For Black Speculative Fiction Month, one of my favourite short stories in Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root is “What the Periwinkle Remember”, an excerpt from Marcia Douglas’s novel, which features a Rolling Calf.
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Books that were banned in Jamaica in the past:
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X
• Black Power: The Politics of Liberation
• Black Beauty (Yes, the horse. 🤦🏽♀️)Moreover, in October 1968, the government of Jamaica banned Walter Rodney from returning to work in the country. He expounded on that experience in The Groundings with My Brothers:
The Government of Jamaica, which is Garvey’s homeland, has seen it fit to ban me, a Guyanese, a black man, and an African. But this is not very surprising because though the composition of that Government — of its Prime Minister, the Head of State and several leading personalities — though that composition happens to be predominantly black, as the Brothers at home say, they are all white-hearted. (p. 59)
(Credit to Professor Emerita Carolyn Cooper re the above-mentioned three banned books.)