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PraiseSongs- Chapters in a Life

Jean Smith's, PraiseSongs- Chapters in a Life, Mill Press, Kingston Jamaica, 2007. So why this book? At least in part because of the extraordinary, textured life that Jean Smith has led and continues to lead. So many luminous characters have crossed her path, as they cross all our paths. But she had a clarity of vision to see them from odd angles and with endearing idiosyncrasies, and to recognize and record their significance, their quirkiness and oftentimes their goodness. Some of their stories go off like a light bulb in our heads, as we have a Eureka moment when we recognize a kindred spirit. Others roll over us with a warm, gentle wave enveloping us in good feelings and a belief in the ultimate lightness of the human spirit. Some give us insight into pivotal points in our nations history, or developments in our culture. But the one's I like best are the one's about ordinary people behaving in extraordinary ways... not a grand scale, but on an everyday, ordinary, mundane stage. Ones filled with pathos and humour and certainty about what the most important things in life are, and how to go about achieving them. Praise Songs offers startling points of light that illuminate truths and highlight surprising beacons of integrity and justice. The vignettes in this book give a road map on how to proceed through life. They shed a brilliant incandescence on the richness, and diversity of experiences in which we should immerse themselves. The stories exhort us to not just sidle along on the outskirts of life, but to interact, to interlink, and most importantly to love. STEFANIE KERINS "Dark peoples, singing in my veins, Fair People's singing in soft strains, So when I lift my hand to pray, I bow with blue eyes, dark hands, red hair My Prayer is Life" Jean Smith in her "Praise Songs", the birth of which we have come to celebrate, quotes this and other passages from Campbell's poems It is only right that she should do so for she was one of the bright stars with "blue eyes, dark hands, red hair" who as a youngster moved confidendy into our early years of Independence. Professor Ted Chamberlin, who gave this book it's tide, reminds us on the back-jacket that "in southern Africa imbongi - or praise singers are the eyes and ears of the community, the author - he continues - takes up that inheritance, watching and listening to her Jamaican people with clarity and compassion bringing light and love to them and to us". True, but we should note that she was not and is not the aloof observer, set apart. She was and is an intimate player, a doer and a facilitator, the heart that in a pivotal period in our cultural history provided the link between head/mind and hand of the body politic and the spirit of the creative souls that abound in this island of ours. …