Author: Antoinette Seymour, University of Windsor
Many people have never heard of a Caribbean funeral booklet, and if they have, they have not thought of it as part of an archive. But these booklets can spur such a frenetic grabbing at a funeral–folks at times could nearly come to blows for one. The Caribbean funeral booklet is the ultimate commemorative keepsake. It is a work of art, an all-out grand production that can sometimes be very expensive to produce. Within the funeral booklet, you will find photographs of the dearly departed, their life story, and a list of people close to them, including relatives and children, their own, legally adopted or children of close friends.
There are many reasons why this booklet is a traditional practice at a Caribbean funeral. No matter the outlandish cost, it’s also the portion of a funeral process that family and other loved ones get to control. The funeral booklet gives you an opportunity to put together a document commemorating the life of a person that incorporates your point of view on the final story of the person who has passed away. There is an intense desire for this piece of literature to live on. The preservation of legacy is paramount in Afro-Caribbean diasporic cultures, as enslaved ancestors violently lost their birth names and spaces. Each person in attendance at a funeral who receives a funeral booklet gets to retain the document as a record of that person’s legacy.
Collections of booklets
How does my professional background intersect with this kind of diasporic genealogy work? I was born in the Bahamas to sterling educators in a household of siblings who were voracious readers. I would often lose myself in any information repository, like libraries and museums. When I was younger, I had no idea what archiving was. I quickly learned that by safeguarding historical materials, archivists preserved culture, history, heritage, identity, legacy, memory, and so much more.
and Special Collections, where the Homegoing Booklet collection is housed under the category “Student Life.”
When I was twenty, I graduated from University of Windsor with a Bachelor’s of Arts in communication studies. In 1985, I began my career at what is now called the University of the Bahamas, as a records professional, a role which typically involves managing current and semi-current records. I later attended the University of Glasgow and received a graduate degree in educational administration in the field of Information Management and Preservation, respectively. Eventually, I became affiliate staff at the University of Glasgow Archive Services and that experience informed my initial training at the University of Bahamas archives.
The Department of Archives in Nassau, Bahamas houses a special collection of funeral booklets that numbers in the thousands and they are readily accessible to the public. Special collections like this are where the funeral booklets would be housed in an institutional archive because they are not publications that are for mass production or publishing.
When I realized funeral booklets were missing in Canada’s archive
Last year, I started working at the University of Windsor as a librarian and archivist. Some funeral booklets I have collected or were donated are now held at the University of Windsor Leddy Library Archives and Special Collections student life section. The funeral booklets are currently under processing at UWindsor’s Leddy Library but may be viewed in person at Leddy’s Archives and Special Collections.
It is my hope that the Caribbean diaspora in Canada will make funeral booklets, or even better still, donate one to an Archives and Special Collections where it will be protected in perpetuity for access by generations to come. In doing so, the tradition of creating these genealogical “talking pieces,” which are items that tell narratives, will be preserved. The homegoing booklets speak loudly about Caribbean culture as well as genealogy through photos and text. would also be preserved, and that practice would also inform the research practices of persons outside the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. I believe the information within the Caribbean funeral booklet, whether in physical or digital format, will likely survive all of us, especially when preserved.
If you have an Afro-Canadian or Caribbean-Canadian funeral booklet which you would like to donate as part of the Home-going Booklet Collection at Leddy Library, please contact me at antoinette.seymour@uwindsor.ca.
About the author
Antoinette “Anto” Seymour is Librarian/Faculty at Leddy Library and also a member of the University of Windsor Black Scholars Institute. Born at Nassau, Bahamas, she is also a professional archivist with the inherent task of facilitating the preservation of culture, heritage, history, identity, legacy and memory.