Here’s what I’ll be doing, the last weekend in September. Time in NYC is always welcome; even more welcome is a chance to converse with these smart and generous people on a crucial era in my country’s post-colonial history, a period with ongoing reverberations. The invitation to participate takes me back to the topic of my book, but by way of allowing me to present new work, on popular-fiction renderings of the Jamaican 1970s. I have long been, and continue to be, deeply interested in popular fiction and the terms of its circulation in post-colonial and African diasporic spaces. In my paper (titled “On Reading Jamaica Inc., Seriously: Sensational(ist) Seventies Literature”) I consider what work pop-fiction texts might do, not merely as troves of data about prevailing attitudes and ideologies, but “as cultural-political agents that enter, interrupt and potentially re-formulate the discursive field surrounding critical conjunctures like the Jamaican 1970s.” (Yes, I’m quoting myself.) As writing is always an adventure, the paper has ended up being a great deal about gender, about historiography, and about pleasure. Excited to see what kind of responses it provokes, and very grateful to Donette Francis and David Scott, conveners of the symposium, for including me.
