Violet Harrington Bryan deserves compliments for this critical biography of the gifted and prolific Jamaican writers and scholars Erna Brodber and Velma Pollard, in a study that focuses on their treatment of Jamaican folklore and culture. Bryan covers a great deal of ground, introducing the reader to the large body of work (novels, stories, poetry, history, critical essays, and anthologies) produced by these two sisters and examining the critical work done on them, including one full-length study of Brodber. This work provides a much-needed resource for students and scholars. However, at times, it suffers from a lack of balance and clear organization, occasionally jumping from one point to another or failing to complete the development of a topic previously introduced.
The study opens with a chapter on “Woodside: The Lived and Imagined Homeland in the Fiction and Poetry of Erna Brodber and Velma Pollard,” an appropriate introduction to a study...
