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Journalist, poet, novelist, artist, (and now archivist) Jacqueline Bishop recently released her first collection of interviews which focuses on documenting the craft and lives of 13 Jamaican women writers, in The Gift of Music and Song.
The Gift of Music and Song is an intimate account that engages monumental Jamaican Women Writers in the context of anti-colonial and anti-misogyny praxis in the country and the politics of Jamaican women in literature, research and publishing. This beautiful collection features interviews with Olive Senior, Lorna Goodison, Marcia Douglas, Hazel Campbell, Velma Pollard and many more. Kristina and Jherane talk to Jacqueline about the process of creating these books and the reason why we all have a responsibility to archive.
To support this show and more work like this, become a sustaining member of Rebel Women Lit today rebelwomenlit.com/join#sustaining, you can also shop The Gift of Music and Song in the Rebel Women Lit show.
Episode Transcript, made possible by our sustaining members.
Kristina Neil 0:00
Hey everyone. Welcome to “Like a Real Book Club,” a podcast from Rebel Women Lit where we talk about books and just about everything else. I'm Kristina. For this episode of the podcast, you'll be dropped into an interview with the brilliant Jacqueline Bishop – stellar interviewer, writer and archivist, as dubbed by Rebel Women Lit, where we talked to her about her collection of interviews, “The Gift of Music and Song: Interviews With Jamaican Women Writers.” We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did.
Jherane Patmore 0:32
[Have you] gotten to that part of the book yet Kristina about Elliott bliss.
Kristina Neil 0:38
Not yet.
Jherane Patmore 0:39
The Elliott bliss was the first one I read because it, I'd never heard of her. And I thought I knew everyone, or at least knew of everyone. (laughs) Or, like, I've heard about these people before, even if I haven't read their work, this was really blew me away as this person that obviously would have such a great interest in terms of what I do, in terms of what I'm interested in. I've never heard of her. So…
Kristina Neil 1:08
Thank you, Jacqueline.
Jherane Patmore 1:09
Thank you, Jacqueline, for doing that. Thank you for bringing her to light, or even more into the light, into the spotlight. Yeah, I guess we could start around there. How this body of work fits into the work you want to do as an artist. Why did you feel compelled to put this work together?
Jacqueline Bishop 1:31
First, I want to say thank you for having me on the programme. And I want to thank you both for the work that you do. Rebel Women have gone on to establish itself not only in Jamaica, but as a brand abroad as well. And just about everybody knows the organization now. It's in major magazines. Everybody talks about it. It's quite an honor to be asked to, to be on the program. So thank you for so much for the work that you do, and for prioritizing and the voice of women so often in the work that you do. So thank you so much. I don't know too many organizations that I would get up for at one o'clock in the morning in London to do an interview with. So thank you so very much. Of course in thanking you, I think I've totally forgotten much of the question that you asked, but perhaps, Yeah, a good place to start is with Elliot bliss. So many people are interested in Elliott bliss, and who she is. I was, too, quite surprised when I met Michela Colorado. We met more than two decades ago. I will never forget the meeting. I myself was starting a literary magazine, Calabash, a journal of Caribbean arts and letters. At the time I had just about finished graduate school at NYU, and had gotten summer teaching gigs, some kind of teaching gig at NYU. I've pretty much stayed at NYU for a very long time. I'm still at NYU. And she came up to me. I'll never forget. we met at the library, Bob's, in front of NYU, and she's telling me about this woman who was a writer, Jamaican white Creole, and also lesbian in the, the turn of the century 1800s, early 1900s, Jamaica. And I just thought this whole thing was a, quite a fictional thing, tale that she was telling me, that I was sure that this could not be. I thought this was fable. And she had published books that were out of date, and she had been working on Elliott bliss for quite some time. I am so happy that last year her “Biography of Bliss” got published by the University of the West Indies Press. And, so, Michela is one of the people that was interviewed in this collection, The Gift of Music and Song, speaking about who Elliot Bliss is, the work that she has done, and her contributions to, to Jamaican literature and women's literature. So, she's here as well. And maybe you can ask your question again, and I can get to answer it.
