Augustown: A Novel

Augustown is a 2016 literary fiction novel by Jamaican poet, essayist, and novelist Kei Miller. The novel juxtaposes the beginning of the Jamaican religious movement Bedwardism in 1920 with an “autoclaps” or calamity in 1982 in Augustown, Jamaica, a fictional village based on August Town, a neighborhood in Kingston, Jamaica. The novel explores themes of identity, religion, folklore, and the importance of history for contemporary life. Augustown won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde. It was shortlisted for the PEN Open Book Award, the HWA Endeavour Ink Gold Crown, and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and nominated for the Green Carnation Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction.

Miller was born in Jamaica and attended the University of the West Indies, a school referenced in Augustown. He earned his MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University and completed a PhD at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of a number of books of poetry, essay collections, short story anthologies, and novels. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has taught in numerous creative writing programs, including at the University of Iowa, York University, and the University of Exeter. 

This study guide refers to the 2017 Pantheon eBook Kindle edition. 

Content Warning: Augustown addresses themes of violence, domestic and sexual abuse, discrimination, and anti-Blackness.

Plot Summary

The story moves between 1920 and 1982 in Augustown, Jamaica, narrated posthumously by Gina, Ma Taffy’s niece and Kaia’s mother, after the police kill her. It begins in 1982, as Ma Taffy smells something sickly sweet as her grandnephew and adopted grandson, Kaia, approaches on his journey home from school. Her sense of smell has increased due to her blindness; 10 years ago, rats fell through her ceiling and clawed out her eyes. The smell is an indicator that Kaia’s teacher, Mr. Saint-Josephs, in a fit of anger, cut off Kaia’s dreadlocks after Kaia whispered to another student in the class. Ma Taffy, Gina, and Kaia are all Rastafarians (members of a religious movement that began in Jamaica), so hair is part of their cultural identity. Mr. Saint-Josephs is insecure due to both his internalized racism, although he is also Black, and the breakdown of his marriage following his wife’s infidelity. 

Kaia cries as he walks home, ignored by the principal Mrs. Garrick, or Mrs. G, as she drives by. To comfort Kaia, Ma Taffy tells him the story of Alexander Bedward, the Flying Preacherman. In 1920, Alexander Bedward, the preacher of the Union Camp church in Jamaica, began floating. His wife, Liz, reported that he at first floated in his sleep, but later, Ma Taffy, then known as Irene Mackenzie, and her family saw him floating amidst a crowd of deacons keeping him closer to the ground. During a service at Union Camp observed by a Kingston journalist, Bedward promised his congregation that on December 31, he would fly into the sky with the other prophets and rain down “ruination” on Kingston and Babylon, or white society. After weeks of buildup, Bedward began to fly after Sister Gilzene, another townsperson alive in both 1920 and 1982, led the congregants in song. Governor Leslie Probyn arrived with other white citizens, and one of the men of Babylon pulled Bedward down with a wooden rod. Before Bedward’s flight, many prominent white and brown businessmen had told Probyn to suppress Bedward and his message to keep the Black citizens of Jamaica from rising up and demanding their rights and equality. 

In school, Kaia heard a false song that said Bedward fell and broke his neck. Ma Taffy tells him that this isn’t true: Bedward did fly, but Babylon dragged him down. While telling Kaia the story, Ma Taffy feels Kaia’s head and realizes what has been done to him. This sparks the narrator, Gina’s, memory of Clarky, a Rastafari man who was beaten and had his dreadlocks cut off by the police. Clarky hung himself afterward, traumatizing Gina, who found his body as a young child. This event also traumatized Ian “Bongo” Moody, a Rastafari man who learns about Kaia’s hair and leads a march of the bobo shantis, the other Rastafarians, to the school to confront Mr. Saint-Josephs. While the marchers chant outside the school, Sister Gilzene sings the same song she sang the day that Bedward flew. After she finishes her song, she dies, the first fatality on the day of the “autoclaps,” or the disaster.

At the same time as the march, Gina sits with Mrs. G in her garden and looks at her acceptance letter to college. She can’t open it without Kaia and Ma Taffy, so Mrs. G drives her home. Mrs. G and Gina originally met three years ago when Gina came to tell the older woman that she had a baby, Kaia, with Mrs. G’s son, Matthew. However, Mrs. G mistook Gina for a housekeeping applicant and hired her. She also helped Gina take her O-level courses so she could apply to college. 

When Gina gets home, she sees Kaia’s hair. She marches to the school and leads the crowd that remains from the march to find Mr. Saint-Josephs. When she finds him, they argue, and he nearly punches her in the face. Gina then takes the scissors Mr. Saint-Josephs used to cut Kaia’s hair and stabs Mr. Saint-Josephs in the eye. She leaves him and walks to return home. While she’s walking, she doesn’t hear the police shouting at her to drop the scissors and put her hands in the air. They shoot her to death in front of Ma Taffy and Kaia, leaving her body in the street. Gina is the second fatality of the autoclaps. Ma Taffy covers Gina’s body in a white sheet, and the community gathers to play music and mourn Gina. Ma Taffy then demands they turn off the music and leads the group in song. As they sing, Gina’s body rises into the air until it is nothing but a speck of white in the sky. Gina then reveals herself as the narrator, floating above Augustown, seeing the past, present, and perhaps even the future.