308 Recommended Reads: The Caribbean Books That Have Made You

A

• Abrahams, Peter – “This Island Now”
• Adam, Claire – “Golden Child” – Fiction, 2019
• Adisa, Ed. by Donna Weir Soley; Opal Palmer – “Caribbean Erotic”
• Alcantara, Amanda – “Chula”
• Alexis, Andre – “Fifteen Dogs”
• Alkins, Jeunanne – “Hatch”
• Allen-Agostini, Lisa – “Home Home” – Fiction,
• Allende, Isabel – “Island Beneath the Sea”
• Allfrey, Phyllis Shand – “The Orchid House”
• Als, Michael – “Love on the River Stone”
• Alsina, Marta Aponte – “Somos Islas: Ensayos de Camino”
• Anthony, Michael – “Green Days by the River” – Fiction, 1967
• Anthony, Michael – “In the Heat of the Day”
• Anthony, Michael – “King of the Masquerade”
• Anthony, Michael – “The Games Were Coming”
• Anthony, Michael – “The Year in San Fernando” – Fiction, 1965
• Antoni, Robert – “Divina Trace”
• Arenas, Reinaldo – “Antes que anochezca”
• Avila, Lorraine – “Malcriada & Other Stories”

B

• Bahadur, Gaiutra – “Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture” – Non-fiction, 2013
• Barrett, Lindsay – “Song for Mumu”
• Beckles, Hilary – “Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide”
• Benítez-Rojo, Antonio – “The Repeating Island (La isla que se repite)”
• Bennett-Coverley, Louise – “Jamaica Labrish” – Poetry, 1966
• Bennett, Alvin – “God the Stone Breaker”
• Best, Lloyd – “Independent Thought and Caribbean Freedom”
• Bhattacharya, Rahul – “The Sly Company of Those Who Care”
• Binch, Caroline – “Gregory Cool”
• Bishop, Jacqueline – “The Gymnast and Other Positions: Stories, Essays, Interviews”
• Bolivar, Simon – “Carta de Jamaica”
• Bourne, Shakirah – “My Fishy Stepmom”
• Brand, Dionne – “A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging ” – Non-fiction, 2001
• Brand, Dionne – “At the Full and Change of the Moon”
• Brand, Dionne – “In Another Place, Not Here”
• Brand, Dionne – “Land to Light On”
• Brathwaite, Kamau – “Ancestors”
• Brathwaite, Kamau – “Barabajan Poems 1492-1992”
• Brathwaite, Kamau – “History of the Voice: The development of nation language in Anglophone Caribbean poetry”
• Brathwaite, Kamau – “The Arrivants: Rights of Passage, Islands, Masks: A New World Trilogy” – Poetry, 1973
• Brinkhurst-Cuff, Charlie – “Mother Country: Real Stories of the Windrush Children”
• Brodber, Edna – “Myal” 1988
• Brown, Ian McDonald & Stewart – “The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry”
• Brown, John Wickham; Stewart (ed.) – “The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories”

• Callender, Kheryn – “Hurricane Child” – Fiction, 2018
• Callender, Timothy – “It So Happen: Caribbean Short Stories”
• Capildeo, Vahni – “Measures of Expatriation” – Poetry, 2016
• Capildeo, Vahni – “No Traveller Returns”
• Carew, Jan – “Black Midas”
• Carew, Jan – “The Last Barbarian”
• Carpentier, Alejo – “El siglo de las luces (Explosion in a Cathedral)”
• Carpentier, Alejo – “The Kingdom of This World” 1949
• Carpentier, Alejo – “The Lost Steps (Los pasos perdidos)”
• Carrington, Roslyn – “Candy Don’t Come in Gray” – Fiction, 2002
• Carter, Martin – “Poems by Martin Carter” – Poetry, 2006
• Carter, Martin – “University of Hunger: Collected Poems and Selected Prose”
• Carty-Williams, Candice – “Queenie”
• Castro, Fidel – “Che: A Memoir” – Non-fiction, 1994
• Césaire, Aimé – “Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Return to My Native Land)” – Poetry, 1939
• Césaire, Aimé – “Discourse on Colonialism” – Non-fiction, 1950
• Chamoiseau, Patrick – “Texaco”
• Channer, Colin – “The Girl with the Golden Shoes”
• Chariandy, David – “Soucouyant”
• Chin, Staceyann – “The Other Side of Paradise”
• Clarke, Austin – “Growing up Stupid Under the Union Jack”
• Clarke, Austin – “The Meeting Point: The Toronto Trilogy”
• Clarke, Austin – “The Polished Hoe”
• Clarke, Edith – “My Mother who Fathered Me” – Non-fiction, 1957
• Collins Klobah, Loretta – “The Twelve-Foot Neon Woman”
• Collins, Merle – “Angel”
• Collins, Merle – “The Colour of Forgetting”
• Condé, Maryse – “I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem” – Fiction, 1986
• Condé, Maryse – “Ségou (Segu)” – Fiction, 1996
• Cooper, Carolyn – “Noises in the Blood”
• Cruz, Victor Hernandez – “The Mountain in the Sea”

