Up for Air: This Half Has Never Been Told!

At the third anniversary of the May 2010 Tivoli Gardens incursion, the wounds of the residents are as raw as when they were first inflicted; hate for officials like the security forces and government and opposition politicians alike runs hotly through the veins of community citizens and their relatives far and wide. As the country waits with bated breath for the Commission of Enquiry that will bring the stories to the surface, the silent rage seethes in emotional cauldrons, like a time bomb, waiting to explode.This novella is Imani Tafari-Ama's imaginative conjuring of fiction from facts too gruesome to be believed and too horrific to remain hidden. This testimonial treatment of the Tivoli Gardens siege-as the Public Defender defines that remarkable event and the torturous road to a still unrealized recover-is the call of all concerned, to conscience and a refusal to treat silence as an option.While this novella is historically located in the context of real events surrounding the Tivoli incursion and refers to public figures that were involved in that incident, all characters represented are fictitious and unrelated to the citizens of Tivoli Gardens and the actual experiences that they went through during the security forces' siege of their community. Any resemblance of these characters or their stories to what actually happened is therefore coincidental. Dr. Imani Tafari-Ama is International Fellow and Curator at the Flensburger Schifffahrtsmuseum, tasked with formulating an African-Caribbean analysis of Danish Colonialism and Legacy in Flensburg, the Virgin Islands of the United States and Ghana.With a Ph.D. is in Development Studies and Masters degree in Women and Development Studies, Dr. Imani Tafari-Ama has lectured across a broad range of disciplines and on a number of topics including: feminist methodology/epistemology, action research and the policy process, the culture of Rastafari and African religious retentions in the Caribbean, thought and action in the African Diaspora, Dancehall, sex and religious ideology and culture and community development, as well as being invited to give special lectures on colonial history, violence and gender and development issues and Rastafari at institutions around the world.Dr. Imani Tafari-Ama is the author of: Blood, Bullets and Bodies: Sexual Politics Below Jamaica's Poverty Line, Up For Air: This Half Has Never Been Told (an award-winning novel; https://youtu.be/qQNYGjRFlwk) and Lead in the Veins (poetry) as well as several book chapters and articles. She is also a multimedia journalist who has produced several audio-visual documentaries including 'Setting the Skin Tone', which explores the catastrophic social practice of skin bleaching (https://youtu.be/VNwIZ_xHjm0). This eight-and-a half minute video documentary (produced in 2006) is an excerpt from her Doctoral research.