Language carries memory
How Wi Talk
A living collection of sayings, proverbs, expressions, riddles and the feelings carried inside them.
Enter Kai Seh… →YAAD · MEMORY · 001
A living collection of Jamaican memory
Jamaica,
Told From Inside.
A home for Jamaican stories, memories, language, traditions, people, humour, history and everyday life. Told by us, remembered by us and reasoned through together.
EDITORIAL COLLAGE · YAADOLOGY VISUAL INTERPRETATION
LANGUAGE
MEMORY
STORY
IDENTITY
YAAD
The study of us
What Is
Yaadology?
Who used to say that?
Who taught you this?
Do people still do this?
What do you remember?
Yaadology is the study of us. Not from a distance, but through the things Jamaicans say, remember, cook, sing, believe, inherit, question and pass down.
Culture does not live only in national heroes, famous music and major events. It lives in school memories and Sunday routines; family sayings and market days; jokes, funerals, faith, work, resistance and the stories traded across a verandah.
Here, the grand history and the ordinary day sit at the same table.
FIELD QUESTION 02
What ordinary thing from your childhood deserves to be remembered?
What ordinary thing from your childhood deserves to be remembered?
Come Sit With
Granny Ivy
Some stories were written down. Others survived because somebody remembered to tell them.
Come sit awhile. There’s a story to hear.
Choose a thread
Reason Through Jamaica
Ten doorways into the memories, rituals and contradictions that shape us. Choose one and follow it deeper.
01
Language & Sayings
How words carry place, history and feeling.
02
Food & Memory
What the pot remembers.
03
Music & Sound
Jamaica through its many frequencies.
04
Childhood & School Days
Growing up, generation by generation.
05
Faith & Church Life
Belief, belonging and Sunday best.
06
Family & Home
The people and reasoning inside di yard.
07
Migration & Diaspora
What travels, changes and stays.
08
Then & Now
More than “better before.”
09
Parish Stories
Fourteen places. Countless Jamaicas.
10
Signs, Superstitions & Beliefs
The warnings, wonders and “dem seh” handed down.
A major Yaadology collection
People, Legends
& Living Memory
The famous. The forgotten. The celebrated. The complicated. And the names that still travel through Jamaican memory.
Folklore, warnings & “dem seh”
Things Dem Tell Wi
Beliefs documented respectfully as beliefs. Never mocked and never declared proven fact.
Enter the superstitions collection →Collected with care
Di Memory Yard
A growing home for the photographs, voices, documents and ordinary things that carry Jamaican memory.
Step into Di Memory Yard →A Yaadology interactive
KAI SEH…
Old wisdom still know how fi enter a modern conversation.
Explore the Proverb BankLoading today’s proverb…
A Yaadology interactive
PA TEE,
RIDDLE MI DIS!
One riddle. One guess. No peeping yet. 👀
Play the riddle archiveLoading today’s riddle…
From the Yaadology bookshelf
Me Granny
Tell Me Seh…
Shelly-Ann Shaw’s three-part cultural book collection.
Stories from the books may appear throughout Yaadology with their source clearly identified.
View the book collection →
One Drop of Hope · Jamaican Cultural Postcard Collection
A little of what
we remember.
Our humour, language, heritage and everyday memories, made to be shared.
Discover the cultural postcard collection taking shape at Yaadology.
Browse the Postcard Collection →In development · Not yet on sale
Free Resources | The Reading Room
There’s More to the Story
Explore free publications about Jamaica’s history, language, traditions and everyday cultural life.
Visit The Reading Room →Yaadology and TDC Institute
Jamaican Voices,
Culture & Creative Life
Explore Jamaican language, storytelling, humour, creativity and lived experience through a dedicated learning collection from The Depression Chronicles Institute.
Yaadology brings the cultural memory and everyday context. TDC Institute provides the wider learning home.
Explore the learning collectionThe Memory Yard needs ordinary life
Add Yuh Piece
Jamaican history is not only what happened nationally. It is also what happened in homes, schools, churches, workplaces, communities and families.
Nothing is posted automatically. Submissions are reviewed and published only with appropriate permission, consent and credit. Your family material remains yours.
What people will be able to bring: a saying, proverb, family story, childhood memory, photograph, recipe memory, belief, game, song memory, parish story, object story or oral-history recording.
Founder & Creative Director
Meet Shelly-Ann Shaw
Shelly-Ann Shaw is a Jamaican advocate, educator, writer and speaker whose work brings cultural storytelling, mental-health education, oral history, interviewing, media and community conversation into one living practice.
Through Yaadology, she is creating room for Jamaicans at home and abroad to document the memories, language and everyday stories that might otherwise disappear. Her wider professional experience includes local speaking engagements, international advisory participation and digital-media collaborations.
View speaker profile & selected experience →Speaking & collaboration
Work With Yaadology
Talks, oral-history projects, cultural workshops, interviews and moderated conversations for communities, schools, media and diaspora organisations.