Interview with Egan Bovell
IntervieweeInterview with
Egan Bovell
(Barbadian)
Date2001 May 17
Mediumdigitized audio cassette tape
DimensionsDuration (side 1): 47 Minutes, 31 Seconds
Duration (side 2): 12 Minutes, 18 Seconds
Duration (total runtime): 59 Minutes, 49 Seconds
ClassificationsInformation Artifacts
Credit LineGift of the CHS Exhibitions Department
Object number2013.26.30a-e
Description(a-d) Audio cassette tape of an interview with Egan Bovell, who was interviewed by Fiona Vernal on May 17, 2001. (e) Black and white portrait photograph of Egan Bovell.
Topics discussed include Bovell's family and childhood in Barbados; being raised by his grandparents after his parents migrated to England; the logistics of his parents' migration to England, such as sponsorship and jobs; joining his parents in England at age 17 and living in England for nine years; extended family is an important support network; education; the Methodist Church; traveling to St. Lucia; his typical day in Barbados; school discipline; expectations about England and settling in; returning to Barbados; coming to Connecticut; marriage; opportunities in America versus Barbados; the changing immigration climate in England in the 1980s; Hartford's early Barbadian community; socializing with West Indians; settling in, raising a family, buying a home, and finding a church in Hartford; the broader West Indian identity versus a specific island identity; the importance of respect an family; the importance of education; and music and Carnival.
2013.26.30a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
2013.26.30e: photograph
Topics discussed include Bovell's family and childhood in Barbados; being raised by his grandparents after his parents migrated to England; the logistics of his parents' migration to England, such as sponsorship and jobs; joining his parents in England at age 17 and living in England for nine years; extended family is an important support network; education; the Methodist Church; traveling to St. Lucia; his typical day in Barbados; school discipline; expectations about England and settling in; returning to Barbados; coming to Connecticut; marriage; opportunities in America versus Barbados; the changing immigration climate in England in the 1980s; Hartford's early Barbadian community; socializing with West Indians; settling in, raising a family, buying a home, and finding a church in Hartford; the broader West Indian identity versus a specific island identity; the importance of respect an family; the importance of education; and music and Carnival.
2013.26.30a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
2013.26.30e: photograph
Label TextListen to interview at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/40002:19641571
NotesSubject Note: In 1999, the West Indian Social Club of Hartford and the West Indian Foundation asked the Connecticut Historical Society to join them in documenting the lives of the West Indian immigrants who first came to the Hartford area in the 1940s to work on local tobacco farms.What began as a project designed to record the experiences of these early pioneers - mostly men from Jamaica - subsequently grew to include audio and videotaped interviews of men and women, elders and young people, longtime residents and more recent arrivals to the Greater Hartford area, both from Jamaica and the other English-speaking, independent countries in the Caribbean.
The exhibition explored a common thread that seems to link people’s individual stories: the challenge of putting down roots in a new place while maintaining ties with the people, history, and cultural heritage of their homelands in the West Indies.
The exhibition, "Finding a Place, Maintaining Ties: Greater Hartford’s West Indians," was on view at the Connecticut Historical Society from July 2, 2002 – August 31, 2003.
Status
Not on view
2000 May 10
2022 February 26
