Book of Memory: A Rastafari Testimony

by Prince Williams, Michael Kuelker (Editor)

Book of Memory is the "Rastafari testimony" of Jamaican Rasta elder Prince Williams. The book is one of the few of its kind - a book-length work in the words of one Rastafarian about the culture - and is conveyed in patois, the Africanized English spoken by the majority of Jamaicans.

Book of Memory delves deep into the early days of Rasta culture in rural Jamaica, and with a compelling voice Prince reasons on the Bible and Selassie, politics and human rights, ital food and bush medicine. Michael Kuelker, the book's editor, supports the text with more than 100 footnotes, and in the third of the book's three parts, he adds ethnographic narratives of Rasta commemorations of the Coral Gardens Incident, an episode of repression and violence against Rastas in 1963. These annual commemorations feature reasonings on contemporary politics, dub poetry, nyahbinghi music and eyewitness testimony of survivors of the Incident, and the reports of them in Book of Memory help bring the book up to date on Rasta culture in Jamaica today.

425 pages, Paperback

First published November 4, 2004

Reviews

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a narrative book but rather a book-length "reasoning" with an elder Rasta. He explains Rastafari at length, goes into the sufferation inflicted by Babylon, and details the Coral Gardens incident of '63. It would've gotten 4 stars, but it was about 50 pages too long. Also, the editor inserted himself into the book at times - not super distracting, but not at all necessary either.