Wow! eBook
Kiskadee Girl UK ed. Edition
Author(s): Maggie Harris (Author)
- Publisher: Kingston University Press
- Publication Date: 1 Aug. 2011
- Edition: UK ed.
- Language: English
- Print length: 224 pages
- ISBN-10: 1899999507
- ISBN-13: 9781899999507
Book Description
This memoir of growing up in the 50s and 60s reflects a society that was trying to find its path after centuries of slavery and colonialism. Life for teenagers was at a crossroads between tradition and discipline, political awareness and a new-found voice influenced by literature, the music of Donovan and the new reggae sound, and the movies of Britain and America. In a world within worlds, love and dreams exist side by side as a young girl on the cusp of maturity discovers her sensuality in the midst of her country’s own movement towards independence.
Kiskadee Girl vividly re-imagines Guyana, named from the Amerindian Land of Many Waters. The Berbice River runs like an artery through the book’s emotional and geographical landscape, carrying tug-boats and ghosts, bauxite, bones, and long-forgotten stories.
Editorial Reviews
Review
The kiskadee is a colorful tropical bird so named for its beautiful, arresting sing-song whistle. So sweetly it sings its kis-ka-dee, kis-ka-dee tune that it plays with the senses…
As the Kiskadee Girl, Maggie Harris is a voyageur in the post-colonial Guyana the land of many waters. Like the bird that she aptly names her book, she flits through her coming of age in a lyrical fashion, immersing the reader in a narrative scattered with references and words that are so Caribbean: – You dare not eyeball an adult, walk far girl,, potagee, suck teeth and betterment – no reader will get lost though as she conscientiously explains the meaning of these words throughout.
In her childhood years, she recounts her happy days with her father, a river man, as she traverses the Berbice River which parallels New Amsterdam, her hometown. Not quite an adolescent, she bravely crosses over this river when she had to leave her nest to attend a prestigious school in Georgetown, the big city so far away. As a misfit, her loneliness, homesickness and exposure to snootiness from the town girls pull at the heartstrings. Forced to return home to her nesting grounds, she reconciles with her old friends only to witness the same snootiness being dished out on a shy Hindu girl who could barely speak English. She handled this in a very kiskadee manner – pairing off and cocooning with the misfit – the heartstrings slacken.
In the transition from childhood to adolescence to womanhood, she steps back in time with ease. She questions, ponders, wonders and worries. Relationship with church, God, and Jesus are questioned. She ponders on her puppy love for the boys of different ethnicities, the shades of color of the people around her. She wonders at her Scottish, African, Portuguese and Amerindian heritage. She worries about politics, which like a volcano waiting to erupt, lurks with the ole higues, jumbies and ghosts and hold their place tightly as this young lady makes us reminiscence with songs of the late sixties and early seventies.
When another riverman steals her heart, Kis-ka-dee Girl Maggie sings at her happiness, but with betterment imbued in her brain, this walk far girl must spread her wings to find another nesting ground. England calls to her from afar. Once again she crosses the river and nostalgically waves adieu to her country, her Guyana from the window of an airplane. What a poignant journey Maggie Harris! I crave more.
The Kis-ka dee Girl plays on your senses… she touches you as she frees the ghost of her father from a conch shell, feel sadness at her homesickness, smell the perfume of the hibiscus and oleander flowers, hear her whisper to her lover, see her as she spread her wings in flight, and you fly with her as she soars higher and higher. –Devi di Guida, linguist, Montreal
