The Cultural Politics of Sugar: Caribbean Slavery and Narratives of Colonialism (review)

‘We thought she was a witch’: Gender, class and whiteness in the familial ‘memory archive’

“…That sugar he stuffs from split bags into his internal pockets was 'the single most [important] colonial commodity' up until the end of the Second World War (Bosne et al, 2007: 5). The handing over of sugar to Nora, who used it to make baked goods for family or that she sold on, or that enabled a war-time trading of sugar coupons for meat and dairy, signals not only the hard graft of working-class survival of austere times, but also the family's increased quality of life through participation in the legacy of slavery represented by the 'politics of sugar' (Sandiford, 2004). Those pockets and pies that move in and out of 64 Chepstow Road frame the house as implicated in colonial histories of prosperity and class-transitional fortunes.…”