{"title":"Merle Collins","description":"\u003cp\u003eDiscover the evocative storytelling of Merle Collins, a Caribbean voice weaving tales of resilience, identity, and the vibrant spirit of Grenada. Explore her novels and poetry for a journey into the heart of island life.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"rain-darling-book-merle-collins-9780704342583","title":"Rain Darling","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49517543031057,"sku":"GOR003193911","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53029575885073,"sku":"GOR007794584","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53383279902993,"sku":"GOR003962714","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0704342588.jpg?v=1751009536"},{"product_id":"colour-of-forgetting-book-merle-collins-9781853818929","title":"The Colour of Forgetting","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49556784840977,"sku":"GOR001906980","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49648612835601,"sku":"GOR004702714","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1853818925.jpg?v=1751123563"},{"product_id":"ladies-are-upstairs-book-merle-collins-9781845231798","title":"The Ladies are Upstairs","description":"* From the 1930s to the new century, Doux Thibaut, one of Merle Collins' most memorable characters, negotiates a hard life on the Caribbean island of Paz. As a child there is the shame of poverty and illegitimacy, and there are the hazards of sectarianism in an island divided between Catholic and Protestant, the rigidity of a class and racial system where, if you are black, your white employer is always right-and only the ladies live upstairs. Doux confronts all such challenges with style and hidden steel.We leave Doux as an old lady moving between the homes of her children in Boston and New York, wondering whether they and her grandchildren really appreciate what her engagement with life has taught her. In these tender and moving stories, Merle Collins demands that we do not forget such lives. If ghosts appear in several of the later stories, they are surely there to warn that amnesia about the past can leave disturbed and restless spirits behind.In addition to the Doux stories, this collection restores to print an earlier 'Paz' story, Rain Darling, and their juxtaposition contrasts two very different responses to the hazards of life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49564440363281,"sku":"GOR008635669","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49654633201937,"sku":"GOR013469554","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49736181317905,"sku":"NGR9781845231798","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50190499348753,"sku":"CIN1845231791G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1845231791.jpg?v=1750995249"},{"product_id":"angel-book-merle-collins-9781845231859","title":"Angel","description":"\u003cp style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\" class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eChronicling the events that took place in Grenada from 1951--when workers revolted against the white owners of the sugar and cocoa estates--to the U.S. invasion in 1983, this revised and expanded edition follows headstrong Angel and her mother Doodsie as they experience the deposition of the old, corrupted leadership with conflicted emotions. As their community struggles for independence, the political conflicts in Grenada tear long-term relationships apart, provoke fratricidal killings, and allow an outrageous breach of sovereignty. Seamlessly moving between these serious events and the warmth and tensions of family life, this celebrated novel offers an informed account of the revolution and a richly developed vernacular.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49567834079505,"sku":"GOR010097261","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49649902125329,"sku":"GOR009263280","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49736087765265,"sku":"NGR9781845231859","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1845231856.jpg?v=1751445125"},{"product_id":"rotten-pomerack-book-merle-collins-9781853815560","title":"Rotten Pomerack","description":"This collection of poems from the Caribbean poet, novelist and performer reflects on the ironies and paradoxes of living in Britain, the longing for home, wherever it may be, and the balm of forgetting.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49569049084177,"sku":"GOR001725956","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49649014538513,"sku":"GOR004418233","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50798644527377,"sku":"GOR001439889","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/185381556X.jpg?v=1751411807"},{"product_id":"angel-book-merle-collins-9780704340824","title":"Angel","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49607438729489,"sku":"GOR002628421","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49652374602001,"sku":"GOR004084965","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0704340828.jpg?v=1751009531"},{"product_id":"lady-in-a-boat-book-merle-collins-9781900715850","title":"Lady in a Boat","description":"In poems that express an oblique and resonant disquiet ('people dream of a lady\/ in a boat, dressed in red\/ petticoat, adrift and weeping') and a sequence that addresses memories of the death of the Grenadian revolution, too painful to confront until now, Merle Collins writes of a Caribbean adrift, amnesiac and in danger of nihilistic despair.   But she also achieves a life-enhancing and consoling perspective on those griefs. She does this by revisiting the hopes and humanities of the people involved, recreating them in all their concrete particularity, or by speaking through the voice of an eighty-year-old woman 'making miracle\/ with little money because turn hand is life lesson', and in writing poems that celebrate love, the world of children and the splendours of Caribbean nature. Her poems take the 'new dead ancestors back to\/ mountain to feed the fountain\/ of dreams again.'  Merle Collins is Grenadian. She is the author of two novels, a collection of short stories and two previous collections of poetry. She teaches Caribbean literature at the University of Maryland.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49744869753105,"sku":"NGR9781900715850","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52598832365841,"sku":"GOR002916932","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1900715856.jpg?v=1750963759"},{"product_id":"colour-of-forgetting-book-merle-collins-9781845235512","title":"The Colour of Forgetting","description":"Set on the Caribbean island of Paz (not a million miles from Grenada), this is a book that creates a space between epic poetry and the novel in the way its sequence of interludes bring into focus the lives of family and community through time – and in the confinements of space. It moves from the days of slavery through to the 1980s, through the difficult inheritance of one family – or rather the disinheritance of those in the family born illegitimate. Throughout, the novel conveys a powerful sense of place, of both attachment and confinement, of the meaning of land in relation to the island’s smallness, and the ever-present danger of the communal violence that can spring from those pressures. Through the generations comes the voice of three generations of the women the islanders know as Carib, warner women, whose prophecies of disaster are dismissed as madness, but who have an unerring sense of what is to come. Signalled in her title, Merle Collins has much to say about the nature of memory and the fatal nature of amnesia when it comes to the lessons of the past. Whilst the book is written in the continuing shadow of Grenada’s catastrophe of 1983, it signals hope in small things: the courage of women like Mamag who will not be silenced, the reconciliation between father and son that crosses the incomprehension between generations, the capacity of a young man to confront his innermost fears.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49746185519377,"sku":"NGR9781845235512","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51308889506065,"sku":"GOR014222783","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1845235517.jpg?v=1751411421"},{"product_id":"ocean-stirrings-a-work-of-fiction-in-tribute-to-louise-langdon-norton-little-wor-book-merle-collins-9781845235529","title":"Ocean Stirrings: A Work of Fiction in Tribute to Louise Langdon Norton Little, Working Mother and Activist, Mother of Malcolm X and Seven Siblings","description":"A mix of fictive narrative, letters and poetry, with episodes of great warmth, exuberant humour, drama, and heartbreak, telling a story of Louse Little. The mother of the revolutionary firebrand Malcolm X was a Grenadian woman born at the turn of the 20th century in a small rural community in a deeply colonial society where access to education had only just begun for the children of working people. She emigrated to Canada and then the USA, where she became involved in the struggle for Black civil rights led by Marcus Garvey. Within the sparse facts of Louise Langdon Norton Little's biography, Merle Collins, the distinguished Grenadian novelist, has created a moving and deeply feminist work that gives vivid inwardness to both the heroism and tragedy of a life that involved fighting the Ku Klux Klan, discovering that male comrades in the struggle could be abusers at home, recognition of her skills as an organiser, but also a period of mental collapse that saw her incarcerated in a mental hospital until her family fought for her release.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49752116560145,"sku":"NGR9781845235529","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50263571890449,"sku":"CIN1845235525VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50320337404177,"sku":"GOR013925740","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053236781329,"sku":"NIN9781845235529","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1845235525.jpg?v=1751421553"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/de-de\/collections\/autor-buecher-von-merle-collins.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}