Antiguan-Born, Althea Romeo-Mark’s important and enduring work echo’s themes of ‘otherness’.

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 Althea Romeo Mark Interview Bookends, The Jamaican Sunday Observer, June 6, 2021, p. 47.

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#Caribbean Strong

Today, Bookends present the fourth in this year’s series of conversations #Caribbean Strong between Jacqueline Bishop and writers and artists from the region. Today’s featured writer is writer and educator, Althea Romeo Mark.

Althea Romeo Mark was born in Antigua and has traveled throughout the world, now making her home in Switzerland. In addition to having published five volumes of poetry, she has been an invited speaker at international poetry festivals in among others, Medellin, Colombia and Kisi, Kenya. 

Her work has been published in regional journals and international anthologies. She is a founder of the Liberian Association of Writers and served as the poetry editor of Seabreeze: Journal of Liberian Contemporary Literature. In 2009, she was awarded the Marguerite Cobb Mckay Prize by the Caribbean Writers.

 Althea Romeo-Mark it is quite a pleasure to have this chance to interview you around four of your collections: Palaver, Beyond Dreams, If Only the Dust Would Settle & The Nakedness of New. Let’s start with Palaver published in 1978 by the Downtown Poets Co-op. How did you come to be published by this Co-op?

 While teaching at the University of Liberia, Dr. David Gershator, who was my mentor at the University of the Virgin Islands (then College of the Virgin Islands), contacted me with the offer to publish a book of my poems. Back in the late 60s and early 70s Dr. Gershator, who taught, Caribbean literature, discovered the poet in many of us when he challenged his students to write a poem about “What is A West Indian?.” He discovered budding poets in his class and started a creative writing course the next semester. This led to the publication V.I.P (Virgin Islands Poetry) which featured our poems.  I was one of the most prolific writers in the group.

          In 1971, Dr. Gershator got me a scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont. It exposed me to the wider world of poetry.  He also helped with my first publication outside the US Virgin Islands. It was The Revista Inter-Americana Review by Inter American University of Puerto Rico published my work between 1974-1977 (“I Am of Two World,” “Machrone, “ “A Poem for Island Dwellers,” Vol IV, Nr.1,  “Discovery,” “De Wuk Man” Vol III, Nr. 4, “Blackbird,” Vol. VI. Nr. 2, “Miss Benbo,” Vol. VI, Nr.4).  By then, Gershator, a New York native, and his wife, Phillis, were co-editors and members of the poetry co-op in Manhattan, the Down Town Poet Group. Small state and federal grants helped them to publish poetry chapbooks by a range of poets they knew personally or met at readings. They included Ivan Arguelles, Fritz Hamilton, Enid Dame, Don Lev (and others) during the 1970s and 80s. The Co-op did most of the work themselves (typing, layout, staple and binding), and they printed the books at a non-profit Print Center in Brooklyn.  They attended various gatherings of other small presses to display the books and participated in public readings. The Co-op faded away after about ten years, when the Gershators returned to St. Thomas in 1984. Publishing grants were harder to come by then and people had moved on to other projects or had moved out of NY.

Popular culture is a recurring theme throughout the collection and there is a strong series of poems about the figure of the Moko Jumbi. What can you tell us about this character and why is the figure so important to you?

 As far as I can remember,” Moko Jumbies” have always been a part of Virgin Islands culture and featured strongly in our carnivals. What is important is that they are a carry-over from our African past. According to one Virgin Islands source, Moko Jumbies have been around for two hundred years, and of course, can be traced back to 13^th-14^th century Africa. We see the “Moko Jumbie as a “mock” spirit. They appear in our carnival on stilts and in colorful costumes, which make them larger than life. But they come to entertain us, not to scare us. 

However, in Liberia, where I lived for some time, “Moko Jumbie” is a “country devil.”  But there are two “country devils:” the one on stilts (like in the Caribbean) that comes to the city and dances and entertains the people on special occasions. The other, “country devil/bush devil,” is a mysterious figure who strikes fear in women and the uninitiated (young men not yet accepted as full members or adults in rural society via tests of survival skills). They must hide behind closed doors. The bush devil is an authoritative figure and plays an important spiritual role in their secret society (Poro or Sande Bush).

