Dr.Rachel L. Mordecai received her Master’s degree from the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica, and her doctorate from the University of Minnesota; she is an Associate Professor in the English Department of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her primary areas of teaching and research interest are Caribbean and multicultural American literature. Beyond these, her current research interests include African Diasporic popular culture, and the Caribbean presence in US popular culture. She is the author of Citizenship under Pressure: The 1970s in Jamaican Literature and Culture (UWI Press, 2014), which investigates the role of expressive culture in negotiating and memorializing the politically tumultuous and culturally vibrant 1970s in Jamaica.