Nicole Aljoe, who is Jamaican, has seen an array of reactions to the death of Queen Elizabeth II in her family chats on WhatsApp.
With some relatives living in Canada and the U.K., Aljoe has noticed that older people were sad and upset about the passing of the queen and talked very respectfully of her.
“They have a completely different relationship with her,” Aljoe, professor of English and Africana studies at Northeastern University, says. Many of Aljoe’s older relatives attended schools in Jamaica or the U.K. at the time when Queen Elizabeth II was portrayed as the mother of the realms, she says, which meant they were a part of her family.