• D’Aguiar, Fred – “Feeding the Ghosts”
• D’Aguiar, Fred – “Mama Dot”
• D’Costa, Jean – “Escape to Last Man Peak”
• D’Costa, Jean – “Sprat Morrison”
• Danticat, Edwidge – “Breath, Eyes, Memory” – Fiction, 1994
• Danticat, Edwidge – “Brother, I’m Dying”
• Danticat, Edwidge – “Krik? Krak!”
• Danticat, Edwidge – “The Dew Breaker”
• Danticat, Edwidge – “The Farming of Bones” – Fiction, 1998
• Das, Mahadai – “A Leaf in His Ear”
• Dawes, Kwame – “Prophets”
• de Boissiere, Ralph – “Rum and Coca-Cola”
• de Lisser, Herbert G. – “Jane’s Career: A Story of Jamaica”
• de Lisser, Herbert G. – “Susan Proudleigh”
• Dennis-Benn, Nicole – “Here Comes the Sun” – Fiction, 2016
• Depestre, René – “Hadriana Dans Tous Mes Rêves (Hadriana In All My Dreams)”
• Diaz, Junot – “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”
• Dicent, Juan – “Winterness (Short stories)” – Fiction, 2012
• Douglas, Marcia – “Madam Fate”
• Douglas, Marcia – “The Marvellous Equations of the Dread: a novel in bass riddim”
• Drayton, Geoffrey – “Christopher”

• Edgell, Zee – “Beka Lamb” – Fiction, 1982
• Ellis, Garfield – “For Nothing At All”
• Eniath, Aliyyah – “The Yard” – Fiction, 2016

• Fanon, Frantz – “Black Skin, White Masks” – Non-fiction, 1952
• Fanon, Frantz – “The Wretched of the Earth”
• Febres, Mayra Santos – “Anamú y manigua”
• Fermor, Patrick Leigh – “The Violins of Saint-Jacques”
• Forbes, Curdella – “A Tall History of Sugar”
• Foster, Cecil – “No Man in the House”
• Franco, Jennifer – “When the Ti-Marie Closes”
• Frontin, Jeanelle – “The Eld Queen”

• Garvey, Marcus – “The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey”
• Gegele, A-Dziko Simba – “All Over Again”
• Georges, Richard – “Giant” – Poetry, 2018
• Giuseppi, Neville and Undine – “Backfire: A Collection of Caribbean Short Stories”
• Giuseppi, Neville and Undine – “Out for Stars: An Anthology of Poetry for Caribbean Secondary Schools”
• Glissant, Édouard – “Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays” – Non-fiction, 1989
• Glissant, Édouard – “Poetics of Relation”
• Gonsalves, Ralph – “Diary of a Prime Minister: Ten Days Among Benedictine Monks” – Non-fiction, 2010
• Gonsalves, Ralph – “The Making of”The Comrade”: The Political Journey of Ralph Gonsalves : An Autobiographical Sketch of a Caribbean Prime Minister” – Non-fiction, 2010
• Goodison, Lorna – “By Love Possessed: Stories” – Fiction, 2012
• Goodison, Lorna – “Heartease”
• Goodison, Lorna – “I Am Becoming My Mother”
• Goodison, Lorna – “Selected Poems” – Poetry, 1992
• Guillén, Nicolás – “West Indies, Ltd.” – Poetry, 1934

