WHEN WE first went to New York to interview Jamaican migrants for our project, their stories in many ways echoed those we had already heard in Britain and Canada, but we were taken by surprise by one sharp difference. Almost unanimously, however materially successful, and often despite having taken American citizenship, they emphatically rejected the possibility that they had become Americans. As one woman put it, "I'm not American. I have American citizenship, but I'm not an American. I'm a Jamaican."
This has also been the finding of recent American researchers. While in both Britain and Canada, we found migrants more likely to describe themselves as having acquired a mixed identity, whether as 'Jamaican Canadian,' or in more complex ways, migrants to the United States. Almost all saw themselves quite simply as Jamaicans.
This is not what might be expected. There seems to be little difference in terms of overall black-white occupational inequalities between Britain, Canada and the United States: in each country the broad figures show twice as many blacks as whites unemployed, half as many as whites in professional jobs, and so on. But in the United States wage rates are highest, and in addition, West Indians there are better educated and occupationally more successful than indigenous African Americans. Hence, on a simple materialistic basis, Jamaicans in America should be more likely to identify with their new country. Why is this not so?
It is, of course, impossible to make more than suggestive comparisons, not only because of the number of our interviews, but also because our migrants reflect the historical changes in migration currents. Thus, those who came from Jamaica to Britain nearly all arrived between the late 1940s and the early 1960s, before more restrictive immigration legislation was imposed.
IMMIGRATION POLICIES
Later migrants most often went to the United States and Canada, which both switched to more open immigration policies from the early 1970s. Hence, one reason why migrants to Britain are less likely to think of themselves as straightforwardly Jamaican could be because they have spent much more of their lives away from Jamaica. It is also important to remember that Jamaica itself changed over these decades.
The older migrants had grown up in a Jamaican society in which race and class were very closely tied together; they expected whites to be at the top,and indeed could feel disconcerted when they were not. But the younger migrants were leaving a Jamaica which was becoming racially more open, and its black majority population more self-confident; and thus may have been more likely to feel surprise and anger at experiencing racial discrimination in North America than the older generation had been in Britain. On the other hand, time does not help to explain the contrast in attitudes between migrants to Canada and the United States, which although parallel in time, is almost as different as between migrants to the United States and Britain.
There must have been other factors also at play. What other possibilities are suggested by the experience of migration which were recounted to us?
Let us consider three issues: firstly, culture shock on first arrival; secondly, the implications of the immigration process; and thirdly, different forms of racism. Lastly, we shall then return to the issue of identity.
CULTURE SHOCK
Strikingly few differences between destinations show up when we look at first impressions on arrival in the new country. The dashing of dreams by reality is a recurring story, whatever the period. Most migrants set out with high hopes. Thus, Selvin Green recalls how "We know everything about England from starting school. I walk along the road with a flag - red, white and blue. So everybody said the streets of London is paved with gold. And now they say, 'you can come!' And we are going to the mother country." Most also undertook elaborate preparations. They had to get proper photographs taken, go to Spanish Town to get their passports, and very often buy smart clothes for the journey: elaborate dresses, or tailor-made suits with jacket and tie. "You had to travel in style."
On arriving, the first unexpected shock was simply climatic, leaving the tropics for the cold north. Rufus Rawlings came to Britain by boat as an RAF volunteer in 1945: "We landed on the Clyde. Imagine that! Imagine that! On a grey, March morning. Foggy! Coming from Jamaica! You want to go home right away!" Selvin Green remembers the snow, his chilblains, the windowsill outside used as a food fridge: "Man, it was so cold!" These feelings are closely echoed by the younger migrants to North America.
Andrea Sole remembers as a child emerging from her plane in Canada, and literally feeling a shiver of excitement at the clear air and the ice-sheathed ground: "It looked like I was standing in a freezer." Belle Dickens, coming as a student to Toronto, remembers similarly, "I'm freezing! October! And I'm wearing sandals!" And when she came to New York, Gene Trelissick, whose friends had been saying, "You're going to a better place," complained, "Nobody ever tells you that it snows, it gets cold, the streets are not lined with gold."
Vivia Perrin had a particularly bad start when at the age of seven she left her grandparents to fly to London and rejoin her parents. "Nobody bothered to think that it was in the middle of winter, in the heart of January."
They were dressed up with big summer hats, "these pretty boleros, blue dresses, my sister and I, we looked like little dolls! And this one little grip between us. I've still got that grip today." When they landed, there was this thing on the ground called 'snow'. Now me, in my white shoes and my white socks, had to step off the plane, walk right across the tarmac, and I thought I was going to die. And it was the hostess who really saw our plight - we're so cold, and bless that hostess - she went back on the plane and gave us some blankets to wrap ourselves in.
To make matters worse, due to an accident her family missed the children's coach at Victoria, where they were eventually found by a porter. Although in the end a very successful migrant, it took a long time for Vivia to put all this shock behind her. Her grandfather had told her, "If you go and you don't like it, you come straight back." So from that moment, I hated it. Even if it was going to be nice, I hated it. I wanted to come back!
SIGNS OF POVERTY
Vivia blamed her mother for it all. "So for many, many, many years, I was, and I'm still, a little bit aloof from my mum - I hated my mother for years, for bringing me to Britain."
The signs of poverty, both among white people and in the degraded city environment, were indeed the second shock. Rufus was astonished, on reaching Britain, to "see white men sweeping the streets, right" We couldn't believe". Lola Woods thought Britain 'backward' when she saw housewives washing the street pavement in front of their houses, 'white people on their knees, scrubbing the streets'. Josephine Buxton, who had been living in a two-room village board house with a verandah, now found herself living with her husband in one room: "a room was all you could have in those days. And I tell you, that was the bed, that was the cooker, that was everything in the room - and no bathroom, and an outside toilet. That was some of the living that was a little bit lower than what we had left home." Equally off-putting was the general grime of British cities, then still massively polluted by millions of coal fires. Instead of the 'lovely little cottages' which Chris Bartley had expected, she saw 'all these chimneys'.
Rose Lyle was astonished that in London "the buildings were so black and horrible" and she asked, "Don't they ever clean them. I thought it was the dirtiest place I'd ever seen in my life!"
Again there were parallels in the feelings of later migrants to the United States - although not to Canada. Stuart Campbell, now a New York accountant, remembered:
One of the worst things in my life was actually coming here. "I was overwhelmed really, especially when I went to Manhattan.
These wide, huge streets, these tall buildings. But to some extent, I was a little disappointed, because you hear stories of America, you didn't think they have potholes and broken down buildings. - There were also poor people here too, living real tough lives."
