Bentley Walcott didn’t set out to be an author. He set out to tell the truth about Jamaica, about labor, about the quiet, grinding resilience that rarely makes headlines. His debut novel, Jamaica: The Untold Story and Rhapsody, is more than a story; it’s a living archive of a vanishing world, built from the soil, sweat, and songs of the island’s banana farmers.
Long before the book took shape, Walcott’s words were already commanding attention. While attending school in New Jersey, his essays caught the interest of his teachers, who encouraged him to share his story with a broader audience. “They clipped together after graduation and said, ‘You have to publish this,’” Walcott recalled. That seed of encouragement would grow into Tally Mi Banana, the original title of the manuscript, later changed due to publishing requirements to Jamaica: The Untold Story and Rhapsody.
The novel centers on a young boy named Harry, whose life in the rural hills of Mount Hannah is shaped by the rhythms of banana farming and the enigmatic song sung by laborers, “Daylight come and me wa go home.” As Harry searches for the meaning behind the lyrics, he uncovers layers of hardship, history, and identity. The song, a staple of Jamaican folk memory and global pop culture, is reclaimed here as a chorus of survival.
This is not fiction for fiction’s sake. “Everything in the book is true,” Walcott said. “I grew up in it.” From the banana fields to the barter systems, from bullhorn messages echoing across hills to the sting of Black Widow spiders hiding in banana stems, every detail is drawn from lived experience. The narrative is layered with the complexities of agrarian life in post-colonial Jamaica: labor exploitation, environmental hazards, cultural pride, and quiet defiance.
At the heart of the story is resilience. Walcott writes not with nostalgia, but with an unflinching gaze at what it means to survive. The banana, technically a berry, but a fruit to every Jamaican, becomes both symbol and sustenance. Farmers plant it in stony soil, pray for a good crop, and battle wind, rain, and infestation to protect it. A single fruitful bunch can mean barter, trade, or a hopeful return on back-breaking labor. And yet, for many, the reward never arrives.
In one striking anecdote, Walcott describes how farmers could only count up to nine. When they reached ten, they simply called it a “bunch”—a linguistic stopgap for a numeric limit. “They didn’t know ten was just another number,” he says. “To them, a bunch was as far as they could go.” It’s a powerful metaphor for systemic deprivation: the ways in which entire communities were denied access to education, power, and self-determination.
The character of Useful, Harry’s father, embodies the generational knowledge passed down by word, not textbook. A veteran banana man, Useful teaches Harry not only how to plant and reap, but how to listen; to plants, to nature, to the unspoken codes of the community. “Put yourself as a character,” Walcott says, offering advice to aspiring authors. “Don’t just write a story. Live in it.”
What makes Jamaica: The Untold Story and Rhapsody stand apart from other Caribbean literature is its immersive, unfiltered honesty. It is a work of oral history dressed in novelistic prose. The narrative carries echoes of folklore, ancestral memory, and a biting sense of realism that never lets the reader forget: this story matters because it happened.
Walcott’s storytelling is enriched by the Jamaican cultural fabric: Proverbs, songs, beliefs, and the raw humor that helps people survive. His inclusion of Jamaican folklore isn’t ornamental; it’s foundational. “These stories are being lost,” he laments. “They don’t seem to hold on anymore. I wanted to preserve them before they pass away.”
The book’s impact extends beyond literature. Accredited by the Library of Congress (LCCN: 2025907179), Jamaica: The Untold Story and Rhapsody is positioned to reach readers in libraries and institutions across the United States. But Walcott isn’t chasing prestige, he’s pursuing truth. “I don’t think this story can be beaten,” he says plainly. “Not from the Caribbean.”
Indeed, there’s something magnetic about the book’s voice; confident, grounded, and deeply personal. Walcott’s writing doesn’t beg for attention; it earns it. And while some stories remain unpublished—“too much truth,” he says, half-joking, they remain in his reservoir, waiting for the world to be ready.
If adapted for film or theater, Walcott believes it’s the banana gang’s journey that would resonate most with audiences. “The song, the selection, the travel through the mountains—those are the scenes people need to see,” he explains. “It shows who we really are.”
In the end, Walcott sees his role not as a literary celebrity but as a cultural custodian. “I have a lot of stories to tell,” he says. “And I’ll leave behind what I believe the world should know.”
For readers seeking authenticity, Jamaica: The Untold Story and Rhapsody are not recommended, but it’s required.
