Afro Central Americans in New York City - by Sarah England (Paperback)

About the Book

Based on two years of fieldwork in Honduras and New York, this study examines not only the transnational movements of Garifuna populations but also the impact that the complex racial and ethnic identity of the Garifuna have on their surrounding societies.

Book Synopsis

Descended from African maroons and the Island Carib on colonial St. Vincent, and later exiled to Honduras, the Garifuna way of life combines elements of African, Island Carib, and colonial European culture. Beginning in the 1940s, this cultural matrix became even more complex as Garifuna began migrating to the United States, forming communities in the cities of New York, New Orleans, and Los Angeles. Moving between a village on the Caribbean coast of Honduras and the New York City neighborhoods of the South Bronx and Harlem, England traces the daily lives, experiences, and grassroots organizing of the Garifuna.

Concentrating on how family life, community life, and grassroots activism are carried out in two countries simultaneously as Garifuna move back and forth, England also examines the relationship between the Garifuna and Honduran national society and discusses much of the recent social activism organized to protect Garifuna coastal villages from being expropriated by the tourism and agro-export industries.

Based on two years of fieldwork in Honduras and New York, her study examines not only how this transnational system works but also the impact that the complex racial and ethnic identity of the Garifuna have on the surrounding societies. As a people who can claim to be Black, Indigenous, and Latino, the Garifuna have a complex relationship not only with U.S. and Honduran societies but also with the international community of nongovernmental organizations that advocate for the rights of Indigenous peoples and blacks.



Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Review Quotes

"An
ethnographically rich exploration of the ways in which Garifuna communities and
grassroots organizations negotiate the transnational complexities of race,
class, gender, ethnicity and nationhood as a multivalent diasporic people."--Journal
of Latin American Studies

"Does
an impressive job of analyzing Garifuna transnationalism while highlighting the
distinctions between dwelling in different places within it. . . . Has much to
offer students of race and ethnicity, ethnic movements and transnationalism."--Journal
of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology

"[A]
finely crafted book. . . . In exquisite theoretical and ethnographic detail,
England focuses on the history of transnational migration of a community of
Garifuna between Limón, Honduras, and New York City."--Latin American Perspectives

"An
excellent account of how transnational culture informs social movements, the
negotiation of development processes, and reformulation of ethnic identity.
England makes her case using rich, thick description based on firsthand
narrative accounts to provide a window of insight into the complexities of
transnational Garifuna culture."--American Anthropologist

"A
strength of England's analysis is her consideration of critical discourses that
compete with the dominant perspective to argue that dependence on remittances
and the consumption they enable is debilitating and enslaving."--Latin
American Research Review

"An important book. . . . England's multisited
ethnography represents a substantial contribution."--New West Indian Guide