And so it is just fascinating how to me this wide story of belief and the necessity of belief was hidden. I suddenly thought that the people who followed him would have had a very different story and of course with that kind of story always, this massive amount of people who believed weren’t the people who wrote things down, who got a chance to tell their stories. I guess, probably later on, realizing what a big movement Bedwardism was. And very much inheriting that story that comes from the class that I guess my grandmother represents: educated, middle class Jamaica who want to rise out of that kind of ignorance that traps the folk. I grew up with this idea: fascinated by Bedward because he was such an idiot. She would cackle, just laughing at what an idiot this was. In a Jamaican context, I’ve always heard about Bedward, but always that story is told in a kind of derogatory way. It’s always that kind of story that’s both right there but hidden. Kei Miller: I think for me the appeal of Bedward is the appeal of many things that occur to me when writing. But as is often said in Jamaica, “Belief can cure Belief can kill.” These beliefs are not so much connected to truths as they are connected to the stories we are told and tell ourselves.Įrin MacLeod: What to you makes the story of Alexander Bedward important? All of the characters that make up the community of August Town react to this according to their beliefs.
With this historical background, the story centres around the story of Kaia, a young boy who is punished by having his dreadlocks cut off (a moment that is also based on a true story).
He was eventually sent to a mental asylum, but he supported Marcus Garvey and his ideas informed both Garveyism and the movement that became Rastafari. He resisted oppression, called for what might now be considered Black power and preached to his many followers that they would all fly back to Africa. The context of the novel is the story of religious leader Alexander Bedward, a legendary Revivalist active in the early years of the twentieth century. As Jamaica turns 55 this year, while also marking 179 years since emancipation from slavery, the book considers ideas and conceptions of freedom. Augustown (Pantheon), Kei Miller’s novel about Jamaica, history, belief, race, and class, touches on a collective human desire to think about why we believe certain things.
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