Histories

In 1984, the year I graduated from high school, my parents and other members of my family spent several days together in a resort on a Jamaican beach. Photographs of our vacation show me in various locations: lying on palm fronds on a sparsely grassed area; frolicking with my cousin in the ocean on the resort’s beach dotted with thatched cabanas; walking in a bathing suit and towel alongside a young hotel employee carrying a tray of food; and standing with a craftswoman who is wearing a brightly colored dress while balancing dozens of woven straw sun visors on her head. In looking back on these photos now, I am struck by my somberness. Indeed, my most vivid memories independent of the photographic record are of watching young children enthusiastically, even relentlessly, but not happily selling gum, T-shirts, and colorful jewelry to us as we exited the minibus in the town outside the gated, walled-in resort. I also remember the battle to remove/contain the abundance of tropical wildlife—particularly the bugs—from our hotel room. In retrospect, I believe our efforts to be tourists and connoisseurs of the tropical “other” failed. In thinking of these snapshots ¹ —both real and imagined—I am also struck by the way in which the “other” is also not fulfilling its expected role as pleasant, happy purveyor of the Jamaican experience. I recognize, from this vantage point, the uneasy relationship across and within race—how do we articulate ourselves at this meeting: the black American middle-class tourist and the Afro-Jamaican tourist attraction? ²