The Immigration Process
Whatever their destination, as we have seen, over half of the migrants came to join kin: mostly parents or spouses who had gone ahead. Thus only a minority were affected by differences and changes in immigration processes, but for some of them this could shape their experiences. It is important to note that the realities, as opposed to the official rules, of immigration processes are not well documented, both because of the unknown proportion who enter improperly, and because of the political need of the authorities to present politically acceptable figures. But in a nutshell: up until the early 1960s migrants to Britain entered easily under an open system, whether or not they had work already fixed or already had family members in Britain. Many were deliberately encouraged to migrate to Britain through official recruitment policies in the West Indies, such as by London Transport. From the mid-1960s, however, just as Britain imposed more restrictive rules, both Canada and the United States became more open, dropping earlier racial quota policies, while nevertheless maintaining selective processes. Since then, all three countries have operated systems primarily based on either work qualifications or family reunification. But while in the late 1960s Linton Black could still enter the United States legally as a farm labourer, the demand is now for much better-qualified workers: hence the easiest route for most Jamaicans is through a parent child family connection. Even then, however, moving from being a visitor to becoming a resident with a public right to work is a complicated and difficult process.
As a result, the majority of those who came to the United States and also some to Canada had at some stage skipped the rules. Typically this was either through manipulating kinship or the form of visa, or both.
Even Linton never intended to stay as a farm labourer. After only three weeks living in a fieldworkers cabin in the American South, he escaped to the New York region, where after a month he found an American girlfriend, moved in with her and married her. I got married because that was the only way I could stay in the country. They stayed together over ten years and had two children, but in retrospect he feels they had little in common, we wasn't on the same wavelength.
Similarly in the 1980s Patsy Clark came on a tourist visa to visit an uncle, disappeared to the west under a false name, and then regularised her position by marrying an American,
with whom she still lives. Two other American migrants also came through spouses, from whom they fairly soon split. Two others similarly reached Canada. The most unusual was Winston Lloyd. He met his Canadian wife in a Jamaican beachside bar through my bigger brother. He was dealing with her sister, at the time. Winston just reason for a while things worked out and we start love each other. After six months living together by the sea, 'di money run out', she went back to Canada, and a year later in 1988 they married 'up the beach at a pastor man yard and he followed her. They were together, migrating between their two countries, for ten years.
Family likenesses could also be used. One woman was able to enter New York by pretending she was one of her cousins and using her papers: 'one of her cousin paper, passport and thing. Much more often, however, our Jamaican migrants came in to visit family on tourist visas, and then immediately looked for ways of staying on.
There could be serious emotional consequences from this, for without official papers they could not respond to a crisis at home by a visit, for they would not have been readmitted as migrants on their return. Already lonely in an unhappy marriage, when Stella Wadham's grandmother died during her first two years in New York in the early 1990s, and she could not go to her funeral, Stella still feels that was the worst thing in her life: Stuck, no papers, and couldn't go home. And that was, like, totally devastating. That killed me. I just wanted to go home. Every time I hear a plane, I would weep. But when she phoned, her family said, Your grandmother would not want to see you give up just throwing away everything you've spent the last years trying to do.
Farmwork
In terms of work, the effects could be even more lasting, for being illegal has meant they have been confined to the informal sector, thus severely constraining any hopes of advancement. For men, informal work opportunities are particularly unpromising. Thus Winston found that in provincial Canada 'the one work me get is farmwork', and the farmers were suspicious of him. He did no better after going back to school for a certificate. So he returned to dealing. You see fi survive. Because, if you have a youth (child) and him want food, you have fe go to any measures. And when me can't get work me have fi do something. So then you start deal drugs.
In New York Selassie Jordan makes a more successful living as a street trader, selling tropical black soaps and creams, aloe and other Caribbean items, and taking American clothes back to sell in Kingston. I do almost everything on a small basis, because it is not like I have that much money. And I'm just a small, small man liven'' and livin'' around di system to tell you di truth. Living around the system. Refuse to comply with it. In particular, he feels he cannot afford to pay a trading licence. I don't have a licence to hustle, to do panhandling. Cops come, they ticket me. Sometimes I just be straight up with judges, man: You gotta leave poor people alone. Me get over 2,000 tickets over a period of three year, and I haven't paid a cent. By the time me fi go deal with it, yow Jamaica he is off back home.
More typically, men got paid manual jobs by evading the social security regulations. This meant that they were always vulnerable. Spurgeon White came in as a stowaway in a boat from The Bahamas in 1965, and he is still working as an illegal immigrant today. I get lost in the society here I didn't have no papers. I've been living in America all these years as a fugitive.
He has never been able to revisit Jamaica. He survived under an alias, using a false Social Security number: You just make up one! They didn't question you. Robert Austin also had no papers, so he pretended to be one of his cousins. I worked in his name, so I would use his social security. Because at that time, they didn't really ask you to bring it, you just give them a number. Eventually he came to realise that with several of the guys who were stacking in the supermarket with him, it wasn't their real names they were working in either. He was able to get a credit card, which he needed for a driving licence, with the help of an ex-girlfriend by putting both of their names on the card. Finally, after five years of these subterfuges, he found a way to get his papers. Well, my friend, his girlfriend decided to do it for me, and we had to do a marriage. She didn't charge me a lot. So that's what I did. For the wrong reason.
Tourist visa
Nor is it easy for a woman who has arrived on a tourist visa to get regular work and stay. Joyce Leroy recalled how she talked a lawyer into finding a babyminding job for her: Oh, you have to have guts! This is illegal, but you have to do it! Nevertheless, women can find work much more easily as caregivers in families for children or older people. Through this kind of work they may in time gain their employer's support for an official green card, opening up wider job opportunities. However, the implications for these women's chances of success through work are very restrictive. For example, Sandrine Porto had a senior managerial post in the hotel industry before she came to New York on a visiting visa in the mid-1990s. Since then she has worked unqualified in turn as a baby nurse, a nanny and a home caregiver for the elderly, much below her professional potential. Her downward mobility is in fact a direct consequence of the migration process itself. She still has ambitions, but feels trapped. She spells out why:
'This country is a little weird, in terms of they push you to get involved in illegal stuff. Because the legal route of getting to become an Alien Resident, it's so tough, that they really push people to do things that are not the proper way. I know lots of people who are getting married to people they never know, they never sleep with, but they pay them some money, and the marriage is just to become an Alien Resident here. Because that's the only way you can get opportunities. The system is set up in such a way that most of the people who become a Resident Alien, go some illegal route. I'm not an Alien Resident. All I can do now is work I don't have the opportunity, like, to get a loan or anything. I want to go back to school (higher education). I want to do something (but) when you start school they want to see all your papers.
