In the 1990’s, cable television exploded in Jamaica which sparked a saturation of North American culture on the island that persists to this day. Trudi Tolani came of age during that decade and although she migrated to the United States in 2001, never lost touch with her rural roots.
That background inspired Winnie: The Beginning, a book revisiting life in rustic Jamaica during the early 1980’s before cable TV set in.Those are simple times she yearned to share with her four children.”The freedom of just going outside and playing, and knowing everyone in your community is something I miss. On a Sunday, especially, seeing everyone at church and having that fellowship was priceless. Everyone knew who you were so your behavior always had to be on par,” she said.Winnie: The Beginning was a labor of love for the first-time author who lives in South Florida. The book, which was first completed in 2014, was independently re-released in June.
It is set in Piper, a fictional district in Manchester parish, a farming region in central Jamaica.
Its lead character is Winnie, a eight year-old whose impoverished life sums up the hardscrabble conditions that existed 40 years ago in rural Jamaica.Despite those challenges, her family gets by through resilience and compassion of neighbors, the kind Tolani knew while growing up in St. Ann, Jamaica’s largest parish.
She visits Jamaica as many as three times a year to re-connect with family, friends and island culture. Winnie: The Beginning is just that for Trudi Tolani.
“Now that I am writing other books, I am researching publishers that fit my genre of books. I have had contact with a couple that seems positive at this point,” she said.
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