Jamaican-Hakka Groupies

At the Tsung Tsin Association of Ontario, I meet Keith Lowe, a multicultural activist and professor of literature. With black-rimmed glasses and a thick mane of white-streaked hair, he looks a bit like the “absent-minded professor,” an affectionate term his friends call him. Lowe’s family originally came from Longgang in Shenzhen, China. His father went to Jamaica as a shopkeeper and later brought his Hakka wife over. After graduating with honors from Harvard, Keith received a PhD from Stanford in the 1960s. He returned to Jamaica for ten years, and then settled in Canada in 1979.