Brown Face, Big Master

Joyce Gladwell grew up in Jamaica, a ‘brown face’ in a country where black and white were often at opposite ends of the social scale. ‘Big Master’ (in the country dialect she used as a child) is God.
First published in 1969, the second edition of this open, forthright story of her life reveals a deep awareness of some of the major social issues and personal problems of our time – race, colour, human relationships, mixed marriage, the search for God. With vivid descriptions of people and her surroundings, she tells of her Jamaican school-days and the attitudes and prejudices which influenced her; of her life as a psychology student at London University; of the discrimination against her which came to a head when her proposed marriage to an Englishman was opposed by his family; and of her early problems of adjustment in marriage.