Myal

By  Erna Brodber

Jamaican-born novelist and sociologist Erna Brodber describes Myal as “an exploration of the links between the way of life forged by the people of two points of the black diaspora the Afro-Americans and the Afro-Jamaicans.” Operating on many literary levels thematically, linguistically, stylistically it is the story of women’s cultural and spiritual struggle in colonial Jamaica.

The novel’s rich, vivid language and vital characters earned it the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Canada and the Caribbean. The novel links nicely with Brodber’s coming-of-age story, Jane & Louisa Will Soon Come Home, also from Waveland Press, for its similar images, themes, and specific Jamaican cultural references to colonialism, religion, slavery, gender, and identity. Both novels are Brodber’s way of telling stories outside of published history to point out the whitewashing and distortion of black history through religion and colonialism.