Table of Contents:
  • Introduction: A new world order
  • The United States
  • Introduction : the burden of race
  • Native son by Richard Wright
  • Giovanni's room by James Baldwin
  • Marvin Gaye
  • Fatheralong by John Edgar Wideman
  • James Baldwin: the lure of Hollywood
  • Amistad
  • Africa
  • Introduction: Dispatches from Africa
  • The fortunes of Wangrin by Amadou Hampate' Ba
  • Nadine Gordimer: the beat of history
  • J.M. Coetzee : Life and the times of John C.
  • The burden of memory, the muse of forgiveness by Wole Soyinka
  • The Caribbean
  • Introduction : The gift of displacement
  • St. Kitts : 19 September 1983
  • A small place by Jamaica Kincaid
  • The Arkansas testament by Derek Walcott
  • C.L.R. James : mariner, renegade and castaway
  • Edouard Glissant: promiscuities
  • V.S. Naipaul
  • Patrick Chamoiseau: unmarooned
  • Following on : the legacy of Lamming and Selvon
  • Britain
  • Introduction: A little luggage
  • Ignatius Sancho: a black British man of letters
  • Linton Kwesi Johnson: prophet in another land
  • The pioneers : Fifty years of Caribbean
  • Migration to Britain
  • White teeth by Zadie Smith
  • Extravagant strangers
  • Leeds united, life and me
  • Conclusion : The high anxiety of belonging.