To me the Moko Jumbie is important as a symbol of human complexity.  We wear masks that reflect our mood or deflect battles within us. We are chameleons, constantly adapting to situations. We often wear faces that mock our true feelings. The “bush devil” is that part of us that is not always recognizable. We keep it suppressed. It can be unpredictable, offensive and defensive.

 

“Blackbird” is a poem featuring a woman of the “old French tradition” in one of the Caribbean islands. Which island does “Moushay Blackbird” belong to and why is she seen as “other” on this island?

         “Moushay Blackbird” is symbolic of French settlers in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. There are two settlements in St. Thomas, one in the hills, in an area called Mafolie, (farmers) and French Town (fishermen) in Charlotte Amalie, the Capital. These are people who had fled France for Caribbean French colonies after the fall of the Bastile (French Revolution). 

They are people of French descent, who immigrated to St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands from the island of St. Barthelemy (also called St. Barths) and St. Kitts beginning in the early-1800s through to 1960-70s. Over time, they have established themselves as part of the local population.  I attended the same Catholic school as they did and we were compelled by the nuns to buy straw school bags from them.  The older women wore straw hats and were often dressed in black. Some lived in tiny houses which are quite traditional in other parts of the Caribbean. I also had family who lived in the area and was sent to French town with my younger sister for sewing lessons. They were called “Frenchies” or “Cha-Chas” in St. Thomas.

The poem “For my Sister” in the collection “Beyond Dreams” has a narrator talking about a sister she has not seen for some time: “And so, my sister from across the miles/ we had not seen each other for a while;”. Why is this poem dedicated to American poet Maya Angelou? 

At the University of Liberia, I was a founding member of The Liberian Association of Writers (LAW). LAW worked in conjunction with the cultural arm of the US embassy to bring Maya Angelo to Liberia twice to conduct writers’ workshops.  I had the honor of introducing her at one of her readings.  The poem is dedicated to her as well as my younger sister who lives far away in California. There are so many similarities in looks and behavior, replication in voice, mannerisms, spirit and soul. Maya Angelo and my sister are symbolic of black women whose faces and voices were reflected in that of women in Liberia. There were always reminders.  Now I see faces and hear names, and I try to remember, try to place them in Liberia or the Virgin Islands. We are far, yet near. Caribbean people began immigrating to Liberia in the 1850s and many “Americo-Liberians (descendants of former slaves from the Americas) have similar English names.

Your author’s statement often states: “She considers herself a citizen of the world.” The word citizen and citizenship come with certain legal rights. How does one become a “citizen of the world”? What do you mean by this term?

I say I am a citizen of the world simply because I was born in Antigua (a former British citizen), grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands (A US citizen), spent fourteen years as a Liberian resident so that many Liberians consider me to be part of them and that makes me feel like I belong. I spent one year in London, England as a resident in transit to Switzerland. My family and I have been Swiss citizens since 1998. I have had the privilege of freedom of movement in all of these countries I feel that I do not belong to one place.

In the introduction of your selected poems “If Only the Dust Would Settle” you write: “It is on this island that I learned to be an island woman, to be a West Indian … When I speak, people say, “She is a Caribbean woman.” How do you square this statement with the one before?  

 No matter where I live, the Caribbean spirit ingrained by culture and oral tradition, and the habits and lifestyles that I was immersed in this environment from an early age and for twenty years of my life, are indelible and irreversible. Anything else I have absorbed is resting on those foundations.

In the selected collection you stated that while studying on the mainland United States “my interactions with Black American students left me with the impression that many were paranoid … Caribbean people were once enslaved and have moved beyond that, have left the past behind and are looking forward.” Can you unpack this statement for our readers, providing support for your statement?

 I have to say, that coming from the Caribbean where Black people were the majority, were in control of local government and policy, and having not lived in the US for a very long time (1968-69-University of Connecticut and 1972-75 (Kent State University grad school), I did not have a good grasp of what daily life for Black Americans were. For me back then, Black-American men that I dated were constantly talking about “The White Man.” But looking back, I have never had to compete for work in the US and experience related racial discrimination. At the time, I received the scholarship to attend grad school, at Kent State University. Although I was a double-minority, black and female, I worked as a teaching assistant. I was very fortunate.  I benefited from that.  It was right after students were killed on the KSU campus by Ohio National Guard during a peaceful protest in 1970.  Most of my friends were African students then. They were the cocoon in which I wrapped myself.

