Overview

Examines reggae culture as an expression of cultural, racial, and gender empowerment in the West Indian Diaspora In popular media Caribbean culture has either been reduced to stereotypes of laziness, marijuana, and reggae music, or conversely, to an identity centered around a refutation of colonialism. Both are oversimplifications, and do not explain the enduring Caribbean identity and empowerment throughout the diaspora. Vibes Up offers an exploration of Caribbean culture as it is felt, understood, and expressed, centered on research conducted in Brooklyn and Costa Rica. Sabia McCoy-Torres demonstrates how reggae culture—which encompasses the music and performance modes of both “roots” and “dancehall”—helps to shed light on dynamics relating to migration, diaspora, queerness, Blackness, and Caribbean cultural subjectivity. Through an examination of elements of the Black outdoors, including nightlife venues, sidewalks, and streets in front of homes, the book shows the important role that reggae plays in articulating the frustrations of migration, establishing community and belonging, and forming transnational relationships. Although reggae’s creators and producers are often perceived as homophobic, Vibes Up also offers a more nuanced examination of the transforming relationships between hetero and LGBTQ+ people in reggae spaces and the accommodation of an array of queer intimacies. The framing of Caribbean Blackness as an expression of perseverance, agency, joy, and the erotic, as opposed to a reaction to colonization, oppression, and enslavement, is a distinctly important and timely view.

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9781479827114

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Reviews

Reflects the best of ethnographic writing. McCoy-Torres writes beautifully and evocatively about the cultural, political, and social practices that structure Caribbean diasporic life, love, labor, community and joy. Her careful attention to the collective labor and love that produce reggae culture reveals novel ways of understanding politics, race, gender and sexuailty that are simultaneously grounded in people's deep sense of place and pride as Afro-Caribbeans in a diasporic context. In this, McCoy-Torres is part of a distinguished tradition of feminist ethnographers whose research and writing is rigorous, rich, and a delight to read. -- Gina Pérez, author of Sanctuary People: Faith-Based Organizing in Latina/o Communities

"""Reflects the best of ethnographic writing. McCoy-Torres writes beautifully and evocatively about the cultural, political, and social practices that structure Caribbean diasporic life, love, labor, community and joy. Her careful attention to the collective labor and love that produce reggae culture reveals novel ways of understanding politics, race, gender and sexuailty that are simultaneously grounded in people's deep sense of place and pride as Afro-Caribbeans in a diasporic context. In this, McCoy-Torres is part of a distinguished tradition of feminist ethnographers whose research and writing is rigorous, rich, and a delight to read.""--Gina P�rez, author of Sanctuary People: Faith-Based Organizing in Latina/o Communities"

"""Reflects the best of ethnographic writing. McCoy-Torres writes beautifully and evocatively about the cultural, political, and social practices that structure Caribbean diasporic life, love, labor, community and joy. Her careful attention to the collective labor and love that produce reggae culture reveals novel ways of understanding politics, race, gender and sexuailty that are simultaneously grounded in people's deep sense of place and pride as Afro-Caribbeans in a diasporic context. In this, McCoy-Torres is part of a distinguished tradition of feminist ethnographers whose research and writing is rigorous, rich, and a delight to read."" -- Gina Pérez, author of Sanctuary People: Faith-Based Organizing in Latina/o Communities"

Author Information

Sabia McCoy-Torres is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Africana Studies Program at Tulane University.

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