Greenwichtown Discussion

[Tigrrr]

Re: Greenwichtown Discussion

OK, hand high if you cried at the end.

tigrrr raises har hand high

After so much bad luck I had come to only expect bad luck for them. The info about Flo prostituting came a bit late in the story so that's the only part that was disruptive to me.

[Pepper]

Re: Greenwichtown Discussion

Flo was prostituting? Don't recall that coming up...please remind me.

Sorry, I did not cry in the end. Just a little too far fetched for me.

[Tigrrr]

Re: Greenwichtown Discussion

Pepper when Flo explained to Fay why she couldn't have kids she said she moved from Ma at 13 and men gave her money to let them touch her. I thought that meant she was prostituting.

Girl you are a hard eharted hannah LOL. I was crying like crazy (over Ma, not over Stumpy). I think it was relief crying after having lived vicariously through so much pain in Fay's life.

[mountaingal]

Re: Greenwichtown Discussion

Originally posted by Jamaica dreamin:
[qb][I make men sign a prefuctual agreement before having sex...[/qb]

Wadda term deh again??!! Love it, lol!

I tried to read the book but couldn't get into it. I'm realizing that I get unreasonable about reading patwa in fiction - if I even sense that it is not right, I start to lose interest. The patwa in the first few pages went back and forth to me in sounding real.

I flipped to the end a bit to see if it was worth persevering, and actually promised myself to go back into the book, but couldn't rouse the energy to do it. I stopped at the part where the little girl walked over the edge of a cliff while being drawn towards the water.

Did that metaphor persist in the book - the connection between the girl and water?

[rayna]

Re: Greenwichtown Discussion

You know Tigrr when you talk about the free lunch program, alot of schools will encourage you to make yourself qualify for free lunch so that they can get more money from the State. Chapter 10 (something like that) give schools money for (as they say) underprivlege students. I agree with you, they do mess over the food but the quality is getting better so that I see more of them eating.

Hey BND what's your take on the book? what did you enjoy or not enjoy most about it?

[mollyss]

Re: Greenwichtown Discussion

mountaingal - I understand where you're coming from, I had difficulty with the patwa at times too and I don't even speak it. I try to read patwa and hear my friends in Jamaica and I couldn't do that with many of the conversations. However, if the author's trying to appeal to an American audience it's probably best to keep the patwa mild so readers don't get frustrated.

Now that you mention it, after Fay left the country the water connection was only brought up once or twice. And it wasn't resolved at the end of the book, other than you knowing she was home and assuming the river still had its pull.

[Pepper]

Re: Greenwichtown Discussion

Originally posted by Tigrrr:
[qb]Pepper when Flo explained to Fay why she couldn't have kids she said she moved from Ma at 13 and men gave her money to let them touch her. I thought that meant she was prostituting.
[/qb]

OIC, I thought it was one man she was dealing with.

have to go back and check

But yes, that whole episode was sad. [img]/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[Tigrrr]

Re: Greenwichtown Discussion

[QUOTE]Originally posted by mountaingal:
[qb]

Originally posted by Jamaica dreamin:
[qb]

Did that metaphor persist in the book - the connection between the girl and water?[/qb]

Good point mountaingal. Such a point was amde of it in the beginning that I thought it would play a major role in the book. A missed opportunity would have been to compare the water connection from her childhood to the water in the gulley where she wanted to end her life. Somehow even though she chose not to end her own life, that part of her life could have died in the gulley. tigrr trying to rewrite di book

About the patwa - I don't speak fluently enough to tell authentic from wannabe patwa, but if a book is set in Jamaica but the dialog does not contain patwa, I just can't get into it. I had no trouble at all with the patwa in this book.

One of my fav parts was when Fay saw the blood on her hospital cover and thought she had been shot. Wooooiiiieeee!!!!!

