Land of My Birth puts the spotlight on the origins and consequences of Jamaica's fight for Independence. The author writes from a strategic vantage point within the country's first viable political party, the party that put Independence firmly and irrevocably on the country's agenda: the People's National Party.

While its focus is on the party in the four decades that straddle this Caribbean Island's political independence from Britain in 1962, the narrative sketches a panoramic context that takes in the island as a whole -- stretching from the post-slavery years of the late nineteenth century to the new horizons of the twenty-first, with its new challenges and opportunities.

This is a story of a yet uncompleted odyssey in pursuit of a national vision: one filled with ups and downs, exhilaration and frustration, remarkable people and surprising events. In this little book, new information is brought to light and new light is shone on old information; the often surprising ordering of the information and the descriptive chapter headings present a graphic guide through the early history of the People's National Party and of Jamaica in the mid-20th Century.

Particularly enlightening is the story of the party's first seventeen years of existence when it tried without success to win political office. This stage of its journey illuminates the party's struggles, the obstacles it had to face, its setbacks and successes: giving insight and analysis to the inner ideological conflicts, personality differences and divisions, and the mediatory and cementing role of "The Three" -- Norman Manley, Noel Nethersole and Vernon Arnett -- during that early period. Here we find incontrovertible evidence that Norman Washington Manley, while not the founder, was indeed "The Father of the People's National Party."