What does a region’s reading list say about it? As the Bocas Lit Fest reveals the 100 Caribbean Books That Made Us, we invite you to explore what lies beneath a crowd-sourced canon – the real revelations have only just begun!
In response to the BBC’s 100 Books That Shaped Our World, 2019, where only six titles were Caribbean-based, we turned to our social media channels to attempt to answer the question: what might a Caribbean list of 100 defining reads look like? We deliberately left the question as open as we could – we asked our audiences which books have meant the most to them, and to our region. The campaign opened in April 2020, and in just over a week’s time, we had crossed 100 recommended titles! After five weeks, more than 300 beloved Caribbean books were named – the stories that hold pride of place on our bookshelves and in our hearts, and a testament to the astounding expanse of literary greatness that is Caribbean literature.
The Final List
Now, we are delighted to reveal the final 100 Caribbean Books That Made Us – an unranked, expansive list as wide-ranging as the Caribbean Sea and its diaspora, spanning multiple genres, generations, styles, languages, settings and themes – a timeless reading list for the Caribbean reader, by the Caribbean reader. Inside these book covers are a range of concerns – class division, colourism, colonialism, development, exile, belonging, identity formation, and love and the challenges of love.
We welcome all discussions that this list undoubtedly provokes – what is a Caribbean book? What is most important in determining Caribbean authorship? Classic or contemporary – which period has truly defined us? Is this list a direct extension of our literature syllabi across the region? Are our stories really our own, or are we still writing back to real and imagined colonisers?
Over the course of this year, we hope you are inspired to read from and question the list, share with family and friends, and revisit with pride the literature that is ours. Thoughts on the list? Post them on this page or start your own conversations on social media using the hashtag #100CbnBooksThatMadeUS.
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”
- 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”
- 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”
- 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”
- Antoni, Robert – “Divina Trace”
- Arenas, Reinaldo – “Antes que anochezca”
- Avila, Lorraine – “Malcriada & Other Stories”
B
- Bahadur, Gaiutra – “Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture”
- 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”
- 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 ”
- 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”
- Brinkhurst-Cuff, Charlie – “Mother Country: Real Stories of the Windrush Children”
- Brodber, Edna – “Myal”
- 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”
- Callender, Timothy – “It So Happen: Caribbean Short Stories”
- Capildeo, Vahni – “Measures of Expatriation”
- 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”
- Carpentier, Alejo – “The Lost Steps (Los pasos perdidos)”
- Carrington, Roslyn – “Candy Don’t Come in Gray”
- Carter, Martin – “Poems by Martin Carter”
- Carter, Martin – “University of Hunger: Collected Poems and Selected Prose”
- Carty-Williams, Candice – “Queenie”
- Castro, Fidel – “Che: A Memoir”
- Césaire, Aimé – “Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Return to My Native Land)”
- Césaire, Aimé – “Discourse on Colonialism”
- 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”
- 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”
- Condé, Maryse – “Ségou (Segu)”
- 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”
- Danticat, Edwidge – “Brother, I’m Dying”
- Danticat, Edwidge – “Krik? Krak!”
- Danticat, Edwidge – “The Dew Breaker”
- Danticat, Edwidge – “The Farming of Bones”
- 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”
- 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)”
- 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”
- Ellis, Garfield – “For Nothing At All”
- Eniath, Aliyyah – “The Yard”
F
- Fanon, Frantz – “Black Skin, White Masks” –
- 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”
- 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”
- Glissant, Édouard – “Poetics of Relation”
- Gonsalves, Ralph – “Diary of a Prime Minister: Ten Days Among Benedictine Monks”
- Gonsalves, Ralph – “The Making of”The Comrade”: The Political Journey of Ralph Gonsalves : An Autobiographical Sketch of a Caribbean Prime Minister”
- Goodison, Lorna – “By Love Possessed: Stories”
- Goodison, Lorna – “Heartease”
- Goodison, Lorna – “I Am Becoming My Mother”
- Goodison, Lorna – “Selected Poems”
- Guillén, Nicolás – “West Indies, Ltd.”
