Tropical Houses: Living in Nature in Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Java, Bali, and the Coasts of Mexico and Belize

Amazon.com

Before opening Tropical Houses, hide your passport. As soon as you get a glimpse of these incredible houses nestled among lush tropical landscapes, you'll want to head straight to the airport. Author Tim Street-Porter spent more than 10 years traveling through Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Bali, Java, Mexico, and Belize, meeting the owners of these Shangri-las and taking interior and exterior photos. Tropical Houses offers intelligent, dreamy commentary and over 272 breathtaking full-color photos.

Visit the House of Iseh in Bali and sit in the verdant shadow of the sacred volcano Gunung Agung. Said writer Anna Mathews of the view from the terrace: "Once you have lived in this place you can never be the same again. You are driven mad by beauty." In Jamaica, imagine you're a guest at Good Hope. Originally a plantation, Good Hope is now a 10-room villa that overlooks the Queen of Spain valley and the Cockpit Mountains. To look at these provocative photos is to imagine yourself in another life--one where you lounge on the veranda while white-jacketed waiters quietly replace your empty rum-and-pineapple drink. The owners of these estates have taken great care (at great expense) to create private, tropical paradises. One of the most stunning is Taprobane, an incredible retreat dominating the tiny island of the same name. Built by Count de Mauny-Talvande, the house is "an octagonal villa that allowed for verandahs in every direction; a 1930s folly, which, with small gardens extending through the foliage to the overhanging edges, fully occupied the crest of his island."

The careful architecture and landscaping of these estates "opens a world of sensual experiences." When the sky is gray and you don't have time for a vacation, Tropical Houses will lift your spirits and quiet your wanderlust. --Dana Van Nest

Book Description

The ambient warmth of the tropics causes architectural distinctions between indoors and out to evaporate, along with the walls that divide them. Houses expand into the landscape, while the sights, sounds, and scents of nature waft through living spaces. Indeed, one of the pleasures of living in the tropics is an awakening of the senses that brings us closer to nature.

Internationally renowned photographer and writer Tim Street-Porter has spent more than ten years traveling through Bali, Java, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Belize, and Jamaica. This book's 272 stunning photographs, supported by Street-Porter's fascinating and informed commentary, capture the appeal and the meaning of the enviable dwellings he found in his journeys. It may be the outdoor bath, a sybarite's delight, with sun filtering through a frangipani tree . . . the deep-eaved verandah, where one sips coffee while contemplating the neighboring valley shrouded in early morning mist . . . or the thatch-roofed palapa, its main supports local tree trunks wrapped in strangler vine.

These wonderful expressions of vernacular architecture -- many the products of the world's finest architects and designers--nest in jungles, perch over volcanic cliffs, stand placidly beside lagoons, and exist always in harmony with the nature that envelops them. These are real places where people really live, but each seems suspended in a setting that is at once dreamlike and elemental.

Customer Reviews:

Island living.......2005-08-02

Excellent book with something for all tastes. Beautiful pictures make you want to go home and decorate immediately.

Beautiful and Exotic.......2004-05-28

The cover is just a teaser to the exciting tropical houses Tim Street-Porter captures in this wondeful book. A real treat to exclusive tropical living around the world. Also an excellent reference to decorate in the tropical look. Street-Porter does it again as he did in Casa Mexicana. A book to enjoy over and over.

Perfect for Decorating Ideas.......2003-01-15

We are trying to get an "island" feel for our home and this book was the perfect reference. Not only are the pictures of the homes (inside and out) breathtaking, but there is enough detail about the decorating itself to be useful for our purpose. The only downside is that it makes you want to sell your current house and just travel the world staying in these amazing homes! Especially tempting is the contact information at the very end in case you actually want to rent one of them on vacation...

Great book.......2002-05-25

I found this to be a wonderful book - it has some amazing pictures. It affords you the opportunity to view some beautiful private houses that you are unlikely to be able to visit. Unlike some other books that focus primarily on houses in South East Asia, this one also features some great houses in Mexico and Jamaica.

The Best in Tropical Houses.......2001-11-29

Tropical Houses takes you around the globe to find some of the most interestingly designed homes in the world. The photographs are at once detailed and lush. If you are going to buy one book on tropical interiors, this should be the one.

A High Wind in Jamaica (New York Review Books Classics)

Average customer rating:

A High Wind in Jamaica
boring
A Grrrr-eat book, mon!
Paradise Lost
One Of My Favorite Books

A High Wind in Jamaica (New York Review Books Classics)
Richard Hughes
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate: Two Novels
Burger's Daughter
The Wapshot Chronicle (Perennial Classics)
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America
The Fox in the Attic (New York Review Books Classics)

ASIN: 0940322153
Release Date: 1999-09-30

Amazon.com

A High Wind in Jamaica is not so much a book as a curious object, like a piece of driftwood torqued into an alarming shape from years at sea. And like driftwood, it seems not to have been made, exactly, but simply to have come into being, so perfectly is its form married to its content. The five Bas-Thornton children must leave their parents in Jamaica after a terrible hurricane blows down their family home. Accompanied by their Creole friends, the Fernandez children, they board a ship that is almost immediately set upon by pirates. The children take to corsair life coolly and matter-of-factly; just as coolly do they commit horrible deeds, and have horrible deeds visited upon them. First published in 1929, A High Wind in Jamaica has been compared to Lord of the Flies in its unflinching portrayal of innocence corrupted, but Richard Hughes is the supreme ironist William Golding never was. He possesses the ability to be one moment thoroughly inside a character's head, and the next outside of it altogether, hilariously commenting.

