Ian Randle Publishers

UNIPOD: La Profe y Sus Universitarios author, Gaye-Leon Williams (Lewin) proudly making her Legal Deposit at the National Library of Jamaica.

BREAKING NEWS! Unipod: La Profe y Sus Universitarios: An Introductory
Spanish Text by Gaye-Leon Williams (Lewin). Now on Sale.

Join us for a book launch with a difference.

IN CASE YOU MISSED THIS: Our first time author Gaye-Leon Lewin (Williams) on Smile Jamaica, promoting UNIPOD: La Profe y Sus Universitarios

'Learning a new language is an excellent way to immerse yourself in another culture. In celebration of Jamaica’s rich heritage, we explore the similarities and differences between Spanish, Patois, and Standard English with Caribbean Maritime University Lecturer and Author, Gaye-Leon Lewin.'

‘Trading Souls’, ‘Saving Souls’ – Two refreshing volumes on slavery and emancipation
Paul H. Williams, Gleaner, Wednesday, September 18, 2024

https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20240918/trading-souls-saving-souls-two-refreshing-volumes-slavery-and-emancipation

Preserving yet another important aspect of our African heritage and Caribbean culture ...

See Gleaner article published by Paul H. Williams in the August 31, 2024 edition of the newspaper.
https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20240831/ivelyn-harris-catalogues-healing-herbs-jamaica

IRP books ... standing the test of time.
‘And I remember many things … Folklore of the Caribbean’ is Still Relevant: An article by Gleaner writer Paul H. Williams in the August 22, 2024 edition of the newspaper.

“Caribbean children today are growing up in a world of television, ‘fast food’ and ‘ready-mades’, a world dramatically different from that of their grandparents. The purpose of this collection is to preserve some of the heritage for them and for the generations yet unborn.” - Christine Barrow

https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20240822/and-i-remember-many-things-folklore-caribbean-still-relevant

We have been busy

Celebrating the rich history and culture of our country, Jamaica. 'Wi likkle but wi Tallawah!'

Feb 25: Miss Lou: Louise Bennett and Jamaican Culture

Louise Bennett Coverley, ‘Miss Lou’, has for decades represented the ‘face’ of Jamaican culture, the essence of what it is to be Jamaican. As a poet, performer, storyteller, singer, actress, writer, broadcaster, folklore scholar and children’s television show host, she won hearts and souls for Jamaica with her humorous yet compelling performances worldwide.
It is Miss Lou, more than any other figure in Jamaica’s history, who showed that the language spoken by most Jamaicans – patois or Jamaican Creole – is worthy of respect.
In Miss Lou: Louise Bennett and Jamaican Culture, Mervyn Morris traces the life of this legendary Jamaican from early beginnings through to her local and international eminence, and discusses aspects of her work.
A listing of recommended books and recordings is an added feature of this worthy biography of Miss Lou. 

Feb 24: Marcus Garvey

Marcus Mosiah Garvey...his name is legend from the America's to Zanzibar. One of the most influential figures of the 20th century, Garvey's powerful message of Black pride remains as relevant today as it was almost a hundred years ago. Across generations and continents, leaders like Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta and musical icon Bob Marley readily acknowledge the influence of Garvey's philosophy on their lives, thoughts and actions. Now the story of Garvey's colourful life, his exploits and his compellign message are captured in text by Suzanne Francis-Brown and in brilliant colour illustrations by Jean Jacques Vaysierres for young readers.

Feb 18: The Confounding Island: Jamaica and The Postcolonial Predicament

There are few places more puzzling than Jamaica. Jamaicans claim their home has more churches per square mile than any other country, yet it is one of the most murderous nations in the world. Its reggae superstars and celebrity sprinters outshine musicians and athletes in countries many times its size. Jamaica’s economy is anemic and many of its people impoverished, yet they are, according to international surveys, some of the happiest on earth. In The Confounding Island, Orlando Patterson returns to the place of his birth to reckon with its contradictions.

Patterson investigates the failures of Jamaica’s postcolonial democracy, exploring why the country has been unable to achieve broad economic growth and why its free elections and stable government have been unable to address violence and poverty. If we look closely at the Jamaican example, we see the central dilemmas of globalization, economic development, poverty reduction, and postcolonial politics thrown into stark relief.

Feb 17: Betwixt and Between: Explorations in the African-Caribbean Mindscape

In this thought provoking collection of essays, anthropologist Barry Chevannes carefully exposes the underlying ideas and values that have given and are giving shape to social life in Jamaica and the Caribbean Region in general. In so doing, he goes beyond a mere examination of social structure, best exemplified by the works of earlier anthropologists like M.G. Smith, to present a comprehensive examination of the nature of Jamaican society. Chevannes advances our understanding of the complex issues of African-Caribbean identity and culture that have plagued intellectuals and scholars form Melville Herskovits right through to contemporary writers like Maureen Warner-Lewis and artists like Kamau Brathwaite.

The approach focuses on the worldview, which, he argues, gives shape to a culture by informing the people’s patterns of behaviours, their social values and sensibilities. The place of Africa has been an important component of that worldview, influencing modes of survival, reconstruction and change, and central to an understanding of identity, sexuality, religion, morality and politics in Jamaican and Caribbean society.