• Harold, Gwyneth – “Something Special: A YA Novel”
• Harris, Wilson – “Eternity to Season”
• Harris, Wilson – “Palace of the Peacock” 1960
• Herbert, Angela – “A Short Holiday: A collection of short stories”
• Hill, Errol – “Trinidad Carnival: Mandate for a National Theatre”
• Hippolyte, Kendel – “Wordplanting”
• Hodge, Merle – “Crick Crack, Monkey”
• Hodge, Merle – “For the Life of Laetitia” – Fiction, 1993
• Hopkinson, Nalo – “Brown Girl in the Ring”
• Hopkinson, Nalo – “Midnight Robber ” – Fiction, 2000
• Hopkinson, Nalo – “Skin Folk”
• Hosein, Kevin Jared – “The Beast of Kukuyo” – Fiction, 2018

• Indiana, Rita – “Papi” – Fiction, 2016

• James, C.L.R. – “Beyond a Boundary” – Non-fiction, 1963
• James, C.L.R. – “Letters from London: Seven Essays”
• James, C.L.R. – “Minty Alley”
• James, C.L.R. – “The Black Jacobins” – Non-fiction, 1938
• James, Marlon – “The Book of Night Women” – Fiction, 2009
• James, Marlon James – “A Brief History of Seven Killings” – Fiction, 2014
• John, Errol – “Moon on a Rainbow Shawl”
• John, Marie-Elena – “Unburnable “
• Jones, Marion Patrick – “Pan Beat”

• Keens-Douglas, Paul – “Tanti at de Oval: Selected Works of Paul Keen-Douglas”
• Kempadoo, Oonya – “Buxton Spice”
• Khan, Ismith – “The Jumbie Bird”
• Kincaid, Jamaica – “A Small Place” 1988
• Kincaid, Jamaica – “Annie John” – Fiction, 1985
• Kincaid, Jamaica – “At the Bottom of the River” 1983
• Kincaid, Jamaica – “Lucy”
• Kincaid, Jamaica – “The Autobiography of My Mother: A Novel”

• Ladoo, Harold Sonny – “No Pain Like This Body”
• Laferriére, Dany – “I Am a Japanese Writer (Je suis un écrivain japonais)”
• Lalla, Barbara – “Uncle Brother” – Fiction, 2014
• Lamming, George – “In the Castle of My Skin” – Fiction, 1953
• Levi, Anna – “Madinah Girl”
• Levy, Andrea – “Every Light in the House Burnin'”
• Levy, Andrea – “Fruit of the Lemon”
• Levy, Andrea – “Never Far Away From Nowhere”
• Levy, Andrea – “Small Island” – Fiction, 2004
• Levy, Andrea – “The Long Song” – Fiction, 2010
• Lewis, Gordon – “The Growth of the Modern West Indies”
• Lewis, Rupert – “Marcus Garvey: Anti-colonial Champion”
• Lord, Karen – “Redemption in Indigo”
• Lord, Karen – “The Best of All Possible Worlds”
• Lord, Shirley – “Golden Hill: A Novel”
• Lorde, Audre – “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name”
• Lovelace, Earl – “A Brief Conversation and other stories”
• Lovelace, Earl – “Is Just A Movie”
• Lovelace, Earl – “Salt”
• Lovelace, Earl – “The Dragon Can’t Dance” – Fiction, 1979
• Lovelace, Earl – “The Schoolmaster” – Fiction, 1979
• Lovelace, Earl – “The Wine of Astonishment ” – Fiction, 1982
• Lovelace, Earl – “While Gods are Falling”
• Lovell, Glenville – “Fire in the Canes”
• Lovell, Glenville – “Going Home in Chains – stories”
• Lubrin, Canisia – “Voodoo Hypothesis” – Fiction, 2019

