Among the Garifuna: Family Tales and Ethnography from the Caribbean Coast by Marilyn McKillop Wells (review)

UNTAMABLE. DANGEROUS. A SCOURGE. The Garifuna, or the Black Caribs, have been described in many ways since they came into existence as a people. A mixture of the Arawak and Carib Indians from South America and African slaves, the Garifuna first inhabited the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent in the mid-1600s. In the mid-eighteenth century, the British targeted them for their insubordination. They were rounded up and deposited on the small island of Bequia. At the tail end of the eighteenth century, the British moved them once more to Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras. Thus begins the story of the Garifuna diaspora. From there, they spread all along the coast of Central America, settling in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Marilyn McKillop Wells's monograph Among the Garifuna: Family Tales and Ethnography from the Caribbean Coast tells the story of a Garifuna family that moves to Belize after tragedy befalls them. McKillop Wells skillfully limns a story that is both particular in that it focuses on one family, yet general in its discussion of issues that are important to Garifuna culture.

How often is an anthropologist invited into a community by one of its members to share its story? Such was the beginning of the author's relationship with the Garifuna. In 1980 McKillop Wells, a medical anthropologist who had previously done extensive research on religion in West Africa, received a letter from a colleague studying the Maya in Belize. A Garifuna man wanted someone to correct the mistakes that had been written about his religion by another anthropologist. McKillop Wells accepted the challenge and flew to Belize. Between 1980 and 1987 she split her time between the States, where she fulfilled her teaching duties, and Larube, Belize, collecting research for the book. She describes how she became a part of the Diego family and ultimately responsible for helping to host the dugu, an extended party thrown for the family's ancestors.

Chapter 1 introduces Margaret and Cervantes Diego, the heads of the family. Through their courtship, marriage, and Cervantes's untimely death, the author shows Garifuna customs and cosmology. The reader learns that polygamy is socially acceptable, ancestors are revered, and a Garifuna woman's first duty is to her children. After Cervantes dies, Margaret leaves Honduras with her family for Larube, Belize. Her sister, Khandi, accompanies them, feeling that she too has nothing left to tie her to Honduras. In Larube, Margaret reclaims her abandoned childhood home and sets up a farm, and the children go to school. It is through the recounting of the children's experiences that the author shows two things: the Creoles (English-speaking blacks) and the Garifuna do not get along, and the Garifuna are always under pressure to abandon their pagan beliefs. By chapter 2 the three Diego children have all grown up, and most have had children of their own. In this chapter, the ethnographer introduces herself and describes how she came to know the Diego family. Finally, the last chapter centers on the planning of the ancestral party for Margaret and Cervantes, commemorating their having reached their final destination.

All ethnographies are intrusive. That is simply the reality of any study that looks at the rituals and culture of a people in order to gain a better understanding of that society. However, perhaps because of the narrative style in which this was written, this book occasionally seemed almost voyeuristic. Readers are privy to private conversations between husbands and wives and lovers. Moreover, the style in which this book is written is less like a typical academic ethnography, which often tries to establish some distance between the subject and the ethnographer and weaves theory into its analysis. Instead, Among the Garifuna reads like a work of historical fiction peppered with magical realism. At times, it is difficult to believe that some of the events actually occurred.

Still, Among the Garifuna is a wonderful...