'If you're here, and you honestly want to make a living, and you want to be a decent citizen, and you want to live and be in accordance with all the laws here, how do I do it' Because the immigration system is set up where there is no way.
The evidence of our interviews suggest how much more difficult it is to become identified with a new society whose arrival paths conspire to push you towards cheating, and to subjugate you socially.
Living with racism
Experiences of racism have varied still more importantly over time and between places. It is also important to distinguish between personal experiences of racism, such as name-calling or direct rejections at work or in housing, and less visible forms of racism, embedded in the social structure and in institutional practices, of which many individuals were unaware.
Both kinds of racism were at their peak in the 1950s both in Britain and North America, and in much of the United States at that time, discrimination was legally enforced through segregation laws one reason why migration to Britain then seemed more attractive. But despite the fact that migrants went later to North America, there are sharp differences between the three countries in the proportion of our interviewees who remember direct personal experiences of racism. Of migrants to both Britain and Canada, two-thirds had such direct memories of racism. By contrast, of those who went to the United States, nine out of every ten migrants recounted personally experiencing racism.
Surprisingly, those who felt that racism had not affected them personally included some who came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s.
Joyce Leroy seems surprised by this herself: Funny, I didn't. I had a lot of whites that like me very much, so I didn't have a problem with that. Dayton Cripps, who also came in the 1960s, said he too had never had trouble: England, right, it's a tolerant place, you come across the odd person who's not, you can ignore him/her, because most of the people are different. From the start, there were also at least some streets where new black neighbours were made to feel welcome.
Don Bartley certainly had some bad stories. At work he had to deal with an ignorant stoker who, when we finish work, we all stripped off and we bath together, so this bloke was looking excitedly thinking that he could spot how black men had tails. Don and his wife also at first suffered many housing difficulties, but when they eventually got a house in a white working-class district in south-east London, where they were the only black family, they remembered the neighbours kindness to their infant son: It used to be quarrels and fuss who is to take him out in his pram, and on his first birthday, it was really warmth down that street. It is also noticeable that those early migrants, including Don, who had experience of both Britain and the United States described American whites as much more aggressive.
Although that could cut either way: Lola Woods, who first went to England in 1948 and then on to America in 1970, said, I kind of prefer American way. Because if they don't like you, in England, they pretend. When I get there first, they pretend. Smile at you, and they hate your guts. Over here, you know just how you stay.
Nevertheless, it was the older generation who came to Britain who had to deal with the most overt racism, which was at that time not legally restricted either in terms of work or housing discrimination, or in public comment. Selvin remembers how there was a lot of black and white talk; Winnie Busfield recalled how you would walk the streets and the children would be calling you names. But on the other hand they came from a Jamaica which was itself sharply stratified by colour, and some, had already directly experienced discrimination there, which in the memory could weigh still worse: as with Rose Lyle, whose blood still boils when she thinks of how she was cheated of her chances of a scholarship.
It was these older migrants to Britain who had to cope with the most open racism at work. For example, of four who worked as nurses, one remembers being constantly abused in the ward by a white nurse, another was pressurised into not taking a full training, while a third, Rose, who did retrain, came back to find she had lost her job. They also had to cope with racist patients, making comments such as, Black, go back to where you're from, or Don't touch me with your black hands. Josephine Buxton, one of these nurses, started work in 1960 as an orderly on one of the wards of an old local London hospital. She was working with three other black orderlies, but also a white girl.
There was a white girl there, she was blondie, nice blondie girl, long hair reach down here, and she was so fair. But boy, she was a troublemaker! She just come and hold you like that, and she hit you. We turn this cheek, we turn the other cheek, I don't know Jamaicans in their New World | 99 what we didn't do. And she used to beat us off. Every time they say, You coming here to take away our job, all like that. They do you this, and you passing and thinking of the little money you're going to get. Or if you don't get that, what you'll do. So most of the time we had borne all. So we had lots of discrimination, which take time, die down, die down.
Perhaps the most effective of anti-racial measures in all three countries have been to make direct work discrimination illegal, so that few of the younger migrants had experienced it. It may have been a key to making upward social mobility more of a real possibility for them. We can see clearly in such instances how open racism kept most of the earlier Jamaican migrants to Britain in a subordinate position, and pushed them towards eventual integration at a lower class level.
In the 1960s even churches in Britain appeared to be openly racist. Vivia Perrin's family had been active Wesleyan Methodists in Jamaica. When they came to Britain in 1957 we were put off, somewhere along the line, because of the racism thing. Not put off religion, but put off going to church. Walk into a new church you move into a new community, you go to church. You sit in the back, you sit somewhere to be not so conspicuous. You go in and you sit there and you wait, and the church is filling up and filling up, and somebody will come and say, Can't sit there. That's my seat. Not, Hello, good morning, welcome. Can I sit with you? This is my seat. You move somewhere else, and somebody will tell you, That's Ms. Jones's seat, she's sat there for 40 years.
By contrast, when she returns to Jamaica, when I go home, I go home to a very loving, warm, church family. Later on such off-putting comments had become unlikely: indeed, the churches in the big cities came to rely on migrants to provide the backbone of their congregations.
In Britain there was also an important change in housing discrimination, which was one of the commonest racist experiences of the earliest migrants. Chris Bartley recalled how sometimes people only want to see you come to the door, and they just open the door, if it's a flat you want, and they just slam the door in our face. Selvin Green encountered one landlord who told him frankly, I don't deal with black people.
Josephine Buxton remembers how there could be, like, the advertisement at the corner shop there is a room for rent at such a place, 'Enquire within'. And then, No children. No blacks. No Irish. No dogs. More often, the racist refusal was covert. Even middle-class Anna Gladstone, on finishing her war service, walked all over London, trying to get accommodation, and couldn't. Rufus Rawlings recalled the frustration of first seeking lodgings as a black man: Hello, I see advertisement, Room for let. Yes, thank you. Right, and you go there. Oh, oh! When they see your face. The room is Oh, I went out and husband let the room.
You know what I mean". Such housing discrimination has proved a phase in Britain not only because it became illegal. West Indian migrants have chosen not to cluster in all-black neighbourhoods, for beginning with some of the earliest, enough of them have decided to move away to buy houses or place children in better schools in mainly white districts. Indeed Rufus himself was driven by the difficulties in renting to buy a large house in a white neighbourhood of Islington, which he restored and filled with lodgers. This combination of legislative and self-push has meant that today our British migrants without exception all live in areas which are either multiracial or, with one-third of them, predominately white. This is equally true of our interviewees in Canada, where again West Indians have chosen a more dispersed pattern of living than other minorities.