Jherane Patmore 4:30
(Laughs) No worries. Question was: tell me a bit about yourself, the work that you do and why you thought this particular collection was important for the body of work you're creating, the legacy you want to leave behind.
Jaqueline Bishop 4:46
So, thanks for the reminder. So, you know, to be fair, I didn't envision the interviews as a book when I started out doing. The interviews spring from seven several sources. One is my own interest in the interview is a form. This is an interest that I've had for several years now. Trained as an oral historian at Columbia University that has found form in a book called “My Mother Who Is Me: Life Stories from Jamaican Women in New York,” when I, when we had Calabash up and running. I tried to involve interviews in that publication as much as possible. And I think there's one interview in this book from my Calabash days, but then Sharon Leitch, and I, Sharon Leitch is the editor of the book and section at the Jamaica Observer. I used to publish, I would publish an interview every now and again in the book hand section of the Observer, most notably Hazel Campbell, who we lost not too long ago, and we got to talking about the lack of interviews for women, in particular, Jamaican women specifically. And so, one summer about, several years ago, five, ten years ago, we did a series of interviews that went over quite well. But then about three, four years ago, we did a series of interviews with Lorna Goodison, among others. And that did extremely well. And so we decided to continue doing these interviews. And in addition to focusing on Jamaican women, we broadened it to a little bit and did Caribbean writers as well. Now, even then, it didn't occur to me that this was a book. I was very just very, very pleased, and Sharon was too, to just be having the voices of these women in a national newspaper and speaking to as broad an audience as possible in Jamaica. And you know how it is, anything that's locally Jamaican is national and international. Right? Jamaica is international, it's just how things are with Jamaica. And wherever I would go, people would mention these interviews to me. And after a while, people kept calling for a book, a book. And the publisher, People Tree Press, eventually reached out to me and said, did I want to make these into a book? And that's how this book came together. I've continued, as you probably know, doing these interviews, and so, I hope that there will be a book two of Jamaican women writers interviews.
Jherane Patmore 7:54
Also…
Jacqueline Bishop 7:55
I hope I answered.
Jherane Patmore 7:56
Yeah, you did. Also, a quick apology. I thought you were based in New York, when I had set the time, because I knew you're still at NYU. So I thought you were based there. I'm so sorry. I did not mean to have you up at 1AM. I'm not… yeah
Jacqueline Bishop 8:16
NYU, has campuses in London, they have campuses in Italy, in, all over the place. And so for the past three years, I've been based here. I am going back to the states in May. just about all these interviews that I've been doing, or people who have been setting meetings with, everyone thinks I'm in New York, actually. But I'm actually in London. Yeah. So the second part of your question is, how does this fit into the larger project of what I am doing? And, I don't think I consciously set out to do some of the things I do but, but when I look back, I think that they unconsciously connect, and that I prioritize certain things in the work that I do. Among other things that I prioritize is the untold story. And I prioritize women's voices. And I think that those things really come together quite forcefully in this book.
Kristina Neil 9:26
I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what the process of coordinating such a book was like. And you also spoke about, there was a desire from others for you to put these interviews together into a book. Why was it, was it important for you for a book like this to be created, for a book like this to exist with these voices? So what was the process of putting this together and then your interest in having such a book like this exist? Oh God, I hate the internet so much. I was asking you about your, Yeah. So, I was asking about your, the process, the process that you went through to coordinate such a book and to compile a book like this with all of your interviews, as well as your own, your own feelings towards why such a book is important, why the documentation of these women writers is important for us to have?
