Miss Lou had the instinctive wisdom to relatelanguage to identity. As a people who have long since lost our identity, wecontinue to search for it.There is an interrelationship between language – thewords we use – and our identity. In that regard, Miss Lou helped us to rememberwho we are. However, mental slavery is still with us. While we continue to denyour own language, our way of expressing ourselves, there is no escaping thefact that our language is part of our identity as Jamaicans.Although a lot of our unique cultural DNAdisappeared during the Middle Passage, Miss Lou had the wisdom and the courageto grasp what remained of that DNA and give voice to the voiceless. She did itwith such decisiveness that I have lived to see the day when Patwa, or JamaicanLanguage as it is properly called, has taken its rightful place as an importantpart of our identity.That is Miss Lou’s legacy. - Beverly Manley-Duncan
