Labor Day in Brooklyn

About the Book

This poem and the accompanying pictures awaken in one the spirit of our home town. The pictures are vibrant and make you feel like gyrating to the music as you read the poem.

Yvonne Moore

This book is very informative and captures the enthusiasm and splendor that pervades the greatest festival in Brooklyn during the summer, the West Indian Labor Day parade. I believe that it should be placed in the libraries and other community outreach locations where it can be accessible to visitors and other residents of the five boroughs.

Clyde Henry

I was born in the United States but my mother has always instilled in me a love of my West Indian roots and culture including an appreciation of the West Indian Day parade. Her poem “Labor Day in Brooklyn”, brings back fond memories of my childhood when I looked forward to going out to the parade on Eastern Parkway and watching in awe the beautiful costumes, seeing the enthusiastic masqueraders and remembering how we danced to the scintillating rhythms of the steelband and brass bands as they blasted away the latest calypsos from the trucks. Congratulations Mother.

Andrea Marques

About the Author

Joyce Eulalie Anderson is a retired teacher from the New York City Department of Education but the teacher in her continues to thrive as a minister/teacher affiliated with the Universal Foundation for Better Living. Innately, she is an artist, a poet and a lover of people everywhere. She is married, has one daughter and one grand daughter. She lives in Brooklyn, New York where the action takes place annually. As a native of Trinidad and Tobago, she is well able to appreciate the splendor, the vibrancy of the colors, the music and all the creativity displayed at the West Indian Day carnival which is the topic of her poem, "Labor Day in Brooklyn," even though she does not actually 'play mas' as they say. The poem captures the beauty, the exuberant spirit of joy and gay abandon that pervades the day and the nostalgia that is shared on these occasions.