Feb 14: Busha’s Mistress or Catherine the Fugitive

Recovered from the archives is Cyrus Francis Perkins’ novel entitled Busha’s Mistress or Catherine the Fugitive: A Stirring Romance of the Days of Slavery in Jamaica which was written in the mid-1800s and published in Jamaica in 1911 as a series of installments in the local newspapers, the Daily Telegraph and the Jamaica Guardian.

Cyrus Francis Perkins, a white Jamaican (of Canadian descent), lived through the period of Jamaica’s history during which the colony was undergoing the transition from slavery to emancipation. The resulting story is, thus, rich in historically insightful details which bring that era to life and which make the book a valuable resource for scholars of Caribbean history. Revealed here are interesting tit-bits about the relationship between slave and master, the daily life on the sugar plantations, the business transactions involved, the depiction of the culture of the African slaves, the Maroon resistance and varied perspectives on the abolition of slavery.

But apart from its historic dimensions, Busha’s Mistress is a satisfying ageless story of romance and heartbreak. The book recounts the tale of Catherine, the slave concubine of a cruel white overseer on the Greenside Estate, near Falmouth on Jamaica’s north coast. This young beauty’s adventures begin with her flight from the estate where she finds refuge with friends who eventually smuggle her off the island to England. Her story continues with her travels and experiences in England, and culminates in her return to Jamaica where she delivers a final act of love.

Feb 11: Mango time: Folk Songs of Jamaica

Jamaica has a rich musical heritage spanning a diversity of styles and forms. Throughout the island’s modern history, music has played a significant role in the social, political and economic life of its people. Mango Time: Folk Songs of Jamaica draws from the wealth of Jamaica’s folk music – the music of the Jamaican people which, with its colourful range of forms, reflects the way of life of individuals or entire communities. There are religious songs and secular songs; songs for marriage, birth, death and all rites of passage. There are songs for work and songs for play; songs of upliftment and hope, and songs of derision and despair; songs which tell of small happenings in remote villages and songs which give epic accounts of significant happenings in the island’s history. In all these, the Jamaican folk song gives voice to the heart, soul and experience of the Jamaican people.

Feb 10: Rastafarian Art

The Rastafarian religion of Jamaica came into prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was given international exposure through the music of one of its main exponents – Bob Marley. Music, and Reggae music in particular, was the centrepiece of Rasta creativity but Rastafarianism gave rise to a whole new cultural movement  of which visual art was one of the many components. ‘Official’ recognition of Rasta art may be traced to the year 1980 when the National Gallery of Jamaica installed a new section dedicated to ‘intuitive’ artists, that is, untrained artists who were previously described as primitive or naïve. The works of Rastafarians were prominent among these intuitive including those of Albert Artwell, Ras Dizzy, Ras Daniel Hartman and Leonard Daley, to name a few. 
Beyond that however, little recognition has been given to Rastafarian art as a particular genre within Jamaica, and the only known attempt to document and survey the art and handicraft of Rastafarians was in the form of an exhibition catalogue prepared for an exhibition in Germany in 1980 and later updated for a second exhibition in Germany.
Decades after that first catalogue was produced, comes its first English translation – RASTAFARIAN ART by Wolfgang Bender, an ethnomusicologist and Director of the African Music Archives in the Institute for Ethnology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany. The works presented in this volume are meant to introduce a selection of Rastafarian artists from Jamaica. The collection is accompanied by photographs that depict everyday life among Rastas and scenes from the environment in which the artists live. In addition, there are interviews with a number of the artists, a chronology of events in the development of the Rastafarian movement and Rastafarian art, and an index of the artists and their works.

Feb 4: Nanny’s Asafo Warriors: The Jamaican Maroons’ African Experience

In 1975, Nanny was declared the first, and is so far the only female National Hero in Jamaica. This was seen as a breakthrough in acknowledging the historical dimension of her people, the Maroons, as freedom fighters. The Maroons are, to this day, viewed in some quarters as a self-styled military elite who abandoned their fellow Africans on the plantations once they had procured their own freedom through the signing of peace treaties with the British Crown. However, Nanny’s Asafo Warriors has documented that much of what is taken for granted concerning the Maroons’ history are mere reiterations of the enslavers’ constructions.

Werner Zips takes Nanny’s key role in the Maroon societies from the seventeenth century to the present as a point of departure to probe into the African political, legal, social and religious experiences throughout the periods of slavery, colonial rule and postcolonial nation building. Against the divide and rule policies employed by the oppressor, Nanny’s Asafo Warriors may still inspire the resistance against all forms of inequality in the African Diaspora.

Feb 3: The Pan-African Pantheon

This book makes a unique contribution to the literature on Pan-Africanism by providing lively biographical essays of 36 major Pan-African figures by a diverse and prominent group of African, Caribbean, and African American scholars. They examine historical and contemporary Pan-Africanism as an ideology of emancipation and unity. The volume covers well-known Pan-Africanists such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Amy Ashwood Garvey, C.L.R. James, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Frantz Fanon, Steve Biko, and Thabo Mbeki, as well as popular figures not typically identified with mainstream Pan-Africanism such as Maya Angelou, Mariama Bâ, Buchi Emecheta, Miriam Makeba, Ruth First, Wangari Maathai, Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, V.Y. Mudimbe, Léopold Senghor, Malcolm X, Bob Marley, and Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. The book also covers topics such as the history and pioneers of Pan-Africanism; the quest for reparations; politicians; poets; activists; as well as Pan-Africanism in the social sciences, philosophy, literature, and its musical activists. This is a comprehensive and diverse introductory reader for specialists and general readers alike.