Irony finds a happy home indeed in the book's mixture of the macabre and the adorable. The baby girl, Rachel, "could even sum up maternal feelings for a marline-spike, and would sit up aloft rocking it in her arms and crooning. The sailors avoided walking underneath: for such an infant, if dropped from a height, will find its way through the thickest skull (an accident which sometimes befalls unpopular captains)." In that "such an infant" lies a world of mordant wit. In fact, throughout, Hughes's wildly eccentric punctuation and startling syntax make just the right verbal vehicle for this dark-hearted pirate story for grownups.

Hughes enjoys some coy riffing on the child mind, as with this description of the way Emily handles an uncomfortable social situation: "Much the best way of escaping from an embarrassing rencontre, when to walk away would be an impossible strain on the nerves, is to retire in a series of somersaults. Emily immediately started turning head over heels up the deck." Even so, Hughes never sentimentalizes his subject: "Babies of course are not human--they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes." Children, as a race, are given rough treatment: "their minds are not just more ignorant and stupider than ours, but differ in kind of thinking (are mad, in fact)." That madness is here isolated, prodded, and poked to chilling effect. But Hughes never loses sight of his ultimate objective: A High Wind in Jamaica is, above all, a cracking good yarn. --Claire Dederer

Book Description

Richard Hughes's celebrated short novel is a masterpiece of concentrated narrative. Its dreamlike action begins among the decayed plantation houses and overwhelming natural abundance of late nineteenth-century Jamaica, before moving out onto the high seas, as Hughes tells the story of a group of children thrown upon the mercy of a crew of down-at-the-heel pirates. A tale of seduction and betrayal, of accommodation and manipulation, of weird humor and unforeseen violence, this classic of twentieth-century literature is above all an extraordinary reckoning with the secret reasons and otherworldly realities of childhood.

Customer Reviews:

A High Wind in Jamaica.......2007-10-08

I found this book sort of a cross between Treasure Island and Huckleberry Finn, the former because the plot concerns children in the hands of pirates; but the style is more humorous and sophisticated, reminding me a bit of Twain, though more cynical, almost like Lord of the Flies. The first quarter of the novel covers the lives of the Thornton children in Jamaica in the mid-nineteenth cetury; it's this part that reminds me of Twain's writing and is about as interesting. Then the children set sail for England and are kidnapped by pirates, and suspense builds through the rest of the novel, along with a good deal of humor, some cynical, and some mildly shocking. The children, unsupervised, appear to be turning more evil than their pirate hosts. Unusual and amusing events described are just surprising enough to ring true. The author proposes that children are a different animal than people, an idea that was explored further in Mimsy Were the Borogoves, by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (filmed as The Last Mimzy).

I recently saw the film version of A High Wind in Jamaica starring Anthony Quinn and James Coburn; in a literal sense it follows the novel reasonably well, but as is always the case in adaptations the viewer can't experience the depth of the narrative, and some of the characters are not even established, let alone developed. However, there is a line at the end of the film that helps drive the point home, when a cab driver ironically tells Mr. Thornton that he must be proud of his children.

boring.......2007-07-24

The characters, the plot, and everything else in this book are extremely boring. The only thing keeping this from a 1 star book is the character Emily. She alone has creative and unique thoughts floating around in her head. I'm glad I read it because she amused me so much. But as for the rest of the book, it was not worth writing, and the ending was infuriating.

A Grrrr-eat book, mon!.......2007-01-07

Richard Hughes knows how children think. He also knows how to write. Put the two together, and you get a pretty good book, a minor classic. The ending isn't "shocking," and there is no real pedophilia, not even the hint of it. (Another reviewer referred to the captain playing with one young girl's "bottom": this implies you-know-what, but it is highly misleading. The captain goes down into the hold where the children sleep to check on them. He notices one young girl's night-shirt has bunched up at her neck. He tries to pull it down, and the young girl rolls over, still asleep, and sticks out her rump. The captain goes on to check the other children, and then, on his way out, flicks the girl's butt as you or I would flick at a fly. Nothing prurient, just playful.)

There is a hint of sex (not rape) with regards to the oldest child, Margaret, who is 13, and post-pubescent. Strictly speaking this is not pedophilia, and bear in mind that in many parts of the world, young girls are married at this age.

However, sex plays a minute role in the story. It is more about the psychological insights and empathy the author has with children, and the verisimilitude (ain't that a two-dollar word?) he conveys. This book is one of the MLA 100, and deserves to be read.

Paradise Lost.......2006-04-30

There's a peculiarly boring film version of this, made in the 1960s, which is interesting only because it features the English novelist Martin Amis, then a fetching blond teenager, in a supporting role. Good books often make bad films, and this is a very good book indeed. Richard Hughes had never been to Jamaica when he wrote this remarkably vivid story about a colonial family in the nineteenth century. Jamaica, as Hughes describes it, is a wild and lush paradise for the Bas-Thornton children - but a paradise from which they are soon to be expelled. After a hurricane devastates the island, their parents decide that the five children (Martin's one of them, in the movie) must be sent back to England. But they have not got far before their ship is attacked by pirates, and the children are kidnapped. The ordeal which follows is a dramatic and unexpected one - for the children, led by the tomboyish Emily, are more than a match for the brutal Captain Jonsen and his crew. Not a children's book as such, but a novel about childhood, this powerful adventure story has been compared to William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954). The vivid, laconic style is a considerable achievement - and the ending, especially the last sentence, is one of the wonders of literature.