• Mais, Roger – “Brother Man” – Fiction, 1954
• Mais, Roger – “The Hills Were Joyful Together” – Fiction, 1953
• Manley, Rachel – “Drumblair: Memories of a Jamaican Childhood”
• Manley, Rachel – “Horses in Her Hair: A Granddaughter’s Story”
• Márquez, Gabriel García – “Crónica de una muerte anunciada”
• Marshall, Paule – “Brown Girl, Brownstones”
• Marshall, Paule – “Praisesong for the Widow”
• Marshall, Paule – “The Chosen Place, The Timeless People”
• McCallum, Shara – “Madwoman” – Poetry, 2017
• McCaulay, Diana – “Dog-Heart”
• McDonald, Ian – “The Hummingbird Tree” – Fiction, 1969
• McKay, Claude – “Banana Bottom” 1933
• McKay, Claude – “Long Way From Home”
• McLeod, Cynthia – “De Vrije Negerin Elisabeth (The Free Negress Elisabeth)”
• McNeill, Anthony – “Reel from”The Life-Movie””
• McWatt, Mark – “Suspended Sentences” – Fiction, 1988-1993
• Melville, Pauline – “The Ventriloquist’s Tale” – Fiction, 1997
• Millar, Sharon – “The Whale House and Other Stories”
• Miller, Kei – “Augustown” – Fiction, 2016
• Miller, Kei – “The Last Warner Woman” 2010
• Mittelholzer, Edgar – “My Bones and My Flute”
• Mittelholzer, Edgar – “The Kaywana Trilogy”
• Mootoo, Shani – “Cereus Blooms at Night” – Fiction, 1996
• Mootoo, Shani – “He Drown She in the Sea” – Fiction, 2006
• Mootoo, Shani – “Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab”
• Mootoo, Shani – “Valmiki’s Daughter”
• Morris, Mervyn – “The Pond “
• Mutabaruka, (Allan Hope) – “The Book: First Poems / The Next Poems” – Poetry, 2005

• Naipaul, V.S. – “A House for Mr Biswas” – Fiction, 1961
• Naipaul, V.S. – “Guerillas”
• Naipaul, V.S. – “Miguel Street ” – Fiction, 1959
• Naipaul, V.S. – “The Enigma of Arrival”
• Naipaul, V.S. – “The Loss of El Dorado”
• Naipaul, V.S. – “The Middle Passage” – Non-fiction, 1963
• Naipaul, V.S. – “The Mimic Men” – Fiction, 1967
• Naipaul, V.S. – “The Mystic Masseur”
• Naipaul, V.S. – “The Return of Eva Peron, with the Killings in Trinidad”
• Nettleford, Rex – “Mirror, Mirror: Identity, Race & Protest in Jamaica”
• Nichols, Grace – “I is a Long Memoried Woman”
• Norat, Vanessa Vilches – “Geografías de lo perdido”
• Nunez, Elizabeth – “Bruised Hibiscus”
• Nunez, Elizabeth – “Prospero’s Daughter” – Fiction, 2006

• Palmer Adisa, Opal – “4-Headed Woman: Poems”
• Palmer Adisa, Opal – “Bake Face and Other Guava Stories”
• Palmer Adisa, Opal – “It Begins with Tears”
• Palmer Adisa, Opal – “Until Judgement Comes: Stories about Jamaican Men”
• Palmer, C. Everard – “A Cow Called Boy”
• Palmer, C. Everard – “My Father, Sun-Sun Johnson”
• Palmer, C. Everard – “The Wooing of Beppo Tate” – Fiction, 1972
• Patterson, Orlando – “The Children of Sisyphus” – Fiction, 2012
• Persaud, Ingrid – “Love after Love”
• Philip, Marlene Nourbese – “Coups and Calypsos: A Play”
• Philip, Marlene Nourbese – “Harriet’s Daughter” – Fiction, 1988
• Philip, Marlene Nourbese – “Zong!”
• Phillips, Caryl – “Crossing the River”
• Phillips, Lincoln A – “Rising Above and Beyond the Crossbar: The Life Story of Lincoln”Tiger”Phillips”
• Philoctete, Rene – “Massacre River”
• Philogene, Shirla – “Between Two Worlds: A Narrative”
• Powell, Colin – “My American Journey”
• Prado-Núñez, Viviana – “The Art of White Roses” – Fiction, 2018
• Prince, Althea – “Loving this Man”
• Pryce, Ken – “Endless Pressure: A Study of WI life-styles in Bristol”

• Rahim, Jennifer – “Ground Level” – Poetry, 2014
• Ramlochan, Shivanee – “Everyone Knows I Am A Haunting”
• Rankine, Claudia – “Citizen: An American Lyric”
• Rankine, Claudia – “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric”
• Reid, V.S. – “The Leopard” – Fiction, 1958
• Reid, V.S. – “The Young Warriors”
• Rhone, Trevor – “Smile Orange”
• Rhys, Jean – “Voyage in the Dark” – Fiction, 1934
• Rhys, Jean – “Wide Sargasso Sea” – Fiction, 1966
• Richards, Sparkle – “Moka”
• Roach, Eric M. – “The Flowering Rock”
• Robinson, Roger – “A Portable Paradise”
• Rodney, Walter – “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” – Non-fiction, 1972
• Rodney, Walter – “The Groundings with My Brother” – Non-fiction, 1971
• Roffey, Monique – “House of Ashes” – Fiction, 2014
• Roffey, Monique – “The White Woman on a Green Bicycle”
• Rohlehr, Gordon – “My Whole Life is Calypso”
• Ross, Jacob – “Pynter Bender” – Fiction, 2008
• Ross, Jacob – “The Bone Readers”
• Roumain, Jacques – “Gouverneurs de la rosée (Masters of the Dew)”
• Rudder, David – “Song Book”

