Discusses C.L.R. James's chronicle of the history of the Haitian revolution of 1843 in his book 'The Black Jacobins.' Contrast between the behavior of the Haitian slaves during the working day and their conversations around the supper fire; Conscious organization of the Caribbean nation; Processes of communication that took place in the midst of conflicts.
Revolutionary poet Peter Blackman has never received his due in either the Caribbean or the UK, where he made his home from 1937. The author has gathered selected poems and a speech by Blackman into a new collection, Footprints (Smokestack Books). This article discusses Blackman's life from colonised' schoolboy and missionary to Africa to railway worker in north London and sets his writing - especially his language - in the context of twentieth-century West Indian literature. Blackman, who befriended Paul Robeson in London and dedicated works to Claudia Jones, was clearly at the vortex of progressive black cultural expression, but has hitherto been overlooked.
Focuses on the works of Jan Carew concerning the construction of Canadian nationalist identity and production of plays about the Black and Caribbean experience through the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Our understanding of multiracial unity needs to go beyond notions of cultural and group rights, to embrace the challenges such unity has posed to the postcolonial status quo in the Anglophone Caribbean. The active creation of multiracial unity in specific political struggles has had a liberatory impact, but we also need to go beyond this to look at it vis-à-vis human relations more generally.