Perhaps now would be a good time to tell us about your childhood and your family history: Where were you born, where you grew up, who were your parents, what notable childhood memories you have and what schools you attended?

I was born in Antigua and spent my first eight years in English Harbor where my father was raised and which had become the adopted home of my mother.

  My father, Gilbert Elliot Romeo was born in San Pedro de Macaris, Dominican Republic.  His mother and her brother, both children of a British sailor and a native Antiguan, had immigrated to the D.R. because of the big demand for labor in a quickly developing sugar industry. His father (my grandfather), Emmanuel Romeo had come to the Dominican Republic from St. Martin to seek work as well. Emmanuel Romeo was of French ancestry and also had family in St. Barts. When my father was three years old, his mother returned to Antigua. Her brother remained in the D.R. Back in Antigua, she married a Mr. Horsford whom she had met in the Dominican Republic, and they had four more children.

 My mother, Daisy Valborg Marsh-Romeo, was born in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands to Alvina Willette from Nevis. Alvina Willette’s mother, Anna Elisabeth Hendrikson was of Scottish and Nevisian. Her husband, Mr. Willette was of Nevisian. My mother’s father, Arthur Marsh, was Antiguan, whose father came to Antigua from Nigeria via Johannesburg, South Africa. My mother kept in touch with family there as well as in the Bahamas where one of her uncles had emigrated.

 My father was a farmer (cotton grower), fisherman and labor leader in English Harbour, Antigua. I remember that he raised cattle, and my older brother assisted in looking after them. I don’t believe there were many cattle. Cotton was picked, cleaned and taken to St. Johns, Antigua from where it was shipped to England.  English Harbour’s inhabitants were known to be smugglers of rum from ships. There were often raids by the police. There was even a story about a female relative sitting on a crate with her skirt spread over it to hide it during a raid. That raid was unsuccessful. Unfortunately, English Harbour became a victim of its rum smuggling. There were many rum shops and many more alcoholics.

    My mother had moved to Antigua from St. Kitts to get to know her family. She was not completely welcomed as she was a child conceived outside her father’s marriage.

     One of the reasons my parents left Antigua for the US Virgin Islands was the devastation of the islands by drought and a series of hurricanes. In addition, my mother did not want her children to become alcoholics.  I am one of four children: Ianthe, Lloyd, Althea and Arlene.

 What has impacted my memory most is the oral tales my father shared, one of which I also heard in Liberia, “All Me Woman Friend Tun to Man”. My dad told us how in the old days, before airplanes arrived, the spirit of the dead walked among the living. He told us about his personal encounter with a spirit when he was coming home late one night from “the land.” He said its voice was like a loud crash against the hills. And there were lots of jokes about villagers, e.g., the man who said he was blind in one eye, and couldn’t see out the other; or the man who went to a friend to borrow money, asked for $5.00, and was told by the proposed lender that he couldn’t hear, that he must go to the other ear. So, the borrower went to the other ear and asked for $10.00 and was swiftly told to go back to the $5.00 ear. And of course, there were the Anansi and Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby stories and Duck, who wanted to go to a party but was advised to cork her butt. Of course, the cork flew out while she was enjoying herself. There is a lesson there. There is always a lesson. And of course, there were the tales of “Heart Men” who captured people and cut their hearts out to make sacrifices for power and wealth, and people who met the Devil at crossroads at midnight to sell their souls for wealth.           

In Antigua, I attended a school my mother established because there was none in English Harbour. Cobscross School was later taken over by the government, but up to now, those old enough to remember my mother, remember her as “Teacher Daisy.”

When we immigrated to St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, my mother got a job in a bakery, and my father worked at the Hilton Hotel as a baggage handler. He greeted guests and took their bags via elevator to their rooms.  We, the school-age children, went to a Catholic school because it took in immigrant children or “sponsored” them. It was a private school, so a fee had to be paid.  My strong Antiguan accent separated me from others. And sometimes, we were embarrassingly separated into lines of Immigrants and natives.  Immigrants from Antigua were called “garrots” and mostly worked as housemaids, in construction, or in the hotel service industry. It is the beginning of the planting of the “outsider seed.” I believe the younger you are, the less you are affected by this. One learned to blend in as quickly as one could. I imagine because my family was mostly “light-skinned”, people did not quite know where to place us. People often spoke Spanish to my father and older sister.

