Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

The Honourable Louise Bennett-Coverley. - file

While the life and legacy of the Honourable Louise Bennett-Coverley, 'Miss Lou', was being celebrated at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus, earlier this month, one of a generation of female Jamaican writers who came after presented her latest book.

Opal Adisa Palmer officially launched Until Judgement Comes, a book with seven stories about men, during 'Noh Lickle Twang: Louise Bennett-Coverley, The Legend and the Legacy', which ran from Wednesday, January 9, to Saturday, January 12.

Published by Peepal Tree Press, the 2007 Until Judgement Comes follows closely on 'Eros Muse', published by Africa World Press at the end of 2006.

However, the book of stories about men was in the making long before the collection of poems and stories about what it means to be "a writer and a mother, what it means to be a Caribbean writer living abroad".

Ten years to write

"I have been writing Until Judgement Comes on and off for 10 years," Palmer Adisa told The Gleaner. "I struggled so much because I wanted the men to tell their stories without me interfering as a feminist."

"It is important, because everywhere it seems that men are in crisis. It is not accidental ... we need to look at what we can do to foster more self-esteem in men, so there can be a balance," she said, noting that it is untenable to have a society where only the women are thriving.

"If there are no comparable mates what will they do?" she asked.

Of the seven essays, Palmer Adisa's favourites are Bad Boy and the title storey, Until Judgement Comes, with the character 'Devon' central to the former. She points out that in "both situations you see physical abuse, but more so you see the emotional". And that includes mothers telling their sons "yu wutliss jus' like yu father".

As for the character Devon, Opal Palmer Adisa says when she was writing the story "at first he was a criminal. Then I said that my Devon did not end up in crime". So "he gets into some little stuff", but through the love of an older woman and friendship of a 'bad boy' who does not want to see Devon on the path that led to the death of his younger brother, pulls through.

The men in the seven stories are connected by being from the same community in Jamaica and known to a particular woman. Palmer Adisa says they are all working class, save for one who is a professor in the United States of America.

Palmer Adisa herself is a professor in the US, at the California College of the Arts, where she teaches graduate fiction and undergraduate creative writing, as well as Caribbean literature once a year. She left Jamaica at 16 years old to do a year in high school in the US, then left again in 1979. She has not lived in Jamaica since she tries to visit once a year.

One of those trips was to the Calabash Literary Festival in Treasure Beach, St Elizabeth, where she read from Caribbean Passion, the book which preceded Eros Muse.

"I left because I wanted to go to graduate school and UWI did not have an MFA in creative writing," Palmer Adisa said.

Now she intends to come home for good in a year and a half.

"I have given so much to the US and students there, I want to give something here," she said.