Jacqueline Bishop 10:28
Actually, it was the first part of your question. It was quite, it wasn't as difficult to put the book together, because in so many ways, Sharon Leitch had done so much of the work already for me. So, I mean, I had done on the back end, I had done so much of the work in reading these women and formulating the questions and getting the interview done. But on the, on the front end, Sharon did a lot of work in editing the interviews and getting them published. So compiling them wasn't, wasn't that that difficult a process. The second part of the question is a more nuanced thing to have to deal with. And I'll give you an example of what I mean by this. Before Hazel Campbell knew that this book was in the works, Hazel Campbell knew what the cover of this book was going to be like. And we had discussions about this and so forth and so on. But Hazel Campbell died before this book was published, and his handbook was in the process of dying, as this book was in the works, and I don't know of too many interviews with someone like Hazel Campbell. So that says something of the importance of this book. Because Hazel Campbell is one of our best short story writers. Hazel Campbell, she has been personally very kind to me as a younger writer, but she has nurtured untold amounts of other Jamaican writers, including Garfield Ellis, who has since died as well. So she has contributed enormously to Jamaican literature. She as well was, she's, she's been instrumental in many areas of Jamaican arts. And in some ways, this book rests on the shoulders of Hazel Campbell, in so far as we became Facebook friends, and it was a bit of an overwhelming experience for me because I, I had read Hazel Campbell when I was much younger, and trying to find my way as a writer. She was one of those writers that I read. And I had seen her on Facebook talking about books that she had published, and that had just been completely overlooked in Jamaica. no one was reviewing her books, no one was talking to her about her books, she was just completely overlooked. And so, I took the opportunity to interview her about these books. And that interview not only made its way into this book, but something she said about wanting in the next life the gift of music and song gave the title to this book. And there are women in this collection, who have an international reputation, and I've been interviewed in other places, but more often than not, that's not the case here. And I think of the Trinidadian writer, Monique Ruffy, when she was talking about this book, she said, I bet people do not know that there are so, there's all this abundance of talent, you know, of female talent in Jamaica, there's been so much of an erasure of women's voices as writers. And this is why a book like this is important. It is important not only to document these women, but also what goes into the making of their works, right? What they think about their work, you know? And it is particularly important because we tell not one of us are going to be here forever. But hopefully a book like this will go on and on and on, and give witness to the fact that we have been here and we have been writing. So there you go.
Kristina Neil 15:06
Thank you for that. And as you said that I was thinking to myself that I'm actually glad that we're able to have this interview with you. Because this too is documentation.
Jacqueline Bishop 15:17
Yes, yes! Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, this, this in and of itself is documentation, right? It's significant, that it's documentation by other Jamaican women who are saying, we are interested in our country women. this is important. This is very, very important.
Kristina Neil 15:41
I mean, I can't for Jherane, but one of my favourite things about Rebel Women Lit is the commitment to women's voices, specifically in the Caribbean, and queer voices. And I don't know if she'll hate this, but leaving a legacy behind in terms of, in terms of just the importance of engaging these writers, because they're just so important to not just our cultural production, as Jamaicans and people living in the Caribbean, but just in our lives, they say and do so much in terms of documenting all of our experiences.
Jacqueline Bishop 16:22
Okay, let me just let me just address that for a moment. Another part of the reason why I am in the UK is that I have many, many, many, many, shameful to admit, many, many, many, many, many Master's degrees. It's embarrassing how many Master's degrees. I'll never admit to how many I have. But this is the first PhD that I'm doing. So, I'm here doing my PhD as well. The archive for black women's voices is this big, right? Trying to dig through the archive to find black women's voice is a problem. And the more we go back in time is the smaller and the slimmer it becomes, right? So this is not, this is a very, very important thing to try and make an archive for voices of our thoughts, right? Because it's not that many that is there, right? It is a very small thing, right? So, and every day, as I sit down before this dissertation, I lament all the things I will not know about black women, because it is not in the archive. So let me just say that.
