Grace Cameron, Lifestyle Editor
THE NIGHT that Big Joe told us duppy stories and the tale of the Rolling Calf, spitting and breathing fire, was the hardest night to go home. My yard was only five or six houses down the road but after a night of pimple-raising, spine-chilling duppy stories the shadows dancing on the leaves of the mango tree sure looked like some of the duppies Big Joe had been telling us kids about.
Oh sure, things were fine while the dozen or so of us were huddled under the tree at the front of Big Joe's yard, dipping into the huge pail full of water, hairy and blackie mangoes. The delicious scent of fear wavered in the air as Big Joe spun his ghostly tales. We squeezed closer together as twilight turned into inky blackness.
So getting home was a problem. The others had quickly scattered, leaving me to face the mocking, dancing silhouettes on my lonely journey home. My heart thumping in my chest, I decided to step strongly, with purpose and straight ahead. I was careful not to even peep through my eye corner because I just knew that the Indian girl - the one that Big Joe said kept coming back in her long white dress even though she had been killed in a car accident one night long ago - would reach out and grab me.
I tried whistling - you know, to keep the duppies at bay - but the breath got stuck in my dry throat.
Heck, this was serious. I swore I heard rattling chains and saw a long, fleshless hand with the scrawny, bony fingers reaching out for me. I decided to run for it.
Two seconds into to my flight I bumped smack into a white-robed figure that had sprung out of the darkness. I thought surely I must be dead as my heart leapt out of my throat.
Just as the horror of my situation started to slide down my legs in warm rivulets, my friend Little Joe (yes, Big Joe's son) guffawed: "Duppy ketch yuh."
I was 8 years old and loved stories (still do) -- like most children. Most people, when you think about it, love a good story. I like stories of all kinds but (outside of duppy tales) I'm tickled by stories about old time Jamaica, our culture, sense of humour, and just plain old yarns about overcoming hardships and the triumph of the human spirit.
Today's Lifestyle, highlights five books (three from Jamaica, one each from Barbados and Trinidad) that speak to our Jamaican and Caribbean experience. In brief, they are stories about us.
The books are part of Carlong Publishers, based in Kingston, effort to develop quality educational and cultural publications for the advancement of people in the Caribbean and for the dissemination of Caribbean culture and traditions to the global community, says Carlong's Marketing Manager Glynis Salmon.
It is not true that our people wouldn't want to read, but they want to see themselves in the stories, adds Salmon.
Michelle Barrett, a reporter on the Lifestyle Desk recalls reading 'Escape to Last Man Peak' (one of the books highlighted here) one summer. "It made me realise the strength of family and what a family united can achieve," she says. "They had to escape from Kingston to the country and the family stuck together, regardless of everything. They didn't achieve much materially, but what they got was more than that," adds Barrett.