[joyce palmer]

Re: Greenwichtown Discussion

Hi Everyone,
I have read all the post so far and the discussion is very good. Firstly, let me tell you about the inspiration for Geenwichtown. The book is sort of based on my own life of growing up in a Jamaican ghetto. Like Fay, I am the youngest of my mother's 9 children. At about 4 years old my older sister took me from the county to live with her in the city of Kingston. It was supposed to be for a visit but she never took me back to my mother and insisted that I call her Ma-just like Fay. My sister was not equipped to raise a child either emotionally or financially. She was very poor and throughout my entire childhood, I shared the same room with her and I always shared the communal toilet with the other tennants. Throughtout my childhood I never had a birthday cake or a Christmas presents because we were too poor to afford such luxuries. Life in Greenwichtown was hard cold and violent. As a child I saw numerous bodies that resulted from disputes. In all honesty, I think that my sister tried her best to give me a better life. She scrimped and saved to send me school. (In Jamaica parents are responsible for purchasing books, and paying for everything else for a child to go to school. If your parent can't afford it then you simply stayed home.)Like Fay, I also passed my exam to go to high school, and I also became pregnant and had twins at 16 years old, and I was "babyfatherless."
My entire family is still in Jamaica, and out of my mother's 9 children, I am the only one to have gone to high school and college.
Jamaica is a country that pulls at my heart strings. The physical landscape is mesmerizing but the lives of the average perosn is a day to day struggle for the basic necessities of life. Most peaople view Jamaica as a place to go on vacation-an island of paradise where the hot Caribbean sun vapories their troubles and the cool sea breeze caresses their skin as they lie on a white sandy beach. Yes, all of this is there but there is also another reality that sits right along side it in the lap of Fay Myrtle.
Ok, for those of you who thought that I am about 40 years old- don't worry, I am getting there. Since I have been in nursing school I have gotten 2 gray hairs.
About the patois. I realized that it would have been difficult to understand, but I had to capture the essence of Fay and her environment.
I am working on my second book which is totally unlike Greenwichtown and will be called, "The love life of senior citizen Bob Withers."
Sorry if my post is too long and Nina I went easy on the CAPS.

[BND1999]

Re: Greenwichtown Discussion

Thank you Joyce!!... I have been sitting back today and reading what others have said..not really needing to add much more..This book was gripping to me from the first page to the last.. It's funny I have such a hard time with the patois on the board, but I did not have any trouble in the book. I had thought this life might have paralleled yours.. Were you as starving for food as they were? no shoes? and when did you go back to see your mother? Is your family in the country, kingson? and what happened to your sister?.. You were so lucky to have struggled from that life to be here now and finishing nursing school. How did you end up having the money to leave and begin again? And in retrospect how do you feel about your life here and the country you left behind? Do you go back often?

[Tigrrr]

Re: Greenwichtown Discussion

Thanks Joyce for joining us. I saw on your book flap that you had twins so I thought there may have been some parallels.

The description of what occurred during the election frightened the heck out of me because of the senselessness of it and the fact that an election is coming up. It was so sad and brutal and I really did not understand why either side of the train tracks participated in this and what they hoped to gain. Did the party leaders promise some level of prosperity for folks on their side?

[Tigrrr]

Re: Greenwichtown Discussion

BND one question per customer [img]/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Actually those are good questions.

Joyce, BND shi fass yu knuh

[BND1999]

Re: Greenwichtown Discussion

Tigrr... I am a New Yorker.. I think and talk quick... I will calm down.. ***pacing***

[joyce palmer]

Re: Greenwichtown Discussion

My relatives are spread out in Jamaica, some in Kingston, St. Mary, Montegobay and all over. My family was never close nit to begin with. Was I really that poor? Oh yes!I got my first pair of shoes at 5 years old. Being poor in the country was bad but there were trees with fruits that we could eat in the ghetto, there were few trees so any food that you acquired you had to buy. When my sister had no money to buy food we simply had nothing to eat. I have visited my mom etc, but we don't have close relationship. I was in Jamaica in 1999, and most everything was still the same way.

[Guest]

Re: Greenwichtown Discussion

[QUOTE]Originally posted by mountaingal:
[qb]

Originally posted by Jamaica dreamin:
[qb][I make men sign a prefuctual agreement before having sex...[/qb]

Wadda term deh again??!! Love it, lol!

I can't take credit for this term / line. I was quoting Tigrr.