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February 23, 2000
Douglas Featured for Visiting Writers Series, Feb. 29, at NC Wesleyan Rocky Mount, NC—Marcia Douglas, author and poet, will be reading selections from her works for the North Carolina Wesleyan College Visiting Writers Series, Tuesday, February 29, at 7:30 p.m. The event will take place in the Powers Recital Hall in the Dunn Center for the Performing Arts. The event is free and open to the public. Ms. Douglas will be reading from her two books that were published in 1999, a novel, "Madam Fate," and a collection of poetry, "Electricity Comes to Cocoa Bottom." Douglas was born in England, and grew up in Jamaica, where Madam Fate is an indigenous plant that has both curative and poisonous properties. There are many folk stories surrounding the use of the plant. "The story is of six Jamaican women and the ways their lives are connected through nature and the world of spirits," said Douglas. "It’s a story of struggle, survival, and healing." Her collection of poems, "Electricity Comes to Cocoa Bottom," received a United Kingdom Poetry Book Society Recommendation in 1999. Previously she received several awards for both her poetry and her fiction. The poetry in her book traverses the different landscapes Douglas has experienced in England, Jamaica, and New York. An assistant professor in the English department, Douglas teaches creative writing and poetry at North Carolina State. She moved to Raleigh from upstate New York. She completed her doctoral work at SUNY Binghamton, and then taught at SUNY Oneonta and Hartwick College. She visits Jamaica as often as she can because her parents and family are there. "Jamaica is where I get my sense of identity," she said. Book synopsis for "Madam Fate": This novel takes the Caribbean concept of "turnin yu hand" (that is, the ability to make something useful and beautiful from odd bits and ends) and extends it to the written word. It pieces together fiction with memoir, old herbal remedies, verse, oral narratives, proverbs and folk wisdom—constructing a story with many voices and the detail of a "crazy" quilt. The plot centers around a diverse group of Jamaican women whose lives become inextricably interconnected. The characters include Ida, an elderly woman who lives in The Garden (the island’s asylum) and listens to voices in her calabash; Claudia, an artist and volunteer at The Garden in search of her mother; and Bella, a woman who sheds her skin at night and roams the island. This is a story about mother/daughter relationships and the transformative power of women’s creativity. In the world of this story where the realm of magic is a part of everyday existence, "gardening" and "tree planting" serve as metaphors for a gathering of women whose lives swirl together in a ceremony of survival and healing. # # # |
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