Kamala Harris Irie With Bob Marley (and Jamaica)

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Kamala Harris talks w/NYT about how she connects personal experiences to her professional life, the breakneck speed of the news cycle, the inspiration she takes from Bob Marley and more...

Who is a creative person (not a writer) who has influenced you and your work?

Certainly my mother. She was incredibly creative, as a scientist. But when I think about performers: Bob Marley. I first started listening to him when I was a child. My father had an incredible jazz collection but also a lot of Marley. I saw him in concert at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. I was hooked.

Jamaica’s history is actually not that well known in the context of the issues we deal with in the United States. But Jamaica grappled with vicious slavery for generations, and then colonists, with a very strong sense of identity in terms of what it meant to be particularly a black Jamaican. A lot of his music was about what it means to fight for the people. He was a very spiritual person also. I’m very spiritual. I don’t talk a lot about it, but the idea that there is a higher being and that we should be motivated by love of one another — that also requires us to fight.

interview: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/books/kamala-harris-book.html

"Hanging out with my family in Jamaica..." (Courtesy of Kamala Harris)

Donald Harris reflects in this essay on the ‘Jamaicanness’ of his daughter Kamala.

"As a child growing up in Jamaica, I often heard it said, by my parents and family friends: “memba whe yu cum fram”. To this day, I continue to retain the deep social awareness and strong sense of identity which that grassroots Jamaican philosophy fed in me. As a father, I naturally sought to develop the same sensibility in my two daughters. Born and bred in America, Kamala was the first in line to have it planted."

read more: https://www.jamaicaglobalonline.com/kamala-harris-jamaican-heritage/

urbandicdef: Irie

[chimpymustgo]

1. She is so awesome. And she admits to loving Doritos:

-snip-

Election night, 2016. I sat on our couch at home after my night at the election party with a family-size bag of Doritos, which I ate by myself, one after the other, in awe and in shock about what I was watching on TV. It was a night that was bittersweet for my campaign, for all of us. None of us saw it coming.

-snip-

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/books/kamala-harris-book.html

But she's smart, funny at ease with herself. I'm onboard!

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2. heritage

Last edited Sat Jan 12, 2019, 02:31 PM - Edit history (2)

Kamala's paternal great-grandmother, Miss Chrishy dressed up in her usual finery, standing in front of the home at Orange Hill, St Ann parish...


John Harris:

____She owned and operated the popular ‘dry-goods store’ on the busy main street leading away from the famous market in the centre of Brown’s Town. Every day after school, I would go to her shop to wait for the drive home to Orange Hill after she closed the shop. It was here that she was in her groove, while engaged in lively and sometimes intense conversation with all who came into the shop about issues of the day.

Business was front and centre for her, a profession and a family tradition that she embodied and carried with purpose, commitment, pride, and dignity (next to her devotion to the church that, as she often said, her ancestor built). She never paid much attention to the business of the farm at Orange Hill. Her sons took care of that side of the family business. Her constant focus was on issues that affected her business of buying and selling imported ‘dry goods’ as well as the cost of living, issues that required understanding and keeping up with the news – a task which she pursued with gusto. She was also fully in charge of ‘domestic affairs’ in our home and, of course, had raised eight children of her own at an earlier age.

There was a daily diet of politics as well. She was a great admirer of ‘Busta’ (Sir William Alexander Bustamante, then Chief Minister in the colonial government and leader of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). She claimed, with conviction and pride, to be a “Labourite” (as members of the JLP were called) and for the interesting reason that, as she argued, “labour is at the heart of everything in life”. Little did I know then, what I learned later in studying economics, that my grandmother was espousing her independently discovered version of a Labour Theory of Value!

Her philanthropic side shone through every Easter and Christmas when she had my sister Enid and me package bun and cheese (a favourite Jamaican Easter fare) and other goodies in little boxes that we carried and delivered to families living in the area around our home.

https://www.jamaicaglobalonline.com/kamala-harris-jamaican-heritage/

[chimpymustgo]

3. Thanks for posting that! Can't wait to get her book - and put it on my all-gifting

list!

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4. .