debut: 2/16/17
38,480 runs
Freedom fighter and blue-eyed bhowgie of Guyana
The first full-length biography of Janet Jagan, by my long-time UWI colleague Patricia Mohammed, has just been published by Ian Randle Publishers. She was born and grew up in Chicago, and first came to the then British Guiana in 1943, in her early twenties, as the new bride of Cheddi Jagan. What followed was a lifetime of deep and significant involvement in Guyana’s political, social and cultural life, right up to her death in 2009 at the age of 86.
Some of the 15 chapters narrate Janet’s life on a chronological sequence, the conventional form for a biography, while others focus on particular themes in her work and character. The first two explore Janet’s childhood, education and young adulthood in Chicago and Detroit from 1920, the year of her birth, to 1943, when she left to join her new husband. Mohammed probes the significance of her American Jewish ethnicity; her family was completely secular, and organised religion was never significant to Janet (or to Cheddi, though his family was Hindu). In 1943, she met Cheddi, who in his seven years in the US had acquired both a BSc and a DDS (Doctor of Dental Surgery). They soon got married, and she abandoned her nursing training to join him in British Guiana at the end of the same year.
She rejects the common idea that Janet pushed Cheddi into a dogmatic kind of Marxism, which demonised her and undermined his “masculinity” as a man under his wife’s thumb. Both were deeply attracted to left-wing ideas as young, idealistic persons growing up in the 1930s and early 1940s; they shared political views from the start of their life together. What Janet contributed, as everyone seems to agree, was an iron discipline and brilliant organisational skills necessary to build their political movement. They supported each other and needed each other’s strengths; but Janet always preferred Cheddi to be the one in the public eye and never sought the limelight for herself.A multi-dimensional character who lived a remarkable life, Janet Jagan has been well served in this long but absorbing biography.
The first full-length biography of Janet Jagan, by my long-time UWI colleague Patricia Mohammed, has just been published by Ian Randle Publishers. She was born and grew up in Chicago, and first came to the then British Guiana in 1943, in her early twenties, as the new bride of Cheddi Jagan. What followed was a lifetime of deep and significant involvement in Guyana’s political, social and cultural life, right up to her death in 2009 at the age of 86.
Some of the 15 chapters narrate Janet’s life on a chronological sequence, the conventional form for a biography, while others focus on particular themes in her work and character. The first two explore Janet’s childhood, education and young adulthood in Chicago and Detroit from 1920, the year of her birth, to 1943, when she left to join her new husband. Mohammed probes the significance of her American Jewish ethnicity; her family was completely secular, and organised religion was never significant to Janet (or to Cheddi, though his family was Hindu). In 1943, she met Cheddi, who in his seven years in the US had acquired both a BSc and a DDS (Doctor of Dental Surgery). They soon got married, and she abandoned her nursing training to join him in British Guiana at the end of the same year.
She rejects the common idea that Janet pushed Cheddi into a dogmatic kind of Marxism, which demonised her and undermined his “masculinity” as a man under his wife’s thumb. Both were deeply attracted to left-wing ideas as young, idealistic persons growing up in the 1930s and early 1940s; they shared political views from the start of their life together. What Janet contributed, as everyone seems to agree, was an iron discipline and brilliant organisational skills necessary to build their political movement. They supported each other and needed each other’s strengths; but Janet always preferred Cheddi to be the one in the public eye and never sought the limelight for herself.A multi-dimensional character who lived a remarkable life, Janet Jagan has been well served in this long but absorbing biography.
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