Making Love (and Maps), Not War

Abstract

The 1918 anti-Chinese riots, which saw scores of Chinese-owned stores destroyed by largely Afro-descended peasant community members, are popularly remembered as one of the worst acts of interracial violence in Jamaica's postemancipation history. However, by examining the coverage of the riots by the Gleaner, Jamaica's newspaper of record, the author embarks on a mapping project to help show the network of nonconforming and anticolonial collaborations within these communities that existed in tandem with interracial tensions. The aim is to show how recapturing these productive collaborations from the past can animate intersectional forms of activism in the present. Furthermore, the article explores how Patricia Powell, as a queer Caribbean writer, uses her novel The Pagoda to perform the same work as the map in creating a counterhistory that gives voice to the anticolonial, nation-building strategies of subaltern groups lost in the gaps of official colonial archives.