euhwa.blogg.se

If as Ja­maican crit­ic Sylvia Wyn­ter ob­serves James' "de­con­struc­tive ef­forts. James un­doubt­ed­ly opened the gates of Caribbean his­to­ri­og­ra­phy for me with his bril­liant re-eval­u­a­tion of the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, which as he re­it­er­ates in Bound­ary "is the most out­stand­ing event in the his­to­ry of the West In­dies." Be­sides the read­ing and ru­mi­nat­ing plea­sure it has af­ford­ed me, it has, along with the Black Ja­cobins and James' yard lit­er­a­ture (the short sto­ry Tri­umph and nov­el Minty Al­ley) fig­ured promi­nent­ly in my own in­tel­lec­tu­al de­vel­op­ment and hope­ful­ly that of all my past and present Costaatt stu­dents. So it's with both grat­i­tude and re­spect for the au­thor (who I once had the priv­i­lege of con­duct­ing an af­ter­noon-long in­ter­view with in his Brix­ton bed­room), that I ded­i­cate this col­umn to cel­e­brat­ing Be­yond a Bound­ary. I bought my first copy dur­ing the Windies' tri­umphant 1984 Eng­lish tour and it has been a faith­ful friend ever since. This text which "pos­es the ques­tion what do they know of crick­et who on­ly crick­et know?" has been on my re­volv­ing read­ing list for the past 20 years. Tucked among the Bo­cas Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val's many ac­tiv­i­ties was a short pan­el dis­cus­sion on CLR James' clas­sic Be­yond a Bound­ary, which cel­e­brates its 50th an­niver­sary of pub­li­ca­tion this year.