The Dead Yard: Tales of Modern Jamaica [Paperback]

I had the misfortune of reading the Dead Yard by Ian Thomson, a book of doom and gloom, as this author sets out to expose the dark side of Jamaica. Any hint of goodness is quickly dismissed by Mr. Thomson as he paints a picture of hell that is my beloved country. Every successive chapter is filled with more doom and gloom than the last as Ian goes out of his way to highlight every nasty disgusting aspect of the Jamaican society. If this writer had stated that there was a Jamaican connection to the World Trade Center attack, I would not be too surprise. He seems clearly upset about Jamaica's independence from Britain, he hates the idea that Jamaica is now being influence by the United States and the fact that Britain turned her back on Jamaica and the empire and so now we get an idea of what Ian Thomson is about.

Anyone can write a book about the dark side of any country as every country have a dark side but to make the dark side the norm is criminal, pure evil, this writer dislikes Jamaica for some reason and understands like most of the British media outlets that negativity sells especially when it comes to Jamaica. Does Jamaica have problems, yes, does Jamaica have a crime problem, yes, but one can ask the same about most countries, including the United Kingdom. The Author interviews several prominent, wealthy Jamaicans who are not of African descent and several none Jamaicans who now lives in Jamaica; they all seem to take pleasure in their raciest description the black population. One would think he was interviewing members of the Ku Klux Klan in the deep south of America or party members of the British National Party. The population of Jamaica like most other countries is diverse, it is made up of people of different races and different historical background and yet the author is shocked to find out that Jamaica suffers from normal human traits that exist in almost every country with a diverse population.

As Jamaicans we understands the problems that we face more than anyone else, we know the negative aspect of our society, we experience it day in day out and it is something we as Jamaicans are fighting to overcome every day. We also know the positives aspects of our society of which there are many, we see it every day and we experience it every day and it is there for all to see but some are blind and that is not what sells. Books like Dead Yard and writers like Ian Thomson exist to kill all hopes, dreams and aspirations of a people. If someone was to compile everything that is negative about the British society and pack it into one book, then they would achieve the same objective. If Jamaica is a failed state then I lay the blame for that failure at the foot of every Jamaican who have migrated from the early 1900s, from the Windrush runners to present day, faced with a chance and a challenge to build a society they choose to turn their backs on their birth right and to suffer and struggle in another man's country at the expense of their own, nation builders they are not.

I see nothing positive about this book, it brings nothing new to the table, it offers no solutions and given the fact that the foreign media only reports bad, negative things about Jamaica it adds nothing new to the way people in other countries view Jamaica. However it reinforces my belief that what is important is how we Jamaicans think about ourselves and the future of our country. We cannot and will not let others like Ian Thomson control or define how we think or who we are. As Jamaicans we are given one of the greatest challenges a human being could face, to take one of the most fertile and the most beautiful land mass on this planet and convert it into a country where all of its inhabitants can live in peace and prosper, to build a nation state future generations of Jamaicans can be proud of. Great Britain left us with nothing but we are determined to create something. Yes we have had set backs along the way but I believe we will get it right, we are a young nation still growing but we will get there.

The tourist boards of Great Britain do not promote football hooliganism, life in impoverish council estates, English Defense League race riots, pub fights, public drunkenness, stabbings and murders in Britain and as such I do not see any reason why the Jamaica Tourist Board should. The author performs interviews after interviews with people who left Jamaica decades ago, with each one giving their own out of date opinion on Jamaica over the years. The very idea that people who have migrated, who turned their backs on their birth right could then turn around and make statements about the lack of growth and development in Jamaica, is to me extremely insulting, here we have a group of people, some of whom left Jamaica for over 30 and 40 years, never returned, most no longer call themselves Jamaican, having never lift a finger to build our nation state, thinking that they somehow have earned the right to make these statements about my country.

The fact is each of the events reported in the book are almost always negative but not unique to Jamaica, however this is not an issue for Ian who only wants negativity presented as if it is unique only to Jamaica. If anything positive is said during his interviews we would never know about it because Ian would never report it, that's not the purpose of The Dead Yard.

I can't help wondering why the author wrote this book. Was it to provide an insight into Jamaica or was it to prove what a right-on modern liberal he is? His insistence throughout the book of blaming everything on Britain is so typical of English middle class leftie types. The rule he employs is basically that anything positive in Jamaican culture can be traced back to Africa, while anything negative is a legacy of slavery or colonialism.

He complains at one point that Britain abandoned Jamaica after independence, but then gripes continually that Britain still has an influence over the Island. Which one is it? He seems to go to great lengths to find people who are still clinging to a sense of Britishness - it's not surprising that most of them are very old! The truth is that to most Jamaicans Britain is just another foreign country, and the only things that strengthens the links between the two are that a) a lot of British tourists go there and b) a lot of Jamaicans have family in Britain. I have never met anyone in Jamaica who shows any reverence towards Britain; the island is far more aligned with America these days. There are strong arguments to suggest that the US government and the IMF are far more responsible for Jamaica's modern decline that Britain is, but that is scarcely mentioned. Why no mention of Kingston's free zone for example?

The culture of Jamaica is overwhelmingly about the working class people of Kingston - why didn't he focus on them instead of hunting down obscure descendants of plantation owners or snobby returnees? He only seemed to want to interview `name brand' people. And why no mention of the town / country divide that defines many Jamaicans' identities?

If this book was supposed to be about alternative and minority cultures in Jamaica then the author did a good job: much of the information about groups such as the Jews and Scots is fascinating. I did actually enjoy the book, but it seemed to be driven more by the author's own political views than Jamaica itself. Probably got a good review in the Guardian though...

Everything in this book is true. But, this being Jamaica, at the same time none of it is true. It's a bit like the lady who flew in on the morning flight and had lunch in Jamaica, before leaving on the afternoon flight to write the Jamaican entry in a Caribbean cookbook. Apart from the author's general lack of graciousness to his seemingly generous hosts, the book totally lacks any kind of attempt to seek out the 'back' story which would lend his 'tales' some air of authenticity. The description of 'Cat' Coore at Kings House is a case in point - knowing that Coore's father, for example, was a well-known political colleague of the then Governer General, Sir Howard Cooke, would explain his familiar behaviour with the aide de camp, and make it appear not so much mockery or disrespect as is implied, so much as being at ease in a familiar environment. 'Cat' was there, no doubt, to see his Uncle Howard. Such overwhelming gaps in the research, and Thompson's willingness to dismiss a Caribbean cultural icon such as the late Professor Rex Nettleford in two short paragraphs and with the gossipy epithet 'Sexy Rexy' are a cause for concern. The historical material and Thompson's encyclopedic knowledge of Jamaican music somehow don't fully contextualize but rather trivialize the contemporary encounters related in the book. Sadly, I felt that throughout, this book was not so much about 'modern Jamaica' but more about Thompson's own disappointment at being British in an age of post-colonial decline. His cynicism is palpable. I was reminded of the time I took a Jamaican theatre company to the UK in the early 1990's. On previous trips to the USA we had sung the US National anthem followed by the Jamaican anthem with mutual respect. In the UK nobody stood for 'God Save the Queen', which was accompanied by bouts of embarrassed laughter, before the audience finally joined in a mocking pub-like singalong of the Jamaican anthem. We never tried it again.