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For those of you familiar with her work, or have read The True History of Paradise, or just have a burning desire for adventure... Margaret Cezair-Thompson joins us for a brief encounter with a variation to how discussions are normally handled!
Join us Thursday, May 20, 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. for a discussion with Margaret Cezair-Thompson.
Members are encouraged to post questions from now about Margaret or The True History of Paradise.
True History of Paradise
From the Publisher
Easter, 1981, and Jamaica's in a state of emergency. With violence in the streets and a government about to collapse, the Landing family gathers to bury one of its own. For Monica Landing, the proud, imperious matriarch who had not spoken to her daughter in fifteen years, the death of Lana Landing is the cruelest kind of loss. For Lana's younger sister, Jean, it is a tragedy she cannot comprehend. All she knows is that her beloved homeland, with its blue mountains and exuberant flora, its rich African rhythms and crashing ocean waves, holds no future for her..
"But flight means crossing a landscape where soldiers turned executioners and armed gangs rule, where fires rage and unburied bodies lie in the roads. Flight means making her way through the memories that engulf her, with a good and silent man, perhaps the only man she has ever loved, traveling by her side, caught up in his own tormented memories of Jean's beautiful, flamboyant sister..
"Told from a multiplicity of perspectives, The True History of Paradise captures the grace, beauty, and brutality that are indelible parts of the Jamaican experience. The story of three women born into a divided, troubled paradise becomes the history of a country, of generations of wanderers coming together in a place that can neither sustain nor be sustained by them, but that will shape them forever.
Synopsis
A woman in mourning over the death of her dear sister in violence-torn Jamaica is lured to America by voices of the spirit world.
From The Critics
Tony Gibbs
Margaret Cezair-Thompson's first novel, is a brilliant, sophisticated piece of fiction. For those who love Jamaica, The True History of Paradise is a vivid and evocative work and one that fully lives up to its title.
&#;151 Island Magazine
Publisher's Weekly
Political unrest and violence in early 1980s Jamaica serve as the backdrop for a young woman's struggle to come to terms with her past and her country's history in Cezair-Thompson's strong debut novel. Jean Landing's island ancestry goes back to the late 17th century, and although in many ways she feels inextricably bound to Jamaica, the political turmoil makes her question whether she can continue to live in her native land.
A series of profoundly unsettling events--she is knifed by thugs, sees a bystander shot by a soldier during a minor traffic accident, tearfully keeps vigil over her best friend Faye's hospital bed after Faye is raped and assaulted--seems portentous. But her talented sister Lana's tragic death is the catalyst to Jean's angst-ridden decision to leave her homeland and seek shelter with her stateside lover, a married man. Paul, her longtime neighbor, confidante and dear friend, drives her across the island to meet her departing flight.
During the journey, they reflect on Lana, whose manic depressive illness contributed to her fiery death. Vignettes in the many voices of Jean's ancestors (Scottish, Chinese, Indian, Creole and African) punctuate the text, their eccentricities lending credence to the probably hereditary effects of mental instability and granting perspective to Jean's weighty decision. It falls to those voices to liven up the narrative when her sometimes overly earnest self-reflections begin to stall the momentum of the cross-island journey.
Born in Jamaica, Thompson's use of island patois is robust and authentic. She manages to depict with vivid immediacy Jamaica's terrors and seductions, portraying a society in which poverty is endemic, and a sense of menace exists in a setting of paradisal beauty. Agent, Susan Bergholz. (Aug.) FYI: Cezair-Thompson's first screenplay, Photo Finish, was sold to Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
The underlying plot is simple--it is Easter 1980, and Jean Landing is driving across Jamaica to a plane waiting to take her away from the violence currently plaguing the island. Along the way, she recollects her past and the stories of her ancestors, who hail from Africa, India, China, and Scotland and have lived in Jamaica for centuries. Taken together, the family history mirrors the history of the island, encompassing domestic violence, slave rebellion, political upheaval, and earthquakes.
Cezair-Thompson's first novel is a dynamic crazy quilt, often jumping too rapidly from one time period to another but suffused throughout with descriptions of Jamaica's tropical flowers, fruits, and foods. The family tree is necessary to keep track of the characters, and the glossary of Jamaican dialect is helpful. Yet despite these scholarly trappings, this is a lively work of fiction. Stretch out in the sun and enjoy.--Yvette Weller Olson, City Univ. Lib., Renton, WA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The colorful and dramatic history of Jamaica is stunningly encapsulated in this complex first novel, whose embattled protagonist gradually comes to terms with her own mixed ethnic heritage: a microcosm of her country's deeply fragmented nature.
Credits /get your copy http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...52280753&itm=2
Bio
Margaret Cezair-Thompson
Teaching/scholarly/literary interests: Late nineteenth through twentieth century British poetry and fiction; African and West Indian literature; Shakespeare; drama; film; colonial, postcolonial, and gender issues in literature; the Atlantic Slave Trade and African diaspora in literature; the presence (explicit and implicit) of colonialism, racial stereotypes, and images of Africa and the Caribbean in nineteenth century English literature; creative writing.
I've written and published in several genres: fiction, screenplays, literary criticism, and journalism, including The True History of Paradise, a novel (Dutton-Plume, 1999).
Writers/books I most enjoy re-reading/working on: Thomas Hardy (poetry and novels); V.S. Naipaul; Thackeray, Vanity Fair; Derek Walcott; Jean Rhys; Yeats; Wallace Stevens; Emily Dickinson; Shakespeare's tragedies; the critic, Alfred Kazin; James Joyce, Dubliners; and I am an avid reader of the King James Bible, the Old and New Testaments and Apocrypha.
Hopefully, this will be a lead up to Margaret's next publication coming out late summer / early fall!!