One Of My Favorite Books.......2006-02-24

I must have re-read "A High Wind In Jamaica" at least a dozen times since first reading it in high school. It remains one of my favorite novels. It is a finely-drawn portrait of a certain era, but its depiction of the fears and fantasies inside the children's heads is timeless. Its humor, though definitely on the dark side, is first rate: there are passages that never fail to make me laugh out loud, despite the fact that I have read them many times before. The ending, however, is disquieting, and it is easy to see why this novel is often compared to "Lord of the Flies."

Average customer rating:

Quite different (for a garden book)
Insufferable
the thickness of things
Tedious - Good Word
Skip it

My Garden (Book)
Jamaica Kincaid
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Essays | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

Women Writers & Feminist Theory | Books & Reading | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Women Writers | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

My Favorite Plant: Writers and Gardeners on the Plants They Love
Autobiography of My Mother
A Small Place
Talk Stories
At the Bottom of the River

ASIN: 0374527768

Book Description

One of our finest writers on one of her greatest loves.Jamaica Kincaid's first garden in Vermont was a plot in the middle of her front lawn. There, to the consternation of more experienced friends, she planted only seeds of the flowers she liked best. In My Garden (Book): she gathers all she loves about gardening and plants, and examines it generously, passionately, and with sharp, idiosyncratic discrimination. Kincaid's affections are matched in intensity only by her dislikes. She loves spring and summer but cannot bring herself to love winter, for it hides the garden. She adores the rhododron Jane Grant, and appreciates ordinary Blue Lake string beans, but abhors the Asiatic lily. The sources of her inspiration -- seed catalogues, the gardener Gertrude Jekyll, gardens like Monet's at Giverny -- are subjected to intense scrutiny. She also examines the idea of the garden on Antigua, where she grew up. My Garden (Book): is an intimate, playful, and penetrating book on gardens, the plants that fill them, and the persons who tend them.

Customer Reviews:

Quite different (for a garden book).......2007-04-25

I found this book at a library book sale and bought it because of the subject (I enjoy garden writings immensely) and because of the loveliness of the book itself.
The first story about a wisteria that won't bloom at the proper time is the only story I didn't like. The author repeated the sentece "What to do?" so many times that it got on my last nerve. Her writing in that piece seemed to be the meanderings of her thoughts that she then attempted to give a heavy-handed poetic touch. I enjoyed the rest of the pieces.
This book is not typical of garden books and Jamaica Kincaid puts in bits and pieces of her life, touching on racial issues and gardener snobbery. Some sentences widen the eyes and make you read it again because it is so unexpected, tidbits that most other authors would self-censor. The author can come across as a bit offensive, particularly when branding various people "ugly", and I'm not sure if she would be a difficult person to know or a fun person to know - maybe both, but I definitely enjoyed her writings and am glad I didn't let her wisteria story deter me from reading the rest of the book.

Insufferable.......2004-08-18

I found this book insufferable, and didn't get to finish it. The contrived title should have tipped me off. Why isn't Amazon listing it correctly? It should be My Garden (Book):

For started, i don't really care for Jamaica Kincaid's writing style. She uses punctuation sparsely, and you go for what it seems like a mile with no period in sight. In the meantime, she has branched in a myriad of extra information, and after a while it gets to be too much to keep track of. This is not stream of consciousness writing, or at least not the good kind anyway.

What really did me in was the beginning of her anecdote titled "Reading":

"It was a day in late October and I had two thousand dollars' worth of heirloom bulbs to place in the ground [...]"

If that wasn't enough, then she continues:

"I do not like winter or anything that represents it ..."

What is she doing then living in Vermont?!

She came across as a malcontent human being who agonizes over insignificant stuff, like the exact month her wisterias bloom. She takes the joy out of gardening, and out of reading.

the thickness of things.......2004-06-07

"Oh, how I like the rush of things, the thickness of things . . ."

Oh, how I like Kincaid's My Garden (Book). I am halfway through it and realize I had better slow down, because I am not going to find another book on the garden I like nearly so much as this one, probably for a very long time. I've got a stack of other books, none so good, and I will use My Garden (Book) like a tiny slice of truffle among the more common and less delicious food on my plate. Rationing is the only option.

What I like about her (among the everything else I like about her) is that she doesn't like Asiatic Lilies because their colors remind her of a hallucinogenic drug she took once ever seven days for a year when she was young. This is the best sort of confession to make in a gardening book.

She also confesses to amassing large debts and threatening letters from creditors about her garden habit. She confesses to being a messy, careless person with a messy house. All these confessions endear her to me. The weaknesses balance the austere authority of her prose, which also endears her to me.

Her garden aesthetic - odd, overgrown, intense and personal, wild, even, endears her to me. I remember reading a bit of memoir in the New Yorker that involved her experiments with coffee enemas. This struck me as the strangest thing I had ever read (because perhaps I was still a teenager in Kansas and ready to be struck by things). Enemas? The reason for them escaped me, but with coffee none the less - or espresso? I paid careful attention to the byline of that piece, wanting to find more of this sort of writing.

Later, one of her essays was in a book I used as a graduate teaching assistant. When I saw her name, I took a sip of coffee.

I like Ms. Kincaid because she doesn't love the writing of Vita Sackville-West. She says that the best literary companion to Vita's gardens is the autobiography of Nina Simone. How could this not be love? The best companion to life is Nina Simone and gardening like Vita Sackville-West.

How could I not see bringing Ms. Kincaid a bouquet of flowers in exquisite yellows and sharing a cocktail in some overgrown, wild garden someday? How could I not tell everyone I know who enjoys the garden or good writing to pick up this book immediately and fall in love?

