Not a new book, but it's reviewed in today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/books/ian-thomsons-dead-yard-a-story-of-modern -jamaica-review.html?pagewanted=1&tntemail1=y&_r=1&emc=tnt

I read this book when it was first published in the UK and found it to be more a work of fiction than fact. Thomson, unfortunately, just doesn't 'get' Jamaica and the reason why we, as tourists, come back to the island year after year after year.

It is not fiction at all.
The book had some very important observations by the writer but seemed a bit disjointed when trying to bring it all together.
It was not about tourists nor was it written for tourists: it is a raw and honest (in the authors eyes and experience) about his time and learnings in jamaica. many did not like it as it portrayed the upper class as pretentious. Are they? Some - yes. But they do not like to acknowledge that, nor do they wish others to acknowledge that about them either.
I appreciated many of the observations he had to make and give him full kudos for bringing to light what some did not want brought to light, but did not get why the book was written in the first place. In my opinion if you wish to make general statements about a country and pick a few people to observe and malign, I would have preffered the writer spend more time on the island, to really learn what it is that makes it tick and be more "all round" in his observations and statements.
I certainly would not venture to the UK, spend a few months, and then dare to write a book, thinking I had encapsulated it all.

Wow! what a great review! You think the problem highlighted is the pretentious upper class! Wow what insight! We are the most indisciplined murderous country in the world and all 'a' could comment on is the upper-class's pretension! Mind boggling!

Well spooky dude makes the observation that Jamaica is the most indisciplined and murderous country in the world. True? Half true? Whatever. There is undoubtedly a ring of truth in that statement and, it is most unfortunate that this is the impression broadcast abroad. How do you think the Dudus saga went down overseas? How many innocents in the 70 odd killed? How many murders remain unsolved? I have personal knowlege of 6 of whom, I guess, 5 could be termed "upper class" whatever that may mean in terms of the wanton destruction of life. Jamaicans should take this on board.

Thank God the people of TB are kind, honest and peaceable. Something that is recognised by those that live in and visit the community. A big up to TB residents and what a wonderful example for the rest of the Island!

To Spooky Dude

Perhaps you should read the book and comment on what you yourself think, [edited by TB.Net].
Then and only then can real dialogue take place.

PS. The book itself is pretty complex, but my comment was addressed to "disappointed" who wrote from a tourists point of view

Hi Karen...What's your take on the NY Times review? The statistics cursorily referenced are alarming, and some regarding out of wedlock births, illiteracy, violence and vendettas are recognizable..."no credible justice system" so many years after the founders and Independence makes you think twice about how the system is gamed.
Thank goodness the Times reviewer is astute enough for proclaiming to a wider audience that "you never feel that Mr. Thomson has gotten particularly close to contemporary Jamaica. He does get out and about. He drops into churches and a whorehouse and a Rastafarian community and a leper home; he goes fishing; he visits Noël Coward’s old house. But not much happens during these desultory outings. Each is over in a couple of pages."
Most of this book is taken up with interviews; Mr. Thomson swings from one to the next as if from vine to vine. Most are so static that he could have done them over Skype. More problematically, nearly all these interviews are with people who are quite old...he gives us a skewed and brittle picture of Jamaica. These are people whose glory days are behind them. It’s no surprise that they think the country’s glory days are in the rearview mirror, too.

I have just read some of the reviews of The Dead Yard, including the Guardian, upon its author, Ian Thomson's winning of the Ondaatje Prize, which goes to the book which has best evoked the spirit of a place. It describes the book as about the gritty underbelly of Jamaica, hailed for its candid portrait of a 'corrupted Eden'.

Thomson's The Dead Yard sees the author walking the streets of Jamaica, describing its poverty, gang rule and police brutality, meeting its people and exploring how the country has changed since its independence in 1962."You visitors are always getting it wrong. Either it's golden beaches or guns, guns, guns, guns. Is there nothing in between?", he is told by one Jamaican.

...The Dead Yard "will be a revelation" for those "to whom Jamaica means only music, sunshine and cricket", said judges...

