Sharon Gordon: Sheribaby, Kartoniert / Broschiert

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SHERIBABY: A Little Girl's Big Voice in Post-Independence Jamaica

Sheribaby is a feisty, full of spunk, insight and charm almost seven-year-old who soaks up every aspect of her life, and all that's happening around her like a sponge. Sheribaby has a strong sense of self although she is only six and half years old, she is a little girl with a mouth and an attitude older than herself.

Sheribaby delves into a slice of life, in a world that borrows heavily from real life places, people and events and could very well have happened in that time but this is a story of fiction. This is a story many in the diaspora of a certain age will identify with. It's a story about life in yesteryear, post-Independence Jamaica 1962. This story touches on the political, the social, the financial, the emotional, the "churchical" and the psychological dynamics colliding during that time. Themes of domestic, sexual, physical and emotional abuse, examinations of the irrational reverence in political party identity, who are you JLP or PNP?

Sheribaby mentions Catholic school indoctrination for success via high scholastic standards, the cultural references to Rastafari and Miss Lou, Jamaican folklore and the language of Patois sets Sheribaby apart for serving up a well-seasoned, old school, Jamaican style stew of cultural and historical context that support the stories being told. Sheribaby is not just a well told tale of an adventurous little girl turned social commentator, curiously attuned to the realities of Classism in post-colonial Jamaica within her own family and her wider community. Sheribaby speaks to those nuanced perceptions in addition to perceptions based on skin color, and how people present, where your family comes from, which party you belong to, and which school you attended.

Music appears as a motif throughout Sheribaby and so does, the practice of prayer, spiced with liberal sprinklings of Jamaican idiomatic expressions, and the cultural references to the island's world renowned cuisine. All this happens seamlessly and is made without force. The story flows for it really is just that, a story offering a narrow lens into the life of a little girl, who seems so much older than her age, growing up in Rollington Town in Kingston, Jamaica, during the years, 1969 to 1975.