Guyana

Dear People: Remembering Jonestown

More than a quarter of a century after the fall of Peoples Temple, in which the world witnessed the devastating loss of over nine hundred lives—including those of Congressman Leo J. Ryan and several journalists—the tragedy of Jonestown continues to mystify. In a sensitive account that traces the rise and fall of the idealistic community movement that preceded the deaths at Jonestown, Denice Stephenson uses letters, oral histories, journal entries, and other original documents—many published here for the first time—to bring this inexplicable event into a very personal and human perspective.

-Coincides with the premiere of the new play "The Peoples Temple" by writer/director Leigh Fondakowski (The Laramie Project)

Alabi's World (Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture)

In the early 18th century, the Dutch colony of Suriname was the envy of all others in the Americas. There, seven hundred Europeans lived off the labor of over four thousand enslaved Africans. Owned by men hell-bent for quick prosperity, the rich plantations on the Suriname river became known for their heights of planter comfort and opulence -- and for their depths of slave misery. Slaves who tried to escape were hunted by the planter militia. If found they were publicly tortured. (A common punishment was for the Achilles tendon to be removed for a first offense, the right leg amputated for a second.) Resisting this cruelty first in small numbers, then in an ever increasing torrent, slaves began to form outlaw communities until nearly one out of every ten Africans in Suriname was helping to build rebel villages in the jungle.

Alabi's World relates the history of a nation founded by escaped slaves deep in the Latin American rain forest. It tells of the black men and women's bloody battles for independence, their uneasy truce with the colonial government, and the attempt of their great leader, Alabi, to reconcile his people with white law and a white God. In a unique historical experiment, Richard Price presents this history by weaving together four voices: the vivid historical accounts related by the slaves' descendants, largely those of Alabi's own villagers, the Saramaka; the reports of the often exasperated colonial officials sent to control the slave communities; the otherworldly diaries of the German Moravian missionaries determined to convert the heathen masses; and the historian's own, mediating voice.

The Saramaka voices in these pages recall a world of powerful spirits -- called obia's -- and renowned heroes, great celebrations and fierce blood-feuds. They also recall, with unconcealed relish, successes in confounding the colonial officials and in bending the treaty to the benefit of their own people. From the opposite side of the negotiations, the colonial Postholders speak of the futility of trying to hold the village leaders to their vow to return any further runaway slaves. Equally frustrated, the Moravian missionaries describe the rigors of their proselytising efforts in the black villages -- places of licentiousness and idol-worship that seemed to be "a foretaste of what hell must be like." Among their only zealous converts was Alabi, who stood nearly alone in his attempts to bridge the cultural gap between black and white -- defiantly working to lead his people on the path toward harmony with their former enemies.

From the confluence of these voices -- set throughout the book in four different typefaces -- Price creates a fully nuanced portrait of the collision of cultures. It is a confrontation, he suggests, that was enacted thousands of times across the slaveholding Americas as white men strained to suppress black culture and blacks resisted -- determined to preserve their heritage and beliefs.

Guyana (Enchantment of the World, Second Series)

Describes the geography history culture industry and people of Guyana

A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905 (Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture)

The Elusive El Dorado: Essays on the Indian Experience in Guyana

The Elusive El Dorado is a thoroughly researched collection of essays on the Indian Diaspora in the Caribbean. This fascinating book focuses mainly on the indenture and post-indenture historical periods. It includes a list of emigrant ships, with dates of arrival that landed in Guyana from Calcutta and Madras. Indians interested in researching their roots will find this information invaluable.

U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story (The New Cold War History)

In the first published account of the massive U.S. covert intervention in British Guiana between 1953 and 1969, Stephen G. Rabe uncovers a Cold War story of imperialism, gender bias, and racism.

When the South American colony now known as Guyana was due to gain independence from Britain in the 1960s, U.S. officials in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations feared it would become a communist nation under the leadership of Cheddi Jagan, a Marxist who was very popular among the South Asian (mostly Indian) majority. Although to this day the CIA refuses to confirm or deny involvement, Rabe presents evidence that CIA funding, through a program run by the AFL-CIO, helped foment the labor unrest, race riots, and general chaos that led to Jagan's replacement in 1964. The political leader preferred by the United States, Forbes Burnham, went on to lead a twenty-year dictatorship in which he persecuted the majority Indian population.

Considering race, gender, religion, and ethnicity along with traditional approaches to diplomatic history, Rabe's analysis of this Cold War tragedy serves as a needed corrective to interpretations that depict the Cold War as an unsullied U.S. triumph.

Masters of All They Surveyed: Exploration, Geography, and a British El Dorado

Guyana (Discovering)

Suriname (Discovering)

Guyana, Fragile Frontier: Loggers, Miners and Forest Peoples