Sixty Years Later

Invited to write an autobiographical essay on “Reading Louise Bennett, Seriously,” sixty years after its initial publication, the author questions some of the attitudes and opinions he expressed then, having learned from Bennett’s Jamaica Labrish (1966) and some responses to it to pay more attention to Bennett’s performance choices and her sociopolitical commentary. This present essay also (re)presents her as a writer whose craft will often reward a detailed focus on her texts—as in, for example, her poems “New Govannah,” “Pass fe White,” and “Dutty Tough.” In Bennett’s Selected Poems (1982), edited by the author, the notes and teaching questions suggest more of her significance than he knew of in 1963.