Culture of the Virgin Islands

The single largest influence on modern Virgin Islander culture, however, comes from the Africans enslaved to work in cane fields from the 17th to the mid-19th century.

These African slaves brought with them traditions from across a wide swathe of Africa, including what is now Nigeria, Senegal, both Congos (the RotC and the DRC), Gambia, and Ghana.

Due to immigration from other Caribbean islands, usage of Spanish and various French creoles have increased in the last few decades.

Their poetry and that of 22 other writers, including the fastly emerging poet and literary critic and Moko journal editor Richard Georges, can be found in Where I See the Sun – Contemporary Poetry in The Virgin Islands (Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Anegada, Jost Van Dyke), an anthology edited by Lasana M. Sekou in 2016.

Other dances include bachata, merengue, and salsa, which were brought to the islands by immigrants from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

Upscale restaurants often cater to tourists, serving a combination of North American dishes with tropical twists as well as local cuisine.

For example, a popular dish is roti, of Indo-Trinidadian origin, which consists of curried vegetables and meat wrapped in a paper-thin dough.

Fruits consumed in the Virgin Islands include: sugar apple, mango, papaya, soursop, genip, sea grapes, tamarind (can be made in a sweet stew or rolled in sweet balls), and goose berries (small green sour fruit, smaller than a grape).

Popular cold beverages include maubi, sorrel, soursop, sea moss and passion fruit.

Paté (Pronounced PAH-TEH), fried dough filled with various meats including beef, chicken, conch, or saltfish stuffed inside is a popular snack (similar to an empanada).

Although dependent territories, the U.S. and British Virgin Islands both have their own independent national sports teams and compete in regional and international athletic events.

Madras is a lightweight cotton fabric, traditionally woven with yarn-dyed, checked — tartan-like — patterns, often in bright colors.

[8] Already such a process had been undertaken in another Caribbean territory, when, in 1992, Antigua and Barbuda adopted a specially-created madras as part of a new national costume.