Tedious - Good Word.......2004-04-20

I couldn't finish this book, and usually I finish books too quickly. The reviewer who described her book/writing style as tedious wins the prize from me. I think I would have liked her piece if she wrote differently. But...

Skip it.......2003-05-30

Has this woman never heard of punctuation? Her sentences are so long you practically have to tie yourself in a knot to read them. This is a shame, because before I got turned off by the sentence length I had spotted some fresh ideas. I toiled on until I realized there was no depth of knowledge behind the ideas. There are lots of good, even great, books of garden essays out there. Don't waste your time on this one.

Average customer rating:

Excellent!
I judged this book by it's cover!
Book of Jamaica is the right title
Little Known book about my Home Country
One of Russell Bank's very best efforts!

Book of Jamaica
Russell Banks
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Rule of the Bone: Novel, A
Trailerpark
Continental Drift (P.S.)
Walk Good: Travels to Negril, Jamaica
Banana Shout

ASIN: 0060977078

Customer Reviews:

Excellent!.......2005-09-23

I spent a fair amount of time doing business in Kingston Jamaica in the late 1980s, travelling there about a dozen times in five year period, and my work led me to various places on the island. Even though it was written by an outsider, I have read very few books that really captured the feeling of the place and the people in the way that "The Book of Jamaica" did. I wonder how much of the central character, the American writer, was based on Banks himself?

I loved the atmosphere and plotline of the book, and Banks conveys much of Jamaican culture with great insight and skill. However it was hard for me not to despise the main character, a neurotic American writer who neglects his family to hang out with his fascinating, "exotic" Jamaican friends. An American trying to beat Jamaicans at rum drinking and dominoes is pure foolishness! But it rings true as something a typical American visitor would try to do. Eventually as the central character becomes more involved with the real Jamaica and the lives of his new friends, he gets a lot more than he bargains for. A book well worth reading.

I judged this book by it's cover!.......2005-07-21

I judged a book by it's cover and bought this book mostly because of the title. I am an American and have always had an unexplainable fascination with Jamaica. I have been to Jamaica twice but don't claim to know much about the history of the culture. When I saw what the story was about and the date on the book I was interested, so I began to read...

The beginning of the book started off extremely slow (for me) with the story of the murder and the many different characters involved became confusing at times. I was surprised during the second part of the book to get sucked in to the story of the narrator, the Maroons and Nyamkopong. The characters were very beleivable to me and I ended up loving the book!

Being that it is not written by a Jamaican from a Jamaican point of view it may not be a "guide to jamaica" but for me it captures the feeling of the culture from an American's point of view.

Long story short- It was not what I expected but I enjoyed it and recommend it.

Book of Jamaica is the right title.......2001-06-02

It was interesting to me to read reviews of this book written by Jamaicans or people who have more first-hand knowledge of Jamaica than a beach vacation can provide. This is because, for me, the cultural and political aspects of Jamaican life that were depicted in _The Book of Jamaica_ far outweighed in interest anything about the protagonist/narrator. I found it odd how unable I was to hold the plot involving the expatriot professor in my mind while I was reading. It created an unpleasant effect because his story would occasionally interrupt the story of the Maroon communities and I would remember that there was more than one thing the story was about. The proportions, in this sense, felt wrong to me.

This said, I found the communties and lifestyles described here to be fascinating reading and Banks (at least apparently) wrote with loving respect about the Jamaican culture and people. A nice change from the usual cliche descriptions.

Little Known book about my Home Country.......2001-05-02

Forget all the Guides to Jamaica. If you really want to know how an American might feel living in my country, where "no problem" is the national password, yet a country full of problems, read this little known--at least in Jamaica--book. It captures the undertow of violence as well as the beauty of the place, giving a most realitic and compelling description, albeit in fictional form. You will want to read this book before taking a short or long visit. Though Russell Bank's experience won't be yours, that is, unless you choose to stay.

One of Russell Bank's very best efforts!.......2000-08-31

The plot of this early Bank's novel revolves around a vacation to the seductive island of Jamaica by a college professor and his wife. They rent a home with patio and swimming pool on the outskirts of Port Antonio. Servants come on each day to cook and clean. The couple is protected from the turbulence of the island's cultural and political life by a fence made of both wire and social class (not to mention race). But the professor, the narrator of this tale, soon finds himself enjoying the company of the locals; in particular a young Rastafarian who has plenty of powerful Jamaican ganja he is very willing to share. Sure enough, before too much time has elapsed, the professor is smoking all the day long and providing transportation in his rental car to a small group of Marroons and Rastas that stay locally for short periods of time but live up in the mountains where they have their marijuana fields and live in villages with their families.

There are several trips back to the island after the narrator's life is completely transformed by his experiences during the first. His wife no longer accompanies him however as their marraige was one of the first casualities of his abrupt new fascination with Rastfarianism, Marroon culture, and ganja. You can imagine! But what starts out as an adventure full of promise, unfortunately follows an inevitable course ending in sorrow and not a little horror. Any attempt to blithely transcend differences of race and class are doomed, the author seems to be saying. And ganja will not of its own power make a story turn out all right, regardless of it's enormous capacity to create an internal state that seems to be mystically protected from all outward harm. In fact the opposite may be true. Ganja may release traits and fuel decisions that create a trend which rushes towards confrontation with dis-associated, unwanted self-aspects and a pressing need to re-assess one's relationship with the basics of self-preservation and the will to continue living.

Book Description

Jamaica doesn't want a younger child to play with her, until she remembers how she felt when her older brother excluded her from his games.