Jherane Patmore 17:59
I feel like you're speaking to my soul right now. A few years ago, I was in a used bookstore and I saw this book by Hazel Campbell, and I had never heard of her before. And I picked it up, and I read it. And it was brilliant. And I Googled, I could not find much about her. And then I found another book, Singer Man, I found and I read it, loved it. No one was talking about it. I don't even think, if I remember correctly, it doesn't even have a Goodreads page. But there was nothing I could find about the author, about craft of what it takes to produce these stories. And then, and I just thought it was very tragic, because I didn't know anything about this writer who created these brilliant stories. And I thought I probably never will. And then I saw about your book came out with, and I didn't know the influence Hazel Campbell would have had on you as a writer or the significance she would have had in this book. So, thank you so much for doing that. Thank you for using or creating space for these other writers, because I think it's so important to document this. And we, we obviously both agree on that. But also, I think what you do as someone who not only writes, but I think someone who also has an interest in craft is that you focus a lot on that, the actual process of writing, the history of that. So, I'm curious about the technical aspects of your interviews. How do you prepare for them? And what made you think “this is the conversation I'm going to share with the world” because I'm sure you talk to these writers a lot. So I'm always curious about when you decide “This is the conversation we share” versus “This is the private conversation that we have. How do I determine what enters the archive?”
Jacqueline Bishop 19:59
Actually, I don't talk to them a lot.
Jherane Patmore 20:02
Really? I just assume all the writers talk to each other all the time.
Jacqueline Bishop 20:05
Some of them I have personal relationships with. But in terms of the interview, I don't talk to them a lot, you know? And there are writers, one of the things that people complain about my interviews, the writers complain a lot, is that the questions are very, very hard. This is, you know? and I actually just had someone who refused to do an interview, because she's like, the questions are very hard. And I think she just didn't want to engage with. Listen, an interview is not about saying how wonderful you are, and just like, rubbing you down and this is just, you're just so great and so wonderful. An interview, at least, as far as I'm concerned, really engages with the idea, I try to engage with the ideas in your work. And sometimes I, in doing so, I might spot things that you might not have spotted in your own work, I am thinking of an interview that I did with an author, really esteemed, I really like him a lot. And he said, “Why must your questions be this hard”. But he went ahead, and he answered them anyway. And sometimes authors just don't want to engage with the ideas in their work, you know? Because it's looking at the omissions in their work. And it's looking at very untidy things that they don't want to engage with. I'm assuming some of the very things happen in my own writing, right? And people can call me on, on various things. So, so there's that they… Let me just say something about Hazel Campbell and craft. There was no more solid person than Hazel Campbell on craft, right? she was the mistress of craft. I don't know how much in future years, we will, someone will do a biography or some kind of PhD on Hazel Campbell, and we will get to know how much she has really worked with writers on their craft. She has transferred this knowledge to others. But I can attest to the fact that Hazel has looked at, and made better, much of my own work. She has had a lot of discussions with me on craft, right? And Hazel ran workshops and trained generations of writers very quietly, right? And made works so much the better, and so much stronger. And I hope that others will come forward and talk about the ways in which Hazel did this, right? I really hope that they will. And that this will become part of her legacy as well. Right? Because she was, ahm, so solid on this, she was rock solid on this. And speaking of sometimes not wanting to get the, the kind of feedback you got. Sometimes she gave me feedback that hurt my feelings (laughs). But it made me into a better writer. And the interesting thing about Hazel is she did this all very quietly. So thanks for this discussion on hazel, right?
Kristina Neil 23:50
Thank you so much for sharing your history with Hazel Campbell and just how much of an amazing person she was, and writer. So while I was looking through this book, and looking at the sort of questions that you asked, it just feels like you have a great interest in the background of the writer, their history and everything that's fundamental to them. So, I wanted to find out from you. If, if it is that you feel that the core of the person determines the kind of story that they write and how they tell their stories and just why is it important for you to really show the humaneness of the writer even while engaging with their work?