  In high school, we were shuffled into programs based on class or wealth. Those who came from families who owned businesses were channeled into college preparatory classes; others, like myself, (working class) and “Frenchies”,, were pushed towards commercial courses. We were taught booking, typing and stenography. Our class valedictorian was in this group: French from the island’s fisherman, the nuns felt college or university was not for her.  Many of us were saved by performing well on our SAT exams. Our parents were then summoned and told we were university material. But I am very grateful today that I had two years of typing courses. Shorthand is now a useless tool unless you are going to use it for coded messages.

As an adult you have lived most of your life away from the Caribbean, can you detail for us some of the places you have lived and the impact these places have on you? When did you realize you were a poet? How did you develop your craft?

 I would say that Liberia and Switzerland have had the greatest impact on my life outside the Caribbean.  

 I arrived for the second time in Monrovia, Liberia in December 1975. I had been there earlier that summer for two weeks. 

 In Liberia, I quickly learned about the divide between the indigenous Liberian and the “Americo-Liberian.”  I stayed with a family for a few weeks before I was assigned housing by the University of Liberia.     

 I became a part of the Caribbean-Liberian community when I married my husband, Dr. Emmanuel Mark, who had arrived in Liberia at age seventeen. He and several cousins were brought to Liberia by their great uncle Christopher Rennie. Rennie was influenced by the Marcus Garvey Back to Africa Movement and immigrated to Liberia from New York, in the early 1920s. There was a large Caribbean community there; people from Jamaica, Haiti and Barbados.  Barbadians were the largest of the Caribbean settlers,  having arrived in Liberia in the mid-1800s. Crozierville was the largest Barbadian settlement. Two of Liberia’s presidents, the Barclays, had Barbadian roots. I met a young woman whose grandmother was from St. Kitts and Nevis. Wilmot Blyden, a Pan-Africanist, was a well-known Liberian who immigrated there from the US Virgin Islands.  It was in Liberia that I ate my first achee made by a Jamaican-Liberian woman, Mother King, whose husband, also Jamaican, was a reverend in the Episcopal church. So naturally, I felt at home.  

 Sadly, the divisions between “Americo-Liberians” and Indigenous Liberians led to the first coup in 1980. And thereafter, divisions among the indigenous groups led to several attempted coups, and later, a fourteen-year-old civil war.  We fled Liberia at the beginning of the Civil War in 1990.  We had just returned from holidays in Grenada and the Virgin Islands when we had to flee the encroaching fighting.  Then, we thought our stay in London would be a temporary thing, and we would return when the fighting abated, but the war went on. 

We remained in England for one year before moving to Switzerland where my husband had studied medicine, and where he was offered a post at the University Kinderspital (Children’s Hospital).

 It took me ten years before Switzerland felt like home.   I had arrived to a different culture, different languages (German and Swiss-German). When we visited other parts of the country, you were confronted by French, Italian and Romansh (a language of Latin origin).  I became a housewife after being a university lecturer for fourteen years. I was completely lost and depressed for a while. I had lost control of my life’s direction. We also had nothing, having left everything we owned behind in Liberia— Family, friends, jobs, a clinic, our home.

At least, in England, I did not have a language barrier, and we were wrapped in a Caribbean cocoon---family (my husband’s sisters, brother, cousins, aunties), Caribbean food, voices whose accents were intact despite having lived in England since the1950s. We had no money, lived in an assigned home for the displaced, but we were loved by family.

 

In Switzerland, CNN and BBC became my English-speaking companions. I watched English programs until my eyes burned. I enrolled in a language school where high German was taught, but Swiss German (a medieval, unwritten Alemannic dialect of German) was the language on the street. After a few months of being a housewife, I decided I wanted to teach again and enrolled in a Teaching English as a Foreign language program. After nine months, I earned a Cambridge Certificate and I was able to teach English to beginners.  It is while at this language school that I met other language teachers and learned that my depression was normal. All expatriates, they had all been through it. 

It is also there that I learned about an English writers’ group. These English teachers, who had been once lost like myself, and the English writers’ group, became my savior and are my extended family today. I do have friends who are teachers of different nationalities. We taught at the same language schools for more than twenty years.  Unfortunately, unlike many of my English-speaking friends or teacher/friends, I was not married to a Swiss, so I was not surrounded by Swiss-German dialect. I speak high German. Many Swiss might compare it to the Queen’s English.

