308 Recommended Reads: The Caribbean Books That Have Made You

It was a joy for us to collate your recommendations for the 100 Caribbean Books that Made Us on social media during our five-week campaign in 2020, and we want to recognise all the books that were named by you during the crowd-sourcing phase. The 308 titles that have “made” you, our audience, can be found in this catalogue. It may be the greatest list of Caribbean reads – find poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama and even a song book recommendation! – enjoy making your way through it!

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”

C

  • 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

  • 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”

E

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

F

  • 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”

G

  • 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

H

  • 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

I

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

J

  • 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”

K

  • 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”

L

  • 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

M

  • 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

N

  • 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

P

  • 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”

R

  • 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”

S

  • 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”

T

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

V

  • 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”

W

  • 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

Y

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

Z

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