Jacqueline Bishop 24:32
A bunch of the people that I interviewed, my sense of it were, was that they said, they took the opportunity to really, I feel lucky because they, they took it that they, overwhelmingly in the interviews people took the process very seriously, right? You look at an interview with someone like Pamela Mordecai, and what you get is not just Pamela Mordecai’s personal story, but she wraps her story in a history of Kingston as well, right? So you come away feeling I not only know this person, but I know Kingston. I know a little bit more about the city. That is, you know, the cultural history of Kingston. So, this is my philosophy about an interview, and how what an interview functions and what it is that an interview is supposed to do. An interview, in Jacqueline's world is supposed to illuminate a body of work, right? it tells us something about the work. And it tells us something about the person who made the work, right? Where does this work come from? Right? So, you get a sense of what this work is about. And it really works best if the, the, the person themselves, is surprised by things that they did not know about their own work, right? So, all the people who are getting pissed off by the questions, I like that, because there are things about the work that you did not know, right? And, of course, I try never to be disrespectful to anyone, and, but this work comes from somewhere, it's coming from somewhere, right? So to understand where the work is coming from, you under… you need to understand something about the person who created the work, right? So to understand my focus on women, for example, you have to understand that I had the most phenomenal grandmother, ever, right? And, and I had a pretty good mother too. But my grandmother and I, it was exceptional. And, and my grandmother would take me to the small district, my family, my maternal family's from this small district called Nonsuch, and they were all, there was a grandmother, and there was a great-grandmother. And there's my mother and all these women who were doing all these fantastic things. Now, I think it's important, at first I thought I couldn't see as clearly as I can see now, how much of what I create comes from this, comes from this world. So, I think that to really understand Lorna Goodison, and her focus on sewing in her works, you have to understand that her mother was a seamstress, right? And a really good one, as well. And that's why I try to do two things in the interviews. I try to get readers to understand. I try to get the interviewee to talk about the work. But I also try to get them to talk about where the work comes from, which is to give us something of their biography.
Kristina Neil 28:32
It's really interesting that you mentioned that you like when the authors are pissed off by your questions. I was messaging Jherane today that while reading the interview with Olive Senior, it felt so much like she was just not, she was just not here for your questions. And Olive was just not interested in answering or well, the types of questions that were being asked. You were very insistent, especially that question about violence in Jamaica. I was like, mmhmm, okay, you were very insistent that she give you a response to that question.
Jacqueline Bishop 29:07
I don't know if you saw the book launch, the wonderful book launch, that the University of the West Indies, the department of Literatures in English, did. And Tanya surely pulled out certain moments in that particular interview and talked about it as well. It's quite interesting. Of course, congratulations to Olive for being the new “Poet Laureate” of Jamaica.
Kristina Neil 29:34
Absolutely, this book club is an Olive Senior stan.
Jherane Patmore 29:41
Yeah, that reminds me, need to submit her for some national awards now. Yeah. I wanted to ask when, when someone deliberately decides to create work for posterity, how do you go about editing that work? How do you go about, from selecting which writers you want to interview, which writers you're going to include in this book, to actually editing the interview? Because, for me, archivists kind of play a role, kind of like a godlike role when it comes to what is documented and what is shared.
Jacqueline Bishop 30:20
Well, to be honest, I don't see myself so much as an archivist, though I do think that perhaps the work is functioning in that way, being one of my difficult interviewees. I guess, my focus overwhelmingly, is on the untold story, the untold voices, those we do not generally hear from, those we generally do not see. Those are the people that I give most priority to, because I think those are the ones that are in danger, most, of not being archived. So, if, since you've declared me an archivist, to be fair, I don't think you're pulling things out of the air, there is an archivist impulse in a lot of the things that I do. I don't, yes, I was, I was about to say, I don't see myself as an archivist. But to be fair, there is an archivist impulse in in so much that I do. But if you look, Jherane, there is the, the, the answer to your question, if you in, in the work that I select to do. So, Jamaican women's voices in New York, right? Jamaican women writers. Women who are textile workers in Jamaica. So much, so many of the women's that we dub… “women's” Look, so many of the women that we don't hear from or we do not see or who we walk by, those are the people that get centre stage in my world. Someone mentioned to me that my Wikipedia page had been updated. So, I went to look. And when I went to look, I realized that I had been asked to do a story for an anthology that Margaret bug, bug, buzz, Busby had put out. And it's called “The Vanishing Woman.” And it tells the story of this enslaved woman who is also a needle worker. That pretty much is who I was setting out to archive, and she's making this gorgeous embroidery piece. And so yeah, that's, that's, she is who I have in my sight. Hazel Campbell is who I have in my sight. Those are the women that I have in my sight.
