US-based Jamaican businesswoman reveals odyssey through horror, abuse

I Persist is Dr Patricia Smith’s latest book, capturing her odyssey through life-sapping abandonment by her mother into the arms of a cruel grand aunt who subjected her to daily trauma and abuse. Adding to her trauma was exploitation through burdensome chores that amounted to child slavery and neglect.

The book covers the familiar Jamaican pattern of migration in search of a better future by mothers to England and the early gifts of barrels, a supply chain that soon disappeared for Smith as her mother got submerged in a new life. It covers her early years in Spanish Town, St Catherine and rural Clarendon, then to Kingston and ultimately New York.

I Persist is ultimately a story of triumph over adversity, as Smith is today a wealthy, successful businesswoman, who splits her time between the United States and Jamaica, but an odyssey that exacted a high price that she has survives through a process she describes as “manage and control”.

The book takes the reader through a vortex of “willbreaking obstacles” covering the gamut of physical and emotional abuse, betrayal, and abandonment, assorted failed business ventures and bouts of homelessness and depression.

Smith, a former ward of the State, recently donated $10 million to the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA) a cathartic act in honour of the strides made in children’s services from the days when, as a ward, she experienced the horrors of abuse and deprivation in the system.

The book will be launched next Monday at the Edward Seaga Suite at Devon House in St Andrew, starting at 6 p.m.