Description: The reconstruction of one of the rare Caribbean slave narratives is an amplification, interrogation, and modification of its original texts by cross-reference with official documents, contemporary diary entries and reports, present-day oral sources, and secondary analyses of plantation society. Accessing a variety of primary records, Maureen Warner-Lewis meticulously reconstructs a biography of enslaved Archibald Montieth, an Igbo, who was brought to Jamaica around 1802, became active in the Moravian Church and later purchased his freedom. Through Monteath's biography she explores the sociology of slavery from 1750 to the 1860s. Fieldwork conducted in Africa brings an important dimension to the work, and scholars of Caribbean history, church history, diasporic studies, Atlantic studies and Jamaica will find it of significant interest.
Brief description: MAUREEN WARNER-LEWIS is Professor Emerita, African-Caribbean Language and Orature, Department of Literatures in English, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. Her many publications include E. Kamau Brathwaite's "Masks" Essays and Annotations; Yoruba Songs of Trinidad; Trinidad Yoruba: From Mother Tongue to Memory; Central Africa in the Caribbean: Transcending Time, Transforming Cultures; and Archibald Monteath: Igbo, Jamaican, Moravian.