Book Foreword

Foreword By Rt. Hon. Hubert A. Ingraham
Prime Minister Commonwealth of the Bahamas

It is a delight to provide a Foreword to Marina Gottlieb Sarles’ insightful collection of ‘snippets of life’ painted through the eyes of a child who grew to adulthood influenced by the traditions and lifestyle of remote Bahamian Island settlements far from the sophisticated and developed world from which her German parents escaped. Marina’s collection is an important addition to the growing body of Bahamian literature spawned by our growing awareness of ourselves as a people with our own identity—a whole made up of many different but congealing parts.

Her memories of her parents—of a strong no-nonsense mother with a mischievous sense of humour, a loving, gentle and spiritual inner core, and a scientific father whose greatest pleasures came from healing—whether ailing humans or broken animals—allowed her to touch on a spiritual side of life, and to relay to her readers a mystical world in which a connection with the afterlife, or conversing with animals, is as normal as breathing.

Marina’s love of her homeland and of the many characters that populated her life is brilliantly displayed through warm recollections of her special relationship with Bahamian housekeepers, cooks and surrogate mothers.

A descendant of a world created by Hitler’s racial and cultural hatred against Jews and other minorities in pre-World War II Germany, Marina is able to lay bare for Bahamian evaluation the dangers inherent in racial and ethnic discrimination as expressed by ordinary Bahamians against Haitian immigrants, a difficult but necessary reflection for Bahamians of all walks of life.

Rt. Hon. Hubert A. Ingraham

Prime Minister
Commonwealth of The Bahamas
Member of Parliament
Justice of the Peace