Down Town Ladies & Black Feminist Theory

Down Town Ladies by Gina Ulysse takes the reader into the lives of Informal Commercial Importers (ICIs) in Kingston, Jamaica as they live life through high expectations of gender, class, and color as well as difficult, complex state regulations. Her goal in this book was to “both highlight and decipher the historical and contemporary codes that are written on the bodies of importers and that impact their movement.” (15) She achieves her goal by deconstructing the ICI along the lines of the different categories they are put into just by looking at their gender, race, and class.

In the everyday life of an ICI they are dictated by the color of their skin which indicates their social standing and whether or not they are a “lady” or a “woman”. This is very interesting because the reader gets to see the influence and reach of European influences and what they have on a small country. Through these European influences do they define themselves and even outsiders like the author. While living in Jamaica, the author got to experience this type of reality when she first cut her long hair. By local standards, she had rid herself of her femininity, and by doing this she was exposing herself to being labeled a ‘rebel’ and even a ‘lesbian’. Just by cutting her hair she took on a masculine persona! She became a walking contradiction due to her dialect, dress, and appearance. This helped her come to some startling realizations while doing her field work and ultimately helped her in dissecting the lives of the ICIs. The only problem I personally had within these first few chapters was when she was talking about the treatment of the ICIs in airports. What type of treatment did they received? In regards to visible and invisible ICIs are there any similarities or differences in their treatment besides ‘niceness’?

Overall, these first few chapters were interesting. To see the how Jamaican women live with the confines of gender, color, and class brought new perspectives to my mind.

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In Barriteau’s article, The Relevance of Black Feminist Scholarship, she brings to the reader’s attention “the contributions that black feminist theory has brought to feminist epistemology.” Looking at it from a Caribbean feminist perspective, she makes the reader see in detail what has been contributed and how Caribbean feminism can benefit from the use of this. It is interesting to see the marks it has made in the study of feminism and continues to make, and it makes me wonder indeed to her question into why other feminists do not look closely at the ideas of black feminist theorists if scholars like Barriteau can see the validity?