ERNA BRODBER was born in Jamaica in 1940. She is a respected sociologist and her published works include Abandonment of Children in Jamaica (1974), A Study of Yards in the City of Kingston (1975) and Perceptions of Caribbean Women (1982). She worked at the Institute of Social and Economic Research in Mona, Jamaica, from 1975 to 1983. She is at present a freelance writer, researcher and lecturer and runs her own research and study project 'Blackspace' at her home village in Jamaica. Erna Brodber's other two novels Jane And Louisa Will Soon Come Home (New Beacon Books 1980) and Louisiana (New Beacon Books 1994) were both greeted with critical acclaim. MYAL has enhanced Erna Brodber's reputation as a gifted writer and major novelist and was the Caribbean and Canadian Regional Winner in the 1989 Commonwealth Writers prize. "...Brodber's fiction discovers the various strategies by which the colonized person is constructed within, and in terms of imperial discourse, and the terrible alienation which results. How to fight back, how to restore the 'zombi' to full personhood? Myal demonstrates that 'human will, subversive desire, and the consolidation of human connectedness can still exist as effective forces of political change'..." Evelyn O'Callaghan "I am completely taken with Myal, its deconstruction of the colonial myth of domesticated and zombified subalterns; its celebration of what Toni Morrison has called 'ways of knowing beyond the five senses'... its rejection of simple binary oppositions in favour of an alliance of all who are willing and able to enlist on the transformative side of struggle; its beautiful, black-musical design of structure and language which challenges the reader and then clicks together at the end like an annunciation of light. With this novel, Erna Brodber has extended herself, becoming even more accessible to those of us ...who are ready to hear and to welcome her voice." Gloria Hull