Jherane Patmore 32:58
I want to ask why you think these women have, have not been archived? And it's something that as someone who, when I get the free time, I'm at the National Library doing things that I have no particular goal in mind. It's just a curiosity. And something that I think should be, like, it's there, why aren't we… I'll give you an example, just to contextualize this. So, abortions in Jamaica is something, abortions generally is something that's been happening for centuries. It's something we've always done. Yet the National Library's documentation on abortions, it's limited to opinion pieces that have been in the Gleaner. And I just could not understand why there were no first-hand accounts, I couldn't understand why any of this existed. Why have no, why haven't any women or anyone who's actually had an abortion or conducted an abortion, why haven't that, why hasn't that been documented? It's something that's just so obvious to me. And all I could think is, really, why haven't we done it? So, I'm curious to hear from your perspective, as to why you think we have not seen this as important to have in the archives, to have in the National Archives. What makes construction as to what we remember the nation, as what image do we have a foreign nation that disconnects from the reality of our nation?
Jacqueline Bishop 34:40
Well, let's understand something here. The archive is a tool of empire to begin with, right? And it continued as a colonial construct, right? So, the archive itself was meant to represent the, what empire thought it should, right? It was meant, that's the founding of an archive. This is who we are as an empire. And this is what we the empire, England, thinks is important to record. Hence, we do not have records of enslaved bodies and enslaved people. And we have continued in that in a colonial state and a post-colonial state. This is just facts, right? I find the, so, that's just archiving, right? I find your, your example interesting. But the answers are almost there, right? Female bodies are political bodies, right? And there have been multiple attempts to control female bodies. Because female bodies are sexualized bodies. And they're also reproductive bodies, right? And, as such, they should be controlled. In addition to which you have religion pressing down on female bodies, right? All sorts of religious institutions and whatnot pressing down on female bodies. Now, if you start to add these things to it, it's, like, you're not my student, let's be very clear about this. But it's, like I said, I would say to my students, oftentimes, you have like a toolbox, right? And you just start taking out the tools out of this toolbox, right? And so first, you say, our archive tool of empire, post- colonial tool, you know? So, our empire is not interested in abortions. So, that's one reason why you don't find it there. Why were we brought here? We were brought here, brought to the Jamaica, we indigenized and all sorts of things, but as a source of labor and reproduction. That runs in the face of abortion, right there, Right? To say nothing of the fact that the knowledge, our knowledge, was discounted in that we, we came along with, as to abortions and whatnot. Now, the good news is Jherane, oftentimes I say to my students, is that the very tools of empire can be used against empire. That's the beauty of it. And that's, that's the, this is my dissertation, right? So, if you are interested in this, I can guarantee you that within the very archives are the answers of the things you want to find, both within the archive, and you can create your own archive, right? Which, hopefully, can get added to this to this archive, or to new archives that are created, right? And one of the main ways of doing this, actually, is what you're doing right now. You go out and you conduct oral histories, you speak to people, you seek to gather this information. Isn't this, after all, what Michela has done? And given us this stunning story that, pushes back on the idea that sexuality was just one way, and one way only, in Jamaica all these years? She goes back and she says not at all, right? This was never quite like this. So, there is my very long answer to your very short question.
Jherane Patmore 39:01
Who do you think? I guess, this is a two part question. Who do you want to read your work? And who do you think reads your work?
Jacqueline Bishop 39:13
The second question is easier than the first question. I've been on college campuses. So, I see that everybody's reading it, you know? College boys, girls, you know? All sorts of people are asking me questions about the work. I think my work speaks to a broad cross section of, of people who are interested in the Caribbean, who are interested in Jamaica, or interested in women's stories. Let me just hold up this wonderful, beautiful book here. And I love what the back of this book says, “What unites the voices in this book is not their country of birth or gender, but an unfaltering belief in the power of poetry and poetics, in the gift of music and song, our lessons and meditations on writing and making for women and men, old and young, Jamaican and non-Jamaican alike.” So, I think anybody who is interested in craft, in good writing, if I may say so myself, and, you know, any of the issues that we've talked about today should read this work. You know, I, I must admit that I think I might just be, Jherane and Kristina, slightly older than you guys, just, just…
Kristina Neil 40:58
Just a smidge. Just a smidge.
