Caribbean Mothers: Identity and experience in the UK (original) (raw)

Radical Caribbean social thought: Race, class identity and the postcolonial nation Article

The Caribbean experience, that first place of significant European conquest, colonialism, large-scale transportation and varying levels of forced or coerced migration and labour, provided the impetus for many 'race theories' of the 18th and 19th centuries. This article explores the engaged scholarship of radical intellectuals of the English-speaking Caribbean emerging from this racially defined colonial context that emerged over the early to mid-20th century and produced counter-narratives of 'postcolonial' and 'anticolonial' thought. With a focus on the radical pan-Africanist, socialist and neo-Marxist traditions it locates elements of radical Caribbean social thought within a larger radical global intellectual tradition and as a precursor in many ways to today's critical race theories/studies. It focuses on particular themes and methodologies that characterize this work and writing as well as its regional and international impact. Also, the significance of women's rights and 'gender' issues in this tradition is examined; both by its attention to the situation of women in writing and activism and through the important work of key women in these movements. Finally, the article makes a call for a re-engagement with this earlier radical tradition contributing to what Michael Burawoy refers to as public sociology, i.e. a sociology in dialogue with audiences outside the academy while drawing on the traditions of critical sociology.

Reproducing the British Caribbean: Sex, Gender and Population Politics After Slavery

Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, 2015

Rich in description and breadth of content, Incarcerated Mothers has room to deepen the analytical scope. Problematizing the tensions between oppression and resistance (and better clarifying the concepts) would allow for more about "what is done to mothers in and by these systems" and "the agency of the mothers themselves, their resistance and values that are of high importance to them" (11). Eljdupovic and Bromwich extend Andrea O'Reilly's idea of "Mother Outlaw" as a way to "bridge the gap" between incarcerated and many other mothers (21). There is room left to explore a link between empowered mothers as "ideological outlaws" and incarcerated mothers as "legal outlaws." Constrained choices are found in all mothering contexts but are particularly salient for incarcerated mothers whose decisions about how they mother and meet their child(ren)'s needs are inextricably bound in the social spaces in which their lives are embedded, structured by race, gender, class and other inequalities. Shame of letting others down may be shared among mothers, yet a freedom some of us find in letting go of the cultural myth of the "perfect good mother" by embracing a maternal role on our own terms, as "outlaw," may be less likely for incarcerated moms, ironically. Eljdupovic and Bromwich argue: "when women from the margins do mother, they place value on themselves and on children that the society in which they live has deemed unworthy of investment" (6). Stories about "Other" mothers challenging mainstream discourse on parenting and gender justice may help to shift the social devaluation of incarcerated mothers and their children. In response to women's oppression a new paradigm where we support amelioration through stable and caring communities for all mothers and children over criminalization holds promise for social justice.

Gender, Generation and Memory: Remembering a Future Caribbean

Editor's Note Working Paper No.14 is based on a lecture delivered by Dr. Alissa Trotz, Associate Professor, New College University of Toronto, USA. Dr. Trotz delivered the 13th lecture in the series, Caribbean Women: Catalysts for Change on November 16th 2007; this series is dedicated to honouring the memory of Dame Nita Barrow, Governor General of Barbados 1990-1995, and the first subject of the research project, Caribbean Women: Catalysts for Change. As a Caribbean feminist and scholar, Dr. Trotz mines the intersecting sites of diaspora, identities and constantly shifting Caribbean political economy. In the process she offers a searing assessment of a creeping social fragmentation in the region facilitated by the politics of polarization and division. While maintaining that we need to move past defensiveness and to engage each other, she proffers a different future and concludes with the gift of sociality. It is a social blue print from the indigenous Wai Wai of Guyana on how we can remain each other’s keepers. She uses three dimensions of Dame Nita’s public life to organize her lecture on the theme “Gender, Generation and Memory: Remembering a Future Caribbean.” These themes are the Social Geography of a Pan-Caribbean Identity, Caribbean Movement and Political Conflict, and Social Justice and Gender Equality.

