President receives volumes of Janet Jagan’s speeches

TIMES INT'L

President Donald Ramotar last Thursday received a copy of Volumes One and Two of late President Janet Jagan’s speeches in the National Assembly, the preface for which was authored by President Ramotar.
Professor David Dabydeen, head of the Caribbean Press and Guyana’s ambassador to China, during a courtesy call presented the head of state with the books as well as a copy of his latest novel Johnson’s Dictionary. Professor Dabydeen was quoted by the Government Information Agency as saying a batch of the two volumes of speeches is on its way to Guyana via sea.
Mrs Jagan was president from December 19, 1997 to August 11, 1999. She previously served as prime minister from March 17, 1997, to December 19, 1997.

Professor David Dabydeen presents a copy of Janet Jagan: National Assembly Speeches volumes one and two, which were recently published by the Caribbean Press to President Donald Ramotar
Professor David Dabydeen presents a copy of Janet Jagan: National Assembly Speeches volumes one and two, which were recently published by the Caribbean Press to President Donald Ramotar

A few days ago Professor Dabydeen also presented the initial volume of speeches of the late President Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham to Speaker of the National Assembly, Raphael Trotman at Parliament.
He also gave an insight into his latest novel. “It’s about the journey taken from the days of slavery and indentureship, when they were barely literate in the English Language to the point at which they won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature twice, so that’s the role of Johnson’s Dictionary in the way we achieved literary and linguistic excellence,” he explained.
The back cover of the book reads: Told by Manu, this novel journeys through 18th century London and Demerara in British Guiana, recounting experiences that might be dreamed or remembered.
With a diverse set of characters – including slaves, lowly women on the make, lustful overseers, sodomites, and pious Jews – these characters come alive from artist William Hogarth’s engravings; Hogarth himself also appears as a drunkard official artist in Demerara, from whom the slave Cato steals his skills and discovers a way of remaking his world.
From the dens of sexual specialties, where the ex-slave Francis conducts a highly popular flagellant mission to cure his clients of their man-love and preach abolition, to the sugar estates of Demerara, this novel revels in the connections of empire, art, literature, and human desire in ways that are comic, salutary, and redemptive.

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