Title: Family Love in the Diaspora: Migration and the Anglo-Caribbean Experience
Author: Mary Chamberlain
Reviewer: Barbara Nelson
Publisher: Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston (Jamaica)

CONSTANCE R. Sutton, professor, Department of Anthropology, New York University says Family Love in The Diaspora is "the best book yet written on African Caribbean family structure, values and culture."

She continues: "It is an absorbing, graciously written account that draws on both historical data referring to past forms of family behaviour and on the dynamics of more recent family life as related in the oral narratives of three or more generations of family members living in the Caribbean and Britain. Not only do the oral narratives reflect the lively rhetorical genres of African Caribbean, but they give voice to how they view their family and community, the meanings they ascribe to their practices and how they connect this to their sense of personal and collective identity."

The professor feels that the book places the distinctive African Caribbean family culture on the list of heritages and legacies that need to be recognised, respected and celebrated; and puts to rest the idée fixe that African Caribbean family values and practices create problems for individuals and/or modern nation states.

The author, Mary Chamberlain, is professor of modern social history at Oxford Brookes University, in the United Kingdom.

A 245-page exposé, the book (including bibliography and index) and the study, is based on 150 life story narratives across three generations of 45 families who originated in the former British West Indies.

The chapters within each of the four parts present an oral history of migrant African-Caribbean families, demonstrating the varieties, organisation and dynamics of family through their memories and narrative.

PART 1

Chapter 1: Families and Oral History

Colonial social policy in the British West Indies from the nineteenth century onward assumed that black families lacked morals, structure, and men, a void that explained poverty and lack of citizenship. These families appeared as the opposite of the 'ideal' family advocated by the white colonial authorities.

Chapter 2: Historical Perspectives on African-Caribbean Families provides a historical profile of African-Caribbean families tracing their formations and influences, in tandem with the commentaries of contemporaries and colonial authorities.

PART 2

Narratives of the Family examines the language used by families to describe themselves and offer clues into their dynamics and priorities. (Chapters 3 to 8 explore the contemporary dynamics of African Caribbean families at home and abroad.)

There are three chapters in this part: Chapter 3: "Praisesongs" of the Family looks at the languages of repetitions in accounts of childhood and the self and argues that repetitions can be analysed through the imaginative structures or cultural templates that have informed them, revealing, in the process, the social priorities, values and influences embedded within.

Chapter 4:Continuities and Change introduces three case studies of African-Caribbean families and shows how difficult it is to generalize or typologise family life. The first family illustrates the complexity of families and shows that family loyalty and unity must remain paramount. It also shows that the generation of separate and independent economic risk structures within a single family may be considered characteristically West African and African Caribbean as opposed to European or North American.

While there are elements that are common to all three families, there are, nevertheless, striking differences.

Chapter 5:Transnational Narratives and National Belongings continues the analysis by examining the languages used by families in their accounts of relations with family members dispersed around the world.

PART 3

Families through the Narratives of ...

Chapter 6:The Wider Household. Grandparents and other kin looks at the role of grandparents and other foster or surrogate parents in the rearing of children in the Caribbean.

Chapter 7: Small Worlds: Families and Children. This chapter examines families through the eyes of children and their childhoods.

Chapter 8: Brothers and Sisters, Uncles and Aunts looks at family life through siblings. In migrant families, siblings play a central and continuing role in the support and nurture of family members.

PART 4

Chapter 9: Indo-Caribbean Families in Britain and the Caribbean looks at Indo-Caribbean families and suggests ways in which these families have also been part of the creolisation process of the Caribbean...

Chapter 10: Conclusion. The author returns to the original theme of dysfunctionality by looking at some of the contemporary anxieties in Britain (and elsewhere) relating to African-Caribbean families and, in particular, to the profiles of its young, male members.