English Lang. & Lit. Blog | Tómas Egilsson

Today is October 30 th , 1980. The Jamaican general election was held today in which the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) won the vote with 51 of the 60 seats. This is what the people of Jamaica hope will be the end of the political civil war between the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP). So, for this reason I would like to refer to an interview I had with Jamaican reggae star Bob Marley, after the now famous One Love Peace Concert in Kingston, Jamaica. It was at this concert where Edward Seaga and Michael Manley, leaders of the JLP and PNP respectively, joined Marley on stage as he sung his hit “Jammin’”. While this did not end the civil war, it showed a brief moment of unity and peace, in an otherwise cruel war. How did the idea for the “One Love Peace Concert” come about? Well it all started when these two men from rival political parties ended up locked up in a cell together. Claudie Massop from the JLP and Bucky Marshall from the PNP, and both of...

In Tupac Shakur’s “My Block”, he mentions the many hardships and obstacles with being an African American in urban America and what it was like for him to grow up in his neighborhood. Drugs, gangs, and murder are a few of the things he addresses in order to establish the main theme of spreading awareness of life as an African American and simply opening the eyes of the public. The first problem he mentions is the prejudice towards African Americans saying, “I’ve been marked for death,” essentially saying that life was decided for him as soon as he was born. He expands on this later on saying “the three strikes law is drastic and certain death for us ghetto bastards.” So, not only does he expand on the idea of life being decided for him, but also mentions how the judicial system is out for him and the people in his neighborhood. He then solidifies this statement, saying “the only time they notice a n**ga is when he’s clutching on a four-five,” stating that African Americans only seem ...

When I moved to Abu Dhabi I was 9 years old. I had never travelled anywhere outside Europe, and had a mix of an Icelandic and American accent. It was 2010 and my father had already lived here for a year. I’d only visited him once during that time. While there for three weeks, I visited this school called “Raha International School”. This was the school I was going to spend the next three years (unbeknownst to me, that number would triple). Before I moved to Abu Dhabi, I took some English classes with a tutor in order to be prepared for the fourth grade in an English speaking, international school. I really liked my tutor, she was super nice and taught very well. What I always found funny was that she would speak Icelandic with a thick American accent, while I would speak English with what I thought was an American accent, but my friends have since told me that I had a very strong Icelandic accent. She would ask me questions like: “How do you like the weather in Iceland?”, and I’d...