 So, in that respect, I am still outside the circle of Swiss-German speakers. I understand it very well. I am terrible at other languages. I had a terrifying language teacher in high school. My French was a disaster at university. Learning German was enough of a struggle. I am still a foreigner.

The entire last section of “If Only the Dust Would Settle” introduces a strong suite of poems that are rich in imagery and effortless in their integration of both a Swiss and a West Indian identity. In fact, part of what the poems do is to introduce the idea for me that Swiss identity which to my mind is uniformly Caucasian is much more plural than that. Yet, I found myself still struggling with your statement that “The key, I am told, is speaking the dialect. If you speak the dialect, you will be accepted into the fold.” Is it really that easy to gain entrée into Swiss society?

 It took me ten years before I accepted Switzerland as home. It is a breathtakingly, beautiful, quiet, conservative country. When I die, I will be buried here. Have I gained entry into Swiss society? I would have to say no. They are a very close, reserved group of people. I am not a member of any Swiss groups but rather my groups of friends are English speakers: English teachers, artists, writers and Swiss people who speak and write in English.

 Unlike many of my English or non-Swiss friends, I am not married to a Swiss, so I am not surrounded by or steeped in a Swiss-German speaking environment or culture. I am still a foreigner. But I am Swiss in a way that I have conformed to its unwritten social rules. You learn not to ruffles feathers by not playing loud music or making any loud noise (drilling, hammering, moving furniture around) on Sunday or after 10:00 pm. Neighbors must be informed when you are planning a party.  You invite them, too. You keep to your washing schedules if you do not have a washing machine. If you are curious, see this link. https://www.helloswitzerland.ch/magazine/-/swiss-culture

 Your collection, “The Nakedness of New” pulls together poems from your other collections and adds new poems as well. It has sections separated by short essays. I enjoyed the work enormously. The importance of food and cooking shines through in, for example, a poem like “Cookbook” in this collection. Why do you place so much emphasis on food in your writing?

  I did not realize that I have put a lot of emphasis on food.  But family gatherings and food go well together. I think food takes you home if you are separated from family by an ocean. While sharing food, you share your stories, your news, your common culture. It is like a spiritual renewal by way of sharing your pain, your joy. Isn’t there an anthology called “Food for the Soul?” They might not have meant it literally but eating food from home with family and close friends is a “communion” of sorts. The sharing of food is a balm to the spirit if you are feeling naked, exposed in a new environment.

 The love and the longing for a lost home in Liberia also shines through in many of these poems, and begs the question of where exactly is home for you?

  I think of myself of having four homes, my birth home, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, where I grew up, Liberia, where I became a responsible adult, wife, mother, university lecturer. In Switzerland, my family began again, after losing all but lives due to Liberia’s Civil War.   Each country has something special whether it be culture, the integration experience, the place from where our ancestors came, and the place that gave my family a second chance. Each experience is a case of fitting into new skin. It takes time, it scratches, itches, and stretches until it fits.

I’m fascinated by the tales of Liberia that migrate with you from Liberia to Europe in this collection. Specifically, I’m drawn to the river and water stories that are told about the Nigi world. (“Rivers of Fear”) Can you describe this Nigi world for us? Is this world and its inhabitants like the rivermaids and rivermumas of Caribbean folklore? How might they be similar and/or different? 

 The nigi (negee) is a cult that drowned people in rivers and on the beaches in Liberia. The drowned bodies are used in ritualistic killings. It is a common practice on the southwestern coast of Liberia from Bassa County to the Cavalla area. People are warned as in the case of the Mami Water, which exists there, too, not to go swimming alone. Like the Caribbean, Mami Water in Liberia functions, as a warning about the dangers of the river, the sea, the ocean and is the rationale for unexplained drowning. The sea is a mysterious world in itself.  You are pulled down never seen again in that other place. It could also be a way to soften the blow of death by drowning. 

Parents warn against rivers and oceans, too, because (and this is my opinion) the West African shores and river banks are where people were captured from and taken into slavery. It is where our ancestors disappeared from.  I never learned to swim. People often ask, how come you come from the Caribbean, and you can’t swim. I can hear my mother’s voice calling, “don’t go too far out.” One of my uncles said that “If God wanted us to swim, He would have given us gill.” I have a fear of drowning. I feel secure when my feet touch the sand.

