Over the Roofs of the World
Using nature as both model and metaphor, Toronto resident Olive Senior delves into birds, flying, and Caribbean life in her third book of poems.
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Gardening in the Tropics
Gardening in the Tropics contains a rich Caribbean world in poems offered to readers everywhere. Olive Senior's rich vein of humour can turn wry and then sharp in satire of colour-consciousness, class-consciousness and racism. But her predominant tone is the verbal equivalent of a pair of wide-open arms.
Discerner of Hearts
The nine vividly rendered stories of place and character in Discerner of Hearts are set in Jamaica, both rural and urban, some present-day, others looking back several decades. Senior’s gift for fine characterization, for recreating the music of everyday speech, pervades these tales, which explore notions of home and exile as well as the intricate realm of […]
"'This is our Alabama': Racial Segregation, Discrimination, and Violence in Tamio Wakayama's Signs of Life" in The Global South, 9 (1), 124-146
This essay examines the civil rights photography of TamioWakayama. In 1963, Wakayama, a twenty-year-old Japanese Canadian philosophy student, left the University ofWestern Ontario and joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). A self-taught photographer, he shot pictures of SNCC's grassroots organizing activities in Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama. In this essay, I argue that Wakayama's representations […]
Dancing Lessons
When her house in the Jamaican countryside is damaged by a hurricane, Gertrude Samphire is sent by her estranged daughter Celia to Ellesmere Lodge, an assisted living centre. Gertrude is unimpressed with her new wealthy neighbours, and spends most of her time alone. It is only through writing that she finds her voice, and she […]
Boonoonoonous Hair
In this vibrant and exquisitely illustrated picture book, written by Commonwealth Prize—winning Jamaican—Canadian Olive Senior, and with pictures by the acclaimed artist Laura James (the team that created Anna Carries Water), a young girl learns to love her difficult—to—manage, voluminous and boonoonoonous hair.
Birthday Suit
Johnny loves nothing better than splashing in the ocean waves—naked. But Mom says now that he’s four he’s too old to run around without clothes on. She even buys him a pair of overalls with genuine 100 percent child-proof snap fasteners! But they’re no match for Johnny as he wriggles out of them.
Arrival of the Snake-Woman
The Toronto author Olive Senior's Jamaican birthplace provides the setting for these powerfully engaging stories that span a period of roughly 150 years, from the closing days of slavery in 1838 to the 1980s. The tensions wrought by rapid change and conflicting loyalties are at the heart of these stories, most beautifully evoked in the […]
Cuba: A Revolution in Motion
This accessible, up-to-date and comprehensive introduction to Cuba today provides both students and general readers with a sense of the changes–and continuities–in Cuba through the 1990s. It starts with the crisis the country faced following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of its support to Cuba. Isaac Saney describes the economic crash, […]