The Hills of Hebron

by Sylvia Wynter

Written in the late 1950s on the cusp of Jamaica’s independence from Britain, The Hills of Hebron tells the story of a group of formerly enslaved Jamaicans as they attempt to create a new life and assert themselves against the colonial power. Strongly anti-colonial, the novel depicts Hebron as a Revivalist community embracing Afro-Caribbean religious practices and gives voice to the social forces of that period in Jamaican and Caribbean history. Based on the early twentieth century Bedwardism movement (a revivalist group led by Alexander Bedward), The Hills of Hebron was one of the first attempts to present the lives of black Jamaicans not as colonial subjects, but as independent human beings.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Race, Literature, Novels, 20th Century, Post Colonial

320 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1984

About the author

Sylvia Wynter, OJ (born 11 May 1928), is a Jamaican novelist, dramatist critic and essayist.

Sylvia Wynter’s scholarly work is highly poetic, expository and complex. Her work attempts to elucidate the development and maintenance of modernity and the modern man. She interweaves science, astrology and critical race theory to explain how the European man comes to be the epitome of humanity, “Man 2” or “the figure of man.” In “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument,” Wynter explains that the West uses race to attempt to answer the question of who and what we are—particularly after the enlightenment period that unveils religion as incapable of answering that question.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[chantel nouseforaname · Rating 4 out of 5]

This took me quite a while to read. It was intense and at times jarring. I sped through the first half but then my soul became overwhelmed and I had to breathe deeply through the rest of the novel as the discussions being had in this novel were so big. You could step into one concept being discussed and literally disappear.

Sylvia Wynter wastes no words and thoroughly explores the delusion that folks live under regarding Christianity, and the pain that they are willing to inflict on their community following ideology and the words of those successfully hoodwinking people. The knowledge of the havoc and destitution that colonization has caused in Jamaica is explored in this novel in great detail and it's a worthy read. It's extremely well-written.

“As a radical anti-colonial novel, The Hills of Hebron points us to the lives and symbolic world of black Jamaicans." (p.24) The discussions taking place surrounding theology, ideology, colonization, intra-community terrorism, and sexism were thick. The discussions surrounding men and the harm they choose to inflict on each other and their community using the word was next level, the exploration of the women that enable them (Miss Gatha) was shrewd and astute. The posturing that rich/high and mighty church folk take and the ways that they weaponize the church against their own congregants are also explored. It highlights why I don't fuck with organized religion like that. I feel like the Hills of Hebron is an onion that had many layers to explore. Author Candice Marie Benbow, writer of Red Lip Theology: For Church Girls Who've Considered Tithing to the Beauty Supply Store When Sunday Morning Isn't Enough, led me to this book. I can say that it shook me to my core.

Standout quotes include:

“The deacon left, swearing to himself at the presumption of this black woman. Didn’t she know that on his estate he could use any of the labourers’ women the way he wanted to? That the labourers and their women considered it an honour and a privilege? As Aloysius was useful to him, the deacon held his tongue. But whenever Kate went to church with her husband he deliberately ignored her.” (38%)

“My God, look what they did to your people, Moses. Sent their missionaries to trade in African souls, to promise them the Kingdom of Heaven in exchange for a few strings of beads and a paper with a big red seal. Your African chiefs signed away a continent for a Christian conscience, bartered their land, their souls, for a slice of the Kingdom of Heaven. And when the Kingdom of Heaven did not materialize, the missionaries, those traders in blood, conjured up a God in the image of an Englishman, a wise and holy father-figure who never existed. They sold this God to the natives as a new kind of fetish. Take my word for it, Moses, Christianity was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on any peoples.”(45%)

“These missionaries carried the Cross before them, but behind them came ships and soldiers and guns. They could have taken what they wanted by force. But they knew that all empires won by force are wrested away again, in the fullness of time, by others stronger than themselves.” (63%)

It's a novel that I feel would expose and educate with every reread. Sylvia Wynter was not ramping (playing around) when she wrote this book and it shows. The afterward was also an entire education.

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just re-read this updated edition of Sylvia Wynter’s classic 1962 novel, which I had not revisited for close to fifteen years. It is more extraordinary upon the second reading than before, perhaps because I read the novel this time with other themes in mind. To my delight, there were many elements of it that I did not notice before (and frankly, I wonder if I *truly* read it carefully before). All in all, this was quite enjoyable, for it calls into question not only millenarian movements’ purposes, but the realms in which we look for and find transformative hope in moments of despair.

[Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

#RWLChallenge: A classic written by a person of colour.

It took me very long time to get into this, but it was worth it.
I like the story that Wynter told but was overwhelmed by the use of literary devices. At points it bordered on flowerly which made it difficult to understand. Would defintely recommend for a women's literature class or book club.

[Lungstrum Smalls · Rating 4 out of 5]

The back of this book claims it's "The first of its kind." The highly academic introduction talks about how Wynter fits into a radical anti-colonial tradition. The cover of the novel makes it look like a textbook. All of this made me skeptical. For as much as I appreciate the academic anti-colonial tradition and those who are the 'first' of their kind, these factors don't always make for great stories, for complex and beautiful art.

But this is complex and beautiful art. This is a great novel, full of layered meanings and layered characters. It's full of heartbreak and just a few rays of hope. It's full of people who are, like real people, a bit nutty, kind and unkind at once. It's an anti-colonial book, absolutely, but a very human book too.

In short, I think wrapping this book in descriptions of how it fits into a larger political and artistic movement downplays just how great it is on its own as a piece of art. Or maybe I just too readily judged a book by its cover. Classic mistake.

