Chat ’Bout!: An Anthology of Jamaican Conversations Jamaicans love to ‘tek bad tings mek laugh’ and Chat ’Bout! lets you get in on the conversation. Written in Patwa or Patois, Chat ’Bout! celebrates all things mundanely Jamaican. Unfiltered, honest and funny, it examines the idiosyncrasies of everyday Jamaican life - the good, the bad, and the ugly. Guided by Jamaican GPS, Chat ’Bout! takes you on a journey through Jamaica, past and present. Get lost while reminiscing down memory lane; stop and eavesdrop on conversations, and vicariously experience a minibus ride. Next thing you know, you are experiencing an unfortunate episode of ‘runnin’ belly’ and having a good belly laugh while you are at it. Be thoroughly entertained by Chat ’Bout! and pick up some Patwa as brawta.

Bob Marley and Media: Representation and Audiences presents an analysis of how media, radio, television and print represented Bob Marley, including his popularity after his death. Mike Hajimichael examines unexplored connections between Bob Marley and media representation and the specifics of audiences, including coverage in tabloids, music magazines, and fanzines, as well as radio and television interviews. Hajimichael builds an extensive catalogue of Bob Marley’s media engagements and connects Marley to media through forms of political discourse and ideologies relevant to social change in different contexts globally, such as civil rights, anti-racism, Rastafari, and liberation movements. Given that varieties of representation exist, the book unpacks these media discourses with regard to public perceptions and key themes articulated, including mainstream versus fan-based coverage, issues of Rastafari, Black Consciousness, economic crisis, legacies of colonialism, slavery, racism, links to other music idioms, concepts of identity, and Marley’s personal relationships.

Chat Bout!: An Anthology of Jamaican Conversations Jamaicans love to tek bad tings mek laugh and Chat Bout! lets you get in on the conversation. Written in Patwa or Patois, Chat Bout! celebrates all things mundanely Jamaican. Unfiltered, honest and funny, it examines the idiosyncrasies of everyday Jamaican life - the good, the bad, and the ugly. Guided by Jamaican GPS, Chat Bout! takes you on a journey through Jamaica, past and present. Get lost while reminiscing down memory lane; stop and eavesdrop on conversations, and vicariously experience a minibus ride. Next thing you know, you are experiencing an unfortunate episode of runnin belly and having a good belly laugh while you are at it. Be thoroughly entertained by Chat Bout! and pick up some Patwa as brawta.

The ten essays in The Crucible of Carolina explore the connections between the language and culture of South Carolina's barrier islands, West Africa, the Caribbean, and England. Decades before any formal, scholarly interest in South Carolina barrier life, outsiders had been commenting on and documenting the "African" qualities of the region's black inhabitants. These qualities have long been manifest in their language, religious practices, music, and material culture. Although direct contact between South Carolina and Africa continued until the Civil War, the era of Caribbean contact was briefer and ended with the close of the American colonial period. Throughout this volume, though, the contributors look beyond the cultural motivations and political appeal of strengthening the links between coastal Carolina and Africa and examine the cost of a diminished recognition of this important Caribbean influence. Not surprisingly, the influence of the pioneering linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner is reflected in many of these essays. The work presented in this volume, however, moves beyond Turner in dealing with the discourse and stylistic aspects of Gullah; in relating patters of Gullah to other Anglophone creoles and to various processes of creolization; and in questioning the usefulness of "retention," "survival," and "continuity" as operational concepts in comparative research. Within this context of furthering and challenging Turner's work in the barrier islands, and in seeking a truer measure of both African and Caribbean influences there, the contributors cover such topics as names and naming, the language of religious rituals, basket-making traditions, creole discourse patterns, and the grammatical morphology of Gullah and related creole and pidgin languages. Other contributors consider the substrate contributions and African continuities to be found in New World language patterns into new patterns adapted to the various situations in the New World. Opening new and advancing previous areas of research, The Crucible of Carolina also contributes to a further appreciation of the richness and diversity of South Carolina's cultural heritage.

Life Revelations is a captivating, inspirational, and revolutionary book laced with lyrical potency that will evoke a feeling of involvement. From the onset it keeps you locked in its strong grasp of imagery, words laced with fire burning on the page to get you drawn in to want to find out more. This book is revealing the struggles of the working class, their quest for upward mobility in a society that is seeking to maintain its status quo. The poems are vibrant, soul searching and probing. Frank bares his soul in Lifes Revelations. He is crying out to be free, free from a system that seeks to denigrate his very thoughts, his dreams, and his aspirations to hear and be heard. This book is speaking to all those who seek freedom of expression and liberation from the clutches of the system.