How do people respond to the news that they are HIV positive? To date, there have been few published qualitative studies of HIV diagnosis experiences, and none focusing on Caribbean people. Twenty-five HIV-positive Caribbean people in London, UK, related their diagnosis experience and its immediate aftermath in semi-structured interviews. Diagnosis with HIV caused profound shock and distress to participants, as they associated the disease with immediate death and stigmatisation. The respondents struggled with "biographical disruption", the radical disjuncture between life before and after diagnosis, which led them into a state of liminality, as they found themselves "betwixt and between" established structural and social identities. Respondents were faced with multifaceted loss: of their known self, their present life, their envisioned future and the partner they had expected to play a role in each of these. A minority of accounts suggest that the way in which healthcare practitioners delivered the diagnosis intensified the participants' distress. This research suggests that healthcare practitioners should educate patients in specific aspects of HIV transmission and treatment, and engage closely with them in order to understand their needs and potential reactions to a positive diagnosis. Adapted from the source document.
Reports on the researchers' findings 20 years after Lord Gifford's inquiry into race relations in the city after the 1980s Toxteth riots. Gifford reported on the prevalence of racial attitudes, racial abuse, and racial violence directed against the Black citizens of Liverpool. The authors' research focused on education and specifically the low percentage of Black teachers compared to the whole teaching workforce and the percentage Black population in the city.
Reviewing the 22 years that have elapsed since Gifford's 1989 report labelled Liverpool as racist, the authors focus on the fact that in a city which has had a British African Caribbean community for over 400 years, there is minimum representation of that community in the city's workforce.
Focuses on the retrospective accounts of Caribbean-born adults who as children were serial migrants, joining their parents in the UK following a period of separation. Considers aspects of their relationships with their siblings and with their mothers and fathers.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
282 p, In the last 50 years, the United Kingdom has witnessed a growing proportion of mixed African-Caribbean and white British families. With rich new primary evidence of 'mixed-race' in the capital city, The Creolisation of London Kinship thoughtfully explores this population. Individuals are followed through changing social and historical contexts, seeking to understand in how far many of these transformations may be interpreted as creolisation.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
248 p., Case studies dealing with a variety of black British and ethnic American writers, Home, identity, and mobility in contemporary diasporic fiction shows how new identities and homes are constructed in the migrants' new homelands. Includes chapter on Black British perspectives. From black Britain to the Caribbean : the return of the (im)migrant in Caryl Phillips's A state of independence.
330 p., This dissertation examines the major works of Trinidad-born playwright Mustapha Matura, dealing with plays written from 1970 to the present. By considering the relation of Matura's work to Britain and Trinidad, it explores the complexity of identity performance in postcolonial theatre and the ongoing need for agency among diasporic communities. Postcolonial scholarship fully recognizes the significance of writing in the development of postcolonial identities, yet dominant postcolonial theory largely excludes theatre from discussions of that development. Given its aural and visual presentation and its immediate interaction with an audience, theatre provides a unique postcolonial moment through which audience members can survey issues of race and place in their lives.
Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK: University of Sheffield
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
1 vol., Investigates experiences of bereavement after the death of a partner. The original research aim was to study the implications of death among older people, including those from ethnic minority groups, a neglected area of study. The research included participant observation at lunch clubs in centers attended by older White British and African Caribbean people, and semi-structured interviews recorded in 2007-2008 with 20 men and women over 60.
A recent analysis of the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE) indicates a White British-Black Caribbean achievement gap at age 14 which cannot be accounted for by socio-economic variables or a wide range of contextual factors. This article uses the LSYPE to analyse patterns of entry to the different tiers of national mathematics and science tests at age 14.
