Parable of the Mangoes - Paperback

by Jean L. Goulbourne (Author)

The 12 stories represent a number of people who have been imprisoned in various situations over many years. They seek to illustrate problems that people face: slavery -old and new, life in the ghetto, insanity, differences in religion, political differences and many other forms of mental and physical imprisonment.

Author Biography

After you've read Hemmingway and Camus and seen how powerful simple language can be, you'll be glad to have discovered Jean Goulbourne. Parable of the Mangoes takes simple occurrences such as a boy being punished for sharing with a neighbour across the fence and shows us that prejudice is not just racial. Or the father who'd rather go to his grave than attend the wedding of his estranged son because of the younger's Rastafarianism. So many of the things that imprison and divide us are explored in her lyrical poetic way without sending us to the dictionary, meaning she doesn't regurgitate a thesaurus. These 12 stories were "written to represent a number of people who have been imprisoned in various situations over many years," said Jean. "They seek to illustrate problems that people face: slavery, life in the ghetto, insanity, differences in religion, political differences and many other forms of mental and physical imprisonment." Jean was born in Black River, on Jamaica's south coast, one of the first places outside of the USA to have got a public electricity supply and maybe that's one source of the spark - a historical pride in a History graduate of the University of the West Indies, who has published several poetry and prose collections and has been a James Michener Fellow at University of Miami's Caribbean Writers Summer Institute Writers Programme, and an Honorary Fellow, at Iowa International Writer's programme, University of Iowa. Most of her life has been spent teaching at all levels of the Jamaican schooling system and as an administrator in that system and it is amazing that she found time to amass a trove of literary awards including the 2010 gold medal for short story from the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission and the award for best adult short story writer. Her other publications include Actors in the Arena, a collection of poems published by Savacou Jamaica (1977); Under the Sun, poems published by The New Voices, Trinidad (1988); Excavation a novella by Peepal Tree Press UK (1997); Woman Song, poems published by Peepal Tree Press UK 2002; and Freedom Come, a collection of children's historical stories by Carlong Publishers Jamaica (2002). Reward her again with some of your time.