Erna Brodber and Velma Pollard

Velma Pollard and Erna Brodber, two sister-writers born and raised in Jamaica, recreate imagined and lived homelands in their literature by commemorating the history, culture, and religion of the Caribbean. Velma Pollard was born in St. Catherine, Jamaica; by the time Velma Pollard was three, her parents had moved to Woodside, St. Mary, in northeast Jamaica, where her sister, Erna Brodber was born. They write about their homeland in a series of memories and stories of that lived and imagined experience in their many works: fictional, nonfictional, and poetic. They center on their home village, but occasionally move the settings of their writings to other regions of Jamaica and various Caribbean islands, as well as to other parts of the African diaspora in the United States, Canada, and England. The role of women in the patriarchal society of Jamaica and much of the Caribbean is also a subject of the sisters’ writing. Growing up in what Erna Brodber calls the kumbla, the protective but restrictive environment of many women in the Anglo-Caribbean, is also an important theme in their works. In her fiction, Velma Pollard discusses the gender gaps in employment and the demands of marriage and the special contributions of women to family and community. This study examines Erna Brodber’s work on a par with her sister Velma Pollard’s writing and is the first to do so, drawing upon original interviews.