203 p., Explores the work experiences of professional Caribbean immigrant English-speaking women in the United States. Much study has been dedicated to the experiences and success of Caribbean immigrant women and men in service and domestic roles. The study explores these professional immigrant women's experiences attaining career success in the United States racial society. Data was obtained from 12 professional Caribbean immigrant women using semi-structured interviews conducted by the researcher.
217 p., A comparative study of late 20th-century migration narratives by African American and Afro-Caribbean women, such as Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, and Loida Maritza Pérez. Informed by critical race theory, postcolonial, and feminist approaches to literature, this dissertation intervenes in literary studies of the African diaspora by underscoring the cultural and political implications that class and national differences have on intra-racial relations among Blacks.
101 p., Little published research describes views of intimate heterosexual relationships among non-Western samples of women. This study represents a first attempt to document Afro-Caribbean women's views about their intimate relationships. A small sample of 53 Afro-Caribbean women from the island of Barbados were interviewed in their homes for a larger study of body image. Included in the measures were questionnaires about the extent to which women's expectations were or were not met in their current heterosexual relationships and if symptoms of depression were experienced. The women in this study generally reported, like Western women, that their relationships met their expectations (whatever those expectations may have been), that they contributed more positive than negative behaviors to the relationship, and that they experienced mostly mild or infrequent depressive symptoms. Unlike findings for Western samples, however, neither relationship duration, women's level of education, nor the extent to which they reported depressive symptoms covaried with whether they reported that their expectations were met or not. In summary, this study did not shed light on possible sources of Afro-Caribbean women's relationship satisfaction, although it potentially ruled out a few.
255 p., This qualitative study examines the social, spiritual and political role the Black Oneness Churches play in Black communities. It also provides an anti-colonial examination of the Afro-Caribbean Oneness churches to understand how it functioned in the formation and defense of the emerging Black communities for the period 1960-1980. This project is based on qualitative interviews and focus groups conducted with Black Clergy and Black women in the Oneness church of the Greater Toronto area. This study is based on the following four objectives: (1) Understanding the central importance of the Black Oneness Pentecostal Church post 1960 to Black communities. (2) Providing a voice for those of the Black Church that are currently underrepresented in academic scholarship. (3) Examining how the Black Church responds to allegations of its own complicities in colonial practices. (4) Engage spirituality as a legitimate location and space from which to know and resist colonization. The study also introduces an emerging framework entitled: Whiteness as Theology. This framework is a critique of the theological discourse of Whiteness and the enduring relevance of the Black Church in a pluralistic Afro-Christian culture.
276 p., A critical examination of Haitian migration and displacement in North America that engages both a theoretical and literary analysis of exile and diaspora as consequences of migration and displacement. Argues that Haitian writers in North America inscribe migration by troping exile and diaspora to speak of the predicament of displaced migratory subjects and their inevitable crossings of places, landscapes, borders, cultures, and nations. Analyzes three novels by Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat: Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), The Farming of Bones (1998), and the Dew Breaker (2004); and two novels by Haitian Canadian writer Myriam Chancy: Spirit of Haiti (2003) and The Scorpion's Claw (2005).
363 p., investigates the pre- and post- migratory experiences of working-class African-Caribbean women from the English-speaking Caribbean who left their children in their home countries while pursuing better economic opportunities in Canada from the 1970s to the early 1990s. The author problematizes the intersectional relationship between female migrant labor, transnationality and motherhood within the rubric of globalized gender, race and class relations. Given the centrality of African-Caribbean women's worker-mother role in their societies, further exploration of this role within global migration is important in order to recognize its significant gendered impact on women's labor and familial relations on a transnational level.
473 p., Demonstrates that the figure of the trickster is a key trope for the achievement of agency by the narrators of the three slave narratives Autobiografia de un esclavo, "Routes in North Africa by Abú Bekr es[dotbelow] s[dotbelow]iddik" [sic], and Biografia de un cimarrón. Also shows how both the realization of the trickster's role and the achievement of agency to which such a role is oriented are dependent on the use of the four Afro-Caribbean meta-tropes ndoki, nkisi, nganga, and simbi.
208 p., Recent prevalence rates of clinical depression in African Americans seeking services from primary care facilities reveal that African Americans are presenting with more depression symptoms than any other group. Although there is research on depression among women in general, the research among women of African descent is very limited while research on subsets of this population (Afro-Caribbean) is even more limited. Women of African descent residing in the United States are treated as a homogeneous population. Although some Afro-Caribbean women may share similar experiences with their African American counterparts, their immigration status may create unique concerns. Thus, categorizing all women of African descent as African American may provide a biased and inaccurate description of the problem.
305 p., Examines how social inequalities, in combination with identified social risk factors, contribute to disparities in the incidence of schizophrenia among individuals of African-Caribbean descent in England. It addresses the psychiatric epidemiological puzzle that indicates African-Caribbbeans in England have significantly greater rates of schizophrenia than the general British population. Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork with patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, their relatives, and community members in North London, the researcher argued that specific social changes and historical forces interlink to create a toxic environment characterized by negative expressed emotions and social defeat to affect African-Caribbeans' mental health.
306 p., This project brings together adventure novels by white British authors, like Frederick Marryat, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and H. Rider Haggard, and African American and Afro-Caribbean texts by authors like Frederick Douglass, Pauline Hopkins, and Maxwell Philip, to argue that the sensational elements of the adventure genre that were so effective in developing British national identity were appropriated by African American and Afro-Caribbean authors to re-imagine national identity as a flexible and multi-ethnic concept.