The Tribe - Tapa blanda

Maruka is different to the other girls; she likes to hunt and fish deep in the forest, even though it's dangerous. But she should have stayed in the village the day the Kalinas tribe came and stole her mother. She would have stopped them. Two years later, Maruka sees giant white sails rearing up on the horizon. She is sure of a Kalinas attack but a deadlier enemy wades ashore and plants a flag on the beach. Her tribe welcome the pale-skinned men but are repaid with treachery and forced to mine the white man's God - gold. Maruka knows that the tribes have one option: they must put aside their differences and defeat their common enemy. And if the tribes unite, Maruka might even find her mother again . . .

Valerie Bloom was born in Jamaica and came to England in 1979. The Caribbean remains a strong influence on her work. She has conducted lots of writing and performance workshops in schools and colleges and has performed widely in Britain and the Caribbean. Her poems have been included in over two hundred anthologies, in the National Curriculum and have appeared in POEMS ON THE UNDERGROUND. She had been on many television programmes especially for the BBC and on many radio programmess including Women's Hour.