Whiteness, Weddings, and Tourism in the Caribbean: Paradise for Sale

by Karen Wilkes

This book examines myths of the Caribbean as paradise. These myths are used as a backdrop to market destination white weddings. The book is interdisciplinary and uses historical and contemporary visual texts to examine the way in which middle class white womanhood assumes a decorative, privileged, and elevated position within contemporary images of destination weddings in the Caribbean. To facilitate the notion of the Caribbean as paradise, the book argues that this production of luxury is highly dependent on the positioning of blackness as servitude. To this end, tourism marketing appropriates the Caribbean’s history of slavery; transforming the region into a site where whiteness can consume black labor as luxury.

251 pages, Hardcover

Published August 19, 2016

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book was very well researched, and excellently explains the relation between tourism, colonisation and destination weddings. it is well explained and each chapter dove deeply into these connections. i highly recommend this book, especially to other Caribbean people, it will bring a lot of insight and put much into perspective.

[Ietrio · Rating 2 out of 5]

The text is well articulated, but dry. And the scholasticism and the inline references that are there only to cover the author's academic behind make the text unreadable. A pity.