"She Opened Windows": Edna Manley and Jamaican Literature
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18733/cpi29499Abstract
Edna Manley has been acclaimed for her contribution to Jamaican culture and social consciousness by way of her work as an artist, mainly in sculpture, and her influence, by example and by guidance, on emerging artists in her time. However, that contribution to the emergence of the “new,” pre-Independence Jamaica, must also include what she did for the development of Jamaican literature, although she was not herself a creative writer. In this regard, she made her contribution by way of her influence on, encouragement of, and practical assistance to emerging writers, such as poets H. D. Carberry, A. L. Hendriks, Kenneth Ingram and M. G. Smith, and novelists Roger Mais and Vic Reid. This essay recognizes the roles of her informal soirées at her home. Those writers who did not attend the soirées, would nonetheless seek her comments on their manuscripts. Then there was her founding and editing of the history-making literary journal-anthology Focus. In addition, a few poems by some of the poets were inspired by particular sculptures of hers.