Here Comes the Sun: Deconstructed Student EssaysMain MenuAFR 283: Islands, Archipelagoes and Black Women's Literature“The islands provide me, from a technical point of view, a microcosm in which can be seen in sharp relief many of the basic problems and conflicts which beset oppressed peoples everywhere.” -Paule Marshall, “Shaping the World of My Art”Critical VocabularyLanding page for Critical Vocab TermsUnessaysThis is the launchpad for deconstructed essaysRandi Gill-Sadler4a914792fbfb2078ef84e08319c412098bd9b469
12024-05-01T19:54:00+00:00Tourism in Jamaica Ads8plain2024-05-03T17:26:42+00:00Black Tourism in Jamaica article from JET magazine in 1981 "Make it Jamaica. Again" ad from the 1980s These ads highlight the "tranquility" and "peace" on the island as a way to attract foreign tourists. Nevertheless, as we see in the novel and in M. Jacqui Alexander's work, the actual situation on the island for its inhabitants is anything but peaceful. People are threatened to lose their homes so that their land could be used to develop more hotels and resorts to feed the "tourism economy" of Jamaica (like it happens in River Bank for the new Wellington resort) and, even when people's homes are not directly threatened, the inhabitants lose their jobs (like the fishermen off of River Bank) or are sucked into the neocolonial mindset of the "American dream" and leave Jamaica in search of "a better future" (such as Asafa did and Delores' brother Winston, but there are also many characters in the novel who wish they could leave or urge others to, like Delores and Margot push Thandi). The ads show an image of Jamaica as a virginal land to be (re)discovered by the tourists as explorers. Meanwhile, Dennis-Denn presents Jamaica in the novel as unknownable, in line with the concept of the "anti-explorer" by Stephens and Roberts in Archipelagic American Studies. The anti-explorer embodies an approach to the world that opposes the imperial explorer methods and instead of trying to conquer new territories, the anti-explorer compliments the notion of “critical insularity” (which recognises islands as dynamic sites of connection rather than stagnant boundaries) and views islands as unique entities, as infinite. The article in the Jet magazine (a publication that focuses on culture and entertainment related to the African-American community) is interesting because it reiterates the colonial narratives around tourism in the Caribbean and urges Black Americans to visit the islands and presents them as a main demographic of that industry (when in reality most of the ads are meant to appeal to white tourists). In Here Comes the Sun, there are no mentions of non-white tourists, especially in terms of Margot's encounters with tourists (like Horace, the German tourist that visits Jamaica "just for her" (Chapter 4)).
