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Islands in the North: (re)creating Jamaican identities and cultures in Toronto and New York City during the long twentieth century
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Gaynair, Marlene Hyacinth. Islands in the North: (re)creating Jamaican identities and cultures in Toronto and New York City during the long twentieth century. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-tg8y-rd82

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TitleIslands in the North: (re)creating Jamaican identities and cultures in Toronto and New York City during the long twentieth century
NameGaynair, Marlene Hyacinth (author); Rucker, Walter (chair); Lopez, Kathleen (member); Walker, Barrington (member); Rutgers University; School of Graduate Studies
Date Created2021
Other Date2021-10 (degree)
SubjectBlack history, Caribbean studies, Black studies, African diaspora, Comparative history, Immigration, Jamaica, New York (N.Y.), Toronto (Ont.)
Extent1 online resource (vii, 323 pages) : illustrations
DescriptionThe Black Caribbean experience in New York City, New York and Toronto, Ontario offers necessary reflections about citizenship and belonging in resistance within their post-colonial Caribbean diaspora. Since the twentieth century, Jamaicans have overwhelmingly comprised this migrant population and, as a result, have forged communities through maintaining residencies in the United States and Canada by building their own independent social, cultural, and economic institutions. Using extensive archival research and oral histories which underscore the Jamaican experience abroad, Islands in the North (Re)Creating Jamaican Identities and Cultures In Toronto And New York City During The Long Twentieth Century analyzes how Jamaicans and their descendants have created diasporic identities of citizenship, belonging, and place-making despite the shifting hegemonic forces of the British, American, and Canadian nation-states. Inspired largely by Stuart Hall’s research in Cultural Studies and James Scott’s postcolonial theory of hidden transcripts and infrapolitics, I argue that the Jamaican communities I highlight in New York and Toronto utilized their collective identities and cultures to engage in their community building, rootedness, and belonging in twentieth-century Canada and the United States. Through these processes, Jamaicans and their descendants in both cities construct unique notions of Blackness unlike anywhere else in the world. Ultimately, I argue that the work of these infrapolitics, hidden, and visible transcripts of the Jamaican experience in New York City and Toronto serve as acts of resistance to the American and Canadian nation-states, while allowing these diasporic communities to maintain a connection and sense of belonging to their cultural communities at home and abroad.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses
Persistent URLhttps://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-tg8y-rd82
LanguageEnglish
CollectionSchool of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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