with a paper by Asha Frank, a Barbudan author and former member of the Barbuda Council. Our second paper on Barbuda is by the irrepressible Dorbrene O’Marde. In this work, he develops more fully his views on the deep distrust and social inequalities between Barbudans and Antiguans, how they were amplified by the impact of Hurricane Irma, and the efforts at reconstruction. Finally, in this section on Barbuda, we have the paper by Dr. Elaine Olaoye, our well-known psychologist and poet. With regard to the new themes that this issue puts before you are the works of two very important but overlooked visual artists of Antigua and Barbuda: Frank Walter and Walter Parker. This essay that I wrote on these two gentlemen began as two reviews. The first was a review of Prof. Barbara Paca’s book, Frank Walter: The Last Universal Man, 1926–2009. The second was a review of the exhibition at the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda of the works of Walter Parker, which was organized in August of 2019 by Mali Olatunji and Desiree Edwards. Before completing the first quarter of my review of Prof. Paca’s book, I said to myself: “this will have to be a review essay”. By the time I was at the halfway point I knew that it had to be a full-length essay. Although the selections of Walter Parker’s paintings that were exhibited at the Museum were much more limited than the selection on Frank Walter’s, the quality and themes of Parker’s paintings merited full treatment in their own right. Those were the origins of my essay, “Visual Art in Antigua & Barbuda: Frank Walter and Walter Parker”. Returning to the older but ongoing Afro-Christian theme of our Review, I am delighted to put before you an interview with Dr. Foster Hill, one of Antigua and Barbuda’s most celebrated organists. The pipe organ has been his instrument of choice, and the music of the church his life. In 2018, 6 Volume 13 Number 1 Fall 2020 Mali Olatunji and I visited Dr. Hill at his home in Sarnia, Canada, and surrounded by all manner of music books and a medium-sized organ, did this interview. In our rather depleted book review section, we have an excellent review of London Rocks, a novel by the well-known Brenda Lee Brown.