When thousands of working-class Barbadians left for Cuba in search of better economic opportunities during the early twentieth century, most of them did so with the expectation that they would eventually return to their home. They maintained many of the cultural traditions of their homeland, and they immersed their Cuba-born children in Barbadian culture by exposing them to the type of education which they themselves had received in Barbados and teaching them English to prepare them for life "back home". Although many of the migrants were not able to achieve this dream of returning home, some of their children and grandchildren have managed to retrace their ancestors' journey and find their roots in Barbados. This "reverse migration" is driven as much by economics as by sentiment for the ancestral homeland. The basis of that sentiment has sometimes been called into question, since these "CuBajans" have not always been regarded as true Barbadians by some among the local population. The CuBajans themselves have a sense of pride in what they have been able to achieve in Cuba, and they count themselves fortunate in having two homelands. With relatives still in Cuba, they maintain links through frequent communication, remittances and travel back to the island. In A Return to Roots: "CuBajans" in Barbados, these migrants tell their own stories through oral testimonies, which Sharon Milagro Marshall frames within the context of Barbadian and Cuban history.

Barbadians were among the thousands of British West Indians who migrated to Cuba in the early twentieth century in search of work. They were drawn there by employment opportunities fuelled largely by US investment in Cuban sugar plantations. Tell My Mother I Gone to Cuba: Stories of Early Twentieth-Century Migration from Barbados is their story. The migrants were citizens of the British Empire, and their ill-treatment in Cuba led to a diplomatic tiff between British and Cuban authorities. The author draws from contemporary newspaper articles, official records, journals and books to set the historical contexts which initiated this intra-Caribbean migratory wave. Through oral histories, it also gives voice to the migrants' compelling narratives of their experience in Cuba. One of the oral histories recorded in the book is that of the author's mother, who was born in Cuba of Barbadian parents.