Marcia Douglas’s dreamlike mosaic weaves together ecological prayers, healing wisdom, and buried herstories from the Caribbean and the Americas.
It recalls Zora Neale Hurston’s time with maroons in the village of Accompong; traces a young girl’s flight from NJ to the Grand Canyon to escape U.S. immigration officers; follows an Ashante woman in the hull of a middle-passage ship; a mother searching across centuries for her missing child; and a wailing youth leaping through quantum gates, seeking liberation and the lost parts of himself—the whole juxtaposed against botanical, animal and planetary migrations and the riddims and chants of the cosmos.
By continuing the “speculative ancestral project” (Whiting Foundation) begun in Douglas’ earlier work, The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive further explores themes of loss, survival, and deliverance. Through an immersive storytelling, richly layered with drawings and footnotes on flora, fauna, and natural phenomenon, Douglas preserves and reimagines the “movement of Jah people” and the cultural memory of the African diaspora.

About the Author
Marcia Douglas writes across fiction, poetry and essay forms. Her work has been described as "Brave and strange... [with] constant traffic between this world and the next" (Colin Grant, The New York Review of Books) as well as "beautiful and otherworldly... steeped in history and rich with imagination." (Juan Vidal, NPR).
Website design by Omar Ali.
ANTHOLOGIZED in
Kingston Noir
Mojo: Conjure Stories
The Forward Book of Poetry
Home: An Imagined Landscape
The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse
Caribbean Erotic: Poetry, Prose, Essays
Cultural Activisms: Poetic Voices, Political Voices
The Art of Friction: Where (Non) Fictions Come Together
In This Breadfruit Kingdom: An Anthology of Jamaican Poetry
Sisters of Caliban: Contemporary Women Poets of the Caribbean
Jubilation! Poems Celebrating 50 Years of Jamaican Independence
Queen's Case: A Collection of Contemporary Jamaican Short Stories
Edexcel Anthology for English Language: London Examinations GCSE
Whispers from Under the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction
Come along for the journey, one story at a time.