Jacqueline Bishop 41:06
And after I did the, the, the… After the university, the Department of Literatures in English, UWI did that wonderful book launch for this book, there's a really young woman, she came and she said, “Can I interview you for my blog?” And I said, she's in Jamaica, said, and, yes, and you know? And she asked a similar question. And I said, I really enjoyed talking to her because it feels… I will admit one thing, it feels different talking to you, to you, like it felt different talking to her, because it feels like I'm talking to a younger version of myself. So in that sense, it feels different, you know? I will admit to that it does feel different. And I said to her, what I would say to you, you know? Our voices as women and black women and Jamaican black women, Jamaican women, our voices, too, are universal, you know? Our stories, too, are universal. So our stories can be heard by, can, anybody, anybody, because our stories and our voices too are universal. My cat is all over the place. He was sleeping all day, stuck up in the air. And now he's just like, “Well, I don't know who you're talking to. But I want to get in on this story.” (laughs)
Kristina Neil 42:24
Is that not the nature of cats?
Jacqueline Bishop 42:28
I want to get in on the story too. And all day today I tried to hug him and kiss him. And he was “Leave me alone!” But now he’s just like, “Mommy's working! Mommy’s working!” Right?
Jherane Patmore 42:44
So just one final question, because we will go all night if we can. Whose responsibility do you think it is to archive?
Jacqueline Bishop 42:52
It’s all our responsibility. It’s all our responsibility in the same way that what is happening to all those young women who are meeting, I’m sorry, in the same way that it’s happening to all those women, young and old who are meeting untimely deaths in Jamaica, and we seem to be stumbling over what is happening on that island, and calling it gender based violence and whatnot, when that can apply to women and men, and in fact it is misogyny, and we cannot seem to call it by its proper name, that’s all our responsibility as well. Our legacy belongs to all of us. Our History belongs to all of us. We have to, each and every one of us, take it into our hands and safeguard and protect it in the same, and try to build the society, the beloved community, the beloved country that we want. The fact of the matter is that certain voices, often times male, get prioritized over other voices, right? And a book like this tries to intervene in those ways and in those discussions and a podcast like this tries to do that as well. But it, it, it’s all our responsibility. Every last one of us, it is our responsibility to say no, we will not forget who Hazel Campbell is. We will amplify her legacy, we will amplify her life. We will hold her up and we will make sure that as many people as possible get to know who she was and the amazing things she contributed to Jamaica. Thank you very much ladies.
Jherane Patmore 44:55
And thank you. But I’m hoping everyone who is listening now, if this is your first time knowing or hearing about Jacqueline Bishop, she’s not kidding when she says she has a lot of Master’s degrees. She also has a lot of books a lot of work that she’s doing. Please check out Jacqueline Bishop, it’s someone who, I’m still not over the fact that I’m talking to you right now because it’s someone, you, you’re someone I admired over the years and for you to slide in our DMs it’s just amazing. What’s the name of your cat by the way?
Jacqueline Bishop 45:30
Salem. His name is Salem.
Jherane Patmore 45:33
Hi Salem. But thank you so much Jac… Our voices as Jamaican women central in your work across the work that you’re doing, ahm, just a part of your life you have made us centre and not the, I guess, the tokenistic idea of talking about marginalized voices. You’ve actually prioritized our craft, you’ve prioritized our stories, and thank you for the work that you’re doing.
Jacqueline Bishop 46:01
Thank you. I miss your beautiful face Kristina.
Kristina Neil 46:04
(laughs) For some reason turning my camera off makes the audio better, so, I dunno. But really, thank you. I think one of my favourite things from this conversation, so far, is you saying that our voices are universal. Like, I don’t know why, but that is supremely profound to me (laughs).
Jacqueline Bishop 46:25
Our voices are universal, it really is.
Jherane Patmore 46:28
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