Customer Reviews:

Great.......2006-11-10

Our daughter loves these stories, and we like them too. They're short, but pack a little weight that catch the attention of our 2 and half-year old.

Feelings.......2006-05-20

Excellent book for parents and children alike. It focuses on frienship, family values and social integration. Excellent topic for family discussion. Beautifully illustrated, a nice addition to your family library.

Cute Story with Good Illustrations.......2005-11-28

A sweet story featuring a young African American girl and her older brother. Jamaica wants to tag along to Ossie's pick-up basketball game, but he forbids it. After all, it's not cool to have a younger sister hanging around. She sneaks along anyway, and causes her brother and another player to fall down on the court when she springs from nowhere and grabs the ball. She exits to another section of playground.

Castle building proves diverting, but soon she has a little visitor. A Hispanic American toddler named Berto wants to play, too, and is soon messing up the castle. Initially, Jamaica protests, but then sees the similarity between them. They both want to hang out with older kids.

O'Brien's watercolor illustrations are attractive and effective with their warmth and sharply conveyed emotions. This would be a good read aloud to pre-K to second grade.

How to learn to get along.......2005-02-13

It's a very good book and it can really teach you how sometimes people can be mean to you, and you can put your anger on others, but this book teaches you how that's not a good thing to do. I also think it's a very good book because there are very nice characters, and Jamaica has a very big problem and she learns how to solve it. When Jamaica puts her anger on a little 3-year-old, he accidentally steps on her sand castle, and she says not-nice things to him. But then she thinks that those things would hurt feelings; her big brother always says those things, and she doesn't like it at all, so she plays with the 3-year-old and it makes the 3-year-old feel better. Meanwhile, Jamaica's big brother Ossie is playing basketball with his friends. After he finishes, he comes over to Jamaica and the 3-year-old and is amazed at their sand castle. He asks, "Need some help?" And Jamaica says, "If you want to." So all three of them are all making the sand castle and Jamaica never minds if Ossie tags along.

Lets the Reader Discover the Golden Rule.......2000-04-04

Jamaica feels sad that her older brother and friends won't let her join in their play. When she turns to play of her own, a younger child wants to join her. At first Jamaica refuses, then she remembers that she doesn't like to be excluded and includes the younger child. My 5-year-old enjoys this story, with its appealing pictures and accessible language. The author shows respect for the reader by not explicitly pointing out the similariity between the two situations, leaving it to the reader to discover the Golden Rule in practice.

Understanding Jamaican Patois: An Introduction to Afro-Jamaican Grammar

Average customer rating:

The price is right
Getting it wrong
Don't categorize us Jamaicans
Jamaican patois and its Sweet 'n Swarthy Speakers
A Basic Introduction

Understanding Jamaican Patois: An Introduction to Afro-Jamaican Grammar
L. Emilie Adams , and Llewelyn Dada Adams
Manufacturer: LMH Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

English (All) | Dictionaries & Thesauruses | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Dictionaries & Thesauruses | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Reference | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Dread Talk: The Language of Rastafari
A Dictionary of Jamaican English
In Focus Jamaica: A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture (The in Focus Guides Series)
LMH Official Dictionary of Jamaican Words and Proverbs
Yes M'dear

ASIN: 9766101558

Book Description

This easy-to-understand introduction to Afro-Jamaican grammar "explains clearly and simply the basics of Jamaican patois. Most importantly I think the book has an important role to play in helping Jamaicans take pride in their language and see that it is not second-class" (Deborah Pruitt, anthropologist, Berkeley, California). (Foreign Language Studies)

Customer Reviews:

The price is right.......2004-05-03

Several years back I was in Jamaica, The people there speak english well, but between each other they speak Patois. During my first trip there I spent many hours talking with bartenders and waitress' trying to learn the language. I did get down 'gimme a Red Stripe man' but I wanted to be able to understand them. At the airport on my way home I stopped in one of the book stores and picked up a copy of this book which sells there for a whopping $26 US. I read it through out the year and by the time I returned the following year I could actually understand a good bit of what they were saying, and some of the locals actually thought I worked there at one of the cruise ship terminals. It goes through sentence structure and tenses, not just a list of common phrases. In reference to the Afro-Jamaican it compares different parts of the language to where it probably came from which many times it is linked to different African languages, no reference to the different people who currently speak the language.

Getting it wrong.......2002-08-07

I second Azucena's review and I'd add that it is clear Adams isn't a linguist as she mis-hears some important parts of Jamaican speech. For example, the short vowel in the words 'bird' and 'work' does NOT sound like that in standard English 'book,' but more like that in 'thud.'

Adams would have been better off transcribing the sounds in some standard phonetic alphabet, or, to make the book more accessible, in the same mix that Jamaicans do. Ef yuh ah goh mek it up, yuh haffi come betta dan dat!

Don't categorize us Jamaicans.......2002-06-14

I haven't read this book, let me just get that out of the way.

However, as a degree-holder in linguistics and a Jamaican, I must say that the title alone emphasizes what must be an ineptness by the author to understand the Jamaican dynamic. There are no "Afro-Jamaicans." We are Jamaicans. Period. Some of us are black, some are white, some are Chinese, Syrian, etc. My mother is white, born in Sav-La-Mar, Jamaica, her grand-parents were from Ireland and Wales. She grew up speaking Jamaican Creole but that doesn't make her "Afro-Jamaican." Not all Jamaicans use this dialect, and not all users of this dialect are black.

