My childhood years of immense privilege were spent on or in the sea—at beaches for day trips, on fishing boats of various sizes, snorkeling Jamaica’s north coast reefs, in rowboats and small sailing boats. In one human lifetime—mine—I have seen the living sea of my childhood much degraded. And my work as an environmental activist has taught me that what I thought was an abundant, healthy sea has already been greatly diminished; in fact, that humanity has always treated the sea as garbage receptacle and endless source of protein. We are an island people, yet we treat the sea as if it is entirely expendable. Fish can’t done, sea can’t done, we Jamaican people say. But it is not true.
So Gone to Drift is also a lament, for the Caribbean Sea and all its dependents, its inhabitants, including us, we careless human beings. And as with my other novels, this is a love story about the island of my birth, the place itself: Jamaica.
About the Author
Photo by Michael Vicens
DIANA MCCAULAY is an award-winning Jamaican novelist. This is her first book for children and placed second for the Burt Award for Caribbean Literature. Diana was born and raised in Jamaica and has spent a lifetime pondering questions of race, class, color, and privilege in Jamaican society. Visit her at www.dianamccaulay.com.
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Copyright
GONE TO DRIFT. Copyright © 2016 by Diana McCaulay. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Cover art by Dadu Shin
Cover design by David Curtis
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944339
Digital Edition APRIL 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-267300-8
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-267296-4
17 18 19 20 21 CG/LSCH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Originally published in the UK in 2016 by Papillote Press
First US Edition, 2018
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