About Joey
About the Author
Joan Pamela McDonald Hamilton “Joey” was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1960. She migrated to Canada with her husband, Arthur and their three children. Her odyssey of writing began after she left her homeland.
Joan has enjoyed vocational pursuits as diverse as banking, Christian missionary work, Royal Canadian Mounted Police contractor, businesswoman, and, more recently, authoring over a few decades.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in theology with a minor in guidance and counselling from The Jamaica Theological Seminary and has a deep interest in human behaviour. She takes very seriously the spiritual and emotional well-being of those whose paths interconnect with hers as she journeys through life.
Principled and caring for the welfare of others, she endeavours to help others in need and young persons achieve their everyday, short-term, or career objectives, whether through personal mentoring or previous Sunday School involvement over many years.
Joan became a Christian at the age of 15 years and found that her relationship with Christ is the foundation upon which her feet are most sure. She currently resides in St Andrew, Jamaica, where she enjoys writing.
About the Series
Josephine’s Jamaican Journey, Books One and Two, is a collection of short stories set in Jamaica's immediate post-independence years in the 1960s. The books vividly portray excerpts from Josephine’s life growing up between the ages of 4 and adulthood in four locations along the Spanish Town Road. Check out the map at the back of the book, as places have changed over the decades. It’s good to identify where places were situated and compare the new urban developments.
She tells us her story of venturing from Di Tenement Yaad in Book One to Out and About in Book Two, into the wider world, attending school, and much more. She writes from her perspective, a perspective filled with childhood innocence that allows her to detect nuances that adults often overlook.
Chronicling excerpts from her life growing up in that time, Josephine ostensibly records the country's developing socioeconomic and political scene as she grows up within it. The macro changes in the attitudes, cultural, political, and sociological tensions of the ‘melting pot’ of cultures of many people who have become one nation are on view. This beautifully illustrated book of watercolour images vividly portrays the unique cultural aspects of Jamaica during this transformative period.
One aspect is Jamaica’s colourful language. Josephine speaks in the language of the time, reflecting the fact that Jamaica is, in fact, bilingual. So, when Josephine was growing up, people spoke language along a continuum from Standard British English (being a former British colony) to broken English, Jamaican Patwa, and exciting combinations of all of the above. A handy glossary accompanies the series to help young readers and the diaspora understand the dynamics in the usage of language.
Her narrative is refreshingly honest, devoid of guile or recrimination, and filled with pure observation and questioning, engaging readers of all ages with its unfiltered truth. Join Josephine, her family, neighbours and schoolmates on life’s learning journey. The Yaad full a excitement; and when time you reach a school memba se, teacher kyaahn tell yu evriting a school; some tingz yu afi learn fi yu self." [The yard is filled with excitement, and when you get to school, remember, teachers can't tell you everything at school; some things are self-taught].
Walk Gud!