The Politics of Memory: Historicizing Caribbean Women’s Political Activism - Verene A. Shepherd

Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, 2019

My talk this evening is about historical memory and what women of the Caribbean as individuals or as a collective, and Caribbean states more broadly, conscious of women’s historic contributions, have done with such memory. Memories can be both pleasant and upsetting and what we do with memories depends on the nature of the memories, our distance from them, our philosophy of life, our activism or political commitment and what Fabienne Viala in her excellent book The Post-Columbus Syndrome: Identities, Cultural Nationalism and Commemorations in the Caribbean, calls “the different national templates of memory. ”We can adopt a posture of willed ignorance – that is, develop historical amnesia, refusing to remember; or we can remember deliberately and act on them intentionally. It is the project of acting on those memories—should we choose not to forget— that is political about memory.

Memory, Migration and (De)Colonisation in the Caribbean and Beyond

Press, forthcoming). Ruth Minott Egglestone grew up in Jamaica but has spent most of her teaching career in England and Scotland. She has a background in literature (English and Spanish), education, drama and cultural studies. Her seminal doctoral thesis mapped the development of the Jamaican Pantomime tradition as a model of national identity and a new theatrical form. She is currently working with children in the field of inclusive education, refining a manuscript about teaching with a reggae sensibility in Britain, and collaborating on a biography of Roger Mais. At present, there are also two Shakespeare-based writing projects in the pipeline. Peter Ramrayka, MBA, CIHM, FIHM, FRSPH, FIHEEM, is author of the acclaimed monograph Recycling a Son of the British Raj (Hansib, 2015), which highlights the cultural transformational changes and challenges he went through in his early life as an Indo-Guyanese migrant to the UK. He was an officer in the RAF, and rose to a senior management position in the National Health Service. His career was interspersed with national, international and voluntary consultancies in the UK (including being appointed a Justice of the Peace), Botswana, Pakistan and Tanzania. Miguel Gualdrón Ramírez is visiting professor of philosophy at Oxford College of Emory. His work focuses on the interconnection between history, politics, and aesthetics in Latin America and the Caribbean, and a philosophical attempt at approaching these topics collectively. He is particularly interested in aesthetic theories and practices (such as literature and film) of this world region that critique colonial forms of self-understanding and self-expression, and contribute to new epistemologies of resistance. His work investigates a MEMORY, MIGRATION AND (DE)COLONISATION viii European philosophical tradition of history and aesthetics as challenged by the existence of the Americas. Bruce Nobrega was born in Guyana and attended Queens College. He came to England for the second time in 1969, and settled, just in time to be included in what is now termed the Windrush Generation. He studied quantity surveying and up to his retirement worked on various projects including social housing. He is a long-standing treasurer of a BAME housing association, originally formed for women; he is a committee member on various organisations connected with the community; and he has been involved with the Adult Literacy Programme. He is an activist whose travels have enhanced his knowledge and understanding of black history, and the nuanced effects that the various western colonising powers have had on their subject-citizens. Kelly Delancy is from Nassau, Bahamas. She graduated in 2011 with a BA in anthropology from the State University of New York and in 2015 with an MA in anthropology from the University of Florida. She hopes the information generated during her studies will be of value to future generations of Bahamians and others interested in the history of south Eleuthera and the Bahamas. Delancy currently assists researchers tracing Bahamian histories and continues to share information collected on community histories through the 'From Dat Time': Oral and Public History Institute of the University of the Bahamas, and through the Finding Home Bahamas project, which can be found on Facebook and Instagram. Simeon Simeonov is a PhD student at Brown University interested in the history of extraterritoriality and its relationship to diasporas, empires, states, colonialism and decolonisation. His work historicises the creation of the modern nation state as a process shaped as much by 'external' as by 'internal' agents and institutions. Methodologically, his scholarship aims at transcending the inner-disciplinary boundaries separating cultural, social, political and diplomatic history. It is only by elucidating the role of marginalised groups as political and diplomatic agents that we can fully understand the stakes of creating colonial and post-colonial polities and the political-economic system of global capitalism. William 'Lez' Henry, born in Lewisham, London to Jamaican parents, is the British reggae deejay Lezlee Lyrix. He is an associate professor at the University of West London and is renowned as a first-class public speaker. He has lectured nationally and internationally and featured in numerous documentaries and current affairs television and radio programmes. He also writes about many of the concerns of the African diaspora in the UK, and is a keen martial artist.