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 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
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
February 26, 2018
Monday’s disorder in East Port of Spain made me reflect on my recent visit to the Gambia where I participated in Mboka, a festival to celebrate Gambian as well as African diasporic heritage. Gambians “belong to the Senegambia region of West Africa, the general name given to the area drained by the Senegal and Gambia rivers” (Faal, A History of Gambia). Mboka or “One Family,” a Wolof word, is taken from the ethnic group of the same name.
Continue reading My Gambian Journey
By Sir Ronald Sanders
January 13, 2018 – telesurtv.net
(The writer is Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the United States and the OAS. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London and Massey College in the University of Toronto. The views expressed are his own)
The effect of the inappropriate depiction of Haiti, El Salvador and all African nations as “shit hole” countries is a matter that the people of the United States of America and their government and Congress should contemplate seriously.
Continue reading No regrets for making Haiti a ‘shithole’?
By Bill Quigley
November 27, 2013 – ccrjustice.org
Why does the US owe Haiti Billions? Colin Powell, former US Secretary of State, stated his foreign policy view as the “Pottery Barn rule.” That is – “if you break it, you own it.”
The US has worked to break Haiti for over 200 years. We owe Haiti. Not charity. We owe Haiti as a matter of justice. Reparations. And not the $100 million promised by President Obama either – that is Powerball money. The US owes Haiti Billions – with a big B.
Continue reading Why The US Owes Haiti Billions – The Briefest History
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 10, 2017
PART 1
I spent four weeks in South Africa and Swaziland at the end of June and the beginning of July. These were some of the most educative and inspiring days of my life. I had followed the South African liberation struggle since the late 1950s when Miriam Makeba sang her freedom songs. In the 1960s I read Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country and cried. Later I read Peter Abrahams Tell Freedom. It did not produce the same emotional impact on me.
Continue reading Long Walk to Freedom
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 27, 2017
Many Trinidadians and Tobagonians of my generation can remember when, in a rage or disagreement, an antagonist uttered the insult: “Go to Timbuktu!” It was a term that suggested one should be banished into ignominy and sent into the dungeon of stupidity.
Experience and education have taught me that Timbuktu, an important seat of learning between the 12th and 16th centuries, was one of the most important educational and cultural centers in the world. In its Golden age, the town’s numerous Islamic scholars and extensive trading network made possible an important book trade. There were campuses of the Sankore Madrasah, an Islamic university. At its height, as many as 25,000 students, a quarter of the city’s population, studied there.
Continue reading Go to Timbuktu!!!