• Salkey, Andrew – “Georgetown Journal – A Caribbean Writer’s Journey from London via Port of Spain to Georgetown, Guyana 1970”
• Sánchez, Luis Rafael – “La guaracha del Macho Camacho”
• Santimanitay
• Schwarz-Bart, Simone – “Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle (The bridge of beyond)” – Fiction, 1972
• Scott, Beverley-Ann – “Is America She Gone?”
• Scott, Beverley-Ann – “The Stolen Cascadura”
• Scott, Dennis – “Uncle Time”
• Selvon, Sam – “A Brighter Sun” – Fiction, 1952
• Selvon, Sam – “The Lonely Londoners” 1956
• Selvon, Sam – “Those Who Eat the Cascadura” – Fiction, 1972
• Selvon, Sam – “Turn Again Tiger”
• Selvon, Sam – “Ways of Sunlight” – Fiction, 1957
• Senior, Olive – “Dying to Better Themselves”
• Senior, Olive – “Gardening in the Tropics” – Poetry, 1994
• Senior, Olive – “Summer Lightning and Other Stories”
• Senior, Olive – “The Pain Tree”
• Seymour, A.J. – “Collected Poems ” – Poetry,
• Shah, Ryhaan – “A Silent Life” – Fiction, 2005
• Sherlock, Philip – “West Indian Folk Tales”
• Side by Side We Stand””
• Smith, Keith – “The Best of Keith Smith”
• Sobion, Justin – “The West Indian Lawyer”
• Springer, Pearl Eintou – “Out of the Shadows”

• Taghaboni, Nathalie – “Across From Lapeyrouse: The Savanoy Trilogy”
• Thompson, Krista A. – “An Eye for the Tropics: Tourism, Photography, and Framing the Caribbean Picturesque”

• Vega, Ana Lydia – “Encancaranublado y otros cuentos de naufragio”
• Vieux-Chauvet, Marie – “Amour, Colère, Folie (Love, Anger, Madness: A Haitian Trilogy)” – Fiction, 1968
• Vieux-Chauvet, Marie – “Dance on the Volcano”

• Walcott, Derek – “Another Life”
• Walcott, Derek – “Collected Poems 1948-1984”
• Walcott, Derek – “Dream on Monkey Mountain” – Play, 1970
• Walcott, Derek – “Omeros ” – Poetry, 1990
• Walcott, Derek – “Sea Grapes”
• Walcott, Derek – “The Arkansas Testament”
• Walcott, Derek – “The Star-Apple Kingdom (includes”The Schooner Flight”)” – Poetry, 1979
• Walcott, Derek – “Ti Jean and His Brothers”
• Walcott, Derek – “What the Twilight Says”
• Walcott, Derek – “White Egrets”
• Walcott, Derek Walcott – “Selected Poems (ed. Edward Baugh)” – Poetry, 2007
• Webley-Brown, Carol – “My Mother’s Story, My Story, Our Story”
• Weir Soley, Donna – “First Rain”
• Wiliams, Eric Williams – “From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492-1969” – Non-fiction, 1970
• Williams, Edison T. – “Facing North: Tales from Bathsheba”
• Williams, Eric – “Capitalism and Slavery” – Non-fiction, 1944
• Williams, Eric – “The Negro in the Caribbean”
• Winkler, Anthony C. – “Going Home to Teach” – Non-fiction, 1995
• Wong, Dwayne (Omowale) – “The Political and Intellectual Legacy of Walter Rodney” – Non-fiction, 2016
• Wynter, Sylvia – “The Hills of Hebron” – Fiction, 1962

• Yanique, Tiphanie – “How to Escape from a Leper Colony: A Novella and stories”
• Yanique, Tiphanie – “Land of Love and Drowning”

• Zobel, Joseph – “La rue Cases-Nègres (Black Shack Alley)”