Linnette Vassell
NEARLY 24 years ago, on the night of May 20, 1980, more than 150 destitute women died in a fire that ravaged the Eventide Home on Slipe Road, Kingston. The society already tense from the sharp political divisions of the period, went into shock as many became more convinced that Jamaica was on the brink of total self-destruction. The results of the inquest conducted into the devastating fire was that no one was criminally responsible for the fire.
SISTREN Theatre Collective conducted its own enquiry, so to speak, into the painful experience of the fire through its production in 1981 of QPH. This was its fifth production following 'Downpression Get a Blow' (1977), 'Bellywoman Bangarang' (1987), 'Bandool-oou Version' (1979) and 'Nana Yah' in 1980.
QPH explored the lives of the women in the Alms House through the story of three women, Queenie, Pearlie and Hopie, who had lived together at Eventide Home. Pearlie, represented the famous Kingston commercial sex worker, Pearl Harbour, who had died at the infirmary in 1979. Hopie died in the fire and Queenie, who was badly scarred in the fire, was alive when the play was produced. That exploration led us to see the women as individuals who had struggled with their own ambition for themselves, their children and their family. Through research and improvisation we walked with the women their different roads to the infirmary. SISTREN used the Etu ritual, a celebration for the dead through singing, dancing and feasting to tell the story. In that way, the production provided a space for participants to truly mourn the death of the women who were not projected as hapless destitutes but as our own companions on the journey of life.
WORKING CLASS WOMEN
When I visited SISTREN one day last week, Lana, Miss Foster, Miss Todd and Miss Thompson, members of the original group of 13 working class women who formed the organisation in 1977, were carefully picking through the rubble of the devastation of the fire which had gutted their SISTREN home.
They were being supported by Joyce Thompson, the office helper and three young men. All tried to secure a few precious artefacts and written records that tell in various forms, part of the story of women in struggle over 27 years. In some way, not too precise, the scene reminded me of QPH and brought to my mind the urgent need to recapture the collective memory and secure the continuity into the present and the future.
For SISTREN is about women's history and struggle as part of the struggle of our people, principally in Jamaica and the Caribbean. For the founding and work of the organisation has to be seen in the context of the reality of the resurgence of popular democratic and anti-imperialist movements in the 1970s. The global agenda for 'equality, development and peace' signified by the United Nations Decade for Women (1976-1985) and its local expressions, stimulated the founding of organisations. In Jamaica, the popular democratic reform process of the 1970s under Michael Manley both contributed to and was influenced by the rise in consciousness and activism on the part of women, in organisations such as the Committee of Women formed in 1976 and the PNP Women's Movement which was in 1977 transformed from the PNP Women's Auxiliary. Women in and out of their organisations were to confront the real politics of economic and political destabilisation and the Inter-national Monetary Fund's (IMF) stringent conditionalities.
Within this context, SISTREN was the experience and perspective of women from the grassroots of society. Group members had first come together out of their experience as street sweepers employed under a special relief project which in 1977 involved thousands of women. From this background they researched and projected the experiences and needs of women from town and from country; of factory, household and canepiece workers, among others. They shared, investigated and analysed their own experiences as women and created spaces through which these could be presented.
The videos, 'Sweet Sugar Rage', on women in sugar cane and 'Carrying a Heavy Load', on the IMF's structural adjustment programme and the foreign debt, brought women's perspectives on these national development issues; SISTREN magazine was (and is) a mine of information. SISTREN's work through dramatic presentations, workshops and publications enabled women to share experiences with each other on a variety of issues; for example, what mothers taught their young girls ripening into maturity in a challenging environment; moving from country to town.
SISTREN as women's history is also about how middle strata women, using their skills and insights, engaged in a process to co-create a space that would provide opportunity for sharing and pursuing a vision for social change towards justice and social equity. Honor Ford-Smith, a white Jamaican, was the first middle strata SISTREN. From her position as a lecturer at the Jamaica School of Drama she prepared SISTREN for its first production dealing with the struggle of garment workers to form a union. She was to remain as artistic director for some 20 years.
MIDDLE STRATA WOMEN
She along with a small group of women from the middle strata were to play a pivotal role in research, writing, resource mobilisation, documentation and administration. This collaboration in one organisation of both working and middle strata women, linked to a common purpose, brought powerful results, for example, in research and publication of women's history. Outstanding in this aspect has been the video, Miss Amy and Miss Mae, a docu-drama on Amy Bailey and Mae Farquharson, stalwarts of women's movements of the 1930s, and the yet unpublished "Women, Work and Organisation in Jamaica" which saw strong collaboration between Honor and Joan Ffrench through SISTREN research. However, this was and has not been an easy journey.
The women from the original core like Afolashade who are still there, and others who have moved on will attest to this; there have been written analyses of the struggles, for example, by Ford-Smith (Ring Ding in a Tight Corner: Sistren, Collective Democracy, and the Organisation of Cultural Production). But then that is what SISTREN also is: a excellent analysis of obstacles in women's organising. As such, SISTREN has many lessons to teach us both from its earlier history, as well as from its more contemporary engagements in community animation and organising.
That is why we all have to help pick up the pieces of that life and stand ready to support and participate in the continuing journey of the SISTREN. One aspect of this is for younger academics to help to recover and write the history of SISTREN from our Caribbean perspective. Another is for us to share our own documents and memories of the journey.
Comments? Contact: Linnette Vassell at cvas@cwjamaica.com
