A compelling novel of slavery and colonialism

Natives of My Person

Politics & Social Sciences

LAMMING, George

Social Sciences

HOLT. RINEHART AND WINSTON

Picador

Cannon shot and glass beads;: Modern black writing (Picador)

Reference

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Pan Books

In The Pleasures of Exile, as in his other works, George Lamming embraces the intricate issues of colonization and decolonization with a canny combination of playfulness and seriousness, irony and commitment. “[It] is a reciprocal process,” Lamming observes, “to be a colonial is to be a man in a certain relation; and this relation is an example of exile.” Through a series of interrelated essays, The Pleasures of Exile explores the cultural politics and relationships created in the crucible of colonization. Drawing on Shakespeare’s The Tempest and C. L. R. James’s The Black Jacobins, as well as his own fiction and poetry, Lamming deftly locates the reader in a specific intellectual and cultural domain while conjuring a rich and varied spectrum of physical, intellectual, psychological, and cultural responses to colonialism. “My subject,” he writes, “is the migration of the West Indian writer, as colonial and exile, from his native kingdom, once inhabited by Caliban, to the tempestuous island of Prospero’s and his language. This book is a report on one man’s way of seeing.”

The Pleasures of Exile (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

Biographies & Memoirs

University of Michigan Press

A compelling novel of slavery and colonialism

Natives of My Person (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

Literature & Fiction

United States

Nearly forty years after its initial publication, George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin is considered a classic narrative of the Black colonial experience. This poetic autobiographical novel juxtaposes the undeveloped, unencumbered life of a small Caribbean island with the materialism and anxiety of the twentieth century.
Written when Lamming was twenty-three and residing in England, In the Castle of My Skin poignantly chronicles the author's life from his ninth to his nineteenth year. Through the eyes of a young boy the experiences of colonial education, class tensions, and natural disaster are interpreted and reinterpreted, mediated through the presence of the old villagers and friends who leave for the mainland.
One of the leading Black writers of the twentieth century, George Lamming is the author of numerous works exploring the colonial experience.

In the Castle of My Skin (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

The Emigrants is an elaborately conceived novel, dense with dynamic characters and evocative details. First published in 1954, it focuses initially on the emigrant journey, then on the settling-in process. The journey by sea and subsequent attempts at resettlement provide the fictional framework for Lamming's exploration of the alienation and displacement caused by colonialism. This is the epic journey of a group of West Indians who emigrate to Great Britain in the 1950s in search of educational opportunities unattainable at home. Seeking to redefine themselves in the "mother country," an idealized landscape that they have been taught to revere, the emigrants settle uncomfortably in England's industrial cities. Within two years, ghettoization is firmly in place. The emigrants discover the meaning of their marginality in the British Empire in an environment that is unexpectedly hostile and strange. For some, alienation prompts a new sense of community, a new sense of identity as West Indians. For others, alienation leads to a crisis of confrontation with the law and fugitive status. There is a wealth of information here about the genesis of the black British community and about the cultural differences between the black British and West Indian/Caribbean.

The Emigrants (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

First published in 1960, Season of Adventure details the story of Fola, a light-skinned middle-class girl who has been tipped out of her easy hammock of social privilege into the complex political and cultural world of her recently independent homeland, the Caribbean island of San Cristobal. After attending a ceremony of the souls to raise the dead, she is carried off by the unrelenting accompaniment of steel drums onto a mysterious journey in search of her past and of her identity. Gradually, she is caught in the crossfire of a struggle between people who have "pawned their future to possessions" and those "condemned by lack of learning to a deeper truth." The music of the drums sounds throughout the novel, "loud as gospel to a believer's ears," and at the end stands alone as witness to the tradition which is slowly being destroyed in the name of European values. Whether through literary production or public pronouncements, George Lamming has explored the phenomena of colonialism and imperialism and their impact on the psyche of Caribbean people. First published in 1960, Season of Adventure reveals not only these themes, but involves the reader in the analysis of the forms and discourses of resistance employed by the region's people in the course of reproducing their social existence. George Lamming was born in Barbados, resides in London and teaches regularly in American universities. He is the author of In the Castle of My Skin, Natives of my Person, The Emigrants, and The Pleasures of Exile, also available from the University of Michigan Press.

Season of Adventure (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

Genre Fiction

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Books by LAMMING, George

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by LAMMING, George. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Natives of My Person

Natives of My Person

Cannon shot and glass beads;: Modern black writing (Picador)

The Pleasures of Exile (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

Natives of My Person (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

In the Castle of My Skin (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

The Emigrants (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

Season of Adventure (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

The Pleasures of Exile (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

Natives of My Person (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)