Revolutionary mother and lover, feminist and social activist, Joan French, now harvests her under-life in a fascinating poetic memoir, Remembering the Rainbow. These poems present a rainbow of past experiences covering her political activism, love and relationships, motherhood, depression, the comfort of the familiar, and discomforting features of the return home to residence in Jamaica in 2007, after residing elsewhere for over 15 years.
Remembering The Rainbow
$22.00
Revolutionary mother and lover, feminist and social activist, Joan French, now harvests her under-life in a fascinating poetic memoir, Remembering the Rainbow. These poems present a rainbow of past experiences covering her political activism, love and relationships, motherhood, depression, the comfort of the familiar, and discomforting features of the return home to residence in Jamaica in 2007, after residing elsewhere for over 15 years.
Lessons from a Revolutionary Caribbean Woman
Poetry lovers will relish the scope and breadth of these poems, some of which are intensely personal, intended to show that as women activists, we lived and loved, had our lows and highs, and still managed to find hard-won moments for creativity and peace.
This creative biography and storytelling through poetry will inspire you to tell your own story and perhaps spark a revolution.
About The Author
Joan French has promoted feminist action in the Caribbean since the late 1960s and is a founding member of the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action, which led the struggle for the recognition of Caribbean feminism in the 1980s. She was Chief of Gender for UNICEF from 1998 to 2003, where she led the thrust for inclusion of gender analysis and action in every area of UNICEF programming. Joan has worked as a lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages at the UWI, and at the Institute of Gender and Development Studies (IGDS). She became the first Coordinator of the Caribbean Policy Development Centre, charged with engaging with structures such as CARICOM in order to advance people-centred policies on behalf of regional civil society organisations.
Introduction
When I turned 68, my younger brother became terminally ill and in need of my care while I myself was still on crutches from a fall which had left me with a leg broken in two parts. As a result of these life-changing events in 2013, I became acutely aware of advancing age, which has inspired this collection.
The above incidents proved to be the acceleration of a dynamic which had begun in 2008 when relationships of caregiving with elderly friends and relatives and the elderly relatives of friends became a feature of my life. The loss of the father of my children in 2012 seemed, I thought, to close my circle of affective loss-with-responsibility. This was not to be.
The current collection contains poetry and some prose confronting death with a mixture of fascination, concern, humour and spirited engagement.
I share these out of the conviction that it is important for this generation of aging women to use the capacity and independence gained from the struggles of our foremothers and fathers, and our own, to claim a space for speaking for ourselves of our experiences in the aging process. Too often the elderly and infirm are spoken about, rather than heard in our own voices.
Excerpts
In The Final Analysis
Page 9 – from Part One: Feeling The Shadow
In the final analysis
I am living my dying
Aching step by aching step
Tremble by tremble of my hand
Pill by pill (when I can afford them)
And hand by helping hand.
I carry my body now – it scarcely carries me
And the ‘I’ has to fortify itself to keep it moving.
In the final analysis, tomorrow I will be gone.
