From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Caribbean Peoples/Frances Henry
A standard text on Caribbean society is David Lowenthal, West Indian Societies (London, 1972). A detailed history of the region can be found in Gordon K. Lewis, The Growth of the Modern West Indies (New York, 1969). Of particular interest are the historical works by the late prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Eric Williams, whose From Columbus to Castro and Capitalism and Slavery (London, 1981) demonstrate the usefulness of a neo-Marxist perspective to Caribbean history.
There is little systematic published research on Caribbean people in Canada apart from a variety of media accounts, unpublished government documents, and small-scale community-organization reports. The migration of Caribbean people to Canada is analysed statistically using immigration data in W.W. Anderson, Caribbean Immigrants: A Socio-Demographic Profile (Toronto, 1993), and A. Simmons, “Caribbean Exodus and the World System,” in Global Interactions: International Migration Systems in an Interdependent World, edited by
M. Kritiz and L. Lim (Oxford, U.K., 1991). Anthony Richmond has produced several quantitative studies of Caribbean people in Canada and Great Britain, including “Caribbean Immigrants in Britain and Canada: Socio-economic Adjustment,” International Migration , vol.26, no.4 (1988), and “Caribbean Immigrants in Britain and Canada,” Revue européenne des migrations internationales, vol.3, no.3 (1987).
An ethnographic description of Caribbean life and institutions in Toronto can be found in Frances Henry, The Caribbean Diaspora in Toronto: Learning to Live with Racism (Toronto, 1994), which also discusses the impact of racism on the group. Caribbean Canadians in Canadian education systems have received some attention from researchers. Such studies include Daniel Yon, “Schooling and the Politics of Identity: A Study of Caribbean Students in a Toronto High School,” in Forging Identities and Patterns of Development, edited by H. Diaz (Toronto, 1992); Carl James, “Getting There and Staying There: Black’s Employment Experience,” in Transitions: Schooling and Employment in Canada, edited by P. Anisef and P. Axelrod (Toronto, 1993), 3–20, which focuses on the work expectations of Caribbean youth; and R.P. Solomon, Black Resistance in High School: Forging a Separatist Culture (Albany, N.Y., 1992), a detailed ethnography of the cultural experiences of Caribbean youth in a Toronto high school.
The lives and experiences of Caribbean women migrants is the subject of A. Mendoza, “Caribbean Women in Toronto” (Ph.D. thesis, York University, 1988), while A. Bakan and D. Stasiulus, Foreign Domestic Worker Policy in Canada (Toronto, 1993), includes some discussion about Caribbean female domestic workers.
Caribbean literature is represented in Canada by a number of writers based in this country. Foremost among these is Austin Clarke, whose trilogy, The Meeting (1968), Storm of Fortune (1973), and The Bigger Light (1975), poignantly and humorously describes the lives of domestics workers employed in Toronto households. Other Caribbean authors in Canada include Neil Bissoondath and the late Samuel Selvon.
