Customer Reviews

Born Fi' Dead: A Journey Through The Jamaican Posse Underworld

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

What author Laurie Gunst has written has been well researched and documented. However we will have some Jamaicans up in arms at the hidden truths of our gun crazy society. The book is consise and gives the reader a factural history ride from British Rule to Independence. What she has exposed is the ruthless politicians who are now more worried about the monster they have created.

From Kingston/New York/Miami/Dallas and now England Gunst has a book that moves at a exceptional speed I could not put it down and had to tell others. In reality she has written about facts that do exist sadly to the detriment of Jamaica.

If you read one book on Yardies/Possee's it has to be this one. It hits hard and for those of us around at the times of these horrific crimes it opens up old wounds.

Born fi Dead is by no means the definitive work on the topic of Jamaican criminal gangs, but as it is one of only a published few, one is obliged to read it if at all interested in the subject. The American author, a Harvard graduate and self-styled `street ethnographer,' carried out 10 years of intensive research for the book- some two years of which she undertook in Jamaica. It charts the rise, rise and fall (more of a stumble) of the notorious Jamaican gangsters - dubbed `Posses' in the US and `Yardies' in the UK. Laurie Gunst eloquently illuminates the hostile backdrop that spawns the gunmen, depicting their path from political conception to subsequent redundancy to their flight to America, where crack and easy access to more guns were conveniently waiting in the early eighties. Poverty, high-powered weapons and narcotics are the staple diet of the content of the book. All the major warlords are acknowledged - Claudie Massop, Bucky Marshall, the CIA, the Jim Brown dynasty, "Uzi" Edwards and the like, though some are portrayed with a little too much deference to the cowboy movies we're informed had so much influence on the protagonists. The colonial context and crimson history of the island and it's inhabitants is also covered, though with a hand towel rather than a tarpaulin; more pages are devoted to the surviving and/or imprisoned soldiers of the ghetto ranks, recanting the cinematic scenes from their virulent, violent careers. Ms Gunst, however, doesn't refrain from telling it how she saw it - pulling no punches when disclosing the catalytic role played by the fire-starting local politicians: ".......they got their guns from the JLP (a one-time ruling party.)" The book is an informative introduction to the study of Jamaican criminal crews and is worth a read, though you may have to look past the author's somewhat mawkish stance and her romanticised sense of reality: she describes a machine-gun toting soldier, carrying out what's known in the ghetto as a `rat-patrol' as having "beautiful hands, poised ever-so-gracefully on the barrel." Their is a portent to that sort of thing in the book's introduction, where the writer describes how she conceived the book as "part travellers' tale." There is also a quite intentionally scaremongering afterword entitled `Is Britain next?' that is covered, along with the rest of this subject matter, far more broadly and authentically in the book Ruthless written by Geoff Small.

Although there were few things in the book which were new to me, I found it refreshing to read from an objective-thinking author. The book is also supposedly banned in Jamaica due to its political content, but is becoming a popular read for many Jamaicans in the US.

I enjoyed it tremendously.

Riveting and aggressively reported, this is the finest study available on the Jamaican drug posses. It also gives a revealing look at their origins. But most of all, unlike lesser U.K. and West Indies-derived texts, it's exceptionally well written.

A must read for anyone interested in the history of Jamaican political gangs. Laurie takes you back to the begining to give to a ful understanding of how these gangs began. From the political wars in Jamaica to the drug war in the streets of New York.

I read this book in 3 days.. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the polticial system including the area leaders aka dons. She gives uncut stories about all the big mon that came up since the 1970s. She also gives great detail about how they came to Brooklyn and took over. You will be surprised to see how Seaga and Manley both financed the Concrete Jungle and Tivoli posee dem.

I read Shower Posse and this book is way better because the writing is better and it is non biased.