H
- Harold, Gwyneth – “Something Special: A YA Novel”
- Harris, Wilson – “Eternity to Season”
- Harris, Wilson – “Palace of the Peacock”
- 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”
- Hopkinson, Nalo – “Brown Girl in the Ring”
- Hopkinson, Nalo – “Midnight Robber ”
- Hopkinson, Nalo – “Skin Folk”
- Hosein, Kevin Jared – “The Beast of Kukuyo”
I
- Indiana, Rita – “Papi”
J
- James, C.L.R. – “Beyond a Boundary”
- James, C.L.R. – “Letters from London: Seven Essays”
- James, C.L.R. – “Minty Alley”
- James, C.L.R. – “The Black Jacobins”
- James, Marlon – “The Book of Night Women”
- James, Marlon James – “A Brief History of Seven Killings”
- 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”
- Kincaid, Jamaica – “Annie John”
- Kincaid, Jamaica – “At the Bottom of the River”
- 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”
- Lamming, George – “In the Castle of My Skin”
- 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”
- Levy, Andrea – “The Long Song”
- 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”
- Lovelace, Earl – “The Schoolmaster”
- Lovelace, Earl – “The Wine of Astonishment ”
- Lovelace, Earl – “While Gods are Falling”
- Lovell, Glenville – “Fire in the Canes”
- Lovell, Glenville – “Going Home in Chains – stories”
- Lubrin, Canisia – “Voodoo Hypothesis”
M
- Mais, Roger – “Brother Man”
- Mais, Roger – “The Hills Were Joyful Together”
- 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”
- McCaulay, Diana – “Dog-Heart”
- McDonald, Ian – “The Hummingbird Tree”
- McKay, Claude – “Banana Bottom”
- 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”
- Melville, Pauline – “The Ventriloquist’s Tale”
- Millar, Sharon – “The Whale House and Other Stories”
- Miller, Kei – “Augustown”
- Miller, Kei – “The Last Warner Woman”
- Mittelholzer, Edgar – “My Bones and My Flute”
- Mittelholzer, Edgar – “The Kaywana Trilogy”
- Mootoo, Shani – “Cereus Blooms at Night”
- Mootoo, Shani – “He Drown She in the Sea”
- 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”
N
- Naipaul, V.S. – “A House for Mr Biswas” –
- Naipaul, V.S. – “Guerillas”
- Naipaul, V.S. – “Miguel Street “
- Naipaul, V.S. – “The Enigma of Arrival”
- Naipaul, V.S. – “The Loss of El Dorado”
- Naipaul, V.S. – “The Middle Passage”
- Naipaul, V.S. – “The Mimic Men”
- 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”
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”
- Patterson, Orlando – “The Children of Sisyphus”
- Persaud, Ingrid – “Love after Love”
- Philip, Marlene Nourbese – “Coups and Calypsos: A Play”
- Philip, Marlene Nourbese – “Harriet’s Daughter”
- 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”
- Prince, Althea – “Loving this Man”
- Pryce, Ken – “Endless Pressure: A Study of WI life-styles in Bristol”
R
- Rahim, Jennifer – “Ground Level”
- 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”
- Reid, V.S. – “The Young Warriors”
- Rhone, Trevor – “Smile Orange”
- Rhys, Jean – “Voyage in the Dark”
- Rhys, Jean – “Wide Sargasso Sea”
- Richards, Sparkle – “Moka”
- Roach, Eric M. – “The Flowering Rock”
- Robinson, Roger – “A Portable Paradise”
- Rodney, Walter – “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”
- Rodney, Walter – “The Groundings with My Brother”
- Roffey, Monique – “House of Ashes”
- Roffey, Monique – “The White Woman on a Green Bicycle”
- Rohlehr, Gordon – “My Whole Life is Calypso”
- Ross, Jacob – “Pynter Bender”
- 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)”
- Scott, Beverley-Ann – “Is America She Gone?”
- Scott, Beverley-Ann – “The Stolen Cascadura”
- Scott, Dennis – “Uncle Time”
- Selvon, Sam – “A Brighter Sun”
- Selvon, Sam – “The Lonely Londoners”
- Selvon, Sam – “Those Who Eat the Cascadura”
- Selvon, Sam – “Turn Again Tiger”
- Selvon, Sam – “Ways of Sunlight”
- 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”
- 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)”
- Vieux-Chauvet, Marie – “Dance on the Volcano”
W
- Walcott, Derek – “Another Life”
- Walcott, Derek – “Collected Poems 1948-1984”
- Walcott, Derek – “Dream on Monkey Mountain”
- Walcott, Derek – “Omeros “
- Walcott, Derek – “Sea Grapes”
- Walcott, Derek – “The Arkansas Testament”
- Walcott, Derek – “The Star-Apple Kingdom (includes”The Schooner Flight”)”
- 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)”
- 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”
- Williams, Edison T. – “Facing North: Tales from Bathsheba”
- Williams, Eric – “Capitalism and Slavery”
- Williams, Eric – “The Negro in the Caribbean”
- Winkler, Anthony C. – “Going Home to Teach”
- Wong, Dwayne (Omowale) – “The Political and Intellectual Legacy of Walter Rodney”
- Wynter, Sylvia – “The Hills of Hebron”
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)”