In the United States, by contrast, only one in every 10 of our migrants lived in a mainly white area. For here an older housing pattern has continued. Up to the 1960s racial segregation in terms of public facilities was not only legal, but also legally enforced in a third of the country, along with the prohibition of mixed marriages. Earlier large-scale migration of American blacks from the south had resulted in the growth of segregated black neighbourhoods in the northern cities. This pattern has not been shaken by later anti-discrimination legislation, and in New York there have been incidents of the fire-bombing of the homes of West Indians who have moved into white neighbourhoods, and also of the estate offices who have sold to them.
Jamaicans thus have had little choice but to slot into this segregated housing pattern. With the exception of one high-earning professional, we found all of our New York migrants living in non-white neighbourhoods in the Bronx half of them mixed black and Latino, and in Brooklyn the other half 100 per cent black. As the subway train heads towards the Jamaican heartland in Brooklyn, at a subway stop just beyond City Hall the last whites leave the train: for the subway is now crossing a territory where white people neither live nor work. This part of Brooklyn feels more like a South African black location than anywhere in Canada or Britain. And this segregation both helps to cut off migrants from the mainstream American white society, and sustains their feeling of resentment at marginalisation and discrimination. Celia Mackay, for example, now a caregiver in New York, thought she knew about racism from the subtleties of Jamaican attitudes to skin colour: But coming to America is an entirely different story. An entirely different story. Coming to America, it's like a culture shock, because the things I see people do, because of the colour of your skin, seem to me stupid. If you are going to tell somebody, You have your money, but you can't live in a certain area because you're black.
You cannot get a certain loan because you are black to me it is outrageous. That is what you call racism. And to me, it is stupid. When I think about it, it gets me really angry. Because as far as I'm concerned, we're all created as one. You're getting a cut, and it's the same blood that comes out.
Segregation of housing, through separating whites and blacks, also leads to a subtly pervasive racism in sociability in the United States, of a kind which again we rarely found expressed by migrants to Britain or Canada. The earlier migrants to Britain certainly encountered difficulties in developing mixed relationships with whites, but in the longer run these difficulties were to be overcome.
The problems were worst for black men seeking white women partners. Rufus Rawlings felt of the women, lots were interested, but they was under pressure. You would be considered a prostitute if you seen with a black man. Yeah, that was the thinking. But in 1950 he did find a white woman to marry, for life. His wife Ursula's family in Dublin also accepted him: her mother, on hearing the news that she was marrying a black man, wrote a letter back saying, He could be green for all I care as long as he's a Catholic! Indeed, years later Ursula's mother was to die in Rufus's arms. Rufus and Ursula did stick together, despite severe harassment in their earlier years, including being evicted when their daughter was born because the landlord could not tolerate a mixed baby, and being shunned by friends and neighbours. As Ursula recalled, I just walked along with the pram, and that was it nobody would talk to you. Oh yeah, they put all swastika on me door, shit on me door. Yeah, when I wake up in the morning, Get out you black bastards would be written in black.
Nevertheless, many of the early migrants did marry white women, partly because in the 1940s and 1950s there were considerably more black men than black women in the English cities, as Sam Selvon so vividly describes in "The Lonely Londoners." And even after the sex ratio had evened up, many Jamaicans remained keen for mixed social relationships. They set going a cumulative change in attitudes and practice which have transformed the culture of London and other large cities. As Dick Woodward put it, any part of London you walk, you'll see people of all generations, elderly white men pushing black babies around, elderly white women obviously with their grand kids. And that social change is part of the strength of both communities. Today in Britain mixed West Indian/White couples have become commonplace, to the point that survey information now shows that younger British-born men of West Indian descent are as likely to live with white as with black women a change which Rufus in the late 1940s could have hardly imagined. This survey information fits with the migrants of all ages whom we interviewed, for in both Britain nearly a quarter and in Canada a third were in mixed-marriages with white partners. In the United States, by contrast, if we exclude one who soon migrated on to Britain, there were none.
In both Britain and Canada this change was encouraged by the choice of many migrants to move into white areas. Thus Olive Carstairs moved to Toronto as a child where she grew up with a white crowd, so that she had no difficulty with the idea of mixed relationships. It wouldn't bother me, because it's there in the roots. The change was also a consequence of Jamaicans in their "new world" the deliberate efforts of Jamaican migrants to engage socially with their new neighbours and workmates.
In the United States, even in the great metropolitan cities, mixed couples remain remarkably rare. Few said they even had white friends. Jamaicans in New York found this kind of segregated sociability doubly disturbing.
Firstly, there are those who were proud of belonging to mixed-race families, or who previously had been used to white friends, sometimes lots, and feel their absence. We both asked Gene Trelissick whether she had white friends in Brooklyn. She replied, Not here. But in Jamaica, I had a whole bunch of white friends from Canada and others from Europe. But it was unlikely now. You hardly see white people around here. [To Paul:]
You see why you look so strange! He does! No, it does look strange, seeing a white person around here.
Secondly, those who were living-in helps for white families could see the segregation from the white side of the barrier. Sandrine Porto lived in with a white family who claimed to be anti-racist, but in two years, they have parties and things, and I've never seen a black person; and when television showed things like black people being victimised, they'll walk away like they don't see it. Just because I'm there. In a similar way, when Celia Mackay is pushing the elderly man she cares for in a wheelchair, she notices how his friends would actually come up to him and would totally ignore me, white friends. Totally ignore me. And how are you keeping How are they taking care of you as it I'm not there. I'm not there.
So I just, like, get up and walk away. It hurts because you are a human Jamaicans in the United States, despite their relative income and educational successes by comparison both with black Americans and with Jamaicans in Britain, thus still live within patterns of housing and sociability which they feel deeply stigmatising. We see these forms of discrimination, coming on top of the distortions imposed by the immigration system, as the most likely keys to their different sense of identity.
Maintaining or Shifting Identities
Again and again we heard from Jamaican migrants to the United States, whether or not they had taken American citizenship, that they still considered themselves Jamaican. Others interestingly unaware that since 1995 dual citizenship has been allowed by the United States expressed resentment that they could only get their full rights by becoming an American citizen, forcing you to give up your citizenship of the country you actually belong to. I don't think it's fair. Nor do they want to be confused with African Americans. As Gene Trelissick put it: I don't know where it came up with this African thing from all of a sudden. I really don't. You know, you could identify yourself as African African or whatever you want to identify yourself as, but I know, deep down anything else you wanna hyphenate or add to it, so be it, but I'm Jamaican all the way!
