From the outset, the editors of this volume embrace decolonisation as an ongoing process of collaboration, self-emancipation, community engagement and reparative justice. They foreground the stories, experiences, disillusionment and lived realities of the Windrush generation and their journeys to the United Kingdom. The book celebrates Caribbean people as active agents of decolonialisation, illustrating the power of their oral histories and personal testimonies to challenge imperial narratives.
Matthew Smith (Chapter 1) examines the decolonisation of Jamaica in the 1960s to highlight how Jamaican nationhood was underpinned by deep economic struggles and high emigration rates. Drawing closely on their own memories as Guyanese migrants settled in the UK, Bruce Nobrega, Peter Ramrayka and Anne Braithwaite and (Chapters 2, 5 and 7) recount with some nostalgia their travels to the ‘motherland’. Ramrayka, an Indo-Guyanese former RAF officer and National Health Service manager, talks of feelings of confusion and unease when confronted with distorted fantasies and the broken promises of the British Empire. For Nobrega, ‘[this] mystique of white superiority was totally dismantled’ (p. 32) and, he argues, acted as an important factor in empowering the people of the Caribbean in their fight for decolonisation. Rod Westmaas (Chapter 11) shares the stories of Eric and Jessica Huntley, illustrating how the couple established their radical company Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications in honour of the Haitian Revolution and the Morant Bay Rebellion, two great struggles for liberation.
The positioning of decolonisation as an ongoing process forces a conversation, oftentimes uncomfortable and incomplete. It is a welcome move towards closer engagement with community activists, educators, campaigners and (extra)ordinary people to understand their transnational experiences and to allow new narratives to take centre stage. The words of Caribbean intellectuals, poets and Pan-African activists, including Frantz Fanon, Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, Walter Rodney, Édouard Glissant and Aimé Césaire, are honoured throughout the book. In recognition of Michel-Rolph Trouillot's call to ‘unsilence’ and amplify Caribbean voices from the past, Kelly Delancy (Chapter 3) reminds us that archival records and colonial accounts must never be taken at face value as they too are a way of shining a light on these voices. She illustrates the importance of engaging with oral histories and community elders to help us think creatively about how to really listen to and learn from their personal experiences and memories. Attempting to challenge the historical ambiguities embedded within the archives, Simeon Simeonov (Chapter 8) argues that consuls acted as agents of both colonialism and decolonisation. He maintains that while imposing systems of control, settler colonialists were, rather unexpectedly, also able to challenge, disrupt and dismantle these dominant systems.
In a rare and welcome acknowledgement of the centrality of Indigenous Amerindian people to these questions, Nadine King Chambers (Chapter 6) examines Black women's memories of the female Taíno cacique Anacaona in Ayiti (Haiti), providing a powerful example of why Indigenous studies and Caribbean studies must work together to address framings that can unwittingly also contribute to the erasure of some voices (pp. 88–9). Through their explorations of art, music, literature, creative expression and language, William ‘Lez’ Henry, Miguel Gualdrón Ramírez and Ruth Minott Egglestone (Chapters 4, 9 and 10) challenge and circumnavigate normative discourses to contribute towards ‘a tradition of thinking oneself into being which is beyond the hegemonic scope of a dominant, racist society’ (Henry, p. 74).
As the Haitian–American writer Gina Athena Ulysse reminds us, we need new narratives. This book certainly guides the reader in the right direction, pushing us to (re)examine ways to contribute to the complex, ongoing and ever-changing processes of decolonisation. I cannot help but think, however, that this publication would have benefitted from concluding remarks from the editors and/or contributors to draw together the central themes outlined in this collection of essays. This would have helped provide an analytical overview of the texts, thus offering a useful thread to tie these narratives and lived experiences together.
The point of this volume, however, is not to give answers. Instead, the book reminds us that cultural production, racial injustice and epistemological (un)learning is a global responsibility. We have to start listening. Most remarkable then are not the attempts the editors have made to celebrate the voices they so beautifully amplify in this text but their clear commitment to an ongoing promise to foment collaborative practices and bring about change. An imperfect and ambitious practice, yes, but something that we can nevertheless embrace as a form of collective healing.
