History
Letters from the Voyages of the Slave Ship Pearl
The barbarity of the enforced migration of Africans to the Caribbean and the realities of the transatlantic slave trade are fully revealed in Letters from the Voyages of the Slave Ship PEARL. The nonchalant accounts of the awful details of suffering and death are brought into sharp relief by the editors who reconstruct four voyages […]
AFRICA AND TRANS-ATLANTIC MEMORIES: Literary and Aesthetic Manifestations of Diaspora and History
The trans-Atlantic slave trade and the concomitant enslavement of Africans created an enduring connection between Africa and the scattered communities of peoples of African origins in the Americas and elsewhere. These tragic events of slavery have profoundly influenced the literary imagination, whether in Africa, Europe or the Americas. The authors in this collection explore the […]
You Don't Play With Revolution: The Montreal Lectures of C.L.R. James
You Don’t Play With Revolution collects seven never-before-published lectures by Marxist cultural critic C.L.R. James, delivered during his stay in Montréal in 1967-1968. Ranging in topic from Marx and Lenin to Shakespeare and Rousseau to Caribbean history and the Haitian Revolution, these lectures demonstrate the staggering breadth and clarity of James’ knowledge and interest.
Moving Against the System: The 1968 Congress of Black Writers and the Shaping of Global Black Consciousness
For the first time since 1968, David Austin brings alive the speeches and debates of the most important international gathering of black radicals of the era. With never-before-seen texts from Stokely Carmichael, Walter Rodney, and C. L. R. James, these documents will prove invaluable to anyone interested in black radical thought and political activism of […]
Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal
In the 1960s, for at least a brief moment, Montreal became what seemed an unlikely centre of Black Power and the Caribbean left. In October 1968 the Congress of Black Writers at McGill University brought together well-known Black thinkers and activists from Canada, the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean—people like C.L.R. James, Stokely Carmichael, […]
DREAD POETRY AND FREEDOM: LINTON KWESI JOHNSON AND THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION
In Dread Poetry and Freedom David Austin explores the themes of poetry, political consciousness, and social transformation through the prism of Johnson's work. Drawing from the Bible, reggae and Rastafari, and surrealism, socialism, and feminism, and in dialogue with Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James and Walter Rodney, W.E.B. Du Bois, Johnson's work becomes a crucial […]