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

by Laurie Gunst (Author) "The five men from the Renkers posse carried baseball bats, flashlights, and a set of chains into the basement of the derelict building on Pacific..." (more)
Key Phrases: gang truce, powder cocaine, New York, Jim Brown, West Kingston (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Nothing encapsulates the sad story of 20th-century Jamaica better than the name the island's poor give themselves?"sufferers." Their suffering is the result of political battles between left and right, the latter supported by the U.S. The posses?street gangs made up of very poor people brought up on American westerns, kung fu and Stallone and Schwarzenegger movies?were converted into political strong-arm groups; the warfare reached its high point in the election of 1980, with about 800 political killings. Many posse members then emigrated to the U.S., where they channeled their violence into the crack trade. Gunst, who taught at the University of the West Indies in Kingston and wrote her doctoral dissertation on Jamaica, explores the line between the underworlds of New York and Kingston and shows just how ill-fated the island has become. The title is island patois for "born but to die."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
This book's title comes from an anonymous poem and refers to the high odds of violent death among Jamaican gang members. Gunst, an academic who has taught in Jamaica, combines a history of Jamaican gangs with an account of her own personal experience with gang members. Tracing the origins of the gangs from the rivalry between two political parties in Jamaica, she then follows their evolution into drug-dealing on the island and in New York City. Through her narratives of her meetings with gang members, politicians, and other local people, Gunst presents a vivid picture of the unique culture of the gangs?called posses after the movie Westerns that strongly influenced their culture. She allows several members whom she befriended to tell their own stories, often in their own patois. These tales are inevitably tragic, filled with early deaths from drugs or guns, political exploitation, racism, and poverty. The book's structure is somewhat disjointed, following Gunst's peregrinations between the United States and Jamaica. This, along with the sheer number of characters, makes the story difficult to follow. Nevertheless, this remains a moving portrait of wasted lives caught in a culture of violence and self-destruction. Recommended for public and academic collections.?Ben Harrison, East Orange P.L., N.J.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks (March 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805046984
• ISBN-13: 978-0805046984
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #358,285 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Discard the rose-tinted reading glasses to be well informed., September 16, 1998

By A Customer

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.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Born Fi Dead-Exposes Jamaica's Gun Obsession, August 16, 2000

By A Customer

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.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy Reading, July 23, 2000

By	cherylldawn (Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews

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.