num_pages: 80
description: Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze was a popular Jamaican Dub poet and storytellerwhose performances were so powerful she has been called a 'one-womanfestival'. The Fifth Figure is a book-length sequence mixingpoetry and prose which chronicles the lives of five generations ofCaribbean and Black British women of mixed ancestry.	Part novel, part poem, part family memoir, its structure is based onthe Jamaican quadrille, a hybrid version of the dance brought fromEurope by the island’s former colonial masters. Beginning in the late19th century with her great-great grandmother’s first quadrille, Breezetells a many-layered tale of love and betrayal, innocence and suffering,hardship and joy over a hundred years as each mother sees her daughterjoin a dance that shapes her life.	 The Fifth Figure was her sixth book, and saw Breeze breathingnew life into the dramatic monologue. Steeped in the history of Jamaica,the book develops the possibilities of narrative, voice and rhythm,offering an eloquent and empowering vision of Caribbean lives andculture.In 2011 Bloodaxe published Jean 'Binta' Breeze's Third World Selected Poems , a DVD-book selection of new and previously published work with live performances on the accompanying DVD. This does include work from The Fifth Figure , which remains available as a separate edition, nor the later collection, The Verandah Poems (2016).
language: English
title: The Fifth Figure
publisher: Bloodaxe Books