"His candid portrait – vigorous, illuminating and sometimes shocking – allows Jamaica to speak for itself," they said. "Thomson is a brave writer who takes himself into unexpected, sometimes edgy places. The island he describes is a place of verdant beauty; history-ridden, post-colonial with an undertow of disappointment and violence. This is the best kind of travel writing: stimulating, educative and evocative."
(guardian.co.uk--25 May 2010)

AUDIO: National Public Radio's (NPR) Interview with The Dead Yard author, Ian Thomson:

Click on: Listen to the Story
www.npr.org/2011/04/16/135417990/hopes-unrealized-in-independent-jamaica

Book Review by a Jamaican-Wilfried F. Voss:
If someone was to compile everything that is negative about the British society and pack it into one book, then they would have achieved the same objective. The author made several reference to the Jamaica Tourist Board adverts comparing it to life on the dark side but the tourist boards of Great Britain do not promote football hooliganism, life in impoverish council estates, English Defense League race riots, pub fights, public drunkenness and disorder, massive amount of child abuse from Britain’s Pedophiles’, stabbings and murders in Britain and as such I do not see any reason why the Jamaica Tourist Board should promote crime in Jamaica.

Anyone can write a book about the dark side of any country because every country have a dark side, but to make the dark side the norm is just criminal, pure evil. This writer dislikes Jamaica for some reason and understands like most of the British media outlets that negativity sells, especially when it comes to Jamaica. Does Jamaica have problems, yes, does Jamaica have a crime problem, yes, but one can ask the same about most countries, including the United Kingdom. The Author interviews several prominent, wealthy Jamaicans who are not of African descent and several non Jamaicans who live in Jamaica; they all seem to take pleasure in their raciest description the black population. One would think he was interviewing members of the Ku Klux Klan in the deep south of America or party members of the British National Party or the English Defense league. The population of Jamaica like most other countries is diverse, it is made up of people of different races and different historical background and yet this author is shocked to find out that Jamaica suffers from normal human traits that exist in almost every country with a diverse population.

As Jamaicans we understands the problems that we face more than anyone else, we know the negative aspect of our society, we experience it day in day out and it is something we as Jamaicans are fighting to overcome every day.
We also know and love the positives aspects of our society of which there are many, we see it every day and we experience it every day and it is there for all to see but people like Ian Thomson are blind to this and that is not what sells. Books like Dead Yard and writers like Ian Thomson exist to kill all hopes, dreams and aspirations of a people while making a profit.

I see nothing positive about this book, it brings nothing new to the table, it offers no solutions and given the fact that the foreign media only reports bad, negative things about Jamaica (We all know the BBC’s attraction to a Jamaican Ghetto is like a moth to flame) it adds nothing new to the way people in other countries view Jamaica.
However it reinforces my belief that what is important is how we Jamaicans think about ourselves and the future of our country. We cannot and will not let others like Ian Thomson control or define how we think or who we are. As Jamaicans we are given one of the greatest challenges a human being could face, to take one of the most fertile and the most beautiful land mass on this planet and convert it into a country where all of its inhabitants can live in peace and prosper, to build a nation state future generations of Jamaicans can be proud of.
Great Britain left us with nothing but we are determined to create something. Yes we have had set backs along the way but I believe we will get it right, we are a young nation still growing but we will get there.

The author performs interviews after interviews with people who left Jamaica decades ago, with each one giving their own out of date opinion on Jamaica over the years. The very idea that people who have migrated, who turned their backs on their birth right could then turn around and make statements about the lack of growth and development in Jamaica, is to me extremely insulting, here we have a group of people, some of whom left Jamaica for over 30 and 40 years, never returned, most no longer call themselves Jamaican, having never lift a finger to build our nation state, thinking that they somehow have earned the right to make these statements about my country...

Frogen Yozurt Review of The Dead Yard
http://frogenyozurt.com/2011/04/the-dead-yard-a-story-of-modern-jamaica-by-ian-t homson/

It seems as though the book has been re-issued with new cover art. The one, which I saw in Europe, was more poster-ish and abstract with Jamaica flag colours. The cover depicted in the previous LINKS is of a mother holding a baby and the large family of children gathered around an impoverished cottage and yard. I didn't see much hope for the future of Jamaica there or a summation of the extraordinary physical beauty of "our lively yard" which wow-ed Thomson.

Emanating from that cover is an encapsulation of the Bob Marley lyric and not much more-

Them belly full, but we hungry;
A hungry mob is a angry mob.
A rain is fall, but the dirt it tough;
A pot is cook, but the food no 'nough.

Forget your troubles and dance!
Forget your sorrows and dance!
Forget your sickness and dance!
Forget your weakness and dance!

Cost of livin' gets so high,
Rich and poor they start to cry:
Now the weak must get strong;
They say, "Oh, what a tribulation!"

