Pocomania and London Calling

by Una Marson

Two plays from one of Jamaica’s most important feminists and dramatists. This first publication of Una Marson’s insightful and engaging dramatic work is long overdue. Pocomania is among the most important Caribbean plays ever written. First staged at the dawn of the region’s stride toward nationalism and independence, it heralded a new era of Jamaican and Caribbean drama, one unafraid of taking a serious look at the people, the culture and the language. Though London Calling features citizens from a fictional country, the play uncovers the all too real anxieties surrounding race, class, identity and migration in early twentieth century London. These plays grapple with class, race, gender, language and culture as they explore the tensions at the nexus of prejudice and the performance of blackness.

Genres: Plays, Drama

150 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2016

About the author

Una Maud Victoria Marson was a Jamaican feminist, activist and writer, producing poems, plays and radio programmes.

She travelled to London in 1932 and became the first black woman to be employed by the BBC during World War II. In 1942, she became producer of the programme Calling the West Indies, turning it into Caribbean Voices, which became an important forum for Caribbean literary work.

Reviews

[Shivanee Ramlochan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una Marson's plays being revived in print is no small thing.

Unconventionally progressive in her time, Marson's ambitions were unapologetically feminist. That Pocomania, written in 1938, represents a groundbreaking moment in Jamaican theatre, is as much a feminist accomplishment as it is a national and cultural one.

Marson was intersectional in her politics, and it shows in her writing. Well before Crenshaw's introduction of intersectionality to academic and political discourse in the 1980s, Marson was living the rhetoric. These, therefore, are bold plays written and executed before their time, quite possibly without the buttressing of similarly expansive, progressive vocabularies of inclusion we benefit from in 2018.

They should be staged, interrogated, reanimated, and Una Marson's name should be better known.

[Hannah Lobban · Rating 4 out of 5]

London Calling was just delightful.

[Tonje Beisland]

Bare Pocomania - igjen; hvorfor utgis alle skuespill i samlinger?

[alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Kev Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

can appreciate for what it doing at its time. but nothing remarkable.

[María · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 it was decent