Louise Bennett

“Louise Bennett: (1919-2006) Jamaican poet and folklorist. Louise Bennett is a distinctive and challenging female presence in Jamaican literature. Writing in Jamaican creole, she was one of the first to challenge the cultural hegemony of the Caribbean elite, and has been a model for the experimentation in language and rhythms of contemporary Caribbean poetry. Her celebration of African-Jamaican culture and promotion of black cultural self-confidence is apparent in her major collections (Jamaica) Dialect Verses (1942), Jamaica Labrish (1966) and Selected Poems (1983). Aunty Roachy Seh (1993) is a more recently published work.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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