A Healing Black Power Narrative: Who Is Erna Brodber?

PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness

ISSN: 1543-0855

A Healing Black Power Narrative: Who Is Erna Brodber?

Opal Palmer Adisa

she is a rasta woman
a serious sister
she is a scholar but down to earth
she be grounded in de culture
she be about health and healing
she be about our business
she be about moving us forward

Perhaps because Erna Brodber was born in 1940 in Woodside, St. Mary on the island of Jamaica with a long and lustrous history of maroonage and tallawah spirit;

Perhaps because she was reared in a family of activists who knew that a cohesive community with energetic members led to development and community spirit;

Perhaps because Brodber immersed herself in academia, earning a B.A. from the University College of the West Indies, then pursued and attained an M. Sc and then a doctorate degree with an understanding that what she learned had practical implications;

Perhaps because Brodber was entering young adulthood during the Black Power era and Women's Liberation movements;

Perhaps because since the 1960's, when Erna Brodber was studying in the USA, she became deeply interested in issues that impact people of African descent—not the narrow black nationalistic power that erects geographic boundaries and asserts a specific region's superiority; not a power base that wiggles its way to claim a slice of the capitalistic pie, but rather a power that's inclusive and seeks to help people of African descent, on the continent as well as throughout the Diaspora, to know their mission, but mostly to form alliances and celebrate their rich and varied cultural traditions;

Perhaps because Erna Brodber donned the role of civil servant, teacher, sociologist, oral historian and writer, why her works are so multi-layered and insightful;

Perhaps it is because as Erna Brodber rightly asserts, "I am a communicator," why her novels have had such profound impact on the literature of the Caribbean and women’s letters in particular. From the appearance of her first novel, Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home (1980), which is experimental in form and which explores the theme of identity, reconnection and healing from the emotional and psychological trauma of “new world” schism;

Perhaps because Myal (1988) is framed within the context of African-Jamaican spirituality in which Brodber pushes her premise, "We [meaning Black people] have something to teach the world”; and in Myal the directive is clear, “Get in their books and know their truth, then turn around ship and books into those seven miles of the Black Star Line so desperately needed and take who will with you (p.67)”;

Perhaps because her third novel, Louisiana (1994), delineates for us, among other things, the diasporic connection between USA Blacks and African-Caribbean people, particularly the role of the women;

Perhaps it’s because all of these works and what Brodber realized before she wrote them and what she discovered after they were published and her keen understanding that Black people are still suffering from the psychological trauma of slavery and having to make sense of the schizophrenic world that we have inherited, why her works have had and continue to have such impact;

Perhaps it is because Erna Brodber is a door-opener, an Elegba figure perched in the middle of the crossroad, waving us on to heal from the wounds of our history, heal from the dream swallowed whole, heal from the self-inflicted wounds, heal from colonialism and a god who has been washed white; heal from the independence that is still to happen despite the flag and the parade; heal from the violence in which we are growing, heal and know and love the self we see looking back at us;

Perhaps it is because as they sing on Emancipation Day, that Brodber helped to establish in Woodside, her home town, “Ah come we jus a come / We get we freedom now / And we nuh want no boderation . . . ”;

Perhaps it is because of this affirming of our worth and our intention to keep coming despite or rather in spite of all that we have suffered and triumphed over;

Perhaps it is because of all of these events and our history of leaving without saying goodbye, coming without a welcome, making a memory without proper acknowledgment of ancestors, creating anew from bits-and-pieces and new stuff without knowing what we were really making;

It is all of these factors and more that have combined and congealed, thereby enabling Erna Brodber to be the thinker and scholar and writer and activist and sister that she is, why we are gathered here today to listen to her, and to raise our voice with her and the people of her community in singing, “we get we freedom now/and we nuh wan nuh boderation.”

It is my great pleasure to introduce Erna Brodber, a sister-writer:

she be queenly
knows that her work is her throne
her people and living among and guiding them
to heal is all the palace she needs
she be salt-and-pepper wise
a serene smile lights her manner
she be a thinker a myalist a priestess
erna erna broader continue to walk
your talk

*Delivered at the “10th Anniversary International Conference – The Caribbean Women Writer as Scholar: Imagining/Theorizing/Creating” (Miami, FL, May 30, 2006).

Citation Format:

Opal Palmer Adisa. “A Healing Black Power Narrative: Who Is Erna Brodber?,” PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness: Issue 4, 2006.