 But yet, some of us, island people were great fishermen, took boats out to smuggle rum or became sailors and deck hands-on boats sailing from island to island.

Another area of fascination is of your “feisty yet caring grandmother” who was a self-employed seamstress. You grew up in a home where “a sewing machine was ever-present”. You also talk about the creations that your mother Daisy made and sold, especially a knitted dress that was exceptional. Can you take the time and describe in detail Daisy’s embroidery and decorative works? Who did she sell her work to? Does any of her work survive? Interestingly enough, you call this work “art” and link your creativity to the women in your family, saying that you are an “embroiderer of words”. What exactly do you mean by this?

 Yes, my grandmother, who informally trained as a nurse, also sewed, and so did her daughters.  My mother crocheted doilies and runners used for center and side tables as well as sofa backs. Some of her work were ordered by friends and some were made for gifts. Unfortunately, her work was underappreciated because they all disappeared after her death. My younger sister and I were not present to preserve them nor were we offered the opportunity to salvage her work. I would have loved to have kept her crocheted full-length dress she had made for herself. But perhaps by 1992, crocheted decors were no longer fashionable.

 My mother had a sewing machine and tried to teach us how to sew. One summer my sister and I were sent by her to French town for sewing lessons. I remember well the art of hemming dresses. In the late 60s, we used dress patterns to make our own clothes. I recall my mother being upset with me for throwing away an outfit I made because it did not fit right.  Soon came the department stores with cheap clothes, and buying patterns and sewing clothes became a thing of the past.

I think of writing fiction and poetry as knitting, weaving, embroidering words. Words have to be intricately linked or knitted together to create an image or story. It is a lifelong apprenticeship.  Perhaps a degree in Creative Writing would have been helpful in the better weaving of stories, better poetry.

And finally, what are you working on these days?

 The writers’ group that I belong to propels me to write. We meet monthly and I always force myself to write something, a poem, an essay, a short story, but mostly poetry.

 In 2018, I started a collection of poems titled, Residing on the Borders of Belonging. I promised myself not to wait another ten years before I put out a collection. That seems to have become a pattern. The title reflects on how I feel about having lived in so many places. My “outsiderness” sets me apart. I reside on the border of belonging.  I have felt this way since a child when we immigrated to St. Thomas.  I have got one foot in the door in all the places I have lived.  I believe it takes three generations before an immigrant family is truly integrated into a country.

 Also, living outside the Caribbean, since 1976, most of my life, makes me an outsider there, too. I have missed all the cultural shifts since then, and I have to rely on memory, on my past, to write about the Caribbean, and what I write might no longer be relevant to the younger generation of Caribbean people.

 A good part of “outsiderness” has to do with me Being an introvert.

 

Residing on the Borders of Belonging

 

We live on the fringe within nations,

on the edge of cultures,

hearts and minds transplanted.

We belong everywhere and nowhere,

a foot in doors, never quite inside.

 

We cannot lay claim

to a place with certainty,

being a part of it, yet an alien

to those who cannot see beyond

their own eyes.

 

Going back generations

our people were never of one place,

and we continue to cross continents and oceans

for the sake of love, liberty, livelihood.

 

Ancestral spirits scattered around the world,

we live on the borders of belonging.

 

    © Althea Romeo-Mark

 Note regarding the names"country devil and bush devil" from Liberian poet, educator, and dear friend, Dr. Patricia Wesley.

Great interview, and very enlightening, Althea. It opens one up to the other side of you that we Liberians may not know. My one issue is in the name, "Country Devil," that we were given by the discriminatory system of our leadership and the misinformed missionary culture where, instead of asking the people who owned these cultural figures for the right names of our images, our dancing mascots, they classified them as "Country Devils," two words which are separately derogatory and more so when combined. The tall one is "Gbetu," from Nimba culture. Like in Grebo, ours in my dialectic group of the Grebo culture, we call, "Gborbelloh," but the Pentecostal Missionaries classified as, "Country devil," bush devil, witches, ete. It is we who must now not simply mention them, but help others see that these names were wrong.

It was Lucille Clinton who once said, "Just because we call a cow, "cow," does not mean that is what it calls itself."

Dr. Patricia Wesley.

Jacqueline Bishop, Associate Professor Liberal Studies, New York University. Her latest book is The Gift of Music and Song, Interviews with Jamaican Women Writers.