A Brief History of Seven Killings

By shifting from its Kingston setting to New York, the novel explores how the Jamaican diasporic experience affects characters who either flee the country for their own safety or choose life abroad to pursue opportunities that they have no access to in their country of origin.

Nina Burgess’s story is representative of the typical diasporic narrative. Prompted by the insecurity she feels after a robbery in her middle-class parents’ home, she desires to escape Jamaica even before she witnesses the Singer’s ambush. Nina resists rooting herself into Jamaican culture; she ignores politics and the news, and rejects her sister’s alignment with Rastafarian beliefs. Instead, she dreams of life outside of the island. Externally motivated by fear after the Singer’s ambush, Nina doubles down on her need to escape. She sheds her identity and takes desperate measures to secure a visa abroad. However, living in hiding in New York City precludes Nina from forming new roots; she laments her empty, assimilated life. Her true understanding of the power of diaspora comes after the death of Josey dispels her terror of being found and killed. She ends the novel newly interested in her place of origin, seeking out Jamaican food, tending a Ranking Dons patient as a nurse, and calling her sister for the first time in many years. This arc is characteristic of a person in the diaspora who flees from their home country to escape danger but longs for home once that danger lifts.

Josey is prompted to leave Jamaica by ambition rather than fear; he moves his criminal activities to New York City when he sees opportunities there that Kingston cannot offer. In Part 3, Josey realizes that being in Jamaica limits his agency: Kingston gangs will always function as proxies for other power players, whether it is the JLP as represented by Peter Nasser or the CIA as represented by agents Johnson and Clark. Josey longs to break away from the many power systems that abut organized crime in Jamaica, incorrectly imagining that the US drug trade is less hemmed in. But rather than enjoying the auspices of diaspora, Josey simply recreates the Kingston environment in his new location—he does not escape Jamaica, but brings its factions and violence with him.

To secure his power in New York, Josey installs his longtime deputy Weeper. This inadvertently allows Weeper to experience his own escape from an oppressive system: the antigay bias of Copenhagen City. In New York City, Weeper has the agency to explore his sexuality as a queer person, which directly interferes with his priorities as an enforcer for the Storm Posse. Weeper thus faces the binary choice of acting on his responsibility to Josey or completing his self-discovery. By ignoring Eubie’s calls, Weeper affirms the freedom that New York grants him to explore his full sexual identity for the first time, away from Josey’s belief that Weeper’s queerness is a phase.

Through these character arcs, James shows both how the diasporic experience can liberate people from danger or oppression, and how escaping from home comes with its own difficult choices, underlining the lack of resolution that marks the diasporic experience.