“Seen and Heard”: Reflections on Testimony and Trauma in West Kingston, Jamaica

This article examines the role of religious communities as spaces of belonging and inclusion. Deliverance Tabernacle, a small church located in the Dudley Square section of Tivoli Gardens, provides a community of care in which residents, specifically women and youth, receive recognition and affirmation unavailable to them in mainstream Jamaican society. Their engagement and participation in the church contrasts with the alienation they experience from the state, evinced here in victims’ experiences with offering testimonies to the West Kingston Commission of Enquiry.