Martha Brae's Two Histories

“This book contributes to kinship theory beyond the Caribbean and to explicating the relationships among culture, land, and kinship in peasant economies. Academic libraries supporting anthropology programs on every level will want to have it. . . . Highly recommended.” — CHOICE

“A fine testimony to the ways in which good regional ethnography can offer an important contribution to central concerns within anthropology.” — Journal of Anthropological Research

“Besson’s Martha Brae’s Two Histories is an impressive work, bringing together various aspects of her scholarship, research and reflection upon her own biography. . . . The book is a welcome volume for all Caribbeanists as well as those who are interested in the contacts between Europe and Africa on the third site of contact and living-the Caribbean.” — Ethnic & Racial Studies

“This book about Martha Brae is also a book about a world that Europe and Africa had made together — and not always unwillingly. Here we are afforded, by this daughter of two worlds, an inspiring and genuinely original vision of how the Jamaican people came into being and built their own society.” — Sidney W. Mintz, from the Foreword

“Jean Besson’s efforts in this book warrant high praise. Words that might come to mind to describe her accomplishment and contribution to Caribbean studies are 'essential reading' and 'of central importance,' but 'fundamental to our understanding of Caribbean society' is more apt. The book is full of wonderful detail, hard-wrought from thirty years of sympathetic ethnographic and oral history research by this politically committed 'daughter of the soil' and erudite anthropologist.” — Kevin A. Yelvington, University of South Florida