Narratives of Exile and Return [Hardcover]

Mary Chamberlain (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 031216484X | ISBN-13: 978-0312164843 | Publication Date: April 1997

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.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mary Chamberlain is emeritus professor of Caribbean history at Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom. In addition, she is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a member of the advisory group of the Raphael Samuel History Centre, and a member of the United Kingdom government’s Caribbean Advisory Group (1998-2002). She is former editor of the Transaction Memory and Narrative series, which now has over fifteen volumes in print.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 252 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031216484X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312164843
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,700,280 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book of narratives, August 8, 2002

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A reader "sebastiand" (NY, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Narratives of Exile and Return (Hardcover)

In Chamberlain's use of ethnographic narratives, she shows how her informants reveal a deep attachment to the idea of "place," through one's familial ties, through relationships and kin systems, and through an extended sense of "belonging." For women, the impact has been doubly hard-leaving the homeland requires leaving connections to children, parents, and loved ones that the "solitary, single male" migrant does not face: "Women's migration was likely to be a more permanent, more searing experience for those left behind..." (p. 104). For both women and men, however, "the decision to go, the logistics of leaving were not isolated, individual events but the result of collective action. The family, for instance, through loans, through material support, through child care, enabled and supported the migration of its individual members" (p. 93). This community support allowed for a strengthening of the ties to the home community and the expectation of "return." But "return" carries with it the expectation of "success" for the individual and the community.

The economic pressures of migration, the revision of concepts of kin, identity (individual and communal, national and racial), and the reevaluation of situations in which Caribbean persons feel a sense of "belonging," need to be bound within all anthropological discourse about "place." The work of Chamberlain goes a long way toward a reexamination of these issues and contribute to a deeper understanding of how Caribbeans see themselves in the world.