Furthermore, although the Jamaicans loosely define their language as "patois", that is not what their language is called. A patois is defined as "uneducated speech" or "a dialect different from but based upon the main spoken language of the region." What the Jamaicans speak is certainly not uneducated speech, and any qualified linguist knows that every dialect and every language is complex and complete in its own way. Linguistically speaking, what we speak in certain areas of Jamaican can be called a creole, which is one of the final stages of a birth of a new language created from the pidgin of other languages.

Maybe the author utilized the words "afro" and "patois" to reach a broader audience, but at the expense of perpetuating false perceptions of the Jamaican people and language?

Jamaican patois and its Sweet 'n Swarthy Speakers.......2001-04-23

This is a fine guide to the grammar of Jamaican patois. Adams outlines sentence structure and verb forms with the expertise of someone who has lived and taught in "Jam-dung" for much her life. As a strange and unfamiliar language, it is interesting to learn just for its own sake. But for practical purposes, this is an excellent tool for anyone who wishes to cement lasting bonds with the finest collection of women on the planet: Jamaican women. The guide to verb particles is invaluable, as this can certainly be the greatest obstacle to any white-skinned fool who tries to learn patois. Vocabulary and local idioms are ever-changing in Jamaica, so the reader quickly finds that some of Adams' Glossary entries are either outdated, rarely used, or both. For a greater understanding of vocabulary, you'll need to have sustained contact with Jamaican folk and their speech habits. On the whole, there has been no greater pleasure in my life than my adventures with this unusual tongue. A white man's self-education in Jamaican patois often seems like chasing the wind, but the rewards are such that the work is well worth it in the end. So for anyone who relishes dark eyes, corn-rows, and long tawny legs, I suggest that you read Adams' book on the remarkable language of these equally remarkable women, and just sit back and watch with glee as you gather into your greedy arms the payoff of studying Jamaican patois.

A Basic Introduction.......2000-08-04

For those interested in language ceolization, Understanding Jamaican Patois is a good description of the basics of the creole spoken in Jamaica. A relatively short book, it spends a good deal of time talking about orthography, which is always a problem/concern with a primarily oral language. This discussion is interestingly illustrated in the reading selection (a childhood tale by Llewellen "Dada" Adams) at the end of the book, which is written in facing pages in the two orthographies (one mixes phonetic and standard spellings; the second is purely phonetic). Ending the book is an all-too-short appendix comparing some similar features in Haitian and Jamaican patois.

Average customer rating:

Jamaica's Find

Jamaica's Find (Reading Rainbow)
Juanita Havill
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Activities & Toys | Sports & Activities | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Baby-3 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Jamaica and Brianna
Jamaica Tag-Along
Jamaica's Blue Marker
Jamaica and the Substitute Teacher
A Chair for My Mother 25th Anniversary Edition (Reading Rainbow Book)

ASIN: 0395453577

Product Description

Brand: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN Item # HO-395453577

Customer Reviews:

Jamaica's Find.......2000-04-04

A story that makes you feel the struggle of a little girl when she finds a stuffed toy and doesn't want to take it to the lost and found. Jamaica finds a hat and a stuffed dog at the playground. She returns the hat to the lost and found easily, but retains the dog bkz she likes it. After she gets home she starts feeling the tugs of guilt that maybe the dog belonged to another child who is missing it. The point of realization is quite poignant - she doesn't feel well or want to do anything bkz she is really thinking over what she should do with her conscience. It is a good lesson that returning items that don't belong is a good idea bkz in the end she meets the child who lost the dog and is able to reunite her with her beloved toy. While the art work is a bit fuzzy it is a wonderful, multi-cultural story with a great morale for children who are often wondering what to do with special things they find on the playground: to return or not return - that is the question.

Understanding Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents (The Greenwood Press "Literature in Context" Series)

Average customer rating:

Understanding Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents (The Greenwood Press "Literature in Context" Series)
Deborah Mistron
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Women Writers & Feminist Theory | Books & Reading | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Women Writers | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Notes | Education | Reference | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Annie John: A Novel

ASIN: 0313302545

Book Description

Since its publication in 1985, Annie John has become one of the most widely taught novels in American high schools. Part of its appeal lies in its unique setting, the island of Antigua. This interdisciplinary collection of 30 primary documents and commentary will enrich the reader's understanding of the historical, social, and cultural contexts of the novel. Among the topics examined are slavery in the Caribbean, the various religions in the Caribbean islands, the controversy over Christopher Columbus, family life in Antigua, and emigrations from the West Indies to the United States. Sources include newspaper and magazine articles, editorials, first-person narratives and memoirs of life in the Caribbean, letters, and position papers. Most of the documents are not readily available in any other printed form. A literary analysis of Annie John examines the novel in light of its historical, social, and cultural contexts and as a coming-of-age novel. Each chapter concludes with study questions and topics for research papers and class discussion based on the documents in the chapter, and lists of further reading for examining the themes and issues raised by the novel. This casebook is valuable to students and teachers to help them understand the setting of the novel, its themes, and its young heroine.

Average customer rating:

alluring, seductive, and entertaining
Enlightening
Where's the story?
A Complicated Work
Jamica Kincaid, a story of family and loss

My Brother
Jamaica Kincaid
Manufacturer: Penguin Audio
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette

General | Books on Cassette | Audiobooks | Formats | Books

General | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Autobiography of My Mother
A Small Place
At the Bottom of the River
An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us
Lucy: A Novel

ASIN: 0140867376

Amazon.com

Compassion only occasionally lightens the grim tone of Jamaica Kincaid's searing account of her younger brother Devon's 1996 death from AIDS. As in novels such as Annie John, Kincaid is ruthlessly honest about her ambivalence toward the impoverished Caribbean nation from which she fled, her restrictive family, and the culture that imprisoned Devon. That honesty, which includes chilling detachment from her brother's suffering, is sometimes alienating. But art has its own justifications. The bitter clarity of Kincaid's prose and the tangled, undeniably human feelings it lucidly dissects are justification enough.

