Interview with Doreth Flowers
IntervieweeInterview with
Doreth Flowers
(Jamaican)
Date2001 May 21
Mediumdigitized audio cassette tape
DimensionsDuration (side 1): 47 Minutes, 34 Seconds
Duration (side 2): 35 Minutes, 47 Seconds
Duration (total runtime): 1 Hour, 23 Minutes, 21 Seconds
ClassificationsInformation Artifacts
Credit LineGift of the CHS Exhibitions Department
Object number2013.26.32a-e
Description(a-d) Audio cassette tape of an interview with Doreth (Dee) Flowers, who was interviewed by Fiona Vernal on May 21, 2001. (e) Black and white portrait photograph of Doreth Flowers.
Topics discussed include Flowers' childhood in Jamaica; being raised by her maternal aunt and uncle; explaining her relationship with her biological father and the father who raised her; seamstresses in her family, which was one of the few opportunities for women to run their own businesses in Jamaica; paying for school; her brother migrating to Canada; her aunt migrating to the U.S; as a domestic worker and eventually working at a hospital; Flowers receiving a scholarship to study nursing in England in the 1970s; the sense of family and community in Jamaica; childhood activities, such as telling stories, putting on plays, going to agricultural shows, and church; myths about the United States and England; her first impressions of England; race and class in Jamaica and the U.S.; why Flowers came to the U.S.; why the decision to leave nursing in Jamaica was difficult; England and the U.S. compared in terms of racism and the cohesiveness of the West Indian community; Flowers gets a job as a nurse and settles down in Connecticut in 1980; first contacts and social activities in the West Indian community; the West Indian Social Club; cooperation among the clubs; Flowers' agenda as president of the West Indian Social Club; challenges as a West Indian migrant; initial American perception of West Indian education; relationship between West Indians and African Americans; migration and West Indian women's independence; generational differences; her career; West Indian sayings; and thoughts on being a woman president at the West Indian Social Club.
2013.26.32a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
2013.26.32e: photograph
Topics discussed include Flowers' childhood in Jamaica; being raised by her maternal aunt and uncle; explaining her relationship with her biological father and the father who raised her; seamstresses in her family, which was one of the few opportunities for women to run their own businesses in Jamaica; paying for school; her brother migrating to Canada; her aunt migrating to the U.S; as a domestic worker and eventually working at a hospital; Flowers receiving a scholarship to study nursing in England in the 1970s; the sense of family and community in Jamaica; childhood activities, such as telling stories, putting on plays, going to agricultural shows, and church; myths about the United States and England; her first impressions of England; race and class in Jamaica and the U.S.; why Flowers came to the U.S.; why the decision to leave nursing in Jamaica was difficult; England and the U.S. compared in terms of racism and the cohesiveness of the West Indian community; Flowers gets a job as a nurse and settles down in Connecticut in 1980; first contacts and social activities in the West Indian community; the West Indian Social Club; cooperation among the clubs; Flowers' agenda as president of the West Indian Social Club; challenges as a West Indian migrant; initial American perception of West Indian education; relationship between West Indians and African Americans; migration and West Indian women's independence; generational differences; her career; West Indian sayings; and thoughts on being a woman president at the West Indian Social Club.
2013.26.32a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
2013.26.32e: photograph
Label TextListen to interview at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/40002:19641573
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
