"Born April 20, 1940 in Woodside, St. Mary, Jamaica, Erna Brodber grew
up the daughter of a family acitve in the community affairs of their
small town. She immersed herself in academia perhaps more than most
other Caribbean authors, gaining a B.A. from the University College of
the West Indies (now simply University of the West Indies) and
ultimately attaining an M.Sc and Ph.D. She pursued many other
professions before focusing on writing, including the posts of civil
servant, teacher, sociology lecturer, and fellow/staff member of the
Institute for Social and Economic Research in Mona, Jamaica. While at
the ISER Brodber worked to collect the oral histories of elders in rural
Jamaica, a project that would later inspire her novel Louisiana.
"While studying as a young woman in the United States, Brodber
encountered two powerful forces she had not previously been exposed to:
the Black Power and Women's Liberation movements. Coupled with her
early familial indoctrination to the importance of community, these
social concerns formed a background for her interest in social research
and seeking out those who possess untold stories. Her novels too deal
with the healing power of the community. Female protagonists struggle
both to understand the past, in the form of the historical lineage they
possess, and the present, in terms of their own ambiguous roles in the
community. But successes in these quests for understanding allow
acceptance into a unified if diverse community. Not surprising given
her interest in the larger social world, the need to accept diversity
and link seemingly opposing groups (white and black, rich and poor)
commonly appears in Brodber's work."1
Quoted in its entirety from Postcolonial Web