From the "subjective" variety of experiences, which an oft chaperoned author, Ian Thomson, describes in his sojourn to the Island, it seems that the publisher could have come up with a cover gleaning from a mosaic that would have evoked less pity and more vibrance!
More important, until I have actually read the book, I'll assume that it is more in the genre of a stream of consciousness travel memoir, with valid interviewing, but with a personally skewed interpretation.

What's Right With Jamaica?

This Gleaner Series has tapped some of the most successful and privileged (earned or derived) in the Jamaican society. Never-the-less, these exemplars are an expression of a strong sense of entrepreneurship, decency, resilience and even a thrifty conservatism that is yoked to the Jamaican personality...in spite of security threats and the cult-ure of dancehall exhibitionism!

Although we don't always agree with the "libertarian" African American economist-social theorist Thomas Sowell (especially in areas of an unfettered free-market and compulsive "originalism" in interpreting the exactness of the US Constitution, and socially-based medicine), he has studied widely on ethnic groups from diverse immigrant viewpoints, & has made some cogent observations in his controversial book The Economics and Politics of Race: An International Perspective
Sowell goes internationally, because he says it affords him the opportunity to "test competing beliefs and theories in a way that cannot be done in a given community."
Sowell asks, "How much of any minority group's economic state depends upon their own culture and how much depends upon the way they are treated by the larger society around them?"

Many of Sowell's utterances and broadsides at liberal policies, including the causes for gender representation in the professions have been challenged.
However, one particular piece of his research has stuck in the mind these many years...that is, that a wide majority of Jamaicans and West Indians, who have emigrated from their home islands to North America have been disproportionately more successful financially & culturally cohesive than the majority of the minority African American population.
...A controversial position to be sure, but one that Sowell attributes to a premium given to education, discipline, thrift and an entrepreneural ego having arisen from majority populations of colour, originating in the Caribbean.


The Gleaner:
"Jamaicans are a very resilient people; we are a flavor all on our own. In any situation, we find a way to bring out the best and the humor. We are colorful and expressive with our language and so, in other countries where there would be public strife over vexed national issues, we look at the bright and funny side every time. It is innate in us to reserve the best for visitors and treat them even better than we treat ourselves. That is why there are so few crimes against them. In our homes, we were taught at an early age to use the best china only when strangers come. Unfortunately, we are also very mercurial and tend only to back winners."
(Harry Smith-former Digicel marketing guru)

VIDEO:
http://transitionsunshine.info/2008/07/whats-is-right-with-jamaica/

Audrey Marks: (President/CEO, Paymaster Jamaica Ltd.)
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080613/lead/lead4.html

Aubyn Hill: CEO of Corporate Strategies Ltd)
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080612/business/business1.html

What's Right With Jamaica:

Omar Azan: President of Jamaica Manufacturer's Association Ltd.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080731/lead/lead2.html

Wayne Chen: CEO of Super Plus Food Stores
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080611/lead/lead2.html

Mark Kerr-Jarrett: former President MoBay Chamber of Commerce & Industry
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080721/lead/lead2.html

Wilfred Voss doesn't sound very Jamaican, so he may be a spin doctor for the powers that be who would like all of us to be in denial. When will people realize that the positives speak for themselves.It is tiresome to hear "why you always so negative?" The negatives are the problem and if we deny their existence we will solve nothing. Jamaica was not left with nothing by Britain, but most of what was left has been destroyed by our politicians. Where is the building of a great country taking place? Has to be in the imagination of Mr. Voss! And those emigrants of which he speaks have done a great deal for this country! He is worse than the author of this book when it comes on to veracity! Furthermore, it is no consolation to point out that other countries have the same problem, but even so ours is way out there. We need to take stock of ourselves!
And too many of our people are a disgrace to the human race,haven't you seen the psychiatrists' report that approximately half of us are mentally challenged! It is more like socially challenged!

