Pamela Mordecai
Author of Her True-True Name : an anthology of women's writing from the Caribbean
About the Author
Pamela Mordecai, born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1942, is the author of several collections of poetry, children's books, and language-arts textbooks for the Caribbean, a collection of short fiction, and a novel. She is also the coauthor of a historical-cultural study of Jamaica. She lives in Toronto.
Works by Pamela Mordecai
Associated Works
Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient… (1992) — Contributor — 164 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1942
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- Jamaica
- Birthplace
- Kingston, Jamaica
- Places of residence
- Kingston, Jamaica (birth)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada - Education
- (PhD, English)
- Occupations
- writer
teacher
scholar
poet - Short biography
- Pamela Claire Mordecai (born 1942 in Kingston, Jamaica) is a scholar, poet, playwright and writer of long and short fiction. She attended high school in Jamaica and Newton College of the Sacred Heart in Newton, MA, where she did a first degree in English. A trained language-arts teacher with a PhD in English, she has taught at secondary and tertiary levels, trained teachers, edited an academic journal, and worked in media and in publishing.
Mordecai has written articles on Caribbean literature, education and publishing, and has collaborated on, or herself written, over thirty books, including textbooks, children's books, five books of poetry for adults, a collection of short fiction, a novel, and (with her husband, Martin Mordecai) a reference work on Jamaica.[1] She has edited several anthologies, including the Sunsong series. Her poems and stories for children are widely collected and have been used in textbooks in the UK, Canada, the US, West Africa, the Caribbean and Malaysia. Her short stories have been published in journals and anthologies in the Caribbean, the US and Canada. Her play El Numero Uno had its world premiere at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People in February 2010 in Toronto, Canada.
Mordecai has lived in Canada since 1994, but the Caribbean experience, both in the region and in the diaspora, continues to be an important preoccupation in her writing. In 2013 she was awarded a Bronze Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica.[2] In spring, 2014, she was a fellow at Yaddo[3] artists' community in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Pamela and her husband and three children migrated to Canada in 1993. She lives in Kitchener, Ontario.
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Statistics
- Works
- 22
- Also by
- 4
- Members
- 135
- Popularity
- #150,831
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 2
- ISBNs
- 35
- Favorited
- 1
I also really appreciate the lens she offers on such important social/societal issues like feminism, racism, religion, and health epidemics (HIV/AIDS in this book). I feel like this is required reading, a work that resonated with importance for me as I was working my way through it.
My only 'Yes, but...' with the novel is the ending - and I mean the very, very end of the book. Approaching the mid-way point of the book, and after a good long time with the main character of Grace Carpenter, the narrative shifted to two other characters, James and Mark. Initially it felt a bit awkward and clunky - it did end up coming together well. But the final page of the book just didn't work so well for me. (Actually, I had some 'Yes, but...' moments with Mark's wife, Mona, too.) But I do feel like this story and these characters will sit with me for a time. And I may even revisit the final chapter to give it more thought and closer consideration.
A finalist for the 2015 Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize, this is the jury citation:
"Pamela Mordecai’s Red Jacket is a richly rewarding reading experience, a lyrical nod to the impossibility, and even wrongness, of reducing lives to chronology or to one or two crystalizing moments. Myriad points of view, a variety of englishes, and a wise and smartly handled fractured timeline are mined to unearth the powerful story of Grace Carpenter and to gather up and pay homage to the village that constitutes her community, at home and abroad. This book is more than a heartbreaking, beautiful story; it is also a bawdy meditation on storytelling and the art of writing. "
I enjoyed this moment in an interview with Mordecai, from Open Book Toronto:
OB:
Is there a question that is central to your book, thematically? And if so, did you know the question when you started writing or did it emerge from the writing process?
PM:
The book raises all kinds of questions, but the central one perhaps concerns the extent to which we are in charge of our own destiny. Do we direct our lives, or are we the victims of a fate handed to us, over which we have little control? Are our lives determined by where we are born, the circumstances of that birth, who our parents are, the quality of our education, the opportunities life offers us and so on? I wouldn’t say I had that question in my mind when I started. I had a vague idea that I wanted to put the female protagonist through the wringer, to see how she’d endure the battering, but I think the Big Question emerged in the writing.… (more)