The Dressmaker of Dachau

Chamberlain, Mary

The Borough Press

This text explores the nature and meanings of migration for Barbadians who migrated to Britain and elsewhere. It is an oral and social history based on life-story interviews across three or more generations of Barbadian families. Locating migration within the contemporary debate of modernity, this text highlights the continuing role of migration in shaping the culture and history of Barbados. It investigates the power of social and individual memory in recalling and recounting experience and in shaping and interpreting culture. It reveals the vitality of family dynamics and values in shaping life courses and the ways in which these are transmitted and transformed across generations. It analyzes how the "Mother Country" was encountered and incorporated, and how the continuing presence of the Caribbean shapes identities of those born or brought up in Britain. In reclaiming these narratives of exile and return, this book challenges and exposes those orthodox views which explain Caribbean migration thorugh the labour demands of international capital or the vagaries of the home economy.

Narratives of Exile and Return (Warwick University Caribbean Studies)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Macmillan Education

Fenwomen: A portrait of women in an English village

Quartet Books [for] Virago

Fenwomen: A Portrait of Women in an English Village

Charles River Books

Fenwomen: A portrait of women in an English village (History workshop series)

Routledge& Kegan Paul

This original and exciting book examines the processes of nation building in the British West Indies. It argues that nation building was a more complex and messy affair, involving women and men in a range of social and cultural activities, in a variety of migratory settings, within a unique geo-political context. Taking as a case study Barbados which, in the 1930s, was the most economically impoverished, racially divided, socially disadvantaged and politically conservative of the British West Indian colonies, Empire and nation-building tells the messy, multiple stories of how a colony progressed to a nation. It is the first book to tell all sides of the independence story and will be of interest to specialists and non-specialists interested in the history of Empire, the Caribbean, of de-colonisation and nation building.

Empire and nation-building in the Caribbean: Barbados, 1937–66 (Studies in Imperialism, 82)

History

Americas

Manchester University Press

We may all know that dandelions make us wet the bed, and that stewed prunes are a cure for constipation, but how many of us were aware that a poultice of chicken manure is a remedy for baldness? Or that eel liver will aid a difficult labour? The woman healer is as old as history. For millennia she has been doctor, nurse and midwife, and even in the age of modern medicine her wisdom is handed down in the form of old wives' tales. Using extensive research into archives and original texts, and numerous conversations with women in city and countryside, Mary Chamberlain presents a stimulating challenge to orthodox medicine and an illuminating history of female wisdom which goes back to the earliest times. What are old wives' tales? Where do they come from? Do they really work? These questions, and many more, are answered in this fascinating compendium of remedies and cures handed down from mother to daughter from the beginning of time.

Old Wives' Tales: The History of Remedies, Charms and Spells

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Beauty, Grooming, & Style

Tempus

We may all know that dandelions make us wet the bed, and that stewed prunes are a cure for constipation, but how many of us were aware that a poultice of chicken manure is a remedy for baldness? Or that eel liver will aid a difficult labour? The woman healer is as old as history. For millennia she has been doctor, nurse and midwife, and even in the age of modern medicine her wisdom is handed down in the form of old wives’ tales. Using extensive research into archives and original texts, and numerous conversations with women in city and countryside, Mary Chamberlain presents a stimulating challenge to the history of orthodox medicine and an illuminating survey of female wisdom which goes back to the earliest times. What are old wives’ tales? Where do they come from? Do they really work? These questions, and many more, are answered in this fascinating compendium of remedies and cures handed down from mother to daughter from the beginning of time.

Reference

The History Press

Family Love in the Diaspora: Migration and the Anglo-Caribbean Experience (Memory and Narrative)

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. African-Caribbean families appeared as the mirror opposite of the "ideal" family advocated by the white, colonial authorities. Yet contrary to this image, what provided continuity in the period and contributed to survival was in fact the strength of family connections, their inclusivity and support. This study is based on 150 life story narratives across three generations of forty-five families who originated in the former British West Indies. The author focuses on the particular axes of Caribbean peoples from the former British colonies of Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, and Great Britain. Divided into four parts, the chapters within each present an oral history of migrant African-Caribbean families, demonstrating the varieties, organization, and dynamics of family through their memories and narratives. It traces the evolution of Caribbean life; argues how the family can be seen as the tool that helps transmit and transform historical mentalities; examines the dynamics of family life; and makes comparisons with Indo-Caribbean families. Above all, this is a story of families that evolved, against the odds of slavery and poverty, to form a distinct Creole form, through which much of the social history of the English-speaking Caribbean is refracted. Family Love in the Diaspora offers an important new perspective on African-Caribbean families, their history, and the problems they face, for now and the future. It offers a long overdue historical dimension to the debates on Caribbean families. Mary Chamberlain is professor of modern social history at Oxford Brookes University, in the United Kingdom. She is co-editor of the Transaction Memory and Narrative series, which now has nineteen volumes in print.

Family Love in the Diaspora: Migration And the Anglo-caribbean Experience (Memory and Narrative)

Africa

Routledge

In this original and compelling book, Mary Chamberlain explores the nature and meaning of migration for Barbadians who migrated to Britain and elsewhere. It is a unique oral and social history, based on life-story interviews across three or more generations of Barbadian families. Locating migration within the contemporary debate on modernity, Narratives of Exile and Return highlights the continuing role of migration in shaping the culture and history of Barbados. But it does more by providing post-modern theorizing with concrete national and ethnic settings. Chamberlain investigates the power of social and individual memory in recalling and recounting experience, and in molding and interpreting culture. It reveals the vitality of family dynamics and values in fashioning life courses and the ways in which these are transmitted and transformed across the generations. It analyzes how the "Mother Country" was encountered and incorporated, and how the continuing presence of the Caribbean contributes to the identities of those born or brought up in Britain. In reclaiming these narratives of exile and return, this book challenges and exposes, in an exciting and innovative way, those orthodox views that explain Caribbean migration through the labor demands of international capital or the vagaries of the home economy. Accompanied in Part II by the edited transcripts of three generations of five Barbadian families, Narratives of Exile and Return makes a pioneering contribution to studies of migration and to the social history of the Caribbean. It reaches to the heart of the migrant experience and is a fitting tribute to the power of oral testimony as historical source.

Narratives of Exile and Return: With a new introduction by the author (Memory and Narrative)

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

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