What models of love and support get lost if we cling to a linear model of family life? Leighan Renaud calls for a model of genealogical enquiry rooted in a decolonised, expansive and ‘matrifocal’ understanding of the Caribbean family.
Tag: Caribbean
The Racist History of Jamaica’s Obeah Laws
As debate about Obeah – spiritual and healing practices – erupts in Jamaica, Diana Paton argues that laws against obeah have historically worked to uphold colonial power and to harass poor people.
Undoing the Work of the Windrush Narrative
In light of the recent “Windrush scandal”, Kennetta Hammond Perry asks what aspects of British history are extolled, and which facets remain illegible in popular renditions of the Windrush narrative – and offers up alternative “usable pasts” to understand Black people’s relationship to British citizenship.
‘I was a few years back a slave on your property’: a letter from Mary Williamson to her former owner
Thus begins a letter from a Jamaican formerly enslaved woman, Mary Williamson, written to her former owner in 1809…
