Opal Palmer Adisa: A Storyteller And So Much More
Appreciation
Writer, scholar, teacher, storyteller, administrator, community activist are all accurate descriptions of
Opal Palmer Adisa; yet as someone who eschews silos and boundaries, Adisa moves comfortably within and across these roles with ease as she navigates these creative, intellectual, and activist spaces. In fact, as Adisa’s high level of success and her professional journey illustrate, not only the possibility, but the joys and rewards of this multi-faceted, approach to her work. A storyteller who has always had her ear to the ground, listening to the (mostly) women around talk, and watching them commune, Adisa has built a multiple-layered career that draws heavily on the African traditions that so clearly shape Caribbean cultures.
I first encountered Adisa’s work through the collection of stories, Bake-face and Other Guava Stories (1986), a well-received work that centres on the lives of four rural Jamaican women. Literary scholar and writer Barbara Christian describes the female protagonists in Bake Face as “not the ones you might see on TV travel ads … but women who must struggle to maintain their integrity”. This characterisation of Adisa’s early stories captures a wide span of her life and work for the ensuing decades. And the subtitle, other Guava Stories, (1985), offers a hint of Adisa’s rootedness in a Caribbean, specifically Jamaican sensibility, including its oralvernacular traditions.
Since the publication of her first book, Adisa has gone on to add over two dozen more fulllength works to her list of literary accomplishments and more than 100 shorter pieces that include literary essays, poems, stories, and book reviews. Equally diverse and impressive is the range of publications in which Adisa’s work has appeared. They include: Black Renaissance Noire, California Quarterly, Callaloo, Essence,
Melus, The Black Scholar, The Caribbean Writer, The Gleaner,the Journal of West Indian Literature, The Jamaica Observer, and The Virgin Islands Daily, demonstrating that while she spent decades working in universities and colleges, often chided for being aloof ivory towers, Adisa has been deliberate about ensuring that her work is accessible to communities beyond university walls — that the people she writes about, are also some of the people for whom she writes.
Currently busy with multiple writing projects, Adisa’s three most recent full-length publications encapsulate the range of her work over the past four decades, all of which showcase her varied and sustained interest in women’s and children’s lives, Jamaican culture, and her love for, and commitment to, storytelling. The most recent, The Storyteller’s Return: Story Poems (Ian Randle Publishers, 2022), a collection of poetic prose whose subtitle, story poems, proclaims Adisa’s iconoclastic relationship with genres and boundaries. Organised around five sections, the sheer breadth of stories of the remembered and savored pieces of home, and of the joys and challenges of return counts The Storyteller’s Return
among, not only Adisa’s best works, but also among the kind of Caribbean writing that dwells on what it means to leave, and to return, either in the fullness of ourselves or in spirit. The Storyteller’s Return therefore harks back to what many of us will remember as our first encounters with Caribbean poetry in, for example, the writings of Claude Mckay’s Flame-heart.
Even as she skilfully avoids uncritical nostalgia, in this deeply engaging collection, the rich and textured quality of the poems throughout make it difficult to highlight a specific section.
Apart from its obvious stylistic innovativeness, part I with the inclusion of grandma as a constant voice and presence is compelling and resonant because it showcases Adisa’s sustained engagement with the lives of rural women (similar to the ones we meet in Bake Face). Through this integration of grandma, readers are also invited to share Adisa’s respect for ancestral knowledge and connections, and for those who can, remember grandmothers, mothers, and mother figures whose roles in Caribbean cultural continuities have been so central.
The opening poem in part
II, “turning” captures the vast terrain of subjects, memories, and stylistic choices that define this collection, and nicely sets up this 10-poem section which centers on the life of a particular girl as she comes of age. Quoted in full here, “turning” includes in its list of subjects, the presence of African ancestors, including the creatively remembered middle passage; it captures the sounds, sights, smells and, tastes of Caribbean culture, its flora and fauna, and the cuisine. Mostly strikingly though, this poem embeds the centrality of the storyteller as a custodian and repository of memories, that in turn captures the central point of this collection.
And in keeping with Adisa’s insistence on the celebration of ancestors, the poem “home 3
(for Mervyn Morris)” deserves its own space here. “home 3” opens with the powerful, relatable, lines, “Sometimes the only thing to say about returning is/there is no need to explain yourself….” The storyteller remembers much, including the lost cotton tree, as Adisa turns a well-deserved “t’anks” to Morris, whom she names as one of her mentors and literary ancestors.
Reinforcing Adisa’s integrity to honouring ancestral knowledge is another recent publication 100 + Voices for Miss Lou: Tributes, Poems, Interviews & Essays
(UWI Press, 2021). Adisa is the editor of this diverse collection of writings that pay homage to the life and work of Jamaica’s, and arguably the Caribbean’s, most iconic cultural and literary ancestor. To my knowledge, this is the first wide-ranging collection of its kind. This publication includes writing from multiple genres, and the contributors are even more diverse in terms of professional, literary, and cultural background. This publication also a reminder of the important fact that Adisa is not only a prolific writer fully invested in cultural continuity and regeneration, as well as an activist orientation towards writing, she is equally committed to expanding the number of literary and community voices, and exemplifies her commitment to the exposure and growth of other writers.
Another indication that Adisa’s work is not confined to writing is her initiative to host the inaugural Louise Bennett-coverley Festival in Gordon Town, October 15,
2022, where Miss Lou lived for decades. The significant value of such an event – to remind us of Miss Lou’s undisputed place in our cultural history, and perhaps most significant in the way Adisa thinks about her work, to keep cultural memories alive.
Given my own introduction to Adisa’s work and my association with her as a creative writeracademic, I am also intrigued by her insistence on making the lives and work of women, the visible trailblazers as well as the less visible working-class rural and urban women — part of our historical records. Portia Dreams: Biography of Portia Simpson Miller (2021), a children’s book, is the first in what Adisa expects to be a series of children’s books that will introduce current youth and upcoming generations to the important contribution of our women.
The clear female-centred, womanist inclinations of Adisa’s writing are self-evident. Yet this grounding in a female sensibility and concern about the lives of women in no way represents a rejection or ignores men’s important role in a fully functional society. Adisa was quick to point out that, like many other Caribbean women writers of the latter half of the 20th century, she is a beneficiary of the mentorship, support, and encouragement of Caribbean male writers, specifically Kamau Brathwaite and Mervyn Morris.
While I have already mentioned a few ways in which Adisa’s writing intersects with her social justice work, it is also important to highlighting some key areas of her work beyond writing. Upon her return to Jamaica Adisa served as the university director of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, Regional Coordinating Office, at The University of the West Indies, Mona. This position served as an ideal launch pad for her to reintegrate herself into the different facets of Jamaican life and work that she holds dear. Since then, Adisa has devoted significant energy and time to addressing gender-based violence and children’s welfare. This activist leaning that has been part of Adisa’s life for as long as she can remember was instilled in her through similar social justice work in which her mother, a lifelong community organiser, engaged.
Adisa has fashioned herself to be a well-rounded citizen. A family-oriented mother of three, she describes herself as someone who loves to “have fun, joke around, and spend time in nature”, which, not surprisingly, also informs and inspires much of her writings.
turning
in the house she shared with her mother and sister her bed was pushed up against the wall at nights the croaking lizards taunted her
Opal Palmer Adisa’s The Storyteller’s Return (Ian Randle Publishers) will be launched this Thursday, September 22, 2022,
6:00 to 8:00 pm, at 10A West King’s House Road, Kingston 10, where she will discuss the book with poet/ scholar/author Kwame Dawes.