Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

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Musgrave Medal The Musgrave Medal is an annual award by the Institute of Jamaica in recognition of achievement in art, science, and literature.Webster, Valerie J. (2000), ''Awards, Honors & Prizes, Volume 2'', Gale Group, , p. 447. Originally conceived in 1889 a ...

Institute of Jamaica The Institute of Jamaica (IOJ), founded in 1879, is the country's most significant cultural, artistic and scientific organisation: restricted her ability to find work, and she campaigned against it. She stayed in Peckham, south-east London, at the home of Harold Moody, who the year before had founded civil-rights organisation The League of Coloured Peoples. The League sponsored a production of Marson's play ''At What a Price'' in London in the winter of 1932–33. First staged in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1932, this four-act drama explores the experiences of Ruth Maitland, a young woman who leaves behind her family home in the countryside and moves to Kingston to become a stenographer in the office of a white English businessman named Gerald Fitzroy. He pursues her relentlessly and Ruth becomes pregnant. She returns to the family home, where a long-time admirer proposes marriage. The play explores women’s desires – for love and for a career, as well as interracial relations, sexual harassment in the workplace and women's friendship. It opened at the

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Central Club Hall in London on 23 November 1933. It ran for a further four nights in January 1934 at the

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. Critics noted the diverse origins and accents of the Black cast who played all twenty roles (including the two white roles), which included activists and artists from Bermuda, British Guiana, England, Gold Coast, India, Italy Jamaica and St. Lucia. From 1932 to 1945, Marson moved back and forth between London and Jamaica. She continued to contribute to politics, but now instead of focusing on writing for magazines, she wrote for newspapers and her own literary works in order to get her political ideas across. In these years, Marson kept writing to advocate feminism, but one of her new emphases was on the race issue in England. The racism and sexism she found in the UK "transformed both her life and her poetry": the voice in her poetry became more focused on the identity of black women in England. In this period, Marson not only continued to write about women's roles in society, but also put into the mix the issues faced by black people who lived in England. In July 1933, she wrote a poem called "Nigger" that would appear in the League of Coloured Peoples' journal, '' The Keys'', on which she worked in an editorial capacity and became Editor for in 1935. Outside of her writing at that time, Marson was in the London branch of the

International Alliance of Women The International Alliance of Women (IAW; french: Alliance Internationale des Femmes, AIF) is an international non-governmental organization that works to promote women's rights and gender equality. It was historically the main international org ...

, a global feminist organization. By 1935, she was involved with the International Alliance of Women based in

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Jamaica (1936–38)

Marson returned to Jamaica in 1936, where one of her goals was to promote national literature. One step she took in achieving this goal was to help create the Kingston Readers and Writers Club, as well as the Kingston Drama Club. She also founded the Jamaica Save the Children Fund, an organization that raised funds to give the poorer children money to get a basic education. In promoting Jamaican literature, Marson published ''Moth and the Star'' in 1937. Many poems in that volume demonstrate how despite the media's portrayal that black women have inferior beauty when compared to the whites, black women should still be confident in their own physical beauty. This theme is seen in "Cinema Eyes", "Little Brown Girl", "Black is Fancy" and "Kinky Hair Blues"."Una Marson" in Margaret Busby, '' Daughters of Africa'', London: Cape, 1992, p. 221. However, Marson herself was affected by the stereotype of superior white beauty; Marson herself, her biographer tells us, within months of her arrival in Britain "stopped straightening her hair and went natural". Going along with her feminist principles, Marson worked with

Louise Bennett Louise Simone Bennett-Coverley or Miss Lou (7 September 1919 – 26 July 2006), was a Jamaican poet, folklorist, writer, and educator. Writing and performing her poems in Jamaican Patois or Creole, Bennett worked to preserve the practice of p ...

to create another play called ''London Calling'', which was about a woman who moved to London to further her education. However, the woman later became homesick and returned to Jamaica. This play shows how the main character is a "strong heroine" for being able to "force herself to return to London" in order to finish her education there. Also in the feminist vein, Marson wrote ''Public Opinion'', contributing to the feminist column. Marson's third play, ''Pocomania'', is about a woman named Stella who is looking for an exciting life. Critics suggest that this play is significant because it demonstrates how an "Afro-religious cult" affects middle-class women. ''Pocomania'' is also one of Marson's most important works because she was able to put the essence of Jamaican culture into it. Critics such as Ivy Baxter said that "''Pocomania'' was a break in tradition because it talked about a cult from the country", and, as such, it represented a turning point in what was acceptable on the stage. In 1937, Marson wrote a poem called "Quashie comes to London", which is the perspective of England in a Caribbean narrative. In Caribbean dialect, ''quashie'' means gullible or unsophisticated. Although initially impressed, Quashie becomes disgusted with England because there is not enough good food there. The poem shows how, although England has good things to offer, it is Jamaican culture that Quashie misses, and therefore Marson implies that England is supposed to be "the temporary venue for entertainment". The poem shows how it was possible for a writer to implement Caribbean dialect in a poem, and it is this usage of local dialect that situates Quashie's perspective of England as a Caribbean perspective.

London years (1938–45)

Marson returned to London in 1938 to continue work on the Jamaican Save the Children project that she started in Jamaica, and also to be on the staff of the ''Jamaican Standard''. In March 1940, Marson published an article entitled "We Want Books - But Do We Encourage Our Writers?" in ''Public Opinion'', a political weekly, in an effort to spur Caribbean nationalism through literature. In 1941, she was hired by the

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Early years (1905–1932)

Jamaica (1936–38)

London years (1938–45)

Life after World War II (1945–65)

Legacy

Bibliography

References

Sources

External links