Book Description

Jamaica Kincaid's incantatory, poetic, and often shockingly frank recounting of her brother Devon Drew's life is also the story of her family on the island of Antigua, a constellation centered on the powerful, sometimes threatening figure of the writer's mother. Kincaid's unblinking record of a life that ed too early speaks volumes about the difficult truths at the heart of all families.

Customer Reviews:

alluring, seductive, and entertaining.......2007-04-16

I'd only ever read a short short story of Jamaica Kincaid's (that I wasn't too impressed by) before picking up this memoir. I enjoyed her memoir thoroughly. Wonderfully crafted and skillfully written, this rendition of her memories surrounding the life and death of her brother in Antigua, Jamaica, are emotionally moving, to say the least. I'm not giving much away by revealing that her brother dies of AIDS, something that is revealed in the first few pages, so I'm okay to say that this story of a sister and family's grappling with the immiment death manages to handle the AIDS story with beauty, poise, and compelling writing.

She highlights the stigma that surrounded anyone who contracted the disease. Were they a drug user? A philanderer? A homosexual? What kind of lifestyle does that person live that allowed them to contract such a deadly disease? Those are the questions people in Jamaica, and elsewhere, thought and asked themselves at the time, and even today. The sick were labelled, ostricized, deemed outcast, and refused help. A sad plight, indeed.

Simply put, Kincaid has a simple way with language that turns up on the page as alluring, seductive, and entertaining.

-- Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens

Enlightening.......2002-08-29

I first read Jamaica Kincaid's work in "Talk Stories", and I loved it.

I discovered this book (My Brother) when reading the book "Writing as a Way of Healing" by Louise DeSalvo. I was curious about Jamaica's life and her writing style intrigued me.

Through her writing, Jamaica brings beauty to even the most difficult of life's experiences. She writes, "That sun, that sun. On the last day of our visit its rays seemed as pointed and unfriendly as an enemy's well-aimed spear."(p.73)

Her writing is honest and balanced between expressing the hard aspects and the kindness within her family life. This book is mostly about her brother dying of AIDS, a very difficult subject matter to read. I also enjoyed reading about how she became a writer, and what it means to her to be a writer.

This book also tells about life in Antigua, which I was especially interested in learning about. The next book I will read by Jamaica is "A Small Place", to learn more about life in Antigua.

Where's the story?.......2002-06-28

Normally a fan of Jamaica Kincaid, this book was terribly disappointing. Kincaid tells the story of her brother's battle with AIDS . . . well, sort of tells it anyway.

This book tells the reader surprisingly little about any story. Kincaid, wrapped up in age-old animosity toward her mother does not tell the story of her brother's fight with a deadly disease, or the story of her brother's death, or the story of her brother's life, or even her own story of how she dealt with all of this--all of which would have been fascinating stories had they been told. Kincaid's feelings toward her mother seem not quite unfounded to the reader but certainly a bit mysterious. There is deep conflict between the author and her mother but as readers we have only two or three explanations for the mother/daughter difficulty. If this were only mentioned in passing we could overlook this flaw, however, Kincaid is extremely hung up on the issue and the ill feelings toward her mother cloud the true story of the book (whatever that may be).

Kincaid's style, usually quite interesting, was lacking in this book. Her wandering, redundant sentences build her excessively long and redundant paragraphs, which are full of distracting and also redundant parenthetical comments.

However, the book is not without a few strong points. There are some good detailed descriptions--particularly of her brother's physical condition and of specific places. Kincaid also does a fine job of describing her various feelings when she realizes toward the end of the book that she knew her brother even less than she had previously thought (and she never claimed to know much about him to begin with).

My advice is to pass this book by and pick up one of Kincaid's novels, or--even better--get your hands on one of her short stories.

A Complicated Work.......2002-04-14

I'm still thinking through the issues raised in "My Brother" -- and I suspect that it will be one of those books which, though it feels a bit hollow as I read it, will turn out to haunt me in the future. Only time will tell. The most remarkable thing about it, I think, is the way that Kincaid refuses to valorize any of the characters she describes. The incredible ire towards her mother is the only emotion that feels puzzling, given the lack of context for it -- I kept waiting for a revelation there that never came. With this exception, however, Kincaid seems committed to presenting a balanced portrayal: she does not heroize the dead, nor does she portray herself as particularly wise or noble in the face of death. It is this commitment to a human, complex portrayal that makes the description unique.

I just want to add that I am only posting this to counteract what appears to be a long list of high school book reports that make up most of the "reviewing" on this page. ...

