Narratives of Exile and Return (Warwick University Caribbean Studies) Book

In this original and compelling book, Mary Chamberlain explores the nature and meanings of migration for Barbadians who migrated to Britain and elsewhere. It is a unique oral and social history, based on life-story interviews across three or more generations of Barbadian families. Locating migration within the contemporary debate on modernity, Narratives of Exile and Return highlights the continuing role of migration in shaping the culture and history of Barbados. It investigates the power of social and individual memory in recalling and recounting experience, and in moulding and interpreting culture. It reveals the vitality of family dynamics and values in fashioning life courses and the ways in which these are transmitted and transformed across the generations. It analyzes how the "Mother Country" was encountered and incorporated, and how the continuing presence of the Caribbean contributes to the identities of those born or brought up in Britain. In reclaiming these narratives of exile and return, this book challenges and exposes, in an exciting and innovative way, those orthodox views which explain Caribbean migration through the labor demands of international capital or the vagaries of the home economy.Read More