'Praise Songs' of the Family: Lineage and Kinship in the Caribbean Diaspora

Abstract

Life stories reveal rich empirical data. They also reveal the imaginative structures which organize memory, recall and recount. These structures are shaped by culture and can indicate the underlying values and principles of social life. They are, however, also narratives and, as such, may conform to genre(s). Based on life story narratives from the research project on living arrangements, family structure and social change of Caribbeans in Britain (funded by the ESRC), this article explores the various genres through which families are described. It argues that much of the data conforms with `cultural templates', which are redolent of African praise poems. These then reveal fresh insights into the meaning of lineage and the role of kinship in contemporary Caribbean families, and on the transmission and transformation of family values across the generations and the oceans. In so doing, they offer a new perspective on studies of the Caribbean family, which are often dominated by an agenda of dysfunction aggravated, in the British case, by the presumed disruptions of migration. This paper raises afresh issues of African and Caribbean cultural retentions, and the importance of language and stories in studies of the family.

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