Out of 20 Jamaicans who have settled for a substantial period in the United States, although half of them are already American citizens, only two took a different line. Both are middle class. One is Dana Howard, a successful accountant, who described herself as having a Jamaican identity, proud of my heritage, but through citizenship a proud American as well.
More borderline is Stella Wadham, New York caregiver, who described herself as American in the sense that there is a dream of the home and the education and the aspirations; but in terms of totally leaving my culture behind, no I'm Jamaican. I can never give that up. Also, but at the margins since he has never settled, is the very different vision of Selassie Jordan, who as a rasta dreams of return to his roots in Africa: me done visualise myself on the plains of Africa, hopefully Ethiopia. I'm an African. We are African and we must think African I hate America.
Cause me have no future a Babylon, I have no future here, right here. It is same era of hope who saw return as a chance to share some of what she had gained abroad. Stephanie Gladstone came back from Canada full of idealism to Jamaica to teach in one of the new secondary schools set up by Michael Manley: This is where I want to be. This is home. And I want to give back some of what was given to me.
Most likely for the great majority of migrants their original dream was to do well enough to make a successful return in later life to Jamaica.
Dick Woodward thought his family, who came to London in the 1950s, were typical in originally hoping to return within three years, and for long after living in a state of readiness to travel back, with grips under their beds. And indeed still among our interviewees, despite the passage of time over half still cherish this dream, and these would-be returnees come from right across the occupational spectrum. However, among the older migrants, especially those with modest resources, many have come eventually to accept that they will live out their lives in the countries where they are now settled.
David McNeep, retired London railwayman, cited the proverb, Where the tree falls, it lies there. Conversely, among the younger migrants there were many who felt that it was too early for them to return, although if I could afford it tomorrow, I would. Robert Lynn, New York highway maintenance man, does plan to return, but not now. We have to make a foundation here first. Basically, like my own home, and then go down there and build a nice house. It was important for a migrant to be able to return with pride, so that paradoxically, the worse their situation the harder it became for them to return. Stella Wadham had some very rough years in New York after her husband left her, earning so little as a caregiver that after paying for the rent and sending money to Jamaica for her daughter she had not enough to eat. She would stand and cry in the shower: I cried, cried until I had no voice. She only survived because her Jamaican landlady insisted on giving her free meals. Why didn't Stella return to Jamaica It's this pride thing I couldn't pack up and go back home, that would be admitting that I'd failed.
There was also a minority who had decisively rejected any thought of return, principally for two reasons. The first was that they were too put off by the lower standard of living in Jamaica than they had become used to in their host country, the power cuts, the lack of hot water: the island would have to change 360 degrees. The second was their fear of violence.
Jamaica was a very very good country that you could go any part of the country, and nobody interfere with you, nobody trouble you, remembered David McNeep. When we was growing in Jamaica, you could leave your house open and gone a bush, gone do anything. Many older migrants regret the passing of the old-fashioned Jamaica they knew as children.
Now, fanned by the press, rumours are constantly circulated of returnees who have been robbed or murdered, even on the way from the airport.
People come over from the States to live, and then they are being killed.
For some would-be returnees, the answer is to be pragmatic, to avoid provocative displays of wealth. I don't dress up with a chain, and this flashing of dollars and so forth, says Robert Lynn, New York highways maintenance worker. No. I'm going to the market, I'm in the same pants, same, I just blend with it. For others, fear has put return out of the question:
as Arnold Houghton, Canadian accountant, remarked, I don't want to be living in Jamaica behind some barbed wire fence, six guard dogs.
However, rumours and fear have been so stimulated that even some well-educated migrants have developed fantasy views of current life in Jamaica. Thus a health professional in England asserted that in Jamaica today everybody lives in a prison, locked gates, burglar alarms, bad dogs in the garden. This is not remotely true even of Kingston, let alone the smaller towns and countryside. Hence other migrants are arguing for a more balanced view. I want people to understand that Jamaica's not all about guns and violence and drugs, says Belle Dickens, a writer who has recently returned from New York. There's a side of Jamaica that's warm, that's friendly, where people can sleep with their door open, where people can walk late at night. Similarly Joy Beck, New York health worker, points out that Jamaican society still is caring, and robbery and violence are not a Jamaican monopoly. In New York people are not as caring, like back home.
You know, you can always go to your neighbour and say, Can you watch my child for me I'm going to the store. Here you can't do that. The previous week a thief among the staff had got into her office and stolen $80 from her, but nobody would say who it was. When she was mugged in the Bronx some years earlier, her daughter had been screaming, Help my mummy! He's going to kill my mother! And people were just walking by. People, they just hold their heads straight, they see nothing, they hear nothing. I'm not used to living like that. For all the changes in Jamaica, that is where she hopes to return to live.
Of our Jamaican migrants, 12 have returned to Jamaica for substantial periods, and six of them are still living on the island. All of them, whether they stayed or not, were positive about their decision to come back. I love it. I wouldn't trade it! Nevertheless, for half of them the return proved only temporary. Not surprisingly, most of the reasons for not staying on are similar to those for migrating in the first place. Although all those who were of working age found suitable jobs with little difficulty, one reason for not staying on was economic: it's very hard to make an honest living in Jamaica. Of the others who have left, one man came back to Britain to give his children better educational opportunities; and another as a way of splitting up with his wife. My wife and I just couldn't see eye to eye, and he could see that the children were taking sides, So I said, Well if that's the case, I'll go If you don't want to live that way, you get out of it.
That's what I did. The main difference with younger initial migrants is that some older returnees are forced back because they need the free health care to which they are entitled in Britain.
These few returnees are part of a much wider migratory current which is changing the face of Jamaica. It is having a crucial impact on the Jamaican economy too, for the pensions and other incomes of returnees are now second only to tourism in their contribution to the island's foreign currency earnings.
The pioneers of return migration have principally been English, who constitute ten of our twelve returnees. This is partly because the English Jamaicans migrated earlier and so are closer to retirement age, but also because those who bought their own houses can now cash in on a very substantial capital appreciation. And while some Jamaicans have returned from England to Florida, for them this is a much less easy compromise alternative than it is for Jamaicans in New York. So it is above all the English Jamaicans who are changing the face of Jamaica with their new houses.
