Dulcie Bishop Stewart Publishes Memoir at 90

Retired nurse-midwife’s memoir follows her from rural Jamaica to hospitals in Britain and the U.S., and the workplace remark that led her to write it.

MERIDIANVILLE, AL, UNITED STATES, November 2, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Dulcie Bishop Stewart, a 90-year-old retired nurse-midwife born in Portland, Jamaica, has published "Why Shouldn't I Be Me?: A Jamaican Woman's Life Story," a memoir that follows her from a farming village on Jamaica's east coast to hospitals in England, Scotland and the United States. The book is published by The Write Publishers and is available now on Amazon and other major platforms.

Stewart says she wrote the book because of a remark she could not put out of her mind. In 1979 she took a charge nurse post at the Veterans Administration hospital in Albany, New York. While she was working there, a supervisor said to her in front of other staff, "Coming from your background, why would you want to work with people like these, who are indigent?" Many of the men on her ward had served in wars, and some had lost limbs. Stewart reported the comment to the hospital administrator that same day, and the VA's head office in Washington, D.C., sent a representative to Albany to look into it. She writes that she never discussed her background at work again.

"When you travel internationally, you can experience discrimination," Stewart said. "You cannot allow that to control your life. I wrote this book for anyone who is facing discrimination."

Stewart was born in 1936 in Belmont, Portland, to a farmer and a seamstress. In July 1956 she sailed from Kingston to Southampton to begin nurse training at Ramsgate General Hospital in Kent. She qualified as a State Registered Nurse in 1959 and as a State Certified Midwife in Edinburgh in 1961, then worked at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London and managed operating rooms in Manchester and Middlesex.

In May 1969, recruited during a U.S. nursing shortage, she arrived in New York aboard the QE2 on its maiden voyage and joined the obstetric unit at Albany Medical Center. Because her British qualifications did not count toward an American degree, she went back to school while working nights and earned a bachelor's degree in nursing, followed by master's degrees in health education and health administration. She later moved to the Dorn VA Medical Center in Columbia, South Carolina, where she became head nurse of a nursing home care unit. She also served four years in the U.S. Navy Reserve before retiring from the VA in December 2000.

The memoir also keeps a record of village life in 1940s Portland: the shortcut to Seaside Elementary School through neighbors' fruit yards, the Happy Grove church bell that told the whole district the time, and the midwife everyone called Mother "P." Later chapters describe home deliveries as a student midwife in Edinburgh and the 1957 Asian flu outbreak that put her in hospital in Kent.

Now retired, Stewart volunteers at health clinics, keeps a vegetable garden and is an active member of her church. She still does the tatting and crochet she learned as a schoolgirl.

"Why Shouldn't I Be Me?: A Jamaican Woman's Life Story" is available in print on Amazon and through major book retailers. More information is available at https://dulciebishopstewart.com/

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About Dulcie Bishop Stewart
Dulcie Bishop Stewart was born in Portland, Jamaica, in 1936. She trained as a nurse and midwife in England and Scotland and worked in U.S. hospitals from 1969 until her retirement from the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2000. "Why Shouldn't I Be Me?" is her first book.

About The Write Publishers
The Write Publishers is a book publishing and author services company working with independent authors in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. Its services include editing, book design, publishing and book marketing.

Dulcie Lindsay Bishop Stewart
Author
dulcie.bishop@icloud.com