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Michele A. Johnson

"They Do as They Please": The Jamaican Struggle for Cultural Freedom After Morant Bay

This book is a companion to Neither Led nor Driven, published in 2004. It examines the secular aspects of culture in Jamaica, namely, material culture (architecture and home furnishings, dress, and food), rites of passage, language and oral culture, creative and performance arts, popular entertainment, sports and games, social clubs and fraternities, and the issues of […]

"Ah look afta de chile like is mine': Discourses of Mothering in Jamaican Domestic Service, 1920-1970" in Colonization and Domestic Service: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, 79-96

This groundbreaking book brings together two key themes that have not been addressed together previously in any sustained way: domestic service and colonization. Colonization offers a rich and exciting new paradigm for analyzing the phenomenon of domestic labor by non-family workers, paid and otherwise. Colonization is used here in its broadest sense, to refer to […]

"'The Spear is Black with a pure gold point': Articulations of 'Blackness' in Toronto during the 1970s" in Exploring Dimensions of African Diasporas, 180-215

Diasporas comprise an inescapable part of the human experience and few are more interesting and diverse than African diasporas. By providing a panoramic view across time and geographical space this collection of essays illustrates the inherent variability of African, European and Asian diasporic formation. Even when such communities share a common origin, diasporas behave like […]

"'Mi have to work': La domesticité des enfants en Jamaïque, 1920-1970" in Situations Contemporaines de Servitude et d'Esclavage: Anthropologie et sociétés, 41 (1), 147-177

Among the tens of thousands of workers who built the domestic employment sector in the XX th century in Jamaica there were young people, most of them young girls, and a few still "children." While some were recruited as paid maids, others were placed (sometimes in the form of informal 'adoptions') in households where they performed domestic chores […]

UNSETTLING THE GREAT WHITE NORTH: BLACK CANADIAN HISTORY

An exhaustive volume of leading scholarship in the field of Black Canadian history, Unsettling the Great White North highlights the diverse experiences of persons of African descent within the chronicles of Canada’s past. The book considers histories and theoretical framings within the disciplines of history, sociology, law, and cultural and gender studies to chart the mechanisms of […]