Gothic dream You can find clusters of these new houses right around the Jamaican coastline, and they also climb up to the cooler heights of the central spine around Mandeville and Spaldings: walking the side roads there, their grey concrete frames thrust up through the bright green foliage like a regatta of dinghy sails in the Caribbean sea. When you look more closely, quite often they are unfinished, great three-storey frames with yawning unfilled gaps, sometimes half-abandoned with trees taking over the structures, somebodys abandoned gothic dream. More often with time they are finished, painted sparkling white, doors and windows filled with elaborately twisted metal grilles, and rooms inside big enough for a complete family reunion.
These houses are the fruit of years of struggle, first of all in Britain or merica, but then in Jamaica too. It is very difficult to get a house built satisfactorily at a distance, so that it often takes months of visits stretched over several years before it is completed. When we met Esau Blackett, a tailor from northern England who also runs a wedding car business, he had a load of drainpipes for his house, sticking out of the car windows. He comes out for a month twice a year to push the building on, meanwhileletting both floors which he has finished, keeping only one room for himself.
Winnie Busfield, a nursing assistant also from the north, used to come toJamaica once in every two years to visit her mother, and in the early 1990s,with the help of a niece, she found a plot of land for a house close to thesea, part of a cluster of returnees houses. Three years later the house waspartly built: we finish the downstairs, the lower part of the house, and myhusband came out to help look after my mother. Her mother died before Winnie could follow. For another six years she kept working in the hospital, but raised substantially more cash by selling her house there and renting a flat, because the children now grown and they taking their own paths and working in London. Once her house was sold, she sent out her furniture:
well, things came out from England shipment of all our house, household goods, furnitures and things. But the upper part of the house was still little more than a shell, and it was a good ten years before it was completed. Finally Winnie and her husband could relax in their very spacious house, with guest rooms for their children and a glimpse of the sea down the valley.
Completing the house was one step in the dream of return. But in many ways a still tougher challenge, which took some returnees by surprise, was to reintegrate in Jamaican society. Winnie had one strong advantage, that she had been a Seventh Day Adventist from childhood, and continued to be active in England, where she used to be a missionary, I used to go with literature, proclaiming the word of God.... I brought up my children to love the Lord. Now Winnie feels that the major part of getting back into the system is over, but nevertheless, even for her reintegrating was hard.
It was difficult at first. Very very difficult. Certainly was very hard.
As if the whole custom had changed. People attitude was rougher, not like most of the people I knew when I was small theyre all gone to foreign. So it was a whole generation with the new ideas, more disrespectful to adults, and so forth, so it was hard. But I am a very determined person, I overcome all those I am now well into the system. I fight my way into the system! Even the churches! Oh yes! Barriers in the churches.
Today Winnies local friends are mainly through the church. She has got over her initial surprise, after living for years as an exception in a world of white faces, that here in Jamaica, everywhere I go, there were all these black faces, and for a while, it took me a good while really to grasp it, that this was a black country. She has learnt to speak patois again, and she has become a travelling missionary in Jamaica. But this very process of resettling has brought a profound change in her sense of identity. She has come to feel that she is perhaps as much English as Jamaican.
Now, if you look at my community here, you will see that its mainly returning residents, so that makes it much easier, because you have so much in common. If it was all the everyday Jamaicans, I could not cope with it I could not relate to somebody that I hadnt shared the same culture with for 40 years.
You understand We go from England, so you have a lot of things in common. You know more about them [returnees] than because most of your years youve spent with them. You can talk about a place in England, and they can chat about the place.
Now, when I got back to Jamaica here, there is hardly any place I know I know more of England than Jamaica.
Now, if you have gone back straight into the heart of the community, you will have more problems. Because sometimes they call us 'foreigners', oh yes. In England we were foreigners, you come back to Jamaica, your country, youre foreigners. So you get it from both sides.
Belle Dickens, who has recently returned from America, expressed rather similar feelings. She has moved into a cousins newly built house, and is happy to be back in Jamaica. I love it, because its more laid back, and its really me. It has changed a lot. But I am more relaxed here, as opposed to being in New York, where one is uptight, and youre constantly going. I love it. I wouldnt trade it! Nevertheless she feels much more comfortable living with a group of returnees. I feel more at home with the returned residents, for the fact that they have a wider scope. In rural Jamaica, everybody knows everything you do. Living in this [returnee] community now, its kind of cool, because everybody they have been exposed, everybodys into their own thing, nobody pays much mind. They seem to be doing their own thing. So its cool.
Let us end with Vivia Perrins story of return. Vivia is a professional nurse, and in London she has been a church goer and community activist.
She has come back in that spirit for me, coming back, I needed that purpose but she has no illusions that succeeding as a returnee is easy. She reflected on how she has watched too many others fail.
If they were from Jamaica, 20 years is enough to get them into the culture of the United States, or the culture of Britain. Then they come back, but most of them come back and they have not moved Jamaica on. Somewhere they left it. So a lot of them are disappointed, a lot of them are disheartened. And a lot of the people here, Ive seen a big number going back to England. I dont know what it is going to do for them, because they have sold their homes, they have severed their ties with the church, with their communities, and the money they bring here, to build a house that theyve got here, they cannot resell at a price to go back and buy again.
Vivia says that returnees need a network of support, and many are disappointed not to get that from their families: the biggest complaint you have from returning residents is from families. She advises would-be returnees to come out for four or five years on fact-finding tours, checking out finances, security and so on: taking it gradually as she and her husband Albert did.
Vivia and Albert had been exploring the idea of a retirement house for some years. They tried a house briefly in Florida, and then Portugal. But Albert had retired much before Vivia, and after spending six months in Jamaica, he looked so good. He was so fit, he was like the young man I knew. His mother had given him a piece of land, close to Alberts brother.
Vivia was still unsure, but when Albert asked her, What do you think of building she said, OK, up to you. Albert then got her involved in the project. Id like you to help me design this house, because its for you, even if you dont want to come there.
It was some six years between their first thinking of the retirement house and moving into it. For the main push, Albert had to come back to Jamaica for six months. He says, Love, I think Im going to start building. And I said, OK. But I dont earn enough money to build that sort of house youre going to build. He said, Oh, well just build one room and then add onto it. I said, OK. But by the time my husband come back, the house was nearly done. The next time they came out to Jamaica, they moved into the completed house, beginning by cooking outside under a mango tree.
