James Berry has received the Order of the British Empire for his contribution to poetry and the Signal Poetry Award for his children's poetry. His previous poetry collections, When I Dance and Everywhere Faces Everywhere, were published to rave reviews in the United States. His many awards and honors include the 1993 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction for his novel Ajeemah and His Son and a 1989 Coretta Scott King Honor for his collection of short stories A Thief in the Village and Other Stories of Jamaica. James Berry was born and raised in Jamaica and now lives in Brighton, England.
"Each moment here of the Jamaican-born poet's terse, melodious narrative is laden with emotion. . . . Brilliant, complex, powerfully written."--" The Kirkus Reviews
"Each moment here of the Jamaican-born poet's terse, melodious narrative is laden with emotion. . . . Brilliant, complex, powerfully written."--" The Kirkus Reviews
With its very first line--``That wiping out of Atu and Sisi's wedding was always going to be one of the painful happenings''--this poignant narrative takes on the age-old voice of a folktale. On their way to present a dowry of gold to Sisi's parents, Ajeemah and his son Atu, the groom-to-be, are kidnapped, sold to slave traders and taken to Jamaica, where they are sold to different white estate-owners. From the onset of their new lives, both Ajeemah and Atu are determined not only to escape but to wreak revenge upon the slaveholders as well. Despite the similarity of their plans, father and son end up with quite different fates. This tale, though brief, is packed with details of a slave's frustrating and demeaning life; for the most part, Berry's ( A Thief in His Village ) prose incorporates this information seamlessly. Occasionally, however, the novel's overall simplicity is vitiated by sentences, as well as snippets of dialogue, that would seem more at home in a textbook. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)
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