Uncategorized

The way we tend to understand the world around us or our world perception is mostly derived from the environment we were raised up in. There are always factors that influence not only our perceptions but also our personal philosophy of life. The elements of time in Kei Miller’s The Last Warner Woman provides the story with an interesting series of events and revelations that touch upon many important topics common to the idea mentioned in the previous essay of “how the Western world and the Jamaican one have two different ways of looking at and understanding the world around us.” So, in response to the two first questions the following events actually were the most significant ones but they were not very challenging to narrow down.

To start with, I believe that highlighting the era of Ada’s mother, even though the protagonist did not have the chance to meet or live with her biological mother is of great significance because it has a profound effect on the personal values of the protagonist. Even though she does not know her mother, there seems to be a strong connection between them. Even if she was given another name, she had to be registered under the same name of her mother, and this might indicate that there are always well rotted symbols that are passed along from one generation to another even if we do not realize that.

Another similarly important period is the time that Ada spent with Mother Lazarus. These are two women who has nothing in common biologically yet being two females from the same country they had very similar gender-related situation. Being a woman and of color has never been easy for Mother Lazarus even though she has never been outside her country. Which is something we see also with Ada’s story and how she had it difficult for many reasons including gender and color. Her husband statement might reflect slightly how women are treated in Jamaica when he said: “she began unleashing such a string of course words that had she been in Jamaica where they still charged people for indecent language, she would have been broke after five minutes”.

After giving the readers an overview on her mother’s life story and her birth and childhood in the leper colony, we get to see some of the important events when she religiously engages herself in Christianity and also when she starts emerging herself in her unique powers of prophesying, which earned her respect in her country. Her migration to England is a turning point though, we notice that people take her warnings as signs of madness and lock her in a mental health institution where other major gender related issues happen to her. Here, what happens is that as readers we start noticing how the protagonist ‘s self-reported story starts fading out. Her voice becomes weaker in comparison to Mr. Writer Man at the end. Reading this novel adds to our knowledge of the world by highlighting that our knowledge of the world in relative to our own life experiences and environment.

Kei Miller’s, The Last Warner Woman, was published in the year 2012 in Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The story begins in a leper colony in Jamaica in 1914. However, the story continues in England. In this novel, the Warner Women – Adamine Bustamante – tries to tell her story at the same time when Mr. Writer Man is trying to document her tale. Throughout the book, both narrators focus on the life journey of the Jamaican woman who strives to warn others as she discovers that she had the gift of foretelling tragic events. The novel captures how the Western world and the Jamaican one have two different ways of looking at and understanding the world around us.

The Last Worner Women is a postmodern novel since there are several themes and techniques presented in the novel that characterize it as a postmodern work. Metafiction, for instance, is used by making the fictionality of the novel ostensible to its reader. Adamine who is the protagonist of the story and a second narrator calls into question the fictionality of the story by questioning the way the story is told by Mr. Writer Man and how this might carry a distortion of facts, which makes it a unique story told in a unique way. Questioning the reliability of the narrator, which is this case reciprocal since we cannot trust Adamine’s narrations as well, also adds to the postmodern characterization of the novel.

According to Mr. Writer Man, Pearline Portious was seventeen years old in 1941 which means she was born in 1924, and Mother Lazarus was over 85 when Mr. Dennis was 65 in 1941. He also mentioned that in 1941 Mother Lazurus had not slept for eighty years after her shock which happened when she was twelve. He also confirms that on March 18, 1942 Ada was born. According to Ada, Mother Lazarus died after 15 years of her birth year, that is to say, she died in 1957 at the age of 105, which means that her birth year was 1852. Adamin became a woman when Mother Lazarus died at her fifteenth birthday in 1957. One simple conclusion we can have after that is that even though both narrators are speaking from more or less a similar timestamp, Adamine wants to tell her own story differently from how Mr. Writer Man is stating it, who she is accusing of meandering her words for his own book. Yet, it is never one person who owns a story, or who has the right to tell it.

There is one important question that keeps repeating itself since the very beginning of the story. It is about the relationship between the writer man and the main character of the novel, Ada. The first chapter does intentionally keep the relationship very ambiguous, and this actually keeps the reader wondering about when, where, and how they met and also why is the writer man writing about her in particular. Her accusations towards his way of telling the story also raise suspicion and pose the question of who has the truth and how much important that is.

The DH Project, A History of the Caribbean in 100 Object is a platform containing podcasts that talk about the history and the cultural heritage of the Caribbean societies. Made by two archeologists- Alice Samson, who is employed by the University of Leicester’s School of Ancient History and Archaeology) and Angus Mol who works at Stanford University’s Archaeology Center. They are trying to capture hundred specific objects all of which are in museum’s collections and explain how they are related to the history of the Caribbean Islands in order to present it to the general public.