Vivia and Albert have thrown themselves into the social life of their southern Jamaican village, Guanjo Pen. This had always been central to their dream of return. Twenty years before, sitting at their family table in west London, Albert had said: So many of us have left Jamaica, and have The Dream of Return | 189 come away. We are so blessed by the knowledge that weve gained. Wouldnt it be nice for us to go back and do something on the island We jest and we joke, but we discussed it, and that seed was planted. Vivias original idea was to open a nursing home, and she does indeed work full time as a nurse in the nearest town. But once they had returned they were soon into other activities. They have been helping to provide new board houses for the poorest families. They sit as governors on three local school boards.
The village has new signposts they designed. They have set up a Neighbourhood Watch involving over 100 households. And they have created a wider network in the whole area, the Returning Residents Group.
We look at the community needs, were working on a basic school at the moment, trying to help them rebuild a basic school. But its mainly for us, for camaraderie. Because when you come back, people dont accept you readily. They rip you off. So what we do, weve got a list of dentists and doctors we all use, and plumbers, and these people know where their bread is buttered, you know So we have a togetherness.
The project which most of all engages Vivia, however, is for a health centre which would bring some of the services which are currently only available in Kingston. Vivia has thrown herself into this project, raising money through the churches in Jamaica, England and America. Poorer people gave vegetables and fish, and the church gave a cell phone. Land was given by the church, and the structure has now been built with the help of volunteer labour from abroad. We stood in its shell, trying to imagine it in use. It stands waiting for windows, doors and tiling. Vivia pays for many of the smaller items from her salary, whatever is left over there, I put towards buying whatever is needed paint and stuff for it. So this is the purpose, this is whats keeping me here, and Im not leaving until its done. Its nearly finished, its nearly finished. Although all this campaigning activity has not pleased all of the existing local leadership, there is no doubt that combined with her work as a nurse, Vivia has won a local standing. I had to work to make myself, and to make people accept you, because they dont accept you readily, once youve 190 | Jamaican Hands Across the Atlantic travelled. Being a nurse brings her many confidences, and also gifts. She has learnt patois, which she never spoke at home in England. But in spite of all this, returning to Jamaica has brought home to Vivia her Englishness.
Both emotionally and culturally, she feels the pull of England.
One of Vivias main hesitations about returning was that she did not wish to inflict the same migration pain which she had suffered herself as a child on her children. I hated the fact that my parents left me, and I had to cope, and I was mindful that I didnt want my children to feel that way.
Hence she keeps returning to London, partly fund-raising, partly to enjoy the shops, but above all to see her children and grandchildren, because I need to have close contact with my family. When in Jamaica she texts them all weekly. I think the pull of England will always be there, because thats where my nuclear family is.
Vivia calls herself the lady with a purpose. Thats just how I see myself now. If you ask me, I say Im British first. I dont care who dont like it, I am English first. But I will do what I need to do, where I am. Well I say 'home', England! I cant say that in front of my husband, because he says [of Jamaica], This is your home now.
Living with Family Complexities Remittances are sent not only to parents, but often also to siblings or to inlaws. Temporary help with migration may extend to very distant kin, including even ex-in-laws. Underlying this is a sense not only of the potential importance of extended family kin, but also of how strong obligation with more distant kin can be built through individual life experiences. When Patsy Clark decided to migrate to the United States, she received crucial support not only from her mothers brother, who was already there and had been sending remittances to his nieces, but also from this uncles ex-girlfriend, who had her to stay in her house, and found her a job. In another family, as a child Sarah Chisholm had been particularly close to her eldest sister, who she describes as being like a mother to her, a protector. When this sister died, Sarah decided to help by bringing two of her daughters to Canada, and indeed as one of these nieces says, has in turn played the role of a mother figure: Shes my mother, she took care of us after my mum died, and she has just been making sure that everything goes okay for us. Sarah herself is in no doubt why she has taken on this role, and explains precisely how she felt a clear reciprocal obligation to help her sisters children: I brought them here, because of the kindness of my sister, of what she did for me. I thought it was necessary to return the kindness to her children.
These examples also reinforce another point: the key role of women as activators of these kin networks. In contradiction to those who have argued that women are salient in Caribbean families only by default in incomplete families whose men are missing,6 we have found women taking such roles whether or not husbands or fathers are present in their households. In general, while both men and women are likely to send financial remittances, the responsibility for caring, and also as we saw earlier, for the organizing of kin migration, seem most often to rest with women.
Keeping Contact
It is not surprising that if geographical separations within Jamaica, could cut the bonds between siblings. The impact of long distance migration was inevitably more drastic, endangering the closeness between husbands and wives, grandparents, parents and children, as well as less immediate kin links. In a Jamaican country village maintaining the multiple cousin network required little more than acknowledgement when passing in the road or outside their houses. But migrations pushed these networks into the background, bringing the focus much more onto the inner circle of kin with whom it was practical to maintain contact. And even the inner family might gradually take on a new shape, recentring on a geographical basis.
Sean Ismay, who migrated to Canada, has a large group of relatives in England as well as the multiple extended family back in Jamaica. "Theres like two circles. The ones that never got sent to foreign were really close, because they were back in Jamaica. And the ones that are, was a different circle, because they were all in England, so they all up there."
Yet distance did not deter Jamaican migrants from trying to hold their families together. Indeed, a commitment to maintaining transnational kin links was already evident 40 years ago, when Sheila Patterson wrote of how among British West Indians, the key to the family was not seen as the household: for there was such a frequent exchange of letters, remittances and visitors, that the links with close kin at home are often as strong or stronger than any bonds between the members of a Brixton domestic unit.
We found that both men and women migrants maintained contact with relatives in other countries, but it seems likely that in many families women were more active in sustaining kin links. Thus Owen Callaghan in the United States remarks how my mother is the one who keep in touch much more than I do, because she always curse me, Owen, you dont call anybody, you dont visit." In Rodney Scotts family the hub of contact had been his London great-grandmother, and after her death he felt that the family was drifting apart. [My wife] might be more in touch with her family, than I, reflected Bill Fox, Jamaican agricultural adviser. The woman seem to be able to maintain links, family links, better than men. The men feel thats the womans affair. Thats a womans duty. She should keep the connection. This partly explains why contact seems more often lost on the paternal side. Bill continued: Do you know what a gentleman told me yesterday What he finds is that the womenfolk, the wives, always look after their side of the family better than they look after the husbands side of the family! It is certainly true, as we have already seen, that women play the predominant role in the exchange of help in childrearing in these transnational Jamaican families, the help of a grandmother recurrently enabling a mother to move in search of work. We have also discovered how in many families women have played the strategic role in thinking and planning for migration. But even if to a lesser extent, men are also active in maintaining these transnational Jamaican families. There are in fact plenty of examples of men among our migrants who actively sustain contact with their kin in other countries. From London Jack Constable regularly phones his six brothers and sisters in Canada, the United States, Britain and Jamaica. From Canada Sean Ismay writes frequent letters to his grandmother, and also sends her parcels regularly, although somewhat frustrated by how little of it she enjoys for herself: half of it shes dividing among everybody around where we lived, yeah, not just her family. In particular, the men send money as their form of contact. Russell Peel is in Britain, his brothers and sisters in America and Jamaica. Im here, Im sending her money when shes home [from her travels abroad], he says of his mother. The good thing about her, a good thing she had so many of us, because we are now her pension. Russell, who is single, sends almost half his earnings from England back to his mother.
