Long Time No See A Memoir of Fathers, Daughters and Games of Chance
- Submitting institution
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Brunel University London
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 037-182232-23697
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Periscope Books (UK)
- ISBN
- 9781859643969
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- July
- Year of publication
- 2015
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Long Time No See is a long book form memoir, which took three years to write. It is a hybrid memoir, and involved considerable historical research, including extensive archive and location research in Jamaica. The book involved the complicated synthesis of little known histories - for example for role of Jamaican men in the WWII farm labouring programmes in America. The chapters set in Jamaica at this time are contrasted with chapters set in the 1980s which again involved research into, for example, Thatcherism and grass roots involvement in the Labour Party.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Life writing is both a useful and challenging vehicle for exploring personal narratives that are also historical (i.e. where the narrative ‘I’ is not witness to all of the events of the book); this type of work raises ethical questions about representation and narration; this type of research explores and problematises notions of truth and memory by addressing (and filling) the gaps that are left by archives and data. To date, there is little fictional rendering of the Chinese-Jamaican experience, and none which explores the lives of the Caribbean Afro-Chinese in relation to post-war migration.
Research processes included: examining archives related to Jamaican farm labouring programmes in the USA during WWII; examining archives of the Chinese Benevolent Association in Kingston, Jamaica and looking at online archives of the Communist Party of Great Britain, especially the West Indian sources. Three weeks’ field research in Jamaica, visiting key locations in the history of ‘The Chiney Shop’ a crucial physical location in the Chinese-Caribbean diaspora, the Chinese Temple and other locations in the now vanished Chinatown in Kingston; visits and interviews with staff at the Institute of Jamaica, especially in relation to residual African practices in the parish of St Thomas Interviewing academics with specialisms in the social and political upheavals of early 1940s Jamaica Practice based research (fictional reconstruction) based on my father’s notebook. Making decisions about structure, use of source texts, and parameters of memoir and ways to challenge these. Presenting work at academic meetings, for example the OU’s Life Writing, Trauma and Ethics symposium.
In addition to many public readings, including international literary festivals such as Bocas in Trinidad, this book was BBC Radio 4 ‘Book of the Week’ in July 2015.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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