Coolie Mother
Jasmattie live in bruk-
Down hut big like Bata shoe-box,
Beat clothes, weed yard, chop wood, feed fowl
For this body and that body and every blasted body
Fetch water, all day water like if the
Whole slow-flowing Canje river God create
Just for she one bucket. [more]
The above is the first stanza of David Dabydeen's poem, "Coolie Mother," which is in his second collection of poems titled Coolie Odyssey (1988). The entire poem can be found online on several sites. I linked to two of those sites which provide discussion questions and some analysis of the poem for a general audience and for students who are and will be studying the poem. And I'd also like to add two questions to think about:
--What (if anything) makes the poem significant enough to be included in a syllabus for classroom study?
--Does Jasmattie and her story belong in a canon of classic Caribbean literature? Why or why not?
