[REVIEW] Winston Hayden Chang Jr., The Legacy of the Hakka Shopkeepers of the West Indies

[rfmcdonald]

Winston Hayden Chang. Jr.'s The Legacy of the Hakka Shopkeepers of the West Indies (Wanatqa Enterprises: St. Catherines ON, 2004) provides an entertaining personal perspective on the diaspora beginning in the mid-19th century of the Hakka people of China to the Caribbean, describing the travails of his father Chang Sin Ming as he set up shop as a storekeeper in late colonial Trinidad. While not a professional ethnography by any means, it is a very readable biography of Chang senior, as he tried to make a good life for himself despite the trauma of separation from his home and his family, the difficulties of running a general store, and the too-typical prejudice directed towards members of mercantile minorities. Interesting companion reading can be found in Shirley S. Chiu's graduate thesis on Caribbean and Indian Hakka identity formation in Toronto.