Slipstream: A Daughter Remembers

J.H. Galloway is a professor of geography at the University of Toronto.

Slipstream is an insightful portrait of two lives: a prominent Jamaican
politician and his daughter. Michael Manley was Prime Minister of
Jamaica in the 1970s and again briefly following the election of 1989.
He was the son of a leading figure of the Jamaican independence
movement. Although born into the island’s political and economic
elite, he became a trade unionist during his prime ministership in the
1970s adopted controversial left-leaning policies (including friendship
with Fidel Castro) that alienated Jamaica’s middle classes.

Manley married five times. Rachel, the child of his first marriage,
experienced a succession of stepmothers. She was born in England, but
opted for life in Jamaica until the 1970s when she went into “exile”
(today she lives in Canada). In this gracefully written memoir, she
describes her marriages, her travels, her education, and, above all, her
relations with her father. There is resentment at what she sees as his
neglect of her, but respect as well. Ultimately, Slipstream is the story
of two strong personalities.