In the second episode, specific items such as Adornos from Brighton Beach – the ceramic faces that adorned the rims, handles and walls of pots created by the Caribbean indigenous people. In the fourth episode, they presented an iron axe from Cuba in the shape of a petal, which function was not very clear for the presented, yet they provided many possible usages for it and also tried to characterize its historic period during the pre-colonial era and also as a colonial trade object between Europeans and indigenous people. Additionally, the fifth episode talked about The Three Statues facing the Museo del Hombre (The National Museum of the Dominican Republic), which represent a union of three statues of three men in a symbolically weighed down place in the center of Santo Domingo. The men were highly respected iconic features in the history of the Dominican Republic.

Adichie Chimamanda advocates for another different type of storytelling which emphasizes considering the authentic cultural voice and the fact that facts about places, people and cultures are composed of many overlapping stories and not a single story. For her, the single story creates stereotypes that are incomplete captures of reality because they make one story become the only story. In the DH Project, A History of the Caribbean in 100 Object, they realized that there is never a single story about any place, and by engaging with the many stories of the place and culture they chose to speak about, they tried to present a combination of stories through a number of objects using the power of diversity to create a very inclusive set of facts that are nearer to reality.

The DH Project shed light on the history of the Caribbean Islands using a very powerful method that Adichie called the authentic cultural voice by mixing stories from different aspects just to show how diverse and genuine stories can be if told correctly. A History of the Caribbean in 100 Object is just one of the histories that might be telling a few things about the culture and history of one place that has endless stories to tell.

I choices these pictures of Jamaican people because I am excited to talk about them from my perspective and the research that I have done about their history and culture.

In this picture, the artist wants to present how Jamaican people are hard workers whether were are women or men. In each person in the picture, there are different types of subjects. This made me more excited to read and learn about how and why they made it for. As I searched, the historical baskets in Jamaica start with Tainos, as indicated by Olive Senior; Tainos utilized baskets for both utilitarian and religious purposes. Senior clarifies that there were bins considered Jabas that were generally utilized for homegrown and different purposes. The basketwork of the Jabas was woven firmly to such an extent that they could be utilized to hold fluids. Tainos additionally made one more kind of crate called Cibucanes, which were utilized for communicating juice from the harsh Cassava. Contributions of cakes and cassava bread were conveyed to the zemis in bins and they additionally utilized containers to hold the skulls and bones of dead precursors that were now and then kept in cottages. The Tainos utilized Sisal or Agave, wild banana leaves, and wicker just as cotton to create their crates. At the point when enslaved Africans were brought to Jamaica, they carried with them significant abilities, for example, basketry and straw plaiting. These subjugated people created things like containers, bed mats, ropes and wicker seats for their own utilization, for the ranch, and available to be purchased in the business sectors. Prior to the appearance of current transportation, a significant part of the food in the countryside and towns was brought in a basket on the heads of market ladies and men.

Also, as I can see from the picture, I found that Jamaican people’s clothes are different. When I searched, I found that Jamaican clothes mixed with other cultures such as European cultures. All foreigners acquired their traditions dress to Jamaica however needed to adjust to their new climate and the requests of the prevailing decision culture of the Europeans. This brought about European styled clothing for all Jamaicans. Customary articles of clothing from three of the way of life (Africa, India and China) were chosen as plan motivation for the new ethnic pieces of clothing. This brought about ethnic articles of clothing joining current western, African, Indian and Chinese components with a Jamaican impacted texture. This texture was planned by the mixing of components from the public images to address a Jamaican worth and public personality. Typified in these pieces of clothing are the past, present and what’s to come.

The exhibit presented a thorough examination of the phenomenon of “Obeah” from a different perspective to the view of the Western colonizer. It highlighted the true nature of the practice and its cultural and religious and even political value to the societies where it was practiced. Being a crucial means of emancipation for the enslaved, voiceless, and less fortunate components of society, “Obeah” or as it was referred to in the exhibit, “magical art of resistance”, provided both its practitioners and beneficiaries with power and hope to face and challenge the circumstances they were living in. The contributors of this work provided a highly organized scholarly work which included most of the needed knowledge regarding Obeah. They also tried to tackle the majority of the aspects that were linked to the practice such as gender, law, science, religion. Moreover, the way the work was presented made it easier for the reader to understand and relate Obeah to all the elements related to it since it was presented in an academically structured manner.

For the learning process to be effective, it is always extremely important to have a clear and structured way to approach it, and there is no denying that this exhibit made it very easily approachable for the learners to grasp the presented elements. They also were very informative concerning the contributors and the works they used in their exhibit, which gave the work more value. However, I noticed that the contributors and the bibliography relied mostly on works that represented one side of the writers. They did not include other works or other viewpoints, which would allow the reader to also have an idea about the other not very positive aspects of “Obeah”, or at least be able to make a contrast or comparison between the two opposite viewpoints. Other than this, I believe that the exhibit is a very reliable source of high importance for the learners and also whoever wants to rely on it for any purpose. It has an academic structure.

Welcome to your brand new blog at University of Oregon Sites.\n \n To get started, simply log in, edit or delete this post and check out all the other options available to you.\n \n For assistance, visit UO Blogs General Help or contact the Technology Service Desk (541-346-4357).\n \n