I wholeheartedly agree with Wilfried Voss' review and assessment of this book. I believe that the author is someone attempting to make a name for himself by being sensational and propelling himself into the limelight aided by a friendly media that thrives on negative commentary about jamaica. Mr Voss hits the nail on the head when he talks about the negative side of societies such as Britain and the USA. I daresay I should know I am a social worker with 30 odd years experience working with families in Britain's inner cities.The very nature of my work involves coming face to face with the darker side of society and this darker side is more common than a lot of Britons would like to think, blisfully unaware sometimes of what is happening on their own doorstep. Poverty,homelessness, teenage pregnancy, poor parenting, child abuse etc are all real issues in British society today and why should this come as a surprise to anyone? I have dealt with organised paedophiles from every background and social class involving a number of different agencies. It is reported in our newpapers on a regular basis and we can't fail to see and hear about it on radio and television and believe me this doesn't even touch the surface. There is also the issue of child sex tourism. I can recall watching a TV programme about a racist young man who served a prison sentence and who when interviewed said he felt ashamed to be white as the majority of the sex offenders he met behind bars who had committed heinous crimes against children were white British men. Now does this mean we should condemn white/British males and make a generalistion about their propensity to abuse children? If I took this out of context the reader would no doubt be left with the impression that children were perfectly safe with other males provided they were not white/ British. The point I am trying to make is that we can create any argument to fit our theory. Some years ago whilst on a return journey from Jamaica I got into a conversation with a gentleman who was decrying the high rate of teenage pregnancy in Jamaica; his conclusion was that young girls in jamaica were more sexually active than their British counterparts.I asked him whether he was aware that Britain had the highest rate of teenage/child pregnancy in Western Europe; factor into this the liberal attitude to abortion compared to Jamaica which has a more consevative perspective on this issue and you can work the rest out for yourselves. Today Britain still holds the record as having the higest record of teenage mothers and there are whole communities where having a father figure is the exception. These are communities where if you see a black person you do a double take.Would I get the same prominence and rave reviews if I wrote about my experiences;I think not as only white folks are credited with the label of 'expert' merely from a brief encounter with their subject matter.I visit Jamaica regularly; it is the country of my birth. I meet all sorts of people; the good the bad and the ugly and I always feel safe.What this book hasn't done is put the Jamaican experience into context.

To add to the mix.

My family lived in the center of Kingston for five generations. Between Upper St Andrew and the rest, to context you geo-socially. I remember one burglary in the 50's with police and things on the lawn. My eldest daughter worked on projects in so the called ghettoes where she is remembered with love. My son was the palest of the 100's at JC. When a yout took his watch walking home, I had to stop a little war. All of us were welcome in most any house and yard on the Rock. As are most ladies and gentlemen anywhere. No matter how roughly hewn.

Yea, there is bad mind and blackheart everywhere wearing various skins and with a veneer of many cultures. What to do but live fairly, with courage and generosity and call up the troops if the demons start to run wild.

I believe that if we have a collective wish, it is for 'Peace and Love'. With bling, security, comfort and high energy yes. I can't see a better solution to the mental/emotional problems amongst us than to encourage this dream. If we stopped squandering our resources: time, money and brain power, we live in the perfect location to make it come true.

Zed, I must admit I started the book and didn't finish it, so I feel I can't give a fair assessment. (A friend from the UK gave it to me about two years ago.)

Thanks for sharing this Turey

Yes Ken. My friends tell me that I'm careless, leaving valuables in the open and not locking my door. Apart from my grandparents break in long ago, we lived in Kingston as I now live in Treasure Beach. I have tools upon tools and other goodies. My friends in Canada are amazed when I tell them they are not under lock and key and nothing takes wing. Couldn't do it in their yards.

A self secured community is one of our treasures. A crucial one to protect, without any intimidating presence or heavy handed acts. I remember soldiers on every corner of many cities I visited. No Peace and Love there eh!?

“The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect.”
--Carson McCullers (American Writer, 1917-1967)

In an essay, Scotland Yard, written for The Nation magazine Ian Thomson has adapted a narrow area from his book The Dead Yard, which focuses on many well known families in Treasure Beach. As a Scotsman, he took particular interest in how the "isolation of St. Elizabeth's has helped to preserve the 'Scots" as a people apart...the isolation of the parish--with swamps to the east and west, mountains and desert savannah to the north, and sea to the south..."

Thomson refers to some in the earlier-era Scots planter class, who aimed to gather enough wealth to retire royally to their native soil or "to discreetly amass a fortune or, in the expression of the time, a 'comfortable independence.' ". Through an interviewing style, he describes other Scots as "not so lucky".

They failed to accumulate sufficient capital to go home, and seduced by the tropic warmth and the women of the island (or their Calvinistic conscience silenced by drink), became ensnared. By the 1750s, Scots were estimated to form nearly a third of Jamaica's white European population. Place names in Scotland today attest to their migration: Jamaica Street in Glasgow; Jamaica Bridge over the River Clyde.

For years the "whites" of St Elizabeth had kept to themselves along a fifteen-mile stretch of coast between Parottee Point and Great Bay. Ballards Valley, a little way inward, is still distinctly "white".