This is a fascinating story, told with great skill, about a very complex situation that is difficult if not impossible to examine objectively. I lived in Jamaica from 1975-76, doing research for my doctoral dissertation, and I have been back many times since. It was an unforgettable, tragic, and fateful period. Prime Minister Manley and his party the PNP engaged in a radical experiment to create a more just society that unfortunately divided the country into two warring camps. The opposition JLP under Edward Seaga took on the mission of saving the country (or at least the privileged) from what they said was communism, and naturally received strong support from Washington. Money flowed into the country and a lot of it went into arming political gangs to intimidate voters and disrupt political rallies. Your party affiliation could easily get you killed, particularly in 1980. Seaga and the JLP came to power and the socialist experiment was over, but the guns, gangs, and culture of violence remained. Today, Jamaica leads the world in homicides per capita, particularly in Kingston, and this gang culture spread to the U.S. and to the U.K. in the 1980s. The main problem today is drugs, not politics, though, as Jamaica became the major supplier of marijuana to the U.S. in the 80s and the major transshipment point for cocaine traveling from Colombia to the U.S. in the 90s. Seaga takes most of the blame for starting this violent spiral in this book. I lived in a Labor district, where Manley was portrayed as the anti-Christ and Seaga a deliverer. Jamaicans are still divided on the issue of who was at fault, but most are sick and tired of the violence and fed up with politics as well. I think Gunst has given as balanced an account as possible, given her informants and experiences. Another person, with different informants, would probably provide a different perspective. No one is going to find the "truth" to everyone's satisfaction.

This book displayed a harsh reality of what life was like for many Jamaicans during this period. It clearly showed why so many Jamaicans migrated to get away from the somewhat savage-like environment that the politicians created for the less-educated lower income Kingston residents. I enjoyed reading a book full of harsh realities. This should show people, either PNP or JLP that the goverment is to blame for the condition of this beautiful country now and then.

This well written, well researched book represents the unadulterated truth. Ms. Gunst writes as an academic, at no time pleading a specific case, but rather allowing the facts to speak for themselves as she traces the origins of Jamaica's present gang culture. She spares neither details nor reputations, calling those "bigger heads" who have had a hand in creating this Frankenstein's monster out by name.

Perhaps this is the reason that the censor happy authorities back in Jamaica have banned this tome, along with controversial songs like "Fire Pon Rome" and silly slackness terms for sex like "daggering". Thankfully, the most these cretins and their supporters can do to curtail free speech abroad is to crank out cranky, one-sided, negative book reviews on websites like this one.

It is worth noting that the only reviewers who gave this book a bad review are those who apparently have a political axe to grind, but whether they like it or not, the sad fact remains that to its undying shame the Jamaica Labour Party recruited and subsidized armed and violent street hooligans in order to consolidate its political power. Also to its great shame, the opposition party chose to fight fire with fire and follow suit, getting their hands bloody as well. Those who fault Ms. Gunst for bringing this indisputable reality to the fore tip their hand with statements such as, "We really did not do enough during the 80's to eradicate the Socialist evil that was unleashed onto that Land." Hmmm...arming the street gangs and promoting violence in order to ensure victory at the polls was "not enough", eh? I wonder then where, if at all, the line should have been drawn? Does the end justify the means? How many bodies in the street would be "enough" to ensure an outcome at the polls pleasing to Jamaica's elite and their patrons abroad?

Most Americans could never imagine a world in which one of the major political parties recuited the Bloods, Crips, or Latin Kings to ensure that individuals living in certain districts voted in certain ways, ways contrary to their own interests, but unfortunately, that was the reality in Jamaica for many years. This book tackles that reality boldly and unflinchingly, allowing the facts to speak for themselves. If some individuals cannot deal with the fact that the well-to-do puppet master who places the M-1 in the hands of his street level thug is just as guilty as that thug when his thrall pulls the trigger and murders an innocent, then it is that individual who is running from reality, not the erudite author of this book.

Miss gunst is to be commended. This is a book that no Jamaican had the gutz to write. Mr. Seaga is indeed one of (by no means the only) the worst tragedies in Jamaica's history. He is evidence that mental slavery, of which Marcus Garvey speaks, is still rampant among negroes in this country. Apart from bulldozing squatters and replacing them with his serfs, arming them with the help of the CIA, creating the Shower Posse the most notorious drug gang, and selling out Jamaica to white capitalists by trying to turn it into an offshore sweatshop factory, what has this Lebanese done for black people in this country? Burning Spear was right, Marcus Garvey words really come to pass.