This chapter synthesizes the arguments throughout the book to demonstrate how Come to My Kwe-Kwe has become increasingly important to the process of rediasporization in the African-Guyanese community in New York City, in large part because it constitutes a compound ethnic boundary marker that encompasses other crucial ethnic boundary markers, such as food, music, dance, dress, and religious and gender values. Beneath the consistent negotiation of identities and the policing of ethnic boundaries lies self-preservation. An increasing number of African-Guyanese support Come to My Kwe-Kwe to keep it alive for the next generation in order to prevent complete assimilation. Thus, while the ritual provides an opportunity for African-Guyanese-Americans to embrace their African and Guyanese heritage, it also creates a space for established traditional kweh-kweh practices to be celebrated, challenged, revised, and fractured to accommodate the innovative functions of the ritual, changing performance spaces, and the needs of a secondary diaspora.
Zeki Sarıgil, Ethnic Boundaries in Turkish Politics: The Secular Kurdish Movement and Islam