In a complex exploration of Jamaican ethnic mores, Thomson describes a named contemporary set of Scots-descended sisters, who "had been raised by their "white" grandmother...in the St Elizabeth village of Berlin.
For the slightest misdemeanor "Miss H" would flog her charges; above all, she prohibited them from mixing with black boys. The "Quashees" had to know their place but, Miss H complained, they were always trying to "marry up"--mary light-skinned women in order to "improve" the social colour of their children--and to add "a bit of cream to their coffee." As the only "white" inhabitants of Berlin, the Henry girls would have to watch their backs.

Describing the arrival of darker brethren to the St Elizabeth south-coast as the bauxite industry expanded here, "St Elizabeth's demography changed as more outsiders came to work in the mines and tourism. As late arrivals--black, at that--they often found themselves unwelcome; today things have improved."

A well known citizen of the TB area is quoted as saying "Our Scottish color's dwindling down--we're all getting Jamaicanized now."...Let us hope so.
A "white" wife describes her former TB husband, a former fisherman, as "a black man at heart, with a little Scottish blood.".. Colour prejudice in Jamaica is as subtle as it is pernicious...
(Excerpted from The Nation magazine, March 28, 2011): LINK by subscription only

Thomson goes on to unfold other social relationships and intermarriages regarding our Scots, with all the familiar local monikers, such as St Elizabeth "red men", "redskin" and the derogatory "redibo".

Other anecdotal stories of the Scots mentioned are the families: Macaulay, Burns, Henry, Hamilton, Graham, Dick Kinkead and his daughter, our international-local photographer, Cookie Kinkead.


Here is another telling Review of Thomson's The Dead Yard by a Euro-English woman who shares the experience of having previously travelled to Jamaica with a "British" boyfriend of Island ancestry.
It just goes to show that we all have our experiences, our pre-judgements, our attractions and perhaps unspoken hidden agendas. We take Thomson's sub-titles literally. The original hardback was Tales of Modern Jamaica}. The current re-issue is A Story of Modern Jamaica, which acknowledges a tilt to the experiences of an author who assembled his story from visiting a Jamaican brothel, Rastafarian yard and AIDS clinic among other experiences!

A Tour of Jamaica Reveals Beauty and Brutality but Overlooks Ordinary Life. By Decca Aitkenhead

...The Dead Yard is in one sense quite a brave book, for while Jamaicans may be highly critical of their country they can be very sensitive about foreigners joining in. "You visitors are always getting it wrong," one tells him. "Either it's golden beaches or guns, guns, guns, guns. Is there nothing in between?" Given that almost all Jamaica's problems can be traced back to self-interested exploitation by foreign powers, such indignation is understandable, and Thomson does an excellent and long-overdue job of exporting blame back to its rightful Anglo-American shores. The book's substantial shortcoming, however, is its failure to illuminate everything else "in between".

Thomson's travels introduce him to lots of wealthy white Jamaicans, foreigners, returnees, politicians, churchmen and business people, but disappointingly few of the ordinary poor. "The frequent appearance in The Dead Yard of white and upper-echelon Jamaicans might suggest a skewed image of island society," he admits, but his excuse - "white Jamaicans still wield huge (if not uncontested) power" - omits the more honest explanation.
Poor Jamaican society is notoriously impenetrable to an outside reporter, and Thomson didn't allow the time - which in fairness could mean years, maybe decades - to access a complex and elusive culture suspicious of strangers with notepads.

As a consequence, he misses all the energy and hilarity and wit - the ingenuity and unpredictability, the melodrama and entertainment - which give the island its magnificent charm.

When he does venture into the Kingston ghetto he's a bit scared, and his account is impressionistic, lacking depth or character, while most of rural Jamaica is missed altogether. His encounters are often surprisingly dull - the anecdotes flat, the dialogue wooden - and though I know a lot of the people he meets in his book, I'm not sure I would recognise any of them from his descriptions.

Had I never been to Jamaica, I'd undoubtedly understand the country a lot better having read The Dead Yard. But I would have perplexingly little sense of what it feels like to be there.

www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/16/dead-yard-tales-modern-jamaica-ian-thomson


“To become wise, one must "wish" to have certain experiences and run, as it were, into their gaping jaws. This, of course, is very dangerous; many a wise guy has been swallowed.”
--Friedrich Nietzsche (German classical Scholar, Philosopher and Critic of culture, 1844-1900.)