Jombii Jamborii
Jombii Jamborii
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About the Book
Jombii Jamborii is a wild party. In Guyana’s Creole language, Creolese (or Kriiyaliiz), jumbi (or jombii) can mean “wild” or “of low status.” These pejorative attributes have been similarly ascribed to Creolese through a coloniality of language centuries in the making. Jumbi, however, are also cherished and feared agents of ancestral memory, often understood as “ghosts” or “spirits.” A mass of unwieldy revenants, these jumbi-words cavort together back and forth in both Creolese and English, mirroring multigenerational movement and song bridging worlds of ancestors, young, old, and those yet to be born or remembered.
Authors
Joan Cambridge-Mayfield
(Georgetown, British Guiana, 1940) is an Afro-feminist environmental protector, former leading member of Guyana’s press corps, and author of the internationally acclaimed novel Clarise Cumberbatch Want to Go Home (Ticknor & Fields/The Women’s Press). In the 1970s Joan worked for Howard University’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities. By the 1980s Joan had walked away from an appointed scholar’s desk at the Library of Congress to head for the Guyana rainforest where she spent nearly two decades immersed in her environment, researching, writing, and working on her parcel of the “last of pristine Amazonia” at Yukuriba Falls on the Essequibo River. In the 1990s Joan’s musical drama, Ting-a-Ling-a-Ling, Schoolbell Ring: Di Bush Tun Reenforest, received support from the United Nations. Her writing has appeared in the Antioch Review and was anthologized in Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present (edited by Margaret Busby; Jonathan Cape/Pantheon) and An Anthology of Non-Conformism: Rebel Wom!n Words, Ways and Wonders (edited by Epifania Akosua Amoo-Adare and Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa; DIO). Aunty Joan is also fellow traveler with and widow to Julian Mayfield, and is forever following his profound jumbi wisdom, strength, and guidance.
Jeremy Jacob Peretz
(San Francisco, USA, 1987) scholarship, writing, and multimedia practice have been widely recognized with grants and fellowships including from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Fowler Museum at UCLA, as well as the Caribbean Studies Association’s biennial Best Dissertation Award. Jeremy’s essays, poems, and films are available through such publications as African American Review, Anthropology News, Asymptote, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Caribbean Quarterly, Journal of Africana Religions, New West Indian Guide, and Postcolonial Text. Jeremy holds a PhD in Culture and Performance from the University of California, Los Angeles and teaches in the Faculty of Education and Humanities at the University of Guyana.
Praise
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Excerpt
Laibeeyshon Libation
fa dem wa wish wi wel for those who wish us well
di res a-dem kud goo to hel the rest could go to hell
dem-se they say
[eshuu / eguun [eshu / egun
maantop] mantop]
wi kyaan si yo we can’t see you
bot wi doz sens ya to but we can sense
noo-se dat yaal de-bout you are here with us
laik briiz a-bloo-chruu we know you are
dis-ya bombatika fares like the breeze wafting through
neem laif. these forest thickets called life
le dis-ya juu-drap faal accept these dewdrops
pon di maas a-ya brik-fared on your forehead of mossy stone
an aal-a-ya huu waan wii praaspa all who want us to prosper
wit moo-moo-moo fyuucha with more more more future
DIS WAAN IZ FO-YUU! THIS IS FOR YOU!
FAIYA WAAN WID WII! FIRE ONE WITH US!
Aal-a-ya huu a-bloo god-win pon wii all you blowing good wind on us
di-res-a-ya kyan gwaan go-wee the rest will keep wandering
far-faar from dis-ya jamborii far, far from our party