Mervyn Morris - Miss Lou: Louise Bennett and the Jamaican Culture

Miss Lou

Louise Bennett and Jamaican Culture

Mervyn Morris

First published in Jamaica, 2014 by

Ian Randle Publishers

11 Cunningham Avenue

Box 686

Kingston 6

www.ianrandlepublishers.com

Mervyn Morris, 2014

ISBN 978-976-637-866-0 (Pbk)

Epub Edition @ March 2014 ISBN: 978-976-637-873-8

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF JAMAICA CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Morris, Mervyn

Miss Lou: Louise Bennett and Jamaican culture / Mervyn Morris

p. : ill. ; cm.

Includes index

ISBN 978-976-637-866-0 (pbk)

1 Bennett, Louise, 1919-2006 2. Jamaica Biography

3. Jamaica Culture 4. Jamaica Social life and customs

I. Title

920 dc 23

First published in the UK in 2014 by

Signal Books Limited

36 Minster Road

Oxford OX4 1LY

www.signalbooks.co.uk

Miss Lou: Louise Bennett and Jamaican Culture. Copyright 2014 by Mervyn Morris. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Ian Randle Publishers.

Permission for inclusion of the copyrighted works of Louise Bennett has been obtained from and granted by the LBC Estate, executors: Judge Pamela Appelt and Fabian Coverly, during Jamaicas 50th year of celebration of Independence.

Cover Design: Ian Randle Publishers

Typesetting: Tora Kelly

Cover Images: Maria LaYacona; back: Gleaner Company

Printed and bound in the USA

Contents

Miss Lou

Acknowledgements

Thanks especially to Pamela Appelt and Fabian Coverley, executors of the Louise Bennett Coverley estate, for granting early access to material in Canada and for permission to quote from Louise Bennetts work.

I am also indebted to Mary Jane Hewitt, whose dissertation on Zora Neale Hurston and Louise Bennett has been an invaluable resource; and to Ruth Minott Egglestone who shared a chronological file on Louise Bennett and Eric Coverley which she created while researching the Jamaican Pantomime.

I am grateful for the help of many other individuals, including Peter Ashbourne, Yvonne Brewster, Gracie Cameron, Alvin Campbell, Frankie Campbell, Grub Cooper, Dorothy Cunningham, Leonie Forbes, Linda Gambrill, Tony Gambrill, Nick Gillard, Barbara Gloudon, Colleen Hall, Joan Andrea Hutchinson, Rosie Johnston, Emily Zobel Marshall, Lois Kelly Miller, Easton Lee, Tony McFarlane, Louis Marriott, Alma MockYen, Oliver Samuels, Maureen Warner-Lewis and Marjorie Whylie.

I also wish to thank

The British Broadcasting Corporation Archives, Caversham

The British Library, London

The Institute of Jamaica

The Jamaican Language Unit, University of the West Indies, Mona

The Little Theatre Movement, Jamaica

McMaster University Library, Hamilton

The National Library, Jamaica

Talawa Theatre Company, London

The University of the West Indies Library, Mona

The University of the West Indies Press

The author and the publishers thank the National Library of Jamaica, the Gleaner Company, the Jamaica Tourist Board, the Little Theatre Movement, Dr Owen Minott and the Louise Bennett-Coverley Estate for permission to reproduce photographs.

See Recommended Books and Recordings.

Quoted by Rex Nettleford in Louise Bennett, Jamaica Labrish (Kingston: Sangsters Book Stores, 2005 reprint), p.10. See also Bennett on Bennett , Louise Bennett interviewed by Dennis Scott, Caribbean Quarterly Vol. 14 Nos 1 & 2, March-June 1968, p.97. The interview is reprinted in Hinterland ed. E. A. Markham (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1989), pp.45-50.

Humour becomes, as it were, the expression of a peoples will to live... (Nettleford) Jamaica Labrish , p.22.