Erna Brodber (born 20 April 1940) is a Jamaican writer, sociologist and social activist. She is the sister of writer Velma Pollard.
Biography Born in the farming village of Woodside, Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica, she gained a B.A. from the University College of the West Indies, followed by an MSc and PhD, and has received a predoctoral fellowship in psychiatric anthropology. She subsequently worked as a civil servant, teacher, sociology lecturer, and researcher at the Institute for Social and Economic Research in the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, Jamaica. During Brodber's time working at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of the West Indies, she collected several oral histories of elderly people's lives in rural Jamaica, which inspired her novel, Louisiana. After working at the university, she left to work full-time in her home community of Woodside.Samuel, Petal (12 October 2016), "Erna Brodber and Pan-Africanism in Post-Independence Jamaica", Black Perspectives, AAIHS.
She is the author of five novels: Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home (1980), Myal (1988), Louisiana (1994), The Rainmaker's Mistake (2007), and Nothing's Mat (2014). She also writes non-fiction. Brodber works as a freelance writer, researcher, and lecturer in Jamaica. She was Writer-in-Residence at the University of the West Indies, Mona for the 2013-2014 academic year.
Work Brodber—trained as a sociologist with a Ph.D. and several publications on Jamaican society—emphasizes non-western forms of understanding in her fiction, deconstructing the historical methodologies of colonialist knowledge. She works to challenge western ways of ordering the world, and to resurrect myth and tradition as a form of historical rehabilitation from the psychic damage of slavery and colonialism. She weaves fantastical, non-realist elements with traditional modes of story-telling—emphasizing both as crucial to the psychic make-up of her characters and the world around them. As seen in her novel Louisiana, Brodber also plays with western notions of time. Time is ambiguous among the characters and not exactly viewed in a straight line. The shared experiences of those in the past mingle with those in the present.
Awards and honours Brodber won the Caribbean and Canadian regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1989 for Myal. In 1999, she was awarded the Musgrave Gold Award for Literature and Orature from the Institute of Jamaica,"Erna Brodber", The Spaces between Words - Conversations with Writers. and she was awarded the Order of Distinction (Commander Class) from the government of Jamaica in 2004. She received a Prince Claus Award in 2006 and a Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in 2017.
Bibliography
Novels Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home (London: New Beacon Books, 1980). Extracted in Margaret Busby (ed.), Daughters of Africa (1992), pp. 503ff."Daughters of Africa : an international anthology of words and writings by women of African descent from the ancient Egyptian to the present". Internet Archive. Myal: A Novel (New Beacon Books, 1988), Louisiana (New Beacon Books, 1994) The Rainmaker's Mistake (New Beacon Books, 2007), Nothing's Mat (University of West Indies Press, 2014), Nothing’s Mat page at University of the West Indies Press.
Non-fiction The People of my Jamaican Village, 1817 - 1948 (Blackspace, 1999), Woodside, Pear Tree Grove P.O. (University of the West Indies Press, 2004), The Second Generation of Freemen in Jamaica, 1907–1944 (University Press of Florida, 2004), The Continent of Black Consciousness: On the History of the African Diaspora from Slavery to the Present Day (New Beacon Books, 2003), Moments of Cooperation and Incorporation: African American and African Jamaican Connections, 1782-1996 (The University of West Indies Press, 2019),
Play
Ratoon: a New Jamaica (2015). Performed by the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, School of Drama, directed by Carolyn Allen.
References
External links
Review of Erna Brodber's Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home
"Traditional Folklore and the Question of History in Erna Brodber's Louisiana" by Jérémie Kroubo Dagnini for the Journal of Pan African Studies On-Line, December 2011. Mel Cooke, "Erna Brodber presents her freedom song", Jamaica Gleaner, 18 May 2007. Keshia Abraham, Interview with Erna Brodber, BOMB 86/Winter 2004. . Nadia Ellis Russell, "Crossing borders - An interview with writer, scholar, and activist Erna Brodber" , Woodside, Jamaica, 7 May 2001.