Erna Brodber, celebrated thinker, writer

Perhaps best noted for her novel, Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home, for which she won the Caribbean Commonwealth Award, Erna Brodber is widely regarded not only as a celebrated thinker and writer, but an eager proponent of Black History and Culture.

Her life and work which underpins many an academic discourse at the University of the West Indies will be commemorated on April 26 and 27 with a conference – From Kumblas’ to Blackspace: A symposium on Erna Brodber.

A historian and sociologist, Brodber has written significant articles and papers on the early days of Jamaican independence, children’s education and the conditions of the African Diaspora — a theme which remains close to her heart and which forms the subject matter for many of her earlier and present works. She is presently a senior lecturer within the Department of Sociology and a guest lecturer within the Department of English.

Born on April 20, 1940 in Woodside, a small village 10 minutes outside of Highgate, St Mary, Brodber grew up in the house she now occupies, and of which she is highly sentimental. She has even established “b l a c k s p a c e ” on her property which symbolises a place of gathering, education, work and healing and is also building a school on her premises which is geared towards educating high school graduates in African/Diasporic studies .

“It’s the greatest place I know, the spirits that feed me are there and that’s where I do all my work. I have called this my space, blackspace, this is what I have written on the house.

“It is what I am all about, and it is what I call my work. I believe everybody must have space, that you can’t have true mixing unless each ethnic group has its own space. The Chinese, Indians, Italians, Germans, all have their space,” Brodber told All Woman, adding that she does not mind travelling daily into Kingston to work.

Within this small town community that holds her roots, and of which has fond memories, Brodber has made great efforts to emphasise and retrieve her own personal heritage so much so that her black identity novels espouse are also close to her daily lived experience. Most of them deal with the healing power of the community.

“Her novels deal with the healing power of the community. Female protagonists struggle both to understand the past, in the form of the historical lineage they possess, and the present, in terms of their own ambiguous roles in the community,” said Dr Nadia Ellis who is intimately involved with Brodber’s work.

Educated early at Excelsior High, Brodber went to UWI to read history and then on, through a post-graduate scholarship, to study sociology. She immersed herself in academia perhaps more than most other Caribbean authors, gaining a BA from the then University College of the West and ultimately attaining an MSc and PhD.

While settling down to write, she indulged in many other professions, including the posts of civil servant, teacher, sociology lecturer, and fellow/staff member of the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at Mona. While at the ISER (now the Sir Aurther Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Research), Brodber worked to collect the oral histories of elders in rural Jamaica, a project that would later inspire her novel, Louisiana.

Despite her literary success and her significant contribution to Caribbean history, Brodber remains humble.

“I am not a writer-writer. I am coming out of history and sociology and I go into writing because I find that it is one of the ways I can communicate what I want to say about historical and sociological phenomena relating to the Caribbean. I write because I don’t have the guts to stand up and preach,” she said in a recent interview.

While studying as a young woman in the United States, Brodber encountered two powerful forces she had not previously been exposed to: the Black Power and Women’s Liberation movements. Coupled with her early familial indoctrination to the importance of community, these social concerns further formed a background for her interest in social research.

She recalls with wry humour coming back to Jamaica with an afro.

“Jamaica couldn’t deal with that at all. And I was just shocked. Just plain shocked, because I hadn’t seriously worked or dealt with Jamaica. And I was coming back to being Jamaican and I just didn’t know, and I know now what I should have done – I should have been in high-heeled shoes, I should have been wearing mascara and my hair definitely should have been straightened. But I wasn’t doing those things, because it just wasn’t me. And they buffeted me, they insulted me.”

“I just was laughed at – like in Highgate there, I remember walking on the street in Highgate and people just sort of looking at yuh head and kind of laughing. I remembering doing a piece of work on abandonment of children, going into an office, a childcare office, and the ladies could hardly let me sit in there. I mean they were so unkind.”

Some of Dr Brodber’s prestigious awards include the Fullbright (1990), the Musgrave Medal for Literature and Orature (1999), and the Bronze Medal for Poetry and short story writing in the Jamaica Festival of Arts.

Erna Brodber: Works

Novels:

* Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home, 1980

* Myal, 1988

* Louisiana, 1994

Articles for ISER (Institute for Social and Economic Research, Jamaica):

* Abandonment of Children in Jamaica, 1974

* Yards in the City of Kingston, 1975

* Reggae and Cultural Identity in Jamaica, 1981

* Perceptions of Caribbean Women: Towards a Documentation of Stereotypes, 1982 For UNESCO:

* Rural-Urban Migration and the Jamaican Child, 1986