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Born Fi' Dead: A Journey Through the Jamaican Posse Underworld

Born Fi' Dead: A Journey Through the Jamaican Posse Underworld

List Price: $16.00
Your Price: $10.88
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A very good book
Review: A must read for anyone interested in the history of Jamaican political gangs. Laurie takes you back to the begining to give to a ful understanding of how these gangs began. From the political wars in Jamaica to the drug war in the streets of New York.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Born Fi Dead-Exposes Jamaica's Gun Obsession
Review: Although there were few things in the book which were new to me, I found it refreshing to read from an objective-thinking author. The book is also supposedly banned in Jamaica due to its political content, but is becoming a popular read for many Jamaicans in the US.

I enjoyed it tremendously.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: hatchet job 2
Review: As somene who actually lived through those times and lived in the Southside ghetto she writes about and knew a lot of the people in this book I must say that the spin on events that happened during this time is the same propaganda that was spread by the ruling PNP government of the 70's and this book is a disservice to the many people who lived and died during those times. We really did not do enough during the 80's to eradicate the Socialist evil that was unleashed onto that Land. As with any book proceed with caution and question the Author's intentions.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Hatchet job
Review: As someone who knows what it is like to live in Jamaica, I found this book to be an excellent hatchet job on those who opposed the government of the 70,s. I think that Laura has been made a bit of a fool by the Anansi types that inhabit our intellectual ghettoes,and also our economic and social ghettoes. She accepts without question the things fed to her by one side of the civil war. In her pseudo-objective (and very superficial),so called academic fashion she comes to conclusions that demonstrate her lack of understanding of the dynamics of the situation that existed then. If it is true that we are now suffering from the monsters that were created then,it might be because we did not do enough, in the 80's, to exorcise the demons that arose during the period of the 70's. Had Miss Guntz the intellectual capacity to adopt a more objective approach in researching and writing this book, she would have done us a favour. As it is, she has only added heat, and not light to, the current situation in Jamaica. Can I give her zero stars?

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Discard the rose-tinted reading glasses to be well informed.
Review: Born fi Dead is by no means the definitive work on the topic of Jamaican criminal gangs, but as it is one of only a published few, one is obliged to read it if at all interested in the subject. The American author, a Harvard graduate and self-styled 'street ethnographer,' carried out 10 years of intensive research for the book- some two years of which she undertook in Jamaica. It charts the rise, rise and fall (more of a stumble) of the notorious Jamaican gangsters - dubbed 'Posses' in the US and 'Yardies' in the UK. Laurie Gunst eloquently illuminates the hostile backdrop that spawns the gunmen, depicting their path from political conception to subsequent redundancy to their flight to America, where crack and easy access to more guns were conveniently waiting in the early eighties. Poverty, high-powered weapons and narcotics are the staple diet of the content of the book. All the major warlords are acknowledged - Claudie Massop, Bucky Marshall, the CIA, the Jim Brown dynasty, "Uzi" Edwards and the like, though some are portrayed with a little too much deference to the cowboy movies we're informed had so much influence on the protagonists. The colonial context and crimson history of the island and it's inhabitants is also covered, though with a hand towel rather than a tarpaulin; more pages are devoted to the surviving and/or imprisoned soldiers of the ghetto ranks, recanting the cinematic scenes from their virulent, violent careers. Ms Gunst, however, doesn't refrain from telling it how she saw it - pulling no punches when disclosing the catalytic role played by the fire-starting local politicians: ".......they got their guns from the JLP (a one-time ruling party.)" The book is an informative introduction to the study of Jamaican criminal crews and is worth a read, though you may have to look past the author's somewhat mawkish stance and her romanticised sense of reality: she describes a machine-gun toting soldier, carrying out what's known in the ghetto as a 'rat-patrol' as having "beautiful hands, poised ever-so-gracefully on the barrel." Their is a portent to that sort of thing in the book's introduction, where the writer describes how she conceived the book as "part travellers' tale." There is also a quite intentionally scaremongering afterword entitled 'Is Britain next?' that is covered, along with the rest of this subject matter, far more broadly and authentically in the book Ruthless written by Geoff Small.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A harsh reality
Review: I read this book and it opened my eyes to the root of the Jamaican situation. Born in the UK but living in Barbados it was most interesting reading of a political situation that a Bajan would never dream of experiencing...but yet we are all West Indians.

The author is obviously biased and they're two sides to the tale...however the violence we all know existed spoke for itself and having not been in the situation one has to depend on logic not to be mis-led. The main thing that came across was once your party is not in power you starve. Secondly the posse and yardie movements in the US and UK was based on gang turf for drug and other illict trades with political bais brought from Jamaica.

The pain is how many lifes were lost due to the latter. I never knew what "Green Bay" was all about........I always liked Kojak's version....the politicians losing control of the gunmen and trying to turn them against each other..........a setup to get rid of as many of them at one time. My point is let's put the bias aside...it is obviously pro-Manley...........but the book also shows politicains check for and care about themselves only and that is where reality conquers bias in this novel.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: the naked truth
Review: Miss gunst is to be commended. This is a book that no Jamaican had the gutz to write. Mr. Seaga is indeed one of (by no means the only) the worst tragedies in Jamaica's history. He is evidence that mental slavery, of which Marcus Garvey speaks, is still rampant among negroes in this country. Apart from bulldozing squatters and replacing them with his serfs, arming them with the help of the CIA, creating the Shower Posse the most notorious drug gang, and selling out Jamaica to white capitalists by trying to turn it into an offshore sweatshop factory, what has this Lebanese done for black people in this country? Burning Spear was right, Marcus Garvey words really come to pass.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: FICTION NOT FACT
Review: Ms Gunst is not bad as a storyteller and this book might have made a good novel. But after talking to some people she 'interviewed' and hearing how she twisted their words, I don't think it is worth very much as a work of history.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A harsh reality
Review: This book displayed a harsh reality of what life was like for many Jamaicans during this period. It clearly showed why so many Jamaicans migrated to get away from the somewhat savage-like environment that the politicians created for the less-educated lower income Kingston residents. I enjoyed reading a book full of harsh realities. This should show people, either PNP or JLP that the goverment is to blame for the condition of this beautiful country now and then.


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