Jamica Kincaid, a story of family and loss.......2002-01-22

Jamaica Kincaid tells the story of her ill brother and his encounters with the virus HIV. The story has the title of My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid. The story is essentially written to save Jamaica's own life. Whenever there is a tragic happening in her family, she writes about to let her feelings out and she also tries to exclude herself from her family. She moves away from Antigua once she became old enough to do so. Jamaica goes through sever years without connection to her mother and her siblings. Jamaica struggles to find feelings for her sick and dying brother as he spends his last days in an old run down hospital in Antigua. Jamaica is only able to let her own feelings out in a comfortable manner to Dr. Prince Ramsey. Jamaica is unable to communicate with her own mother. This is due to Jamaica's feeling that her mother was only a mother at certain times. Jamaica is driven on the idea that her mother only wants to care for her children if they were sick or in need of caring. Any time other than that, Jamaica thinks she had a poor mother. Jamaica is pleased however with few things her mother did. When Jamaica was only fifteen years old, she was forced to look after her younger brother who was only age two. She decided to read her books all day long and decided that looking after her younger brother was not a number one priority. Jamaica realized at the end of her reading that her mother would be home soon so she tried to clean up the things she thought her mother would realize first. One of these things was her brothers diaper but Jamaica did not have enough time to change so once her mother found this out, she took all of Jamaica's books, took them outside, doused them with kerosene, and burned them all, every last book. Jamaica recalls this event as driving her to become a written to make up for all for all of the books that she had lost at a young age.
Throughout the book Jamaica conveys her struggle to find love for her dying brother, Devon Drew. She never was close at all to her younger brother and as her brother became more sick, Jamaica knew she need to do something to redeem her self for all of the years she was absent in the presence of her brother. On page 72, Jamaica and her mother have a conversation about bringing her brother the medicine that prolonged his life several months more. Her mother said to her that god would bless her richly for providing her brother with the medicine, AZT. Jamaica was not sure if what her mother said was true but she was really not concerned with gods or being richly blessed. Jamaica was constantly thinking about how her brother was sick and how much Antiguan society shunned HIV positive people. Even though her brother was feeling better from the AZT, Jamaica knew that eventually her brother would die. On January 19th, 1996, at the age of thirty-three, Devon Drew died.
At certain times throughout the story, Jamaica thinks that it is perhaps better if her brother would just die, but when Devon was no more, Jamaica did not know what to feel. At certain points throughout the story, Jamaica feels that Devon is becoming a burden to her, making fly from her home in Vermont to Antigua, every time her brother needed more AZT. On page 87 she states that it seemed that his dying was a good thing, she was relieved when her brother finally did die. She says " when that moment came, the moment I knew he was no longer alive, I didn't know what to think, I didn't know how to feel" I think that this sentence conveys the struggle Jamaica has internally about her brothers illness and about how she felt about him when he was alive. During the story Jamaica also remembers the death of her father. She got word of his death right around Christmas time and she felt increasingly depressed. On page 119 Jamaica says " In the letter telling me that my father is (that is, the man who was not really my father but whom played I thought of as my father, and the man who had filled that role in my life) had died, my mother said his death left them impoverished, that she had been unable to pay for his burial, and the only charitable of others allowed him to have an ordinary burial, not an extraordinary burial of a pauper, with its anonymous grave and which no proper mourners attend". Throughout the second half of the book, Jamaica demonstrates her increasing anger toward her father and her brother. She becomes very angered at the thought of anyone dying and she keeps feeling that she really did not care about the loss of her father, only how to try and make up for the lost time with her brother, who in retrospect never really seemed to love Jamaica as a sister, just perhaps someone who provided him life with more AZT. Jamaica has difficulty dealing with all of the tragic experiences that has happened to her family, that is why one could feel that Jamaica isolated herself from her family. She feels that at certain times throughout the book she feels that perhaps she is to blame for being in the absence of her ill brother.
One could feel that Jamaica Kincaid does represent a hero but in defined terms. At times the only reason she is able to provide her brother with AZT is because she has had a better life than the rest of her family and she also has more money than the rest of her family. She tries her hardest to find love for her brother, even though she really cannot relate to any of his problems. She buys him temporary relief with the AZT medicine, but she knows that is not enough to make up for all of the lost years she had been without her brother. One might not necessarily think that Jamaica wanted to reconnect with her brother and the rest of her family, one might think that she just wanted to see him again before he died. While visiting her brother the experiences Jamaica had with her mother did make her more stressed out and more prone to mental and physical breakdowns. One could say that Jamaica did triumph all of the death and stress that was associated with her mother and the rest of her family.
One cold imagine that this story is heartfelt at times and a very good read. Some parts of the story were somewhat confusing when Jamaica puts things like my father (not my father but my brother's father) in parentheses. It seems as though she does want a mother and father but at times is seems as though Jamaica knows that maybe they do not want to be parents to her. This book is touching on several levels and anyone who has family members who are sick can relate to this book. This book was moving and really from the heart (of Jamaica Kincaid). One could feel that this book could be given to almost anyone and that person would be moved emotionally as well as physically. This book tells the story of hardship and death a young girl inspired to write her feelings in order to save her own life. Jamaica was inspired by the acts of her mother burning the few items she truly loved in live. Her books. She is familiar with the act of saving herself, so when she found out her brother was sick and dying. She started to write she knew that was the only was to understand his sickness, and she also began to write so she would not die with him. This book was amazing and is truly one of the best works of all times. It deals with emotion and real life situations. One feels that anyone who wants to learn the story of a girl who overcame the impoverished life of her family and the way Jamaica tried to save her own brother even when she could not relate to him, and she did with grace and inner strength that is unprecedented and amazing. She tried to keep a smile on her face and have a strong heart through it all.

Average customer rating:

A fantastic book to read to kids at home or in schools.

Where Jamaica Go?
Dale Gottlieb
Manufacturer: Orchard Books (NY)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0531095258

Customer Reviews:

A fantastic book to read to kids at home or in schools........1999-05-22

Sparked by the bright primary colors of the author-artist's illustrations, this text reads in Caribbean rhythms -- fun for the teacher and fun for the listeners. It is also a book which can bring a taste of the island cultures to students who have no other chance to expand their horizons. I am speaking as a grandmother, a former elementary teacher and a current college instructor in children's literature -- also the artist-author's fortunate mother-in-law...

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books