Much love and respect to (((((evan))))) for arranging this very special Guest!
Join us Thursday, May 20, 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. for a discussion with Margaret Cezair-Thompson.
Members are encouraged to post questions from now about Margaret or The True History of Paradise.
True History of Paradise
From the Publisher
Easter, 1981, and Jamaica's in a state of emergency. With violence in the streets and a government about to collapse, the Landing family gathers to bury one of its own. For Monica Landing, the proud, imperious matriarch who had not spoken to her daughter in fifteen years, the death of Lana Landing is the cruelest kind of loss. For Lana's younger sister, Jean, it is a tragedy she cannot comprehend. All she knows is that her beloved homeland, with its blue mountains and exuberant flora, its rich African rhythms and crashing ocean waves, holds no future for her..
"But flight means crossing a landscape where soldiers turned executioners and armed gangs rule, where fires rage and unburied bodies lie in the roads. Flight means making her way through the memories that engulf her, with a good and silent man, perhaps the only man she has ever loved, traveling by her side, caught up in his own tormented memories of Jean's beautiful, flamboyant sister..
"Told from a multiplicity of perspectives, The True History of Paradise captures the grace, beauty, and brutality that are indelible parts of the Jamaican experience. The story of three women born into a divided, troubled paradise becomes the history of a country, of generations of wanderers coming together in a place that can neither sustain nor be sustained by them, but that will shape them forever.
Synopsis
A woman in mourning over the death of her dear sister in violence-torn Jamaica is lured to America by voices of the spirit world.
From The Critics
Tony Gibbs
Margaret Cezair-Thompson's first novel, is a brilliant, sophisticated piece of fiction. For those who love Jamaica, The True History of Paradise is a vivid and evocative work and one that fully lives up to its title.
&#;151 Island Magazine
Publisher's Weekly
Political unrest and violence in early 1980s Jamaica serve as the backdrop for a young woman's struggle to come to terms with her past and her country's history in Cezair-Thompson's strong debut novel. Jean Landing's island ancestry goes back to the late 17th century, and although in many ways she feels inextricably bound to Jamaica, the political turmoil makes her question whether she can continue to live in her native land.
A series of profoundly unsettling events--she is knifed by thugs, sees a bystander shot by a soldier during a minor traffic accident, tearfully keeps vigil over her best friend Faye's hospital bed after Faye is raped and assaulted--seems portentous. But her talented sister Lana's tragic death is the catalyst to Jean's angst-ridden decision to leave her homeland and seek shelter with her stateside lover, a married man. Paul, her longtime neighbor, confidante and dear friend, drives her across the island to meet her departing flight.
During the journey, they reflect on Lana, whose manic depressive illness contributed to her fiery death. Vignettes in the many voices of Jean's ancestors (Scottish, Chinese, Indian, Creole and African) punctuate the text, their eccentricities lending credence to the probably hereditary effects of mental instability and granting perspective to Jean's weighty decision. It falls to those voices to liven up the narrative when her sometimes overly earnest self-reflections begin to stall the momentum of the cross-island journey.
Born in Jamaica, Thompson's use of island patois is robust and authentic. She manages to depict with vivid immediacy Jamaica's terrors and seductions, portraying a society in which poverty is endemic, and a sense of menace exists in a setting of paradisal beauty. Agent, Susan Bergholz. (Aug.) FYI: Cezair-Thompson's first screenplay, Photo Finish, was sold to Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
The underlying plot is simple--it is Easter 1980, and Jean Landing is driving across Jamaica to a plane waiting to take her away from the violence currently plaguing the island. Along the way, she recollects her past and the stories of her ancestors, who hail from Africa, India, China, and Scotland and have lived in Jamaica for centuries. Taken together, the family history mirrors the history of the island, encompassing domestic violence, slave rebellion, political upheaval, and earthquakes.
Cezair-Thompson's first novel is a dynamic crazy quilt, often jumping too rapidly from one time period to another but suffused throughout with descriptions of Jamaica's tropical flowers, fruits, and foods. The family tree is necessary to keep track of the characters, and the glossary of Jamaican dialect is helpful. Yet despite these scholarly trappings, this is a lively work of fiction. Stretch out in the sun and enjoy.--Yvette Weller Olson, City Univ. Lib., Renton, WA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The colorful and dramatic history of Jamaica is stunningly encapsulated in this complex first novel, whose embattled protagonist gradually comes to terms with her own mixed ethnic heritage: a microcosm of her country's deeply fragmented nature.
Credits /get your copy http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...52280753&itm=2
Bio
Margaret Cezair-Thompson
Teaching/scholarly/literary interests: Late nineteenth through twentieth century British poetry and fiction; African and West Indian literature; Shakespeare; drama; film; colonial, postcolonial, and gender issues in literature; the Atlantic Slave Trade and African diaspora in literature; the presence (explicit and implicit) of colonialism, racial stereotypes, and images of Africa and the Caribbean in nineteenth century English literature; creative writing.
I've written and published in several genres: fiction, screenplays, literary criticism, and journalism, including The True History of Paradise, a novel (Dutton-Plume, 1999).
Writers/books I most enjoy re-reading/working on: Thomas Hardy (poetry and novels); V.S. Naipaul; Thackeray, Vanity Fair; Derek Walcott; Jean Rhys; Yeats; Wallace Stevens; Emily Dickinson; Shakespeare's tragedies; the critic, Alfred Kazin; James Joyce, Dubliners; and I am an avid reader of the King James Bible, the Old and New Testaments and Apocrypha.
Hopefully, this will be a lead up to Margaret's next publication coming out late summer / early fall!!
Much love and respect to (((((evan))))) for arranging this very special Guest!
Thursday May 20th, from 12.30-1.30 
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