It has required particular ingenuity, usually by the women of the family, to maintain effective contact with young children who were temporarily left behind by migrants, and we have already encountered instances of children who felt their parents were strangers when they were eventually able to follow and rejoin them. But there were also successes. Ted Oliver lived with his grandmother from the age of three until he rejoined his mother in Canada at 20, but it was very important for him that his mother always kept in close touch. She would be sending anything we need, she would be always sending things for us. She also phoned exceptionally frequently. I would say we grown up far away, but relationships, as a mother, I still cannot throw it away. The relationship is still there. You know, she will call me and tell me this, do this every day. Every day. Sean Ismays mother and grandmother relied on letters and parcels. Money and stuff she [mother] will send. The parcels wed see, and then I used to read the letter to my grandma, because my grandma cant read. We took turns, because okay, not just letters from my mum, but my grandma used to receive letters from her other kids in England. His grandmother also dictated their letters to their mother: She taught me. I remember sitting out with my grandma writing, writing my first letter to my mum here. Me and my cousin, and my mums other sister was here too, so we wrote the letter at the same time. We actually put the same word in each letter, because my grandma was telling us what to put, so we were writing it word for word. She knew how to write letters while we didnt, but yet she cant read or write.
Letters were, however, at best a clumsy way of maintaining contact. This is brought home through the memories of one family who tried to keep in touch systematically through letters alone. Pearl Selkirk wrote from London to her children in Jamaica every week, I write to my mum every weekend. She also sent photos, so that the children would always have a feeling what we look like. Her son Leonard recalls how when the letters arrived at the grandmothers village home, she would solemnly summon the children, call us in the room. Your mother write. And it would be read to us, and shed tell us what she said. But it was very difficult for the children to make sense of her news. For example, in one letter she wrote, shes actually saying, Its snowing in England, and its cold out here. But no one knew, we just couldnt imagine what cold could be we didnt have no concept of cold or snow. Even the photos misfired, because the children could not remember who the people were in them, so much so that Leonard became convinced that one of his uncles was his father, and when he arrived at London airport hugged the wrong man. With the phone, the sound of the voice and the dialogue which it enables, an altogether deeper level of intimate contact becomes possible. Nowadays there are many more ways of keeping in touch. Cheaper flights have encouraged much more frequent visits to distant kin. Some older women have become regular fliers, visiting children and grandchildren. Russell Peel is in London and his mother, a retired school janitor in Jamaica, who Russell visits there annually, now spends almost half her year in America with her daughters, who always fight [over] which one to send a ticket for her to come over. These are mostly individual visits, but another interesting and apparently growing phenomenon is the transnational family reunion.
Jacob Richards, for example, had recently flown out from England to Jamaica for a seaside wedding in which twothirds of the 80 guests, including the bride and groom themselves, lived overseas. Another family have been developing transatlantic plans for a family history with oral history recording as well as genealogical research which has already linked their descent to a 1.747 slave ship on one side and to Arawak Indians on another as well as a reunion in Jamaica and a family website on the Internet. Some of the professional families have been experimenting with faster alternatives to the post. The younger people are trying email, Verity Houghton commented from Canada. Now were getting to email, and her brother Arnold remarks optimistically, Distances have shrunk big time. You never know! Audley Rawlings in Jamaica told us that communication with his daughter at school in England is left to modern technology. Email and telephone. Ill email her a couple of times a week. [Her mother] speaks to her every day. Audley is even able to help her with her homework despite the distance between them. Well now, shes doing an IT project, where shes setting up a computer system, a computerized system for a movie store, movie rentals, video rentals. She puts together her draft, shell type it up and send it to me, and I will edit it. I dont basically change what shes doing, but I might make some grammatical changes, change it to make it make more sense.
Nevertheless phoning, because it has become so much cheaper, at least for those in Britain and North America, is now the dominant form of communication between family members. Mostly this is technically straightforward, but at least one family has used the conference facility to create a regular weekly transnational chatroom. In Brigette Umbers family the pivotal figure is her father, Hopeton, a New York builder, the icon of the family. He tries to keep the family very close. They organise a family reunion every five years in Jamaica, hiring one of the biggest hotels in Montego Bay. More modestly, most Sunday mornings Hopeton gets on the phone.
He call one family member in Jamaica, and then hell put that one family member onto the family member in Canada. Then shell hook that one to the family member in England. Then England will hook that one back up to the family in Brooklyn, and then all of them is on the phone. Sunday morning its chaotic in my house. Its always been like that, every Sunday, because thats the only time they get to talk. This is when family business is sorted out. The wedding is coming up, its even more chaotic, because theyre trying to figure out how theyre going to get from here.
Theyre all over the place. But often it is just chatting to share their ordinary life experience. Every Sunday morning, the routine is still the same ackee and saltfish and fried dumpling, and callaloo. Every family member does it. And then theyll call over, What did you cook Ackee. Okay, Ill come and Ill have the callaloo. Then they go, You bringing over the callaloo Yes. Okay. Then they call the next one, What did you cook Dumpling. And then it all start all over again! They are chaotic! My familys insane! They call one another, youre in Brooklyn and theyre in Connecticut, all of them get on the phone, and they call. Uncle Hopeton, what are your eating Oh, ackee. What are you doing Nothing. All right.
You going to church Yes, ten oclock. Okay, what time is it Oh, around eight. And so this regular weekly round continues, bringing more and more news of ackee and saltfish and fried dumplings, punctuated even after just a weeks interval with the refrain, Sure thing, a long time I dont hear from you. In such a family ritual the new and the old, the world of globalised migration and information technology and the country practices of church and cooking in Jamaica, fuse into new forms.
Part II: From the forthcoming book, which chronicles the lives and experiences of Jamaicans in the diaspora, 'Jamaican Hands Across the Atlantic', by Elaine Bauer and Paul Thompson. The book will be published by Ian Randle Publishers in June 2006. www.ianrandlepublishers.com
