By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 16, 2019
On Monday I presented a paper, “Writing the Slave Master of Trinidad,” at an important conference “Slavery and Its Afterlives: Blackness, Representation, Social Justice, Vision,” at the National Maritime Museum in London. The conference aimed “to extend our understanding of diaspora, to connect diaspora and, in the process, to forge new critical directions.”
Continue reading The Making of a Scholar…
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 12, 2019
“If there is a miracle in the idea of life, it is this: that we are able to exist for a time, in defiance of chaos.”
—Binyavanga Wainaina, One Day I Will Write About This Place
Few people in Trinidad and Tobago may have heard the name Binyavanga Wainaina, the Kenyan writer and activist, who died on May 29 at the age of 48. He was one of the most prominent international writers of his time who “above all, sought the truth of complexity” (Financial Times, June 1). In 2014, Time Magazine named him one of the “100 most influential people in the world.”
Continue reading “I Am a Homosexual, Mum”
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 08, 2019
“Know you not that love, when firmly established, is priceless?”
—Nana Asma’u, “Lamentation for ‘Aysha.'”
I met Margaret Busby in the 1980s just after her press (Allison & Busby) published three volumes of C. L. R. James’s collected work (The Future in the Present [1977], Spheres of Existence [1980], and At the Rendezvous of Victory 1984]). It was an exciting time for James scholars. The assembled pieces were important parts of James’s intellectual corpus.
Continue reading New Daughters of Africa
By Alan MacLeod
February 03, 2019 – venezuelanalysis.com
It is no secret that the United States has long been plotting regime change in Venezuela. For over 18 months President Trump has been publicly floating a military invasion of the country. At a speech in Florida President Trump recently announced “the days of socialism and communism are numbered in Venezuela” ominously stating “one day soon we are going to see what the people will do in Caracas.” Vice President Mike Pence declared President Nicolas Maduro a “dictator” and reiterated that self-declared president Juan Guaidó had the “unwavering support” of the American people. In an attempt to destroy the economy and force Maduro out of power, the US has leveled multiple rounds of punishing (and illegal) sanctions on the country, and encouraged and intimidated others to do the same in an effort to isolate Venezuela politically and economically.
Continue reading The US Tried to Isolate Venezuela. It has Only Isolated Itself
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 30, 2019
“It is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital…without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic.”
—V. I. Lenin quoted in C. L. R. James, Notes on Dialectics
On Monday the Sugar and Slavery Gallery of London Museum Docklands invited me to be a panelist in a seminar, “London’s Debt to and Involvement with Slavery.” The other panelist, Dr. Kate Donington, Co-Curator of the Slavery, Culture and Collecting display at the Museum, spoke about George Hibbert, a slave owner in Jamaica and a hugely influential presence in eighteenth-century Jamaica and London.
Continue reading Thinking Dialectically About Slavery
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 11, 2018
On Thursday and Friday of this week I will launch my new book, The Slave Master of Trinidad, at the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago and the University of The University of the West Indies respectively. The first is a private affair, under the auspices of the Hon. Keith Rowley, Prime Minister; the later is a public affair, “featuring a review (of the book) by Sir Hilary Beckles, the Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies.” No one could think of a more auspicious way to introduce this book to the reading public of Trinidad and Tobago.
Continue reading Whose History Anyhow?
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 28, 2018
(Dedicated to Wendy Williams)
Now, please don’t blame me; doh say that I say so because ah simply selling it as ah buy it but the people have it to say—call them de bad-minded people— that Meghan Markle is not the first black or mixed-race woman to join the British royal family by way of marriage.
Continue reading Is Meghan Really the First …
By Tyehimba Salandy
May 20, 2018
Ten years ago, British ‘royalty’, Prince Charles and his wife Camilla visited the Caribbean and locals prostrated before them. Local leaders made arrangements for them to play the Steelpan and the sacred Rastafarian Nyabinghi drums. Leslie from Africaspeaks.com wrote an insightful article titled Royal Visit Highlights Lingering Colonialism that brought attention to the dynamics of colonialism in this visit. This article is as relevant today as it was ten years ago when it was written, given the celebratory eruptions at the wedding of British monarch Prince Harry and his bride Meghan Markle. Yet the region is poorer today for elevating fake royalty to dizzying heights of reverence while neglecting the royalty inherent in resistant Caribbean voices who have worked hard at improving Caribbean societies.
Continue reading The British Royal Wedding, Feelgoodism and the Colonial Jumbie
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 09, 2018
Queen Njinga of Africa ruled Ndongo (located in present-day Angola) from 1624-1663. Despite her outstanding accomplishments, “Europeans at the time portrayed her as a bloodthirsty cannibal who thought nothing of murdering babies and slaughtering her enemies.” This is the conclusion that Linda Heywood, a Trinidadian professor of history at Boston University, arrives at in her new biography, Njinga of Angola: African Warrior Queen (2017).
Continue reading Flawed Heroines
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 12, 2018
Last Thursday, International Women’s Day (IWD), millions of women around the world celebrated “the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.” The day also marked “a call to action for accelerating gender parity.”
Their website reminded us that IWD has occurred “for well over a century, with the first March 8 IWD gathering supported by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.”
Continue reading Celebrating Unnamed and Unfamed Trinidad and Tobago Women