Tag Archives: Black Power
FMM 3 7 2025 The Boss of Me
“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.” ~ Maximilien Robespierre. Evelyn was the first person who befriended me when I was the new girl in school. I was more than new, I was different, a little girl in rural Jamaica, with an English accent […]
FMM 11 15 2024 The ‘W’ Word
“The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson. For those who don’t know me, I had a uniquely educational childhood. The youngest daughter of a minister who moved his white family from the UK to the heart of rural […]
FMM 9 20 2024 Sticks and Stones
“My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.” ~ Barack Obama. I have spent more than 85% of my life living in a land that was not the land of my birth. Thus, as I recently posted on social media, I identify as Immigrant. My […]
FMM 8 16 2024 One Drop
“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” ~ Marcus Garvey. I became a teenager at a time of racial upheaval in the USA. It coincided with the growing consciousness (‘woke’-ness) in Jamaica of young people of African descent. Rastafarianism and awareness of African culture […]
FMM 3 8 2024 Big Tree, Small Axe
“A reading man and woman is a ready man and woman, but a writing man and woman is exact.” ~ Marcus Garvey. When I started high school in Jamaica, one of the highlights of this new experience was the ‘social’ also known as a ‘boogie’. I suppose at the time the twin influences of the […]
FMM 7 3 2020 Raw Soul
“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.” ~ Frederick Douglass. Upstate New York is an idyllic place, a place of woods and hills and dappled light. There are place names that reveal the original owners of the land, along with […]
FMM 3 31 17 Love the One you’re With
“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”~Buddha. They say that if you go to sleep with a champagne cork under your pillow, you will dream of your future husband. In my case it was true, but I may have cheated a bit. The night that I placed […]
FMM 12 16 16 From Fairy Princess to Feminist
“A woman is like a tea bag, you can’t tell how strong she is till you put her in hot water.”~Eleanor Roosevelt. As a child, I hated the color pink. I don’t know how early this started, but I detested it. There was a saying: ‘Pink to make the boys wink’. I detested that too, […]
FMM 6 17 16 One Blood
“Fighting against isms and schisms”~ Robert Nesta Marley. Jamaica is a land of diversity. Some are not prepared for the range of colors and races that co-exist in that small island. The country’s motto is: “Out of many, one People”. The outward appearance may reflect an origin in India, China, Africa, the Middle East, or […]