Narrative
Becka's Buckra Baby
Tom Redcam · 1903
Synopsis
Noel Maud Bronvola, a young woman with an unusual first name chosen by her father, devotes herself to others after his death, to remain faithful to the integrity that had guided his life. Having become a schoolteacher, she grows attached to the children of a poor Black neighbourhood of Kingston. Shortly before Christmas, she brings a doll to the mother of little Becka, one of her pupils; she accepts it politely, for a child who will hardly have time to play with it.
Context
The story appeared in the All Jamaica Library, a cheap series that its author had founded in 1903 so that Jamaicans would read Jamaican books, written in the island and about the island; publishers date the volume to 1903 or 1904. He was then editing the Jamaica Times, where he had opened a weekly short-story competition as early as 1899, and he signed his fiction with a pseudonym formed by inverting his name. His poems were not collected until 1951.
Who it is for
In English, mixed with Jamaican Creole, and short; a restrained narrative on a subject that turns to drama.
Prizes and reception
It is regarded as the beginning of modern Caribbean writing, through its mixture of English and Creole and its view of colonial society.