[Kate Savage · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jamaican scholar Sylvia Wynter has dedicated her life to analyzing racism and colonialism in her essays and scholarship. But in the early 60s she wrote one novel. And it's a wild one.

The writing flits in and out of the minds of a large host of characters. It also flits around through time. This makes it challenging to read. But it's worth it.

Wynter writes the inner lives of struggling Jamaicans, exploring the belief systems that challenge white supremacy. Her main focus is a religious movement (based on Bedwardism) that preaches that God is Black. The believers build a utopia in the hills.

This is simultaneously a story of despair and hope, wrapped up inside each other like a russian-doll.

[Shelley Schanfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mesmerizing journey to late-colonial Jamaica, where a colony of New Believers strives to build a paradise on earth. They follow their leader Moses, who believes in a black god and seeks his own crucifixion to return to his Father. Haunting, tragic, ultimately redemptive, Wynter creates a world and characters full of life. Her descriptive powers are extraordinary.

[Ainsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

*4.5 Stars

Sylvia Wynter beautifully illustrates the ugly, the complexities of religion, power dynamics, and the difficulties of building a successful community.

[ade · Rating 4 out of 5]

my favorite chapter was “the kingdom of Hebron”. I wonder why wynter never wrote any more fiction. Perhaps she thought she said it all here? I wouldn’t disagree.

[Niall · Rating 5 out of 5]

'He sought for words to tell them of the world that he had entered where there were no far places and no strangers: only men, like themselves, who would one day inhabit together the same new continents of the spirit, the same planets of the imagination.'

[Rhiannon Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent novel which explores the formation of a faith-based community, with a nuanced grasp of the interactions between theology, politics, personality, and the practical demands of life.

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wynter responds to the historical rise of Bedwardism in Jamaica in a perfectly-crafted novel, running a masterclass on the creation of anticolonial literature, rooted in a deeply theoretical orientation. I especially appreciate the structure of the novel, the way in which a single incident at the beginning kicks off the entire set of events that follow: an act of adultery that at once exposes the hypocrisy of the false prophets of a New Christianity, and sets up a theme that will be present throughout, the specific attunement that Wynter always maintains to the gender-based violence that men enact upon women - there's something that's characteristic of the "primordial trauma" that is re-enacted in this structure. Overall though, it really pinpoints the difference between Afro-Caribbean and African-American literature, which is that the former is explicitly attuned to the problematics of colonialism, while the latter is not, meaning that the problems that they seek to address are fundamentally different.

[Manuel Abreu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful book showcasing Wynter's deftness with description and narrative. This "true believers" type story is a powerful vindication of the redemptive capacity of art in the context of a separatist religious community stuck in a cycle of degeneration and patriarchal false prophets. Gatha appears here as she does in Wynter's great play Maskarade (1971), but she's not as compelling here. Other characters end up taking center stage and many of them are interesting. The passage of time and the competition between ideologies is another central theme of the text. I've read this three times now because it's part of a class I teach on Wynter; I love how it shows her wrestling with ideas that she would later extrapolate in her prodigious output of philosophical essays. The idea of the ecumenical, so central to her thought, is clear as day here, albeit in inchoate form. Beautiful book, recommended.

[Nic · Rating 5 out of 5]

I selected this as our class novel for my Intro to Caribbean lit class, with my general aims of including at least one Jamaican text and engaging with the writing of Sylvia Wynter. I didn’t expect to be so drawn into the world of Hebron, the complex anti-colonial desires of a Black underclass of Jamaicans, the historical legacies of Bedwardism, the Morant Bay Rebellion, and British colonial rule. About half of the book is told in flashback as readers learn more about the tragic and difficult lives and dreams that brought the protagonists and congregation of New Believers into the desolate hillside of Jamaica to build a new society of dignity. The final image she leaves readers with at the end of the novel gives us in the postcolonial present a vision of hope. The writing stays rich throughout; I thought it was well-paced. This one would be difficult to replace in my syllabus.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost all of what I read about this novel was interesting, informative but also highly academic. For any vaguely serious read of the book this is vital stuff but it also almost put me off reading it under the absolutely mistaken belief that it would be too difficult for the reading mood that I am in right now. Of course a reader should understand the author’s motivations for writing a book and its importance as an example of Caribbean anti-colonial literature in order to pick up on the many layers that it contains, but this is also a great story with an engaging premise and a set of complex and nuanced characters that left me really wanting to know what happened next. This is a thoughtful and insightful but also, despite a lot of difficult subject matter, enthralling read.

[Fran Kursztejn · Rating 5 out of 5]

“With Prophet Moses she would not just sit waiting, but would be caught up, like all the other New Believers, in a prodigal outpouring of life.”

“I wonder,’ he said in his slow, heavy voice, ‘if the soul of man is not to be found in shape, in forms…?”

one of those rare novels with an unbreakable reverence for life. our utopias will not outlive us, this much is clear. the sun will set on our babylon, our jerusalem, our hebron, and we will be left to feel the cold wind of the night in its fury, the laughter of the stars splitting our ears and breaking our minds. yet as long as we live, there will be another hebron, and another, and another. we will make the same mistakes, recreate the same joys, and one day, yet again, have a kingdom to call our own.

[aster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intellectually stimulating discource on colonialism, religion and identity, and emotionally touching and beautiful conclusion of a people finding an enduring vision of meaning and fulfillment.

[leona · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/4

[Christy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decided not to be a volunteer content provider for Amazon. Follow me to LibraryThing, where this review now lives:

https://www.librarything.com/work/840...

User name: CSRodgers.

[jq · Rating 5 out of 5]

read with melissa. this one took all of 2023. so breathtaking and propulsive