Addresses change and continuity in mortuary practices from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries within enslaved and free populations on the former Danish and current US Virgin Island of St. John. St. John's former residents created diverse burial sites for practical and symbolic reasons related to environment, kinship, socio-cultural politics, and religion. Reveals how people historically transformed identities of selves and communities as they perceived and commemorated the dead through meaningful mortuary sites and practices within dynamic local and regional contexts.
Focuses on the performativity of Black beauty shame as it transforms or intensifies the meanings of parts of the body in Jamaica and its UK diaspora. Uses extracts from interviews with UK Jamaican heritage women. The women’s critique of the shaming event shows that shame is undone through dis-identification as speakers draw on alternative beauty discourses to produce new beauty subjectivities.
