C.L.R.James Reader: (Blackwell Readers)

Author of "The Black Jacobins", "Beyond a Boundary" and "State Capitalism and the World Revolution", C.L.R. James was one of the most significant and widely-read black writers of our time, whose work has deeply influenced succeeding generations. In a life which began in Trinidad in 1901 and ended in Brixton, London in 1989, James contributed to 20th-century intellectual life as a writer on cricket, a literary critic and political theorist and activist. Travelling widely in the United States, Britain and the Caribbean, James exchanged views with Trotsky, Paul Robeson, Martin Luther King, George Orwell and Virginia Woolf among others, and pursued his commitment to a less exploitative world in books, pamphlets, essays reviews and letters. This volume contains extracts from James's major works as well as some less readily available pieces. Prepared in collaboration with James during his last years, the collection is arranged chronologically, and covers his entire career, from his early fiction to the late studies of Black power and Black writing. It includes the complete text of the play, "The Black Jacobins", a wide selection of letters on politics and literature, and the famous essays, "The Case for West Indian Self-Government", "Popular Art and the Cultural Tradition" and "The Rise and Fall of Nkrumah".

Table of Contents:
Part 1 1901-1932 Trinidad 1. La Divina Pastora 2. Triumph. Part 2 1932-38 Britain 3. Bloomsbury - and encounter with Edith Sitwell 4. The Case for West Indian Self-Government 5. Abyssinia and the Imperialists 6. The Black Jacobins 7. Stalin and Socialism. Part 3 1938-53 United States 8. Letter to Constance 9. Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity 10. The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem 11. The Class Struggle 12. Whitman and Melville 13. The Struggle for Happiness 14. Notes on "Hamlet". Part 4 1953-66 The Caribbean 15 Popular Art and Cultural Tradition 16. Preface to Criticism 17. Letters on Politics 18. Writings from the Nation 19. From Toussaint L'Overture to Fidel Castro 20. What is Art? 21a. Lenin and the Vanguard Party 21b. Lenin and the Problem 22a. The People of the Gold Coast 22b. The Rise and Fall of Nkrumah Part 5 1966-89 23 a. Black Power 23 b. Black People in the Urban Areas of the US 24. Garfield Sobers 25. Black Studies 26. Picasso and Jackson Pollock 27. Three Black Women Writers 28. An Interview with C L R James.

About the Author :
Anna Grimshaw is Lecturer in Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester, England. She worked for six years as C. L. R. James's assistant and edited his writings collected as Cricket (1986).

Review :
"A centrally important 20th-century figure, a Trinidadian black whose life as a scholar of history, political activist, cricket player and critic, cultural maverick, restless pilgrim between the West and its former colonial possessions in Africa and America, is emblematic of modern existence itself." Edward Said, Washington Post "Quite simply, the